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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Use Graph Search in order to find Pages that your brand can follow via Interest Lists.

When it comes to finding and targeting the right Facebook audience, the platform has a variety of tools to aid marketers. While quantity is nice, the quality is better: the end goal is to find an audience that finds your page, products and company interesting. An effective Facebook strategy is about identifying the right users and adding value so that these users then convert to customers and share your content with like-minded users.

Well, I’m a huge fan of Graph Search and Interest Lists. Interest lists are a great way for me to categorize different sorts of content on Facebook. I personally have lists that contain pages I like and lists of people that post about Social Media, music, Marketing, local news, sports and a bunch of other stuff that interests me.

Basically, Facebook Interest Lists are my map to the content I want to see on the platform. So, how do you build an effective Interest List? Well, it starts with Graph Search. With Facebook Graph Search it’s very easy to find new pages to follow, old and new friends, people with similar interests, new places to explore, and anything else that interests you.

Used together, Facebook Graph Search and Interest lists can help you find interesting content, engage with fans, find new fans and increase your reach. This is all done in three easy steps. Let’s hit it!

Let's start by searching for pages that you, your fans and your target customers are interested in. By searching for these pages we are aiming to understand what they’re posting, engage with their followers, and to expand our reach. Being a part of the Marketing team at Meltwater, I’m curious about what other pages our fans like. I start with a very simple search: “Pages liked by people who like Meltwater Group.” This search is a good place to start, but it’s quite broad. So, even though I find some pages that might be of interest to our audience, it’s time to narrow the search in order to find the gold.

Since we are a Saas company operating in the field of Online Marketing and Social Media Marketing, I’ll add an interest to the search. “Pages liked by people who like Meltwater Group and social media” is a better search. I found more relevant pages of interest to me, our fans and our target audience. This means I can now like these as the Meltwater page and increase brand visibility.

Here are some more examples of narrower searches that might be useful to you:

Pages that friends of your fans like -> Pages that friends of people that like <your brand> like.

Pages in a specific category -> Restaurants liked by people who like <your brand>.

Pages in a specific region -> Media/news/publishing pages liked by people who like <your brand> and who live in San Francisco, California.

Books that specific users like -> Books liked by people who like <your brand>.

Interesting Pages for your brand -> Pages that are of interest to <your brand> / <your competitor>.

Now that I’ve searched and found a couple of interesting pages, it’s time to add them to a Facebook Interest List.

First, I go to the page. The image on the right shows to click on the Gear Icon under their cover photo. Next, I click on 'Add to Interest Lists'. Here I can either choose to add the page to a specific List (if I have any set up) or I can choose to create a new one. For this example, I will choose 'New List' as this will be a separate one that I'll use to find relevant content, engage with users and identify users that have common interests that might be of importance to our brand.

In the pop-up box that follows, I’ll click on 'Next'. I will then give the Facebook List a fitting name and select whether I want it to be public, available to my friends or just available to me. By clicking on 'Done' I have now created my list and I can easily add more pages by visiting their Facebook page, clicking the gear icon and simply adding it.

Facebook Interest lists can easily be forgotten if you don’t get reminded to visit them on a daily basis. Therefore, by clicking the pencil icon I can choose to 'Add to Favourites' meaning I will see it to the left each time I log in on Facebook.

If you've followed the steps in this article, you now have a full Facebook Interest List that is full of insightful pages for you and your brand. So, what exactly can you do with it? To name a few: 

Be a part of the discussions that happen on posts by sending out valuable and engaging content as your company Facebook page. By showing your knowledge and adding value to the discussions, more potential customers will see your page, engage with your content and return to your page.

What is engaging your target audience? Are there any particular posts in your list that engage a lot of users? Do you have anything interesting to add on the subject? Post about the topic on your page, add interesting opinions and see how potential customers interact with the topic. This will allow for more informed and strategic Marketing and Facebook ads further down the line. 

By adding your opinions and comments on posts that your fans find interesting, you engage with your current fans and get the chance to find new followers. Be sure to use your opportunities wisely. Use this tool to understand current and potential audiences. Post smart and relevant content that is interesting to your current target demographic and analyse how they engage with it. 

So, there you have it: Facebook Interest Lists and Graph Search are two features that will help you find, engage and grow your target Facebook community. Looking for more audience targetting tools? In the last few years, Facebook has introduced capabilities in their ad manager to further aid marketers including: 

Do you use Facebook Interest Lists? What do you think of the steps given in this blog post?

