One thing is certain, Paper is a radical departure from what you are used to using to view your Facebook news feed updates.
What is Facebook Paper?
Paper is a mobile app that let’s you explore news and stories from your Facebook news feed.
What is neat though is that Paper is a cross between the traditional Facebook app and Flipboard, a social news tool.
One thing I really like about the app is the clean look and feel.
It is also very refreshing not to have Facebook Ads to distract you.
Facebook Paper let’s you view news and stories from Facebook in a refreshing way.
How does Facebook Paper work?
I’ve had a few days to use the Facebook Paper app. Basically, it let’s you setup different sections such as Facebook, Headlines, Tech, Sports, Enterprise, Home, and more.
With Paper, you can view stories from your news feed or jump to a section to see updates from pages in that category.
While that doesn’t sound much different from using Add Interest lists to sort your news feed, it is because you are viewing updates from your own news feed, but also from pages you may not be connected with on Facebook.
Example of stories in the tech section of Facebook Paper.
Enough about the look and feel of Facebook Paper, it is awesome! Take an exclusive look into how to use Facebook Paper with this video walk-through.
In the next few weeks, I’m re-launching my website. Along with a new look and feel, I also switched website hosts in the process. This was because my current website host just wasn’t getting the job done for my business.
Since it is important for businesses to choose the best web hosting, I wanted to give you a comparison between two website hosts, Bluehost vs WP Engine and which one I ultimately settled on for my business and why I chose them.
The situation
I made the decision to switch website hosts because the company I was using was not meeting the requirements that my business needed.
For example, here are some of the issues my website encountered over the past year.
Unexpected downtime
Throttling
Lost data
Slow site load times
Poor customer service
If you are a casual blogger, the debate between Bluehost vs WP Engine probably doesn’t matter as much to you, but I spend a lot of time blogging and making tweaks to my site because it is a main source for running my business.
As a result, I need my website to be up, I need it to be fast, and I need it to be reliable.
Does website hosting matter?
It does and it doesn’t. It depends on the type of website you are running.
If you are a casual blogger who doesn’t blog very often or isn’t running a business, you can go with any hosting company, provided you are prepared to deal with slowness and potential down time.
On the otherhand, if you run a business and you blog a lot and want to get more people reading your content and eventually buying products and services, you want to be sure to choose the best web hosting possible.
When you have to constantly worry about whether your website is running and answer questions from customers about why your site isn’t available, this can put a lot of unnecessary strain on your business and your relationships with customers.
Too much of this and you will find yourself spending more time fixing things instead of creating things. This can put you further from achieving your business goals.
Does your business have a presence on Instagram? Do you have an Instagram strategy in-place to help you use the popular photo-sharing tool? While it is one thing to be on Instagram and to occasionally share photos, if you are a business, Instagram is definitely a place you want to consider creating a presence. This is because Instagram brand engagement has grown 350 percent year over year (tweet this | source). So how do you go about leveraging Instagram and its 150 million users? It starts by having an Instagram strategy.
Why you need an Instagram strategy
Anyone can get started on Instagram in just a few minutes. With the abundance of mobile devices available, business owners can begin taking photos and sharing them with the popular social network as well. While that works to get you started, if you truly want to tap-in to the growing user base, it helps to have a strategy in-place. This way when you are going about your day, you can be thinking about the different types of content you need to curate for the different social networks that you have a presence on. In doing this, you can plan ahead and begin thinking about the bigger picture for your social media marketing strategy and how to make Instagram a part of it. To help you out, we have put together five Instagram strategy tips to help you learn what types of content you want to be creating to help your business develop a dominant presence on the growing social media platform.
Do you wish your content could get seen more in the Facebook news feed?
Have you ever considered that you are sharing your content the wrong way?
For example, using a text update instead of a Facebook link share?
With recent changes to Facebook text updates, if you run a Facebook Page and want to have more people see your page posts in their news feed, you will want to use a Facebook link share instead.
Why the Facebook link share matters
Everything you share on Facebook on your Facebook Page is only seen by a select group of fans. This is because you are competing against other items in the news feed.
If you want to beat out your competition (or at least make a better showing), you’ll want to use Facebook link shares.
