Facebook rolls out new product ads

Well, the most awaited feature of Facebook ads is out now. The feature was in a beta testing since last couple of days and has gone through a couple of changes in terms of look & feel and features. Now, as a marketer you can show multiple products in just one ad. The ad copy will have a navigation icon through which users can navigate through multiple products.

I won't waste your time in explaining the basics of creating a new ad in facebook. I'll quickly give you the snapshot of these dynamic ads.

Number of Products that can be displayed: up to 10

Number of links for product: 10, one for each product

Number of images: 10 one for each product, 600*600

After a user flips through each ad, there is a final link to “see more”, you can put up an URL of your website or product category but you don’t get chance to select the image. Facebook will pick up your profile pic by default (little strange!).

Automatic Optimization:

There is also an option for auto-optimization. if selected facebook will automatically select/alter the sequence of your images based on ads engagement with users and you get maximum response for your ad. It’s not mandatory J

Note:

The feature is available only to power editor users as of now and it has just started rolling out so you might see the change in next 1-2 days based on your location.

Let me know what you think about these dynamic ads or if you need any help is setting up the same!

Top 5 SEO myths you should put to grave in 2014

1. I must submit my site to Google

We keep hearing this from our so called “SEO Gurus” that we will have to submit our site to Google in order to Rank or inform the search engines to crawl our website. Even If you are not submitting your site to Google, the crawler is always in hunt for the fresh content on web and will find your site. What you should be worrying about is the robots.txt file to inform the crawler about what part of your website you don’t want to be crawled or indexed so that your real content takes the lead. (You can exclude pages such as your lead management system or any confidential section of your website)

“Don’t bother telling Google about your site, it’s their job to find it, crawl it and index it” :)

2. Meta descriptions have a huge impact on search rankings

Well I will not say anything on this; let me quote Google when they announced way back in 2009 that “Meta description (along with Meta keywords) has no bearing on search rankings”. Having said this I would also like to point out that effective description tag will have an impact on what user clicks and what not as this description comes below the link of your website in Google search results. So if your description is not good or catchy enough to grab the attention, User might click on other links. Try using few (1-2) of your keywords in the description which might match the user query and will appear bold!

“So stop stuffing your description tags with hell lot of keywords, Make it more human friendly”

3. SEO and Social media aren't related at all

Gone are the days when Google was not considering the social footprints in its search results. This is quite evident from the fact that Google is giving importance to authorship and Google plus presence. The intersection of SEO and social media is social search. Your social search content gets prioritized if it’s related with you socially. It could be a facebook friend or page, twitter follower, local Google places listing or relation with any other major social media.

“Make sure that Social media is a part of your overall SEO strategy”

4. Keywords need to be an exact match

Seriously..???? This is 2014 and Google has evolved it’s algorithm from just being returning answers to specific set of keywords to understanding the humanly language. Google doesn’t focus only on the exact keywords but it also considers the synonyms and the content wrapped around these keywords.

“Stop using the same keywords again and again – think humanly”

5. The H1 is the most important on page element

I bet you would have heard this often from SEO experts. Webpage has a predefined structure for presenting the information to users and search engines. What title tag (H1, H2, H3 etc.) your headline is wrapped in has little to no influence on your overall SEO strategy, it’s only for styling purpose in CSS (Custom Style Sheet) what matters more is how quickly and effectively you are communicating the page features to your visitor. Stop using H1 as the god father of on page SEO.

“It’s important that you use only one H1 tag, If you have more subtitles you can accommodate the same in H2, H3 etc.”

Do you know any other such SEO myths? Feel free to share it in the comments :)

Facebook - A New Look for Ads in the Right-Hand Column

Yes, Facebook is coming up with new and improved design and features for right hand column ads. Facebook has realized the importance of quality and not the quantity after a long time. You might have noticed at least half a dozen of ads on right side while flipping through your news feed. Well this is gonna change very soon. 

Before

After the new update right hand side column will look something like this! The ad size has been increased by almost 3 times. The new dimensions is 254*133 pixels.

How this is going to affect the Digital marketers

As the size has increased by almost 3 times, FB will not be able to accommodate more than 3 ads on right hand side (considering the user experience on Facebook) so this will led to less number of inventory for Facebook which in turn will affect their overall revenue numbers. In order to accommodate this change the CPM costs will go up significantly. Even CPC will increase marginally. So, all marketers will have to spend more money to reach their target audience as compared to current rates.

Will it have any effect on Engagement?

A BIG YES! The engagement numbers will definitely increase as compared to current stamp ads. The big size image will make a significant impact on user’s mind while surfing through his/her timeline. The larger size image will make it difficult for user to ignore it! So, the engagement numbers will increase along with the cost. Facebook has found significant improvement in engagement numbers during beta testing.

Do share your inputs on the revised right hand side ads or the Stamp ads!

Let’s connect on Twitter and Linkedin

Infographic of 100 million Indian facebook users!

To celebrate the historical number of 100 million users, KRDS, a Social Media Agency in Europe and Asia and a member of Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer Program, has created an infographic.

What’s the percentage of men and women using Facebook in India? What is their relationship status? What is the city wise distribution? How many of them are mobile, iOS or Android users? To find out, take a look at the infographic below.

Facebook page Redesign – What’s new, what’s missing!