Want more Facebook Marketing Strategy tips? Like us on Facebook!

3 Easy Steps to Using Facebook Interest Lists for Business

Running a contest on Facebook can be a great addition to your social media marketing plan. In one of my recent surveys, I found out that fully 32% of all Facebook users have liked a Page because of a competition on Facebook.

While marketers want to create a magical competition that increases engagement on Facebook, many fall short and end up violating Facebook’s promotion terms or giving away expensive products for very few likes or other return.

Over the years I have helped a lot of businesses create contests on Facebook and I’ve learned something every time. As with any social media marketing endeavour, success comes from good planning, management and follow-up. So, without further ado, here are my seven top tips for companies that want to build a successful promotional campaign on Facebook.

If you're running a promotion on Facebook “because it’s fun” or because all of your competitors are doing it, it’s time for you to go back to the drawing board and rethink your campaign. Your contest should somehow contribute to a business goal for your company. Do you want to reach more relevant fans? Do you want to increase social media engagement with customer? Drive more sales? Decide on a goal that contributes to your wider business strategy, then decide what your goal is worth to you and create a budget that fits.

Say your goal is to drive more likes to your page and each like is worth $5 to you. If the prize will cost you $100, then you will need to get 20 new likes to recoup this cost. Don’t forget set-up costs; you will also need to consider the cost of your Facebook App (more on that later) and any advertising you plan to support your contest on Facebook.

How you calculate what your goal is worth will be unique for your company, but the important thing is that you have a goal and that you can easily measure the success of your contest.

2. Create a simple and shareable contest application

A competition on Facebook needs to be located in an application (read Facebook’s Pages terms if you have not already done so). Whatever choice you make, make sure that you end up with a contest that fans can easily understand and that encourages them to share. Consider four popular types:

A simple “Motivate and Win” contest with a Like-gate, where the components of the contest application are available only to users who like your Page. These are useful if your aim is to grow your Facebook community.

A contest with a few questions, the answers to which users can find the answers on your website. These are especially useful if your goal is to drive traffic to your website.

A competition in which the user needs to vote on other users’ contributions. These usually generate a lot of buzz and get a lovely viral spread as well.

A competition offering a prize to people who share your content. These can be very effective in increasing awareness of your offerings.

The key here is to keep it simple and give the user the ability (and incentive) to share the contest on Facebook with their friends.

3. Ensure your contest on Facebook is accessible on mobile devices

Many Facebook users access the site on mobile devices, so running a competition on Facebook that only works on desktop is a big no-no. Make sure your content on Facebook is accessible to everyone; use a webpage to store your contest on Facebook that can be accessed via mobile apps. You don’t want to risk making your mobile followers sour on you, or lose all mobile users, just because your application doesn’t work on mobile devices!

4. Regularly post about the contest on Facebook

If nobody knows about your contest on Facebook, nobody will participate. Make sure all of your followers and their friends know about the contest by publishing new posts at least 2 – 3 times per week. Offer images of the prize and describe what you can do with it, ask users to participate, and include other calls to action to get more followers to participate in the contest. You can also change your cover photo and point users to your contest. Facebook recently changed its guidelines allowing you to include calls to actions in your cover photo.

5. Promote the contest on your website, in newsletters and through ads

Just because you’re hosting your contest on Facebook doesn’t mean that Facebook should be the only place where you promote it. Add links and banners to your website to make sure visitors are informed about the contest on Facebook and include information on it in your customer newsletters. You can also use other social media apps and create buzz across multiple channels. You never know, the winner may be somebody that hasn't previously liked your Facebook page, they may have been solely a Twitter follower but after seeing the competition promoted on Twitter decided to engage with you on Facebook too. In my experience, advertising on Facebook has been crucial for contests – just make sure that your ads are targeting the right audience (e.g. do not target Italians if your prize is in the US) and try to use multiple ad formats to see which delivers the best results.

6. Send your congratulations to the winner

When the contest is over, you should show the joy that the contest gave all participants and/or winners. You might, for example, take a picture of the lucky winner and publish it on your timeline. (Just keep in mind that, according to Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines, you can’t notify a winner using the Facebook platform). Also consider talking to the winner or some of the participants to get their feedback on the contest, and then use that feedback in posts and for a future contest on Facebook.