Not only do link shares take up more space in the news feed, which works to your benefit if you have an eye-catching image, but they have the opportunity to help you sell your content better to fans instead of posting a status update without any sort of visual.
Here is an example of a Facebook link share.
Creating a Facebook link share is very easy. I’m actually surprised more people don’t use them. To create a Facebook link share, follow these instructions.
Have you ever needed to upload photos and videos to Instagram from a computer?
While Instagram is primarily a mobile site, they do allow you to access an Instagram feed where you can view, like, comment, and embed an Instagram photo in a blog or website.
But what if you want to upload photos to Instagram from your computer?
Right now, Instagram does not offer this feature.
Instead, you can use a third-party tool to upload photos and videos to Instagram from a computer.
What types of media can you upload to Instagram?
You can upload photos and videos to Instagram and even use Instagram Direct to share private content.
To upload your photos and videos to Instagram, follow the instructions below.
How to upload photos and videos to Instagram from a computer
As a Facebook marketer, to be successful, you need an edge over your competitors on Facebook. This way more of your content gets seen in the news feed by fans.
One way to do this was to post Facebook text updates on both Facebook profiles and pages. This was because they were seen more in the news feed.
Facebook even agreed and had this to say about how important text status updates were:
Through testing, we have found that when people see more text status updates on Facebook they write more status updates themselves. In fact, in our initial test when we showed more status updates from friends it led to on average 9 million more status updates written each day. Because of this, we showed people more text status updates in their News Feed.
But when you really stop to think about it, you were not reaching people in the news feed because you were sharing really great content. Instead, you were leveraging a flaw in the news feed algorithm.
And while this seemed like the perfect win-win situation for both Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages because it allowed your content to reach more people, Facebook took notice and implemented Facebook text update changes for Facebook Pages.
Now before you get mad and cry foul over how Facebook keeps making it difficult for your business to succeed because of all of these changes, consider this.
The constant changes on Facebook are not the issue.
The main issue is the type of content that you share on your page. I’m not saying that all of the content you share is bad, it is just how you are sharing it.
Why it is difficult to increase Facebook engagement
If you are not seeing the levels of engagement on Facebook that you would like, there are a number of reasons why this could be happening.
Sharing low quality content
Your news feed is not a dumping ground. As a way to clean-up the Facebook news feed, Facebook reported they wanted to show more high quality content to users.
To do this, Facebook would penalize low quality content that was being shared.
What is considered low quality content?
Internet memes and status updates that are off topic are considered low quality content.
While these items tend to see higher engagement on Facebook because they are very “shareable.” Facebook doesn’t think so and therefore does not show it to users.
The takeaway here is that you will need to find another source of content to share. If you are a business and have a Facebook Page, I would recommend skipping all of the fluff and instead, share content about your brand and tell your story and what makes your business so great.
Posting when your fans are not online
If you are blindly posting on Facebook, you definitely need to consider a new Facebook strategy.
Think about it. If I am sharing content when the least number of users are not on Facebook, I am only reaching a fraction of my audience.
To increase your engagement, you need to ensure you are posting when people are on Facebook. This way they see your content and can interact with it.
There are plenty of tools you can use to help you figure out what the right posting times are.
For example, if you have a Facebook Page, one way to increase Facebook engagement is to use Facebook Insights and to look at when your fans are online.
Use Facebook Insights to learn when your fans are online so you know the best times to engage with them.
Alternatively, you can also use the excellent Facebook tool, Agorapulse to measure how effective your Facebook content is and to tweak when you are sharing it.
Sharing the wrong type of content
While content is kind, it is important to know what type of content works best for your situation.
Instead of copying someone else’s Facebook strategy, you need to figure out what works best for you.
For example, some Facebook users see increased engagement from photo-sharing. For others who don’t have an audience interested in this type of content, text only status updates work well for them.
The takeaway here is to try different types of content to learn what Facebook users are interested in. Once you identify Facebook trends, keep using them until they no longer deliver the results.
Now that you are aware of some of the ways you can hurt your Facebook engagement, here are some tips to help you increase Facebook engagement.
What types of content can increase Facebook engagement?
