Facebook recently made a number of product and platform changes that affect companies and brands that market using the world’s most popular social utility. Here are five of the latest changes you need to be aware of:
1. Privacy settings for sharing: Privacy has long headed the list of concerns expressed by users of Facebook. As a result, Facebook has made a slew of changes that give users more control over who sees the content they create and post.
What this means for your business: Facebook wordsmithed the default sharing prompt that alerts users about who sees what they’re about to post. The default setting "Everyone" was changed to "Public," and that subtle change taps into the human psyche surrounding issues related to privacy. "Public" clearly demonstrates that the public at large can view your updates, photos and more, whereas "Everyone" is ambiguous, or even folksy. That, of course, worked to the advantage of social media monitoring tools that rely on lots of public-facing content to fill their dashboards and analytic reports. The new "Public" label will likely result in fewer public-facing citations, which means businesses may have less to listen to.
2. Facebook Deals is dead: Facebook’s attempt to get in on the daily deal craze has ended. Facebook Deals, which launched in eight U.S. markets since April, has been discontinued. The company says it learned a lot from testing Deals and will continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses. (Note that Yelp this week announced that it would exit the daily-deals space as well.)
What this means for your business: Facebook Deals was only available to merchants in eight U.S. cities, so unless your business operated in or around one of them, you won’t be impacted by this development. In any event, there’s no shortage of daily deal sites interested in working with you.
3. Ad targeting by Topic: For businesses and brands advertising on Facebook, the company now allows you to target your ads by Topic, not just Precise Interests and keywords. Ad targeting by Topic combines overlapping Precise Interests, which in turn allow for easier targeting. For example, listing the Topic "cooking" will target Facebook users with related interests in "cooking," "cooking tips" and "cooking and eating."
What this means for your business: If you know your target audience has a set of interests, ad targeting by Topic eliminates the need to manage a complex list of keywords. The addition of Topic targeting also allows businesses and brands to run A/B testing, or split testing, whereby you run two versions of the same ad -- one powered by Topic targeting, the other by Precise Interest targeting -- and then determine which one generates a higher return.
4. Advertising restrictions eased: Facebook now allows the promotion of legal gambling operations -- including offline casinos -- so long as such ads are appropriately targeted. The company also eased restrictions on ads promoting dietary and herbal supplements that do not contain certain ingredients, including ephedra, anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.
What this means for your business: Lifting restrictions on what is often viewed as advertisements for somewhat unsavory offerings may case users to lump all Facebook advertisements into the same distasteful pool. Now, more than ever, truth and authenticity in advertising matters.
5. Places gives way to location tagging: Facebook is phasing out its mobile Places feature, which allowed users to "check in" to locations -- including businesses -- from their cell phones.
What this means for your business: The impact here is minimal. Users will still be able to check-into a geographical location and take advantage of check-in Deals created by your business. But instead of using Places, they’ll use location tagging to indicate where they are -- possibly resulting in even more people tagging your businesses location.
Will these changes to Facebook help or hurt your business? Tell us how in the comments section.
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Comments:
Nice post Mical, thanks for keeping us informed. I really think that facebook should just step in and buy-out a company like local.com (offer stock or something) or citygrid (someone like yelp) and just build on that infrastructure instead of trying to "reinvent" the wheel. I agree with your 2nd point, the "Daily Deals" are a big market, groupon is HUGE, I agree, but for facebook to get involved, they should just BUY their way in, lol
The issue about privacy is an odd one considering the idea of the site is Social Media, not my private domain, but it should be noted that simple going to the persons page will defeat the present private settings anyway.
This could leave some 'business unaware of what users are actually saying the institution. US Auto Loan Advice
I don't believe that people reading this will have anything to do with an ERP like stated in the first post, and the extra speed and reliability really pays off. 1 day deal
It is clear that using apps offered through FB may not be prudent for small biz since we rely so heavily on things being static without the need to constantly be in fear of losing visibility due to FB changes. I shall continue to avoid relying on FB apps for a while longer and hope that FB apps find a reliable goove. MCatherine Hide A Heart
I think the easier to use Topic targeting will help a lot in efficiency setting up ads and being able to easily judge which of the two types of targeting is working better is great for marketers!
Thoughts on change number 5: I think the one reason that "check in" worked so well, was because it was easy. All people had to do was hit "check in" and their location popped up. This change may make it harder to check in from a smart phone.
Step One – Getting ready to sell your business. When you decide it is time to sell your Communications & Media business, there are certain things you will need to do before you get started. Just like if you were trying to go on a road trip to a place you'd never been before, you'd want to have a map involved with the planning process, right? You will need to figure out the various types of buyers and what they are looking for before you get started.
Fyi, Yelp did not get out of the Daily Deals space.check their CEOs blog post, clarifying the misinterpretation.
There is another social site growing quickly that should be given some attention. It's called MarketMonsterz (http://www.marketmonsterz.com). It's an online business development and marketing platform which was developed strictly for businesses and internet marketers. With MarketMonsterz you can build, maintain, network and market a complete online empire from scratch and for free. Check it out.
What I've noticed is with the restructuring of the News Feed, posts, especially those from brands, get "lost in the sauce". How Facebook determines "headlines", "top stories" and "highlights" is arbitrary, at best, and we've noticed a huge dip in impressions and engagement - especially when posting notes. I don't understand why they don't employ the KISS method with some of these: keep it simple and stupid.
Largely, I don't think this will affect our involvement with Facebook, although I'm not thrilled with the types of new advertisers being let in.
Great article! Thanks for the updates!
I wonder how long it will take for G+ to take over.
Nice recap Mikal. It's easy to pan FB for all their tinkering, but as a marketer who uses it for all of our clients, I appreciate their approach of continually fine-tuning a product to meet users and advertisers needs. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than any alternative? Yes and by a long shot.
http://www.thecustomeradvantage.com is another fast growing group buying company similar to groupon, living social and facebook deals. If you want to see more on the customer advantage here is a invitation id: jpastor
GroupOn.com, LivingSocial.com, etc.
Carl: A deal site (also known as a 'daily deal' or 'group buying' site) is one that works in coordination with a merchant or other business owner to offer products and services -- such as computer repair, spa services, sightseeing tours, etc. -- at reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers make the purchase. Think sites like Groupon, BuyWithMe, Living Social, and you're on the right track. There are also white label group buying providers -- like ChompOn, AnalogAnalytics, Deal Current, Group Commerce, NimbleCommerce and PoweredByTippr -- that offer the same service but in the ASP (application service provider) model. These companies allow you to run deals using their technology on your own website, often saving you lots of money that you tend to give up when you work with GroupOn and their competitors. Hope this helps. Mikal
changes at Facebook still show that it is runned by 20 something lacking worldly experience, a simple review at the number of online complaints and rants about many of the changes will confirm this A simple rewording of what still accomplishes the same result proves it The issue about privacy is an odd one considering the idea of the site is Social Media, not my private domain, but it should be noted that simple going to the persons page will defeat the present private settings anyway. In simple there is still growing pains at Facebook, the lack of new additions or features, improved mobile platform use and cross device compatibility, leaves possiblities for a new site to hit these needed targets in the growing world of multi-platforms and devices...
I'M not sure what is a deal site?
The privacy issue is a big one for online reputation management services because it will not allow them to hear what everyone is saying about different businesses. This could leave some companies in the dark about what users are really saying about the establishment.
Interesting that Facebook is following Google+ on the 'public' thing. If there's one thing I like in this list, it's item # 3. Ad targeting by Topic. I'll have to go ahead and play around with keywords then. Thanks for sharing this news!
Good, quick read! Thank you :)
nice article.;...