When you have done all the above, it’s time to become a “number nerd.” Measure progress toward the goals you picked in Step 1 and how well the contest contributed to your business goals. Check Facebook Insights to see how many people visited your contest, how many more likes you received during the contest period, how your reach was affected during the contest, and so on. Make sure you understand what contributed to the success of your contest, and think about what you can do differently the next time around. Then it’s time to start planning for the next contest on Facebook. 😉

To sum things up, set a goal, create a plan, build an app with shareable content, let the world know about your contest, and keep it simple and fun.

Are there any good tips I missed for running a successful contest on Facebook? Add a comment below!

Want more Facebook marketing tips? Like us on Facebook!

7 Tips for a Successful Contest on Facebook

It's one thing to jump into Facebook marketing, but seeing ROI from the content you share on social media is another thing. I'm sure marketers have many questions floating around their head, from how many users see the posts from my Facebook Page each month to which are my best posts etc?

In this blog post, we will go through four key Facebook metrics that you should be measuring with your social media analytics tool. Be sure to benchmark the metrics on a regular basis so you can optimise and yield better results! 

4 Facebook Metrics Every Company Should be Measuring

Woohoo! Yesterday we reached 5,000 likes.
Tell all your friends to like us!
Like us and win a snowmobile!

I see these types of posts from Pages in my News Feed all the time and I’m always confused by them. Why, you may ask? Because your Business Page’s number of likes means nothing if your fans aren’t engaging with you. There are way more important Facebook strategy metrics that you should be measuring other than likes. In this blog post, I will provide you with four metrics that I think all companies on Facebook should measure in order to prove the results of their marketing efforts.

In Insights, you can see how many users your Page and your posts have reached. From the “Page” tab, navigate to “Post Reach” to see the number of users your posts reached. Scroll down a bit to see your Total Reach, or the number of users who have seen your Page or any posts associated with it.

It’s also important to know which posts, in particular, have the best reach so that you can post more like them. This type of insight if vital for your future content marketing strategy. To get this data, click on the “Posts” tab and sort by reach. Take a look at the posts with the best reach and try to post more like them.

Facebook uses an algorithm, consisting of millions factors, that determines which posts appear in users’ News Feeds, and a strong factor in this algorithm is engaged users. In the “Posts” tab, you can see the number of users who have engaged with your posts – meaning that they clicked, liked, commented on, or shared your update. As more audience members engage with your posts, Facebook will show your updates to more of your fans.

So, make sure you know which of your posts engage the most users, and post more like them to increase your reach.

I don’t like to track the number of likes as I feel it's a vanity metric, but at the same time, I do feel that it’s important to track when I receive new likes and when I loose audience members. This data tells me when my content marketing strategy is doing something good and when I’m doing something bad.

To access this data, go to the “Page” tab and take a look at the “Net Likes” graph, which shows you how many new likes and unlikes you had each day. Take a closer look at the dates where you’ve gained or lost a lot of likes to see what you did those days and take note.

You should experiment with your Facebook posts to find what types of content work best for your Page and followers. But by experimenting you will also take some chances and might receive negative feedback. To get this data, go to the “Posts” tab and navigate to “Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, Unlikes of Page”.

Under Engagement you will see the total number of users who have given your post negative feedback. Click on each post to see what kind of negative feedback that post has received.

Keep in mind that negative feedback does not necessarily mean that you posted something bad. When you publish a post that has a lot of engagement, it will reach users that do not already like your page – which can increase your negative feedback. Look at the positive and negative feedback together to determine if you’re posting something your fans don’t like.

There are lots of interesting Facebook metrics that marketers can use to take their strategy to new heights; this blog post only touches on the most common and important ones. Facebook metrics should be analyzed on a regular basis to give you the information that you need to reach and engage more users.

Do you have any other Facebook metrics that you frequently take a closer look at? Let me know in the comments section below.

Meltwater

Those who use Facebook for brand communications may have noticed a decrease in organic reach over the last few years. Many marketing professionals feel like they’ve been working hard to create content favoured by the Facebook algorithm, only to receive a huge kick in the face by the most recent algorithm tweak.

Encourage Engagement… but don’t engagement bait

Facebook Algorithm Change for Facebook Ads

In January 2018, Zuckerberg announced that it’ll be harder than ever for brand content to be seen by Facebook audiences. Posts by friends and family are being prioritised. With so many brands and publishers “spraying and praying” their message, it’s hardly surprising that Facebook is trying to remove irrelevant content for its users.

