Category: Facebook

Facebook Restricts Access to Australian News

There’s an ongoing stoush between the Australian Government and Big Tech, namely Facebook and Google.

Essentially, the Australian Government wants Facebook and Google to pay content providers when that content is shared.

This morning, Facebook went for broke and restricted access to news sites, such as ABC, The Age, Guardian Australia and so on. Even satirical sites, like The Betoota Advocate, The Chaser and The Shovel are blocked and charities, like MS Research are even seeing their content blacked out.

Effectively, Australian media voices have gone dark on the largest and most consumed online social network on the planet.

How will You be Affected?

Aside from not being able to post or share “news” media, you won’t see content from media providers. At first glance, this is inconvenient, but below the surface this has a significant impact.

I can’t access the Bureau of Meteorology posts. I’ve been alerted of severe weather alerts through Facebook, not to mention floods, covid updates, transport updates and fire.

At the beginning of last year, Australia experienced catastrophic fires and many people turned to Facebook and other online networks for updates and the check in on friends and family.

That’s been taken away.

Content producers and Community Managers will be impacted, especially at media organisations. Insights, such as sentiment and engagement won’t include any metrics from Facebook.

We’ll also see a rise in misinformation on Facebook, with media organisations unable to counter it with factual journalism.

What Can You Do?

The Australian Government will need to negotiate with Facebook about the proposed legislation, which is ongoing.

But I think that individual media organisations will approach Facebook and negotiate for themselves, at least until there’s a resolution.

I’m not sure how effective this will be, but if you’ve been affected, you can try changing your Page category settings from “News” to something like “Travel Website”, or whatever is appropriate for you.

Just go to your page, then Settings, then Page Info. Add the categories you want and remove any reference to news.

Key Learnings

My key takeaway from this is that we can’t rely on third party platforms to also be available for use. Your online communications strategy needs to have a mix of social, web, mobile, communities, forums and email to connect across your audiences.

Secondly, it is more important than ever to develop a Social Listening strategy. You need to know where your content is being shared and what the reactions to that content is. With these restrictions in place, communities and forums will probably see an uptick in content sharing. Take this opportunity to unearth new audiences today.

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Apple’s iOS 14 Update and your social strategy

Apple have released iOS 14 across their devices, with one very important change that will affect your social strategy.

App Tracking Transparency

With iOS 14, when you open an app that tracks your activity across other apps and websites, you’ll be prompted to either Allow the tracking or Ask the App not to Track.

We’ve tried to find the numbers that are opting out of tracking. Nothing has come up so far, but we’re pretty confident that a sizeable majority will be opting to tighten up their privacy. Especially when they’re prompted to do it.

And Facebook seem to be feeling the pinch already, with this rebuke of Apple:

“[Apple are] using their dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection, while making it nearly impossible for their competitors to use the same data”.

What changes are taking place?

 As App Tracking Transparency is rolled out, apps won’t be able to collect data from websites and other apps, which is used to build audiences for advertising. As developers update their iOS apps, they need to apply App Tracking Transparency. This seeds App Tracking Transparency throughout the iOS ecosystem, depriving advertisers of third-party audience and behavioural data.

It also explains why Google hasn’t updated their iOS apps since early December.

What does this mean for Social Advertising?

 Without this third-party data, advertisers will find it more difficult to obtain and target audiences that are beyond their sphere of influence. For example, a ticketing business will find it harder to connect to fans of performers that haven’t purchased through them before.

First party and second party won’t be affected, but connecting first and second party data to third party interactions will.

Content, Content, Content. Content is King

In 1996, Bill Gates wrote that Content is King. In 2021, twenty-five years later, it’s still true. Creating interesting organic content that garners engagement through sharing and other forms of participation will build your audience. And audiences find user generated content more authentic than brand generated content.

A renewed focus on developing engaging branded content and nurturing positive and authentic user generated content is needed.

Finding User Generated Content

Content can be anywhere on the social web, across social networks, forums, tube sites and image sites. You can’t be across all of the locations, so you need a social listening strategy.

The good news is that a Topic Profile in Social Studio with some well targeted keywords will uncover this for you. Not only that, you’ll discover your product evangelists, detractors and even keep tabs on your competition.

We’d love to help you get social listening setup for your organisation. Talk to us today to go through your needs.

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Facebook is changing Pages. What that means for you.

Facebook announced some pretty big changes for Pages last week. We’ve looked at what’s coming up and we REALLY love the focus on engagement, with a dedicated News Feed, Q&A format and the removal of the Like button.

No More Like Button

This is a massive change, but one we are very much looking forward to. Facebook now considers the Followers of a page the primary metric, meaning the audience will need to be engaging with the page, not clicking “Like” once. In our view, this gives a much clearer indication of how a content strategy is working, what topics the audience is interested in and how healthy the audience is from a sentiment standpoint.

This will take some adjustment, especially for brands that see “Likes” as important, but we feel that this is an opportunity to start measuring engagement, topics and sentiment to be prepared for the change.

Dedicated News Feed

Changes to the News Feed reinforce this focus on engagement, with the Page being able to participate in conversations. Your page will be a public figure, able to interact and engage with the audience, as well as find other Pages, Groups or content to consume and share.

Your Page will have a lot more visibility, with interactions from the Page, such as comments or replies, pushed towards the top of the comments section, and the audience will be able to engage with and follow the Page from the comments section, too.

Q&A

Facebook now provides a Q&A format. When a Page answers audience questions on a topic, the answer becomes swipeable content that can be browsed. This is a great opportunity to gather common questions asked and develop a strategy for quick responses. If you’re using Social Studio, this will develop your Standard Engagement Responses strategy, speeding up you response time.

We’re excited to see how these changes affect how brands report and develop content for their audiences. The focus on audience engagement is definitely a positive sign. Although some brands may see a downturn in engagement initially, our take is that this will lead to better content and better audience outcomes.

 

 

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