JSB Talks Digital Podcast #71

JSB Talks Digital is a weekly digital marketing and social media podcast hosted by author, strategist, consultant, speaker and trainer Joanne Sweeney-Burke. Each Friday Joanne shares her digital marketing and social media insights from her work as CEO of Digital Training Institute. 

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This episode of JSB Talks Digital is dedicated to Facebook – marketing hacks, case studies, why we should embrace it as marketers and how we can maximise it for business and organisational results.

In this episode:

• In social media news:
  • Facebook brings Stories to Pages
  • Facebook’s Discovery Feed hits all user accounts
  • Facebook, Twitter and Google to appear before Congress in election tampering investigation
• I interview Louise McDonnell, Facebook Marketing Consultant and Author
• Ask JSB
• In shout-outs: Facebook Marketing Experts we can all learn from
• In JSB’s column: Why Facebook dominates and why marketers need to be skilled on the platform
• Find out what Facebook tool saved my working week

Listen to this week’s podcast:

Social Media News 

Facebook brings Stories to Pages  

In 2017, Facebook introduced Facebook Stories to all users. The feature works similar to Snapchat whereby users can share photos and videos mixed up with filters, frames, stickers, text overlay and geo-locations tags. Stories disappear after 24 hours.

Now Facebook is rolling out Stories to Facebook Pages, giving brands the opportunity to connect on a deeper level with fans.

Facebook began testing Stories with select iOS and Android users in Ireland in January, and the social network expanded that testing to Chile, Vietnam and Greece in March, before rolling the feature out globally later that month. 

Source: Business Insider

Page administrators with access to the feature can go to their pages’ Timelines via their mobile devices and click the “Create Story” button to get started.

Just as with Facebook Stories for users, pages’ Facebook Stories will appear for 24 hours, and they will not appear on pages’ Timelines or in News Feed unless page admins choose to post them to those locations.

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Facebook’s Discovery Feed hits all user accounts

Have you noticed the new Discovery icon on your Facebook app? I’ve had it for many months on mobile.

Now the second News Feed is available to all users’, on mobile and on desktop.

On the desktop, the feed is found in the left-side sidebar, within the “Explore” section – where you’ll also find links to Facebook features like Events, Groups, Pages, Moments, Saved items, and more.

Facebook’s Explore Feed is now on desktop, huh? pic.twitter.com/mgXs6tpapH

— Matt Navarra ? (@MattNavarra) October 17, 2017

The idea behind the Explore Feed is to help Facebook users discover more content across the social network, beyond posts from friends and Pages you already follow. Instead, this feed surfaces recommended content it thinks you might find interesting, including posts, articles, photos and videos from sources you haven’t followed yet – like Facebook Pages and other posts from publishers or news organisations.

Some commentators are getting quite uneasy about its full roll-out.

Some are saying that it marks the end of free Facebook exposure for brands and a signal from Facebook that if you want to leverage the platform for business then you will need to pay to play.

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Facebook, Twitter and Google to appear before Congress in election tampering investigation

Representatives for Facebook, Google, and Twitter will appear in front of US congress next month to provide evidence on Russian election interference.

All three tech companies found evidence of ad tampering over the course of internal investigations this year, and subsequently reported those findings to congress.

Facebook reported hundreds of Pages and advertisers tied to a Russian troll farm, which had purchased over 3000 advertisements totalling over $100,000.

Twitter uncovered at least 200 accounts tied to similar ones flagged by Facebook, and hundreds of bots spamming propaganda.

Google, for its part, found thousands of dollars in ads were purchased by Russian agents, and continues to investigate over $50,000 in questionable ad purchases from accounts that haven’t been confirmed to be bad actors yet.

Even worse than that, those social undesirables used malware to hijack our browsers and use our Facebook accounts to like ads and fake-news stories — with us none the wiser.

McAfee labs recently reported “Faceliker” binaries comprised approximately nine percent of malware it detected. That’s nine percent of 52 million – meaning nearly 4.7 million instances of Faceliker were detected.

Interview | Louise McDonnell, Facebook Marketing Consultant and Author

In today’s show I interview Louise McDonnell, an online and social media marketing expert. Louise has a particular expertise in Facebook Marketing having coached and trained in excess of 2000 businesses since 2009.

Louise recently launched her first book: Facebook Marketing – A Guide for Irish Organisations (published by Liffey Press).

Earlier this year was voted as one of the top worldwide 50 Facebook Marketing Bloggers by Feedspot.

Tune in to listen to my interview with Louise

My favourite quote from our chat

Shout-Outs: Three Facebook Marketing Experts

In this part of the show I give shout-outs to individuals, organisations or brands that are remarkable online and worth talking about.

This week I’m recommending three top Facebook Marketing Experts from Ireland.

