Indian Social Media Landscape

Over the past few months, the netizens have been irked about various developments surrounding the much talked about Anti piracy acts and censorship debate. Leading the pack are PIPA and SOPA. Various other issues have also cropped up on similar lines. Concerns pertaining to censorship of social media in India being one of them. For the ease of understanding let’s break them down and do a quick recap on what has been causing the stir in the cyber space.

No less than TIME magazine themselves asked whether Facebook is on a decline. While I understand it’s fashionable to ask whether products that are seemingly approaching the plateau of their product life cycle – are dying out, I do not think Facebook’s going anywhere.

And why? (I like to analyse questions like these from an emprical and this-is-how-we-work way rather than cull out numbers, graphs and stats that can be used to say anything)

1. It’s become our Flickr and Picasa: Apart from professional photographers and enthusiasts who benefit from pro features, I can’t recall too many people using either service anymore. Let me put it this way – you’re just back after a vacation. Or a friend’s birthday party. Or just transferring photos you’ve taken using your phone cam. What do you do with them? My guess is, Facebook and tag. And one doesn’t need stats to say how important photos are to the Facebook experience.

After much anticipation, Google finally allowed brands to create their pages on Google+ social network earlier this month. With lots of pre-launch speculation as to features, functionality and the impact Google+ Pages for brands could have on search and on Facebook pages, many brands will surely be very very excited to make their presence felt on the latest social media platform. An early adoption may boost the brand numbers in short run but a close look is a must before diving in.

While it will be essential that brands make the most of the functionalities and features available to add something new and fresh to their social media user experience, emphasis will also be on the way they integrate their approach to social media and SEO which would be a very important element of Google+ pages.

Impact on brand search

Knowing Google, it would have been hard to believe that they would not have used their core product to jump start the Google+ page promotion. Google search is the single largest provider of information on the net today and not using it to its benefit would simply not make sense. Thus, the new Direct Connect feature – a feature that will enable users to search for brand pages within the Google search page by simply adding ‘+’ before their search has been established. This not only gives a great boost to the brand page but also thumps Facebook page search abilities which are far more complex.

Google Search for a Google+ page of Pepsi

Also, the tie-in between +1′s and brand page content will be a very important search engine optimization tool now. It is widely thought that content receiving +1′s, whether this is inside the Google+ platform or indeed on a brand’s own website, will appear considerably higher in organic searches. Additionally, when a user is logged-in to their Google+ account, Google also takes the +1′s of both the user and their connections/circles into account when delivering the search results it serves to users. Essentially, Google is assigning weight to social recommendations through Google+ as a metric of content quality and relevance to the user, making search results more personalized in a way we have not seen before.

The clean and clear advantage

The Google+ page retains a very bright, big colorful layout. It feels less “narrow” than Facebook, and one does not have to scroll down so much to see previous conversations. This makes photos a lot easier to view, also, with an easy-to-spot conversation bubble to notify which photos had comments attached to them. There’s just something about that clean design that is a breath of fresh air from the ad-and-content-cluttered Twitter and Facebook.

A clean and crisp page layout

On first look, Google+ brand pages may look remarkably similar to the layout we have come to know and love on Facebook. However, it is in the additional visual features available beneath the surface where things start to come to life on Google+. Like the dynamic profile pic option that changes every time you click on it or the animated header profile picture gallery, Google has added stuff that are nice and pleasant on the eye.

Another Wave

Google wave may have died but Google has introduced Ripples! It shows, in a web diagram, how a content piece has been shared, who are the main influencers on the page, and other fascinating statistics that one can’t find anywhere else.

Google Ripple

This helps in making the page a lot more convenient and easier to interpret. Add to this, the Hangout feature will surely help bring down the gap between the brand and the people who follow it. A direct interaction with those who run the brand will only serve to establish a better relationship.

Not yet there

While a direct connect and a straight link to YouTube will add to Google+ pages advantages, the lack of APIs will hurt as much. Facebook was not just a standalone platform. It was a ground to work on. It has helped make industries out of game makers and application developers. How Google+ pages counter that is yet to be seen.

Also, the strict policy of not allowing and contest or promotion on the page is a hurdle. One cannot ignore the fact that promotions and offer are key to social media marketing in our region. Thus, while it makes sense to give Google+ a thought, a wait and watch approach may give a clearer picture to the brand managers.

Click here to read more about Google +

Insight in to new Facebook Insights Part I

Continuing our discovery of the new Facebook Insights, we would now look at growth measurement tools that have been incorporated.

