There is no doubt about it, Facebook™ is the most complex social media platform. It started by splitting its main functionalities into different mobile apps. Then it continued down the path of creating unique experience for the browser-based platform and for the mobile app. These are key benefits for everyday users, but what about businesses?
As we have discussed in depth in previous articles, Facebook™ has one of the most user-friendly and detailed advertising platforms you can find across all social media networks. You can take advantage of a unique user tracking tool, the Facebook™ Pixel and, thanks to the most recent updates for the mobile and web-based platforms, you can now do more with Facebook™ in terms of engaging with your followers and evaluating how they feel about your business.
Let us take a look at the most important changes in Facebook™ for 2017:
- Stories Steal the Show from Snapchat
Snapchat became popular due to the perishable character of content shared on this platform: every photo and video disappears after being viewed by the intended audience. This type of content sharing is popular among young people and adds a note of scarcity to marketing messages and promotional offers.
The concept was taken over by the Facebook™ team and implemented first on Instagram, but now it is also available on the mobile app for their main platform. Facebook™ Stories practically create a new type of news feed for mobile users. They will first notice Stories shared by friends – photos and videos which will expire after 24 hours after being posted. However, the creators of Stories can opt to share them on their Timeline, making them permanent. While this feature is now available for personal accounts, there is no doubt that they will soon make the transition to pages, as well.
- Reactions in Messenger and Comments
Until now, the only type of reaction people had for comment threads and replies in Messenger was the Like button. Since Facebook™ reactions became so popular for posts, they are now available for direct messages and comments as well. This comprises the entire range of reactions: like, love, laugh, wow, sad and angry.
What does this mean for businesses interacting with their prospect? It means an improved way of evaluating how people feel about your products, services and brand image. You can use the reactions you get to refine and adapt your social media mix, removing content which your followers do not like and adding more things which make them happy.
- Newsfeed Videos Will Play with Sound by Default
So far, videos in the newsfeed were set on autoplay, but muted. The user could opt to keep scrolling, watch without sound for a while or turn up the sound. But various surveys found that people are more likely to stop and watch a video if it is accompanied by sound.
Therefore, very soon videos in Facebook™ will have the sound on by default. For companies, this is very good news. So far, promotional videos and ads had to rely solely on images and text to attract people’s attention. Soon, you can also work on honing the right audio intro to keep people watching your video.
- Live Location for Facebook™ Messenger
This feature makes use of Apple and Google maps to allow users to share the exact location where they are. This is a very useful feature for people to find each other when they are attending an event or plan to meet in a location where they had not been to before.
For businesses, it has a huge potential to advertise events and special in-store promotions, as well as to interact with users when they are close to your location and opt to contact you by direct messaging.
- More In-Depth Insights to Ad Reports
This new feature was specially designed for businesses only. The redesigned ad reports interface now offers better predictions for the results of your ads. Also, the new tool for auction overlap allows you to analyse how overlapping audiences for different campaigns can hurt or boost your final ROI and ad spending.
These new tools allow you to interpret the fluctuations in campaign results in real time and make the necessary changes to limit your spending and improve the rate of achieving your goals.