1. Facebook Updates – Amanda Webb, Spiderworking 

It’s really hard to keep up with Facebook updates. But fear not Amanda Webb or Spiderworking has a weekly Digital Coffee video round-up of all things social.

Check out her Facebook Page and subscribe to her weekly Friday Facebook Live at https://facebook.com/spiderworking

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2. Facebook Strategy – Louise McDonnell

For all-round Facebook Marketing Strategy, I recommend Louise McDonnell who you’ve already heard from on today’s show.

Louise currently has a 10-week Facebook Marketing Bootcamp with:

• Weekly Online Video Tutorials
• One to One Support
• Deal with one aspect of Facebook marketing at a time
• Guided by a Facebook marketing expert

Find out more at http://louisemcdonnell.com

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3. Facebook Advertising – Jenny Brennan

For Facebook Advertising expertise, look no further than Jenny Brennan.

Jenny has worked with and for Facebook Marketing Guru Marie Smith.

If you are running your own business I can show you how to reach your ideal customers effectively using Facebook advertising.

Jenny says,

“The secret is using a simple system that helps them get to know you and where you get to show them how they need your product or services.”

Find out more at https://jennybrennan.me

Ask JSB

Ask JSB brings the voices of my listeners onto the show. 

I’m always hunting for new ideas for my podcast, blog and blog and I find the best inspiration comes from questions from my community.

If you want to hear your voice on JSB Talks Digital simply log on to www.digitaltraining.ie/askjsb and leave me your voicemail.

Today’s questions are from Colm Connolly, Founder of Rucksnacks, an Irish food company producing healthy high protein beef snacks.

“What is the no 1 businesses should be doing on Facebook and what is the most common mistake you see businesses or marketers doing on Facebook?”

Tune in to listen to my answer.

JSB’s Column | Why Facebook dominates and why marketers need to be skilled on the platform

In today’s column, I share my views on why Facebook dominates and why marketers need to be skilled on the platform.

Recently I got asked in a workshop if I thought Facebook was dead? Let me put it on the record, Facebook is not dead, it’s not dying and it won’t be dead any time soon. One in six minutes online are spent on Facebook with 1.2 billion people accessing the social network each and every day. Hell I’m now even making calls though Facebook rather than the old fashioned way!

So, think about how this can help your brand or organisation?

Okay, I’ll take you back to the early days of Facebook. Sharing food pictures, short text updates and web links. Those were good old says, when reach could be as much as 100%! But I cringe when I look back at my early Facebook posts, a daily reminder with Facebook Memories. It was not sophisticated marketing. But guess what? Our expectations and those of prosumers have changed and matured. changing.

Mobile-first consumers will no longer tolerate being sold to. Instead they want to be entertained, educated or informed. So, ask yourself how your brand can step into those moments and be relevant? 

Today Facebook is a revolutionary social network, advertising hub and entertainment platform. It is changing the way marketers approach marketing and is also diverting marketing spends.

If you want to be a savvy marketer in the Digital Age then get to grips with Facebook. By focusing on this one platform, you will understand how to create a variety of digital content types, get an astute insight into social advertising and audience segmentation, you will get to experiment with Augmented Reality, workplace communications, messenger bots, be forced to re-think how to create marketing and you will have crafted a mobile marketing strategy for your business all in one platform.

If you need an up to date Facebook Marketing Strategy for your business then get in touch. Simply drop me an email to [email protected].

Social Media Tool of the Week: Facebook Pixel

The Facebook marketing tool that saved my working week this week is Facebook Pixel.

Any marketer worth his or her salt will have this piece of powerful code installed on their and client websites.

The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that helps you measure the effectiveness of your advertising. You can use the Facebook pixel to understand the actions people are taking on your website and reach audiences you care about.

Source: Kissmetrics

There are many ways to use the Pixel to get results:

• Track conversions as the Facebook pixel allows you to monitor how people interact with your website after viewing your Facebook ad.
• Remarketing as the Facebook pixel tracking data allows you to show targeted ads to people who have already visited your site.
• Create lookalike audiences as Facebook can use its targeting data to help you build a lookalike audience of people who have similar likes, interests, and demographics to people who are already interacting with your website, helping you expand your potential customer base.

In a nutshell, using a Facebook pixel can make your ads more effective by improving the quality of the ads you run, and by improving the targeting of the people who see them.

Read our useful blog post how to install the Facebook pixel on your website.

I love feedback

I’d love to know what you think about this episode. So please get in touch by commenting below or tweet me @tweetsbyJSB or send me a snap to @jsbsnaps.

Listen: JSB Talks Digital | Episode #71

I would like to thank Eoghan Murphy aka The Galway Gamer for producing my podcast series and to Flirt FM on the campus of NUI, Galway where I am based for the use of their studio.