Section 3: Growth Measurement

3.1 Like Sources

Facebook included Like sources in the previous iteration of analytics, but this is now more advanced. This number used to be fairly arbitrary as organic Like sources within Facebook were simply expressed as ‘unknown’:

This has now been expanded upon to give a much more accurate view of how people are not only finding the Page, but also how they Like it. Importantly, this is split down for the different functionalities within Facebook. So, for example, one can now see how many Likes the page is getting as a result of another Page posting a link to the brand Page :

3.2 Demographic Reach

While Facebook offered access to the demographic breakdown of fans, now it gives the admins the ability to see the demographic breakdown of active fans. This shows information on age, gender and location for anyone that was exposed to the content, whether they are a fan of the Page or not. As this gives a more accurate indication of who is actually engaging with the content, one might find that if the demographic breakdown here is different to the demographic breakdown of the fans, then you need to adjust the content to better suit these engaged fans.

3.3 How you reached people?

This graph will allow admins to plot different visits to the Page based on how people were exposed to it. That is to say that if most people are finding the Page through ads, then there is a need to improve the organic content.

3.3.1

Another insight is ‘unique users by frequency’ that gives the average number of times someone engaged with a piece of content. So, for example, one can now see how many people were engaged with your content once, versus the number of people who were engaged with the content 3 times. This counts people that viewed the content, as opposed to commenting or Liking for example.

Verdict:

Overall it seems that Facebook has really jazzed up their insights with tools that give more or less a complete picture of the expanse to which the page admin can monitor developments without having to rely on external softwares. The various new tabs, sub tabs and sections introduced give a real time happening about the brand’s engagement with not only its primary audience (users) but the secondary audience too.

This development also means that as an owner one can gather various data and analytics and determine the course of the page. What kind of content is a hit with the users, what’s not, what will perhaps be received with much enthusiasm, by whom, how etc.

With features such as the Timeline and Subscribers already gaining popularity, carefully integrating the insights with these could only spell wonders for brands. Of course, it does not take away the fact that it becomes a little too complicated from a strategic viewpoint and the results are yet to be seen.

Facebook Insights had always been a handy tool for page owners irrespective of the size they command. It always provided information about how to make the page even better. Last month Facebook launched a new version of Facebook Insight. Many had speculated it to be a paid service, but so far Facebook is not charging anyone. Here is a look at how the insights have evolved.

Section 1: Reach Measurement

1.1 Friends of Fans

Facebook advertising provides the option to target friends of fans. Essentially this means that the ad will only be shown to friends of people already on the brand page. Now through Page Insights, one can see the total reach of ‘friends of fans’. This is an important number to keep an eye on, as it will ensure that when someone engages with a piece of content on the Page, their friends are being alerted to it. It gives a more accurate reflection of your ‘ambient’ audience. i.e. those who might not be fans of your Page themselves (as this number excludes current fans) but who may have been exposed to your message :

1.2 People Talking About This

This is the most hyped feature that Facebook has introduced. It gives a figure, for the time period that one selects, of the number of times a post was generated about the Page, including links in personal profiles, or posts in which the Page has been tagged in.

Within this new metric, one can see a demographic breakdown of people who are talking about the Page by age, gender and location. One can also compare the viral reach (the number of people who saw your Page), compared to ‘talking about this’ (the number of people who actively created a story). As reach just takes into account people that were exposed to your content, this figure will always be a lot higher than those people talking about it. Individual ‘story’ can be compared, for example the number of times someone tagged the page in a post or photo:

1.3 Weekly Total Reach

Earlier for a post on Facebook Page one could see the individual number of impressions, but not the cumulative total. Now Facebook has introduced a feature that gives the weekly total reach, which is the number of times someone has been exposed to the Page, either through a post, a friend commenting, or through an ad. One can see the percentage change over time, thus, if there is increase in fans but the reach is going down, brand may need to think about creating more engaging content, so as to grow organically:

Section 2: Post Insights

2.1 How viral is a post?

Facebook ranks the posts in order of engagement, as before, but this has been massively expanded on. Now, ranks also show a number of different metrics, which cover : Reach (the total number of people that saw your post) ; Engaged Users (people who interacted with the post in some way, such as clicking on the post in their newsfeed or leaving a comment) ; Talking About This (the number of people who have created a ‘story’ from your post, such as leaving a reply or sharing with friends) and Virality which is slightly more complex. The ‘virality’ of a post is expressed as a percentage of people that created a story about the post, against the total reach. Seeing the posts in this way allows brands to see the content that clearly worked, or didn’t work:

2.1.1

One can then expand on a particular figure, to get more detailed insights. Clicking on ‘reach’ reveals a breakdown of whether that reach came directly from your Page activity, Facebook Ads, or whether it was viral (fans generating stories)

2.1.2

Clicking on ‘engaged users’ shows: Other  clicks (clicks on other parts of the post, such as the name of the person that posted it) ; Link clicks (the number of clicks in a link on your post) ; the number of stories generated from the post, by fans :

2.1.3

Clicking on ‘talking about this’ allows people to see whether these stories generated were someone who likes the post or sharing it:

Click here to read part two of this post.