Facebook video ads coming to a news feed near you

Since September, Facebook has been testing an easier way to watch videos. After months of testing and seeing higher levels of engagement in people liking, commenting, and watching videos, they announced a premium ad called Facebook video ads.

What are Facebook video ads?

Facebook video ads
Example of Facebook video ads in the news feed.

Facebook video ads are a way for advertisers to display video content in a users’ news feed.

When a user is viewing their news feed and a video ad appears, the video will begin to autoplay without sound.

Before you get mad and delete your Facebook account, don’t worry. They’re not that bad.

That’s because in order to play a video with sound, users will need to click on the video to play it with sound.

What they’re not

I am surprised at how many people are already complaining about Facebook video ads. They’re not live, so you really have nothing to compare them to yet.

For those of you trying to figure out what they look like, forget about seeing a Facebook news feed with lots of videos playing at one time.

Facebook knows what they are doing. Video ads will autoplay (without sound).

One additional thing if you want to watch the video ad with sound, users will need to click the ad. If you want to skip the video ad, you can scroll right past them.

Why you don’t need to worry about Facebook video ads

While Facebook is currently testing video ads with select partners like Summit Entertainment, most users won’t need to worry about seeing an abundance of video ads in their news feed.

As I mentioned, they’re a premium feature and because they will cost $2 million per 15 second spot (source), you’ll mostly only see video ads from companies with deep pockets, which means the ads should be pretty good.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid Facebook video ads. They are coming to a news feed near you at some point so get ready.

How do Facebook video ads work?

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2013 Web design trends – Infographic

We’re currently undergoing design changes on our website (we’re using the Epik theme and Studiopress Genesis) and so I thought it would be pertinent to talk about 2013 web design trends, as we should have a new website launching before the end of the year that incorporates a number of these trends.

So what was popular in 2013? One word, mobile.

With 84% of smartphone users using their smartphone to browse the web , if your website wasn’t responsive, you were missing the mark.

For those of you not aware of the meaning of the word responsive web design, it’s where you build a site that can adapt across different devices. For example, it works one way on desktops, adapts for tablets, and then adapts again for smartphone users.

There are plenty of reasons why this was a popular trend in 2013. The main reason is because it is user friendly. It also saves designers lot of time when doing web design because they don’t have to try to get everything to fit into each device.

While this was one popular web design trend, there were plenty of other ones that you probably saw when surfing the web in 2013.

Here’s a list of trends from this past year.

2013 Web design trends

  • Responsive
  • Metro
  • Minimalism
  • Typography
  • Parallax
  • Infinite scrolling
  • Fixed header
  • Single page
  • Large background image
  • Content first

Keep reading to learn about each one of these trends and how you can implement them into your own site.

Design Trends in 2013

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Share Instagram photos and videos with Instagram Direct in 4 Simple Steps

After a failed attempt by Facebook to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion, they hit back in a big way when they announced Instagram Direct.

What is Instagram Direct?

Instagram Direct is a way for users to share photos and videos privately with up to 15 other Instagram users.

Here is what makes Instagram Direct so powerful and why it should be part of your Instagram strategy.

For example, one of the biggest issues that Instagram used to have was that every update, like, or comment was public.

Now, that isn’t the case because you can share Instagram photos or videos with everyone in your Instagram feed or use Instagram Direct to share them privately with a select group of followers.

Besides this new feature, Instagram also put Snapchat and Twitter on notice that they are a major force in social media.

Instagram Direct vs. Snapchat and Twitter

Previously, if you wanted to share a photo or video with someone privately, you had to look to Snapchat and Twitter because they offered the ability to send private messages while Instagram did not.

With 150 million Instagram users, by introducing private photo and video sharing, Instagram can keep its growing userbase within their platform.

Couple that with the fact that Facebook owns Instagram and you can start to understand why this feature is a giant step forward for Instagram.

So how easy is it to use Instagram Direct?

Follow the step-by-step guide and instructional video below on how to use Instagram Direct.

How to use Instagram Direct

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Changing your affiliation with the Facebook Pages follow button

Facebook has been making a lot of updates to Facebook Pages over the past few months. Not only did they roll out the Facebook reviews button, which let’s fans leave a review about a business, but now they have now rolled out the Facebook Pages follow button.

While the follow button was a feature they were testing for Facebook Pages in October, it’s finally here.

What this means is that instead of liking every Facebook Page, fans and customers have a choice. They can like a page or choose to follow Facebook Pages.

I consider this to be a major announcement because it changes the level to which fans and customers can engage with a Facebook Page.

Changing interactions with Facebook Pages

Previously, the Facebook follow button was a feature only reserved for Facebook Profiles.

This gave people the opportunity to friend people they knew personally and to follow people they didn’t.

For example, most people would send a friend request to a family member and follow a celebrity or public figure. This way they would be able to see updates from both people in their news feed without being friends with everyone.

Now, instead of liking a Facebook Page by becoming a fan and liking their page, you can choose to follow a page instead.

Following vs. Liking a Facebook Page

As I mentioned, this is pretty significant. Here’s why.

Previously, in order to interact with a Facebook Page, you could add them to an interest list or if you wanted to see their updates in your news feed, you had to like their page.

This is great if it’s someone you know and you support their business. But what if you want to see their updates in your news feed, but you don’t really want to endorse them (because that’s what liking a page essentially does). There really was no other option.

With the follow button for Facebook Pages, now you can selectively choose which pages you like and which ones you follow.

In both situations, this solves the problem of seeing their updates in the news feed and it let’s fans and customers be more selective about which pages they endorse to their friends.

