Keeping up with 2016: Year of Facebook keeping marketers on their toes

Stop. Wait a minute. Before you start reading this piece you may want to go refresh your feed again, lest you miss some other update from Facebook. News Flash –  FOMO of Facebook updates are not your own, we are reeling under their onslaught as well.

Give us marketers a sniff of possibilities of better reaching the audience and we will be like dogs with bones. This week particularly, Facebook has been throwing one curve ball after the other at us, with significant updates in UX and features, and we won’t deny that we are interested and want more!

So do we “like” the updates, let’s find out!

Like it. Love it. But you can’t ignore it.

In one of the most significant changes ever done to its UX. Facebook rolled out “reaction” buttons an augmented version of the like button enabling users to respond to post in a more nuanced manner. Facial expressions tagged “love,” “haha,” “sad,” “angry” and “wow” now can be used to respond to a post.

Marketers earlier found it difficult to gauge the exact reaction to a content / ad simply from a “like” and consumers are sometimes too passive, indifferent or busy to let their exact feelings known in a comment. Now, they will be able to at least get a drift of what their consumers feel about a particular post.

As LiveWorld CEO,  Peter Friedman told SocialTimes,

“For brands, it opens doors not only to evaluate the success or relevance of their content, but to create meaningful customer experiences and humanize the brand. It’s an opportunity to engage customers on a deeper level, more often and with better results. Social is fundamentally an engagement media form with the secret sauce being emotion. That’s what achieves desired business results because customer involvement drives commitment, which drives loyalty, awareness and sales.”

Though Facebook is yet to differentiate between the reactions yet, all the reactions would be counted as additional likes, for the moment. Facebook says that the way users react to a post will be later incorporated to affect the algorithm in rather complex ways.

The full potential of these reaction buttons can only be realized if only we are allowed to use them to target our ads. We already have metrics on “likes”, if we get data on these reaction buttons too, it can significantly help us in understanding our work better.

Some brands wasted no time capitalizing on the frenzy though

Chevrolet was one of the first

https://youtu.be/5gPrAIr5ULw

Canvas. Canvas on the ‘wall’!

Move over Carousel ads, Canvas ads are here. A gift addressed specially to marketers, Facebook launched interactive mobile ads called Canvas earlier this week. The canvas ads are an augmentation of the carousel ads which allowed users to swipe through more of brand content if they expressed interest in a line of content.

Source: Engadget

Canvas ads resemble mini-websites that designed around specific products but it reportedly loads 10 times faster than web pages. The idea behind canvas is pretty much evident in its name itself, it allows brands to tell stories without having to worry much about restrictive spaces. Current launch partners for the Canvas experience include Lowe’s, Coca Cola, L’Occitane, ASUS and Burberry, these are brands which aided Facebook in testing the canvas experience.

The canvas ads should enable more immersive mobile experiences, thus can hugely impact brands especially looking to target mobile consumers

Facebook understands and you must too, that social commerce is here to stay. It’s an intersection of a lot many crucial marketing points and too ignore it is folly. You must always stay one step ahead, adapting to the latest developments as seamlessly as possible and one of the only ways to do so is emphasis on creation of media agnostic content.

We at Capital Numbers always try and keep abreast with advancements in digital marketing fields to help you craft your marketing communication and meet your business goals. To know more about how to best use these continuous updates, visit http://www.capitalnumbers.com/user_engagement.php

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