Similar to growth hacking on Google, many companies try to cheat the Facebook algorithm – for example, we’ve seen an increase in images disguised as video. This is because video is prioritised over images in the Facebook newsfeed. Until recently, some cheating tactics have slid through the net and worked. 

In the above image, it is clear someone is attempting to cheat the algorithm.

Why are companies going so out of their way to fight the Facebook algorithm changes, you may be thinking? Well to put things into perspective, research from Social@Ogilvy found that for Facebook business pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%. If we have only a 2% chance of reaching people who have chosen to hear from us, just imagine how low organic reach is for those who haven’t!

We must admit, this change is pretty alarming, but we’re not doomed. Creating high-quality content is still likely to reach our audience and ride the algorithm wave. Here are our top tips for creating engaging Facebook content.

Back in December 2017, Facebook announced they’d be cracking down on so-called ‘engagement bait’. This is where users attempt to exploit the Facebook algorithm by asking viewers to like and share posts. See below for the kind of posts we’re talking about!

Engagement bait posts will be de-prioritised by the newsfeed since the Facebook algorithm update. According to Facebook, their machine learning technology will review posts to detect engagement baiting. Brands that publish genuinely interesting content that receives a lot of engagement will not be affected.

The key is to understand our industry, audience and trends that occur within it. Only then can then create content that will be most appealing to our target market.

How? Find out as much to know about your target market and industry. We can use media monitoring to look at trending themes around our industry to discover hot topics. In addition, look at what kind of content is creating engagement for your competitors. Finally, survey the audience you have and find out what they’d like to hear more about.

Blending owned with paid for media, by using Facebook ads to promote our content and increase engagement, is one way to get over the Facebook algorithm issue. It’s true that we’re entering a “pay to play” realm, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk.

Fortunately, Facebook ads are pretty attractive to marketers due to their advanced targeting capabilities! Facebook ads offer users the ability to really drill down into target demographics, for example, job titles, interests, likes, age etc.

To get started with Facebook ads, first decide what your objectives are. Below is a screenshot of the objectives Facebook offer. You’ll notice there’s quite a few, Facebook has been really focusing on its “paid for” function… I wonder why? 

Next, define who you wish to target. We can use our audience or buyer personas to decide exactly what demographics and interests we want to target.  Find out more about persona mapping here.

After this, set budgets and create the advert. We can use an existing post or create a new advert. There are loads of different types of Facebook ads, so we can get creative!

To help structure your thoughts initially, we’d suggest using Google Analytics to analyse the type of content that’s bringing in the most amount of traffic to your website. You can also look at what is driving engagement on your social media channels.  

For a full guide to getting started with Facebook ads, check out Facebook’s business page. They have case studies, inspiration, and in-depth guides to each feature. If you’re interested in a high-level overview of 

We’re not saying give up with Facebook, but unless Facebook is where the majority of our brand’s audience is, it may be worth focusing our efforts elsewhere, particularly if we’re limited on time and resources. Use a social listening tool to understand conversation split by channel.

Our most recent webinar with Marie Ennis-O’Connor taught us how to find, grow and nurture our social communities.

According to AdWeek, Facebook video gets triple the engagement and 1,200% more shares compared to text and image posts. In addition to this, video is currently the highest ranked kind of content within the Facebook algorithm.

For success with video try the following things:

Ensure video can be enjoyed without rather sound – many users watch video on mute

Post the video directly to Facebook, rather than linking them to Vimeo or YouTube

Live stream Q&A’s, behind the scenes videos, events and walkthroughs of new products

This article by vidyard, ‘10 ways small businesses should be using video’ is full of inspiration to get you started! Remember, Facebook Live video doesn’t have to be shot on the highest quality camera with sound mics left, right and centre. The whole appeal of going live is that it’s raw footage, adding to the authenticity of a brand.

We can’t improve our strategy and aim for higher engagement if we don’t currently know how well (or not well…) we’re doing. Blend data found through a social media monitoring tool with data found through an engagement tool such as Meltwater Engage. Aim to report back on negative or positive movements monthly.