How to use the Facebook Pages follow button

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Facebook community management (the right way) with Agorapulse CEO, Emeric Ernoult

Agorapulse CEO, Emeric ErnoultThis interview with Emeric Ernoult, owner of Agorapulse, a Facebook community management tool, is the ninth in an ongoing series of podcasts with individuals doing great things in social media marketing.

I am very honored to have the opportunity to interview Emeric Ernoult from Agorapulse on today’s podcast.

For those of you who are not familiar with Emeric’s work, he created a social media tool called Agorapulse just for helping you better manage Facebook Pages.

Real Facebook community management with Agorapulse

While there are lots of tools on the market that let you manage multiple social networks at one time, Emeric chose to focus on Facebook Page management because it was an area he felt could be improved upon (significantly).

Here are some of the major businesses that use Agorapulse.

Agorapulse clients
List of businesses using Agorapulse.

Obviously, if major businesses are using Agorapulse, it has to be a good social media tool. We tend to agree, because we featured it on our list of 10 Wildfire alternatives for managing Facebook Pages earlier this year.

Just to prepare you, this week’s podcast with Emeric Ernoult clocks in at nearly 50 minutes. If you want to take it with you, it’s also available as a download as well.

Here is a breadown on the topics that Emeric and I talk about on the show.

The good, the bad, and the ugly about Facebook Page management

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Building a Twitter Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack

Last week we showed you how to add a Google Calendar to your Facebook Page. Now we’re going to show you how you can use Shortstack to add a Twitter feed to your Facebook Page.

Here is an example of a Facebook landing page tab we built using Shortstack to display our tweets.

Example of a Twitter feed embedded on a Facebook Page

Example of a Twitter feed on a Facebook Page
Example of a Twitter feed added to a Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack.

Let’s get started teaching you how to display your Twitter stream on your Facebook Page.

Display Twitter on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

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Logo tips – What does your logo say about your business?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This also holds true for your logo for your business as well. Learn what your logo is saying to your customers with this collection of logo tips.

The importance of a logo

Anyone with a graphics program can slap together a logo these days. In most cases, that is normally how a logo for a business starts out. As  business gets up and running, you often go through a number of iterations and end up with a professional looking logo.

While your logo may not cost very much, some logos can cost $1,000,000. Does that really mean it is a lot better than your logo?

When designing a logo, the cost doesn’t determine how popular and iconic your logo may turn out to be.

Here are some things to think about as it relates to logos from many of the most popular brands in the world.

Stats about logos

What goes into a logo

There are a number of elements to consider when designing a logo. Here are some logo tips to think about when you are designing your next logo.

  • Keep it simple
  • Two key areas for logo design are color and font 

Not sure how to create a logo using just these two areas? Try using the SMILE approach.

The SMILE approach means: Simple, Memorable, Inviting, Limited, Exciting.

This way you don’t makes things more complicated for your business. 

Logos and social media

If you look at most of the social media logos, a lot of them employ a two-color approach. As we mentioned, 95% of brands use only one or two colors .

While this doesn’t mean you should only use two colors in your logo design, a lot of the world’s top brands follow this technique. You might want to as well.

Social media logos
Example of social media logos for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Logo tips for your business

Now that you know how important your logo is for your business, here are some helpful logo tips to consider as it relates to choosing colors and fonts for your own logo.

Continue reading Logo tips – What does your logo say about your business?

7 Ways to drive Instagram engagement

It’s one thing to push a lot of content out through your social media channels like Instagram. Anyone can do that.

It’s another thing to drive Instagram engagement.

So what is the secret to getting higher engagement on Instagram?

According to Curalate, a research firm, they analyzed some 8,000,000 Instagram photos and looked at 30 image features such as background ratio, dominant color, lightness, and saturation and here is what they found.

When posting images on Instagram, be sure to share images that are predominantly blue, spaciously cropped, bright, and slightly desaturated.

Facts on achieving higher engagement on Instagram:

Here are seven examples of photos you want to share to drive Instagram engagement.

7 Ways to drive Instagram engagement

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How to change Facebook Ads currency for accounts you manage

Do you need to change Facebook Ads currency for your Facebook Ads? It’s not exactly where you expect it to be.

The Problem with changing currencies

For those of you who run Facebook Ads for your own business or for someone else, there may come a time when you need to change the currency. This way you’re not losing money because of exchange rates.

Instead of looking in Facebook Ads Manager, you need to look somewhere else, because Facebook doesn’t let you change your currency there.

It’s somewhat understandable why they didn’t put it in Facebook Ads Manager in the first place.

Chances are you login to your own Facebook Profile to create Facebook Ads. By having it in your profile instead of in your Facebook Ads account, you can quickly switch your Facebook Ads currency in one place for all of the ads accounts you work with.

To change Facebook Ads currency, follow these instructions.

Remember, if you are managing Facebook Ads for other pages, be sure you are managing Facebook Ads the right way. This way they are being billed for their ads instead of you. You can also easily change currencies depending on the ads account you are working with.

How to change Facebook Ads currency for Facebook Ads

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6 Tools to Help Bridge the Gap between Social Media and Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach has often been synonymous with terms like guest posting and guest blogging in the past but it’s fast becoming a pivotal part of PR.

Successful blogger outreach relies on utilising as many channels of communication as possible and one of the most effective channels is social media.

By using social media you can reach bloggers much easier and when you do drop them an email later on to talk further (or pick up the phone) they will know who you are and be much more likely to take you seriously.

In this post I will show you a number of tools that help to bridge the gap between social media and blogger outreach.

Before we dive into the post, it’s important to note that when working on any blogger outreach you need to be targeting the right people and by that I mean you need to be targeting bloggers that are influencers within your target market. The tools that I have included below will help you target the right people.

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