Well, it’s been a long time since Facebook has made significant changes in the “Page”. This time Facebook is planning to remove most of the clutter and help admin and users with the quick navigation options to most of the content they are looking for! You might not have received the updated Page as Facebook has recently started rolling out the changes (from 10th March)

Let’s take a quick look on what’s there in the new page layout. What is new and what is missing :)

1. Page timeline will look like your personal timeline

You no longer need to nod left and right to check the content of your page, you will see them on the right hand side similar to your personal timeline. This will save your time and make your timeline less cluttered.

2. Showcase your Business info more prominently 

Since the content has been moved to right hand side, the left hand column will be used for displaying your business information. You will have option to display operating hours, about company, website URL, Phone no as well as photos and videos.

3. Easy access to Admin tools

Earlier there was an option to access the admin tools from a push down menu and I personally feel that it was very annoying, now you’ll get admin navigation at the top that includes things like Page, Activity (notifications), Insights, Settings, Build Audience and Help. This navigation will exist no matter where you are within the page.

4. The Key Addition – THIS WEEK tab

This is my personal favourite; Page admin will get a quick sneak peak of their page activity in last one week. This will give info such as new likes, ads running, unread messages, post reach and page notifications.

5. Custom tabs

Did you fail to notice the custom tabs? No you didn’t! Actually Facebook has buried the custom tabs under “more” section. You (admin) and your audience will no longer be able to see the prominent custom tabs. This is a part of Facebook’s action of making the pages clutter free but it might not affect the way you get engagement on your page if you are not using lot of apps and tabs frequently.

Do share your feedback. Let's connect!

Linkedin & Twitter

6 Secrets about LinkedIn that nobody will tell you!

The title of this blog is little catchy, right? Trust me, you will find the content equally interesting. We will discuss some secretive features about linkedin that many of us are not aware of. These features can help you to scale your linkedin profile to an altogether new level if used effectively. Now without wasting much time let’s start with the feature number 1 – Vanity URL

1. Vanity URL 

First of all let me help you people with what is vanity URL, if you’ll search Wikipedia you’ll find it as a URL or domain name, created to point to something to which it is related and indicated in the name of the URL, very similar to a personalized URL. But why do we need to have a vanity URL? Well, this will help people to search quickly about you on search engines like Google, if you have used your name properly on this URL you will rank higher!

Now try and check out your vanity URL for LinkedIn. You might not find it as catchy as mine right now! But you can make it even better. Just go to edit profile and click on edit as below.

After clicking on edit you’ll be redirected on a separate page to change your URL

2. Be Secretive – it’s not Facebook

How many times have you seen some trivial updates (10-20) about your friend’s profile on your LinkedIn newsfeed simultaneously? I have done this hell lot of times and I know how irritating this can be to your contacts sometimes. Let’s not use it like facebook where in you beam about each of your activities to your friends, this is LinkedIn and you have got some serious professional connections in here. So let’s behave accordingly. I am not saying that you don’t make frequent changes to your profile, just be secretive while you do it! Here’s how :)

Go to Privacy & Settings and then click on Turn on/off your activity broadcast. Once you have made those trivial changes to your profile just turn this on again!

3. Use your endorsements properly!

How many times have you received endorsements for skills for which you don’t wanna be known for? You might have done your summer project in Marketing Research or Recruitment but your current profile is in HR, Marketing or Sales and you want to portray yourself for those skills. By default LinkedIn will ask others to endorse you for skills for which you have highest numbers of endorsements in descending order. So, how to fix this? Go to edit profile, scroll down to Endorsements and Skills section and click on Edit. You will see below screen.

Now simply remove the skills for which you don’t want others to endorse you (even if you have very good number of endorsements for it). Also change the sequence of the remaining skills by dragging them in the order you want. Now your connections will be able to endorse you only for these skills.

4. Save on Premium account fees

Normally people use premium account to connect with the premium people or the connections which are not their 1st or 2nd degree connection as you can not send a connection request to them. Don’t worry, just make a long list of those premium people, try the LinkedIn premium account for 1 month which is absolutely free, connect with the people of your choice and deactivate it by the end of the month. You won’t be charged even a single penny! J

5. Use Mr. India Feature!

Now LinkedIn has this typical ‘Orkut’ feature which tells people about recent visitors/your visit to their profile and this is something that you dont’ want. So how not to get noticed

Now this feature comes with a catch, if you want to get unnoticed, you will also not get information about people viewing your profile. So use this feature when you want to see other’s profile and then again deactivate it so that you don’t miss out on your updates! J

6. Reorder your Content

LinkedIn has this beautiful feature of altering the order of your content in your profile. You can highlight what is best about your profile on first position followed by less important once. This is pretty simple. Just go to edit profile and use the following icon to move it upward or down.

Welcome to the world of LinkedIn, I am sure you would have liked this article, Do share your feedback (Good/Bad/Ugly) in the comments section.

Let's connect!
Linkedin & Twitter

Social Media Infographics - 2014

Twitter

· 560 million active users

· micro blogging social site that limits posts to 140 characters

· largest penetration in the US but spreading slowly and steadily

· 5,700 tweets happen every second

Facebook

· Social sharing site that has 1 billion users worldwide

· Largest opportunities communicating with consumers in a non-obtrusive way

· Users share 2.5 billion pieces of content each day

Google+

· 400 million active users

· Social network built by Google that allows for brands and users to build circles

· Not as many brands active but the ones that are tend to be a good fit with a great following

· Growing rapidly with 925,000 new users every day

LinkedIn

· 240 Million active users

· Business oriented social networking site

· Brands that are participating are corporate brands giving potential and current associates a place to

  network and connect

· 79% of users are 35 or older