Learn about the latest news making waves in the world of social media marketing.
Episode 0357
October 2019 Social Media News Roundup
Liz Hey there, welcome back to Liz and Sandro’s Marketing Podcast. We are the podcast that helps companies and marketing departments control their business, their brand and get the word out. I’m super excited for today’s episode. It is a social media roundup. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve had a lot to talk about. So Sandro is going to be sharing quite a few updates.
Sandro Correct. Thanks, Liz. This morning, October 18th, there was some big news breaking out about Facebook and the way it’s tracking and reporting organic impressions. So let’s start with that. As of October 28 in 10 days, as of today’s recording, you may see your organic numbers drop even more if they already haven’t.
Liz Is that possible for them to drop even more?
Sandro I know. This is on Facebook. And of course, we all know Facebook’s organic reach is dismal. They really want you to put even a dollar behind every post. That’s how they make money. But they’re, these numbers are actually going to be more reliable, more in line with numbers reported on Facebook ads. Basically, what their quotas will be updating the timeframe for which we filter out repeat organic impressions for the same person. Meaning they may take the timeframe longer, the window longer to count as just one person viewed your post. So let’s say somebody comes to your page and sees the same post two or three times in a one week period. Well, that may have counted as two views, maybe three views. Well, now it’s just gonna probably counts as one. We don’t have specifics yet on what that timeframe is, but just know it’ll be a longer window where a view will count as once, even though they may have seen it two or three times in that window. So more reliable numbers, but your numbers may drop a bit in terms of impressions.
Liz That’s I think that’s a good thing. I know we’ve talked in the past about issues with video view reporting stats from Facebook. So I think they’re, at least they are moving in the right direction.
Sandro They’re trying to be more honest about their reporting in numbers. Yeah, because people are still calling on for third party verification and Facebook won’t allow third parties to come in and verify their numbers. So maybe eventually they will. Maybe they’re fixing things before they do. Who knows?
Liz I’m sure they won’t ever let that happen.
Sandro Yeah. Facebook’s gray verification badges. Not the blue ones, but the gray ones are going to be going away. You know, most restaurants or businesses, they could verify that they were real by having Facebook call you or send you a postcard with a verification number. And once you were verified as a real business, the real Facebook page for that business, not your competitor, setting up a competing page, you got a gray badge because you got the postcard or you got the phone call to your business. Facebook’s saying too many people were confused by the gray badge, so they’re just getting rid of it. Keeping the blue badges. That’s for like the main Coca-Cola brand or the Lady Gaga page. Those are official blue and those are staying. But for small businesses, the gray badges are going away.
Sandro And so what this means for you is basically going forward Facebook is recommending that you as a page admin make sure your page profile is complete with up to date information. A profile picture, correct contact information. It also encourages page owners to post regularly, organically. Just let people know the lights are on and also something they don’t recommend but I recommend is every once in awhile search for your business in the search bar on Facebook and see how many times it pops up. Because somebody may have created another page accidentally to check-in. They couldn’t find you. Or your competitor creates a page for you now, and nobody will be able to tell the difference anymore because there are no great badges. So I don’t know if this is good or not, but it’s just more work for you to make sure nobody steals your stuff. But again, organic reach is so low. Who cares? Your competitor is not going to pay to advertise for you anyways, so.
Liz That’s a good point. Yeah.
Sandro Next up, Facebook’s finally testing ads in groups.
Liz Finally.
Sandro Finally. I’ve been saying this for years. The best part about Facebook is groups. And there were no ads. That was one of the benefits. But now there’s going to be ads. They’re testing them. And I got rid of the Facebook app on my phone 6 months ago. So I had to test this with Liz’s phone. But I remember when Facebook was all in on Marketplace. Their market, their selling thing. And it took the prime spot of the center tab on the app. And now we looked on Liz’s Facebook app…
Liz Yeah, I still have it.
Sandro Oh, you still have the market, is it still on there?
Liz No, the app. I mean, yeah, I still have the app on my phone.