Likealyzer is a great resource for businesses looking to improve their organic reach on Facebook using data to support their strategy. This free online tool, offers recommendations as well as metric analysis. Give it a go by popping your brands Facebook business page URL in the box to uncover your key insights!

Here’s what Likealyzer has to say about Coca Cola’spage.

Hopefully, the above tips will provide you with some ways of continuing to reach your target audience, despite the latest Facebook algorithm change.

Staying up to date with the latest social media updates and changes to platforms must become part of our daily role. The writing was on the wall for quite some time when it comes to this update. Those who followed key industry updates would have noticed this prior and felt less of the effects because of this.

We’ll be posting key news on big social media updates on our blog to ensure our subscribers stay relevant in the changing social media landscape. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss out!

Tip: Check out 5 Ways PR Pros Can Take Advantage of the Facebook Algorithm Change

Facebook Algorithm Change – Now What for Brands?

During a recent #MarketingMinds chat, participants spoke of the differences between engaging on Facebook compared to Twitter. Although touched upon in the chat, we feel this deserves its own dedicated post. After all, if we know how engagement differs between the two most widely used social media platforms, we know how to adapt our social media strategy to accommodate.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Social Media Strategy Differences #1
Storytelling vs. Short bursts of Information

Facebook’s unlimited character updates make it the perfect platform for brand storytelling. Storytelling is important to feed into our social networks and social media strategy as our followers are more likely to buy if we nurture and flirt with them throughout each stage of the purchase funnel. We recently published a post on how flirting is one secret towards a successful social media strategy. When thought of like this, if we storm in and ask if a person would like to go out on a date before engaging they will find us creepy… and nobody likes a creep! The same principles apply to marketing. Facebook is so successful from a sales point of view because it’s the perfect social platform for long conversations.

Twitter on the other hand is for short bursts of information. Sheena Cox, Key Account Manager at Meltwater explains, “Whilst all social media content has to tap into the here and now, Twitter is the Usain Bolt of social media channels. 140 characters is the fastest way to spread the word. Whereas Facebook content tends to keep conversations going for longer.” Due to the 240 character limit on a tweet, we tend to see brands directing followers to other sites rather than focusing communication purely on the platform. Don’t be afraid to share third party content on Twitter. The hashtag feature is often used by the audience as a social discovery mechanism to follow industry news; therefore our audience expects to see third party content to engage with.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Social Media Strategy Differences #2
Evergreen vs. Real-time content

There’s a real weigh-up between real-time content and timeliness between the two social networks and we must consider this in our strategies for social media. Twitter is often thought of as a news outlet due to the real time nature of the platform. We tend to see shorter but more frequent posts on Twitter, with Twitter users and brands often providing a running commentary on situations (take Dunkin Donuts’s #DunkinReplay campaign for example). Consequently, the lifespan of engagement with tweets and content on Twitter is shorter. For those wanting to post evergreen content, consider Facebook as the medium as it is the outlet for on-going conversations, as Sheena Cox mentions.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Social Media Strategy Differences #3
‘Real Life Friends’ vs. Connecting with Strangers

Our Facebooks are typically full of people we’ve met. Whether it’s an old school friend, a family member or somebody we met travelling and made a deal to keep in touch with (we all know how that turns out!). Twitter, however, is less about ‘real life’ friendships. It’s perfectly normal for users to connect with strangers. This makes Twitter a great platform to build influencer relationships. There’s a hefty list of reasons why our social media strategy should aim to connect with industry influencers.

Find out more about how our Meltwater Social Influencer Tool can help you or check out the best influencer management platforms and influencer marketing tools on the market.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Social Media Strategy Differences #4
Knowing the Different Peak Engagement Times

When building a social media strategy, it’s important to consider the best optimal time and day to post. As mentioned in a previous Meltwater blog, engagement for our own target audience occurs at different times. According to Fannit, Twitter engagement goes up by 30% on weekends, with the most optimised times being 1pm-3pm. 

Once we know the best time to post, we can use social media monitoring tools, such as Meltwater’s Media Intelligence platform, to schedule posts to ensure we don’t miss the best time slot for engagement and set up our social media strategy to flourish.

Facebook Blog

3 Easy Steps to Using Facebook Interest Lists for Business

7 Tips for a Successful Contest on Facebook

4 Facebook Metrics Every Company Should be Measuring

Facebook Algorithm Change – Now What for Brands?

Facebook vs. Twitter: Social Media Strategy Differences

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