Sandro So now seeing the app on Liz’s phone, the Marketplace tab is gone from the main 5 tabs and one of the things in its place is a groups tab. And this just points to the fact that groups are becoming more and more important to Facebook. And Mark Zuckerberg realizes that community is probably the strongest, strongest part of Facebook, to be honest with you.
Sandro Next up, the 25 most popular Instagram hashtags in 2019 thus far. The list was just published. We’ll link to it in our show notes, but number one. Do you have any guesses, Liz for the number one?
Liz The number one hashtag… and this is on Instagram?
Sandro On Instagram 2019 thus far. #Love. L O V E.
Liz Really?
Sandro Yeah. Number one, most popular. Number two is #instagood. I still don’t understand what that is. Is that like a… I see it every once in awhile, #instagood. It’s like a charity, charitable.
Liz Oh, okay.
Sandro Yeah. Number three: #photooftheday. Number four: #fashion. Number five: #beautiful. There’s more of course. But we’ll list them. We’ll put them in our show notes. But a lighter story. Twenty-five most popular hashtags on Instagram in 2019 thus far.
Liz And I think it’s helpful to know these.
Sandro Yeah.
Liz If you’re a nonprofit you should use, be using that #instagood one. I like it.
Sandro Yes. Another light Instagram story. Jennifer Aniston.
Liz Okay. I have been following this one because I am a huge Friends fanatic and I have been bingeing the show hardcore now that I know it’s leaving Netflix.
Sandro So what’s the news?
Liz So Jennifer Aniston officially joined Instagram. She literally broke it because so many people were trying to follow her account, which I love. She also now holds the Guinness World Record for achieving a million fans faster than anyone. I think it was like five hours and some odd minutes. So that beats the record previously set this year by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. So. Awesome for Jennifer Aniston. I think it’s great that people love her so much and she held out for as long as she did and then boom, broke it. I love it.
Sandro And she only has one photo up there, apparently.
Liz She has three now.
Sandro Oh, she has three now.
Liz Yeah, I am following her.
Sandro As of October 18th. But yeah, you’re right. Everything you just said is what I had in my notes. She broke it in 5 hours and 16 minutes. Previously, the title was held by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle. They have a shared Instagram account. I didn’t know this. A Duke and Duchess account?
Liz Oh, Sandro. We will talk offline.
Sandro I don’t know, you are an Anglophile.
Liz I am the Anglophile, I follow all the royal news.
Sandro They did it in 5 hours and 45 minutes. So it took Jennifer Aniston 29 more minutes, or less minutes to break the record.
Liz Nice.
Sandro Our next bit of news, Instagram is also removing, has removed the “following” tab. It took me a while to realize what this meant. I thought it meant you cannot see who someone is following anymore, but you can actually still see who people are following. But it was a big thing on Twitter because a lot of people were saying they should join the FBI because they can track down things through the following tab. What this tab was, was a way you tracked someone you’re following. When they started following another user or virtually all activity from people you’re following could be found in that tab. The only thing it didn’t track was comments someone left on a user’s content. Some people call this a stalker tool, the stalking tool, correct?
Liz But Sandro and I aren’t stalking any exes.
Sandro Yeah. That was a thing.
Liz We were both kind of like…
Sandro Who cares?
Liz Like, yeah. That was a thing? Like, I never used it.
Sandro Yeah. So a lot of people would stalk their significant others’ “following” tab to see when they followed somebody. If they like some post by somebody else, they might have been jealous and gotten very even more jealous. Who knows? But now that’s gone. And the reason Instagram and Facebook say they took it away is that most people did not know it even existed. So why continue to update it and upgrade it when no one really knew it existed? I occasionally went to it just to see what other people were following or liking, just to see what was going on on Instagram that day. But I really haven’t looked at it in months. And now, I didn’t even know it was gone. But apparently it’s a big deal to many people that it’s gone.
Liz Should we insert some relationship advice and say if you have to stalk your significant other on social media, there’s probably not a lot of trust there. Probably shouldn’t be with them.
Sandro Not a healthy…
Liz We can cut this out.
Sandro Next up, HubSpot just recently surveyed some people to see which is more popular. And Liz, which do you think of these three is the most popular: Instagram stories, Facebook stories or Snapchat stories?
Liz Oh, Instagram stories.
Sandro Absolutely wrong.
Liz Really?
Sandro 70 percent of people preferred Facebook stories. 17 percent of Instagram stories and 13 percent Snapchat stories. I was shocked, too. I was really shocked. Facebook stories won by huge margins, 70 percent.
Liz That is a lot higher than I thought it would be.
Sandro To be sure, it’s a very small sample size. HubSpot did 275 people. That’s very few people.
Liz Oh, I would argue that’s very small. But even if you account for a margin of error of like 10 percent, Facebook would still win. Interesting.
Sandro Right. Well, it’s only the United States. It doesn’t include other countries where Instagram or Snap are more popular even than they are here. So 275 people in the United States, 70%.
Liz And what were their age ranges?
Sandro Yeah, I don’t know that.
Liz Let’s just use a round number. If it’s 300 20-year-olds versus 300 40-year-olds…
Sandro And TikTok’s not even on here, which I just learned, TikTok’s not available in every country. Like it’s not available in Mexico. So Instagram has rolled out a TikTok competitor, but only in Mexico. To try to get in there before TikTok gets in there. Anyways, I digress. The point is, though, you’re right. Again, I deleted my Facebook app so I don’t watch the Facebook stories, but apparently marketers need to rethink. Maybe Facebook stories are a viable option.
Liz Interesting.
Sandro Two points on this. A, it’s easy to share a Facebook story because, with one click of a button on your Instagram story, you can share to your Facebook for business. There is a way to link that up.
Liz Yeah.
Sandro And we do that regularly. And 2, we were running for the past for 8 weeks in July and August Instagram ads for our cinema clients. We were running them on both Instagram and Facebook stories, and the reports that would come back from the ads would be literally 8,000 views. Instagram stories to views. Facebook stories. And I don’t know why they weren’t serving them up on Facebook stories. Maybe that’s a bargain right now. If you’re looking for a bargain on where to put your Facebook, your ad money, maybe Facebook stories are a bargain right now. I haven’t done the research on it, but maybe if you just say, hey, Facebook show this ad on Facebook stories, get better bang for your buck. I don’t know. So it’s just something to consider. Totally giving a different perspective.
Liz Yes. It’s a reminder of not using my personal behavior to dictate, dictate what I do for clients. Because, yeah, I didn’t realize that Facebook stories were so popular.
Sandro I feel like it’s easier to follow strangers on Instagram than it is on Facebook. So maybe your Facebook stories are just your friends and family. And Instagram stories are fashion people, people with fabulous lives that you wish you had. So I don’t know. You know what, I have no idea.
Liz Continue.
Sandro And finally, like counts are going away on Facebook as well. Facebook is testing like counts, the removal of like counts on Facebook. They’ve been testing them in about six or seven countries for Instagram and now they’re testing them for Facebook. And I feel like marketers were ahead of the curve on this because we were already focusing more on other things. Something, the term now is “attention metrics.” Things like completion rate for stories, video watch time, audience retention, referral traffic, attribution, conversions, engagement rate. The engagement rate as the total interactions divided by the reach. So let’s say something reached 10,000 people and 1,000 watched all 10 seconds of your video or your story. Then that’s a 10 percent engagement rate. I think those things are more important than likes, which can be, likes are kind of ambiguous to me. So I’m OK with this. I know some people may not be, but as a marketer getting rid of likes, that’s fine.
Liz Yeah, fine with me.
Sandro Yeah. And that’s our update.
Liz There’s a lot.
Sandro Yeah. There’s a lot going on.
Liz A lot going on. Which is good. I mean it had been quiet for the past couple months so.
Sandro Yeah, I think summer everything is just a lull because everybody’s just taking advantage of all the social media. Let’s introduce some new things in the fall and see how they hit for the holidays. Yeah. So lots going on.
Liz Awesome. Well, thanks for these updates. And thank you for joining us. Don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. You can find us on iTunes, Google Podcast and Spotify. If you have questions, comments, send us a message. We’d love to give you a shout out on the show. You can email us directly or reach us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next time.