The Ever-Changing Face of Facebook

With the advent of another quarter comes another sweeping round of changes from our good friends at Facebook. In what is becoming a weird mix of techie tradition and rage-inducing behavior for the average Joe, Facebook will be rolling out a barrage of new updates over the upcoming weeks.

Now that the inevitable initial backlash has subsided (You changed ma Facebooks!1! Facebook is going to start charging for their services!!), let’s dive in and look at what’s ahead.

Timeline

The most significant update is the introduction of the Timeline – Facebook’s version of an online scrapbook. Once it’s been fully rolled out, the Timeline will replace the user’s profile page and will more closely resemble a blog, complete with a header image, summary bio information and a quick overview of friends, photos, likes and notes.

Scrolling further down the Timeline, you’ll see highlights from the user’s Facebook footprint over the years, laid out in reverse chronological order. Scroll down far enough, and you’ll see a hilarious new section for the user’s birth.

Yes, Facebook is no longer content with shaping our present and future. Zuckerberg & Co. have now devised a way to retroactively insert themselves into our past, too.

All joking aside, the interface is fairly intuitive and fun. While some have raised privacy concerns, as with every other service that Facebook offers, Timeline only works with the information that its users provide. Preventing photos or life events from being made public is as simple as not posting them.

News Ticker

If the Timeline is the most visually appealing new update, the News Ticker is probably the least (and possibly most annoying).

The Ticker is like status updates on steroids, providing running commentary – er, updates – whenever one friend comments on another friend’s photo, comment, etc.

Whereas previously a user’s interaction with their friends’ updates was mostly limited to the ones they commented on or liked (triggering notifications whenever someone else subsequently commented on the same item), Ticker operates from the assumption that users don’t want to miss a single instance of activity between any of their friends.

While I’m not necessarily opposed to the concept of the Ticker, in its current iteration, it definitely feels like information overload. It would be preferable if this feature could simply be hidden or deactivated.

Subscribe

Taking a page from Twitter, Facebook now makes it possible to subscribe to a user’s profile, rather than adding them as a friend. So in case you want to follow (a la Twitter) someone you don’t know on Facebook without the creep factor of adding them as a friend, now you can just subscribe to their updates. Then again, maybe that is the creepier of the two options…

Smart Friends lists

Oh, Facebook, again with the blatant Twitter homages. Their new “smart” Friends lists are exactly what they sound like: Facebook creates and auto-populates certain default categories (work, school, family, city) of Friends to allow users to easily view updates only from contacts in that particular group.

This isn’t necessarily a bad update, but it’s probably only truly useful for those who are approaching their 5,000 friend limit and need an easy way to slice and dice their friend-base.

Recent Stories vs. Top Stories

Finally, Facebook has revamped the way updates are displayed in the home news feed. In the past, users had the option to choose between “All Updates” – activity from all friends displayed in reverse chronological order – or “Top News,” which was aggregated and ordered based on Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.

Facebook has now eliminated these options by creating a hybrid of the two. The jury is still out on this new beast, but it appears that it might not be a bad compromise.

On login, Facebook displays a selection of “Top Stories” mixed with “Recent Stories.” As a user spends more time on their home news feed, Top Stories are filtered out and the feed returns to a straightforward view of Recent Stories (i.e., updates from friends/pages as they happen in real time).

Users also now have the power to select certain updates as Top Stories to further customize their news feed in the future. Conversely, they can deselect those updates that don’t make the cut for relevance and interest.

What do these changes mean for you?

While none of the most recently announced changes directly affect Pages, they are not without implications for those who use the platform to engage with customers and clients.

First, the evolution of the news feed and the introduction of the Ticker mean that it’s more important than ever for brands to publish exceptionally valuable, relevant content that encourages interaction from fans in order to ensure visibility in their feeds.

Secondly – and perhaps most importantly – despite the latest round of loud complaints from its most vocal users, Facebook’s growth shows no signs of slowing. Recent data from Nielsen indicates that users are spending an ever-increasing amount of time on Facebook – more time even than on Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft sites combined. And Facebook remains dedicated to driving innovation in their interface and the ways that users can engage with the platform. As new options and features continue to emerge, Facebook will become the default online home base of more and more users, making it an invaluable vehicle of communication between companies and their customers.

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Keep it Social

Human communication is complex. The words that you use, the tone and volume of your voice as well as your body language and facial expressions all play a role in how your message is received by those that you are communicating with. A poorly chosen phrase or a simple misstep in your body language can steer a conversation into unexpected, and unintended, territory. In an age when so much of our communication has now become digital, the challenges have become even greater. Many of the social cues present in face-to-face interactions are all but impossible to convey. Body language and facial expressions are a non‐factor, and tone is as hard to express as it is easy to misinterpret. As a result, when communicating online, achieving clear understanding of meaning and intention comes down to the words that you use and how you use them.

Social communication

In today’s Digital Age, social media plays a pivotal role in the way companies communicate with their customers. But with the proliferation of social platforms – from standard bearers like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to niche sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr and Foursquare – it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the task of managing your brand’s social presence. As a result, it’s tempting to find ways to automate this communication in order to save time and resources. This is exactly the solution that I discussed recently with a vendor who was promoting a platform that would automatically broadcast updates to dozens of social media sites each time a blog post, news release or similar content was published to our website. Rather than spending the time to post this content to each of our social profiles individually, this tool would do it all for us in one quick shot. While this may sound like a dream come true, the problem is that it is a blunt instrument-style approach to communication: every profile gets exactly the same update at the same time. But the reality is that not all social media sites are the same, and neither are the audiences that use them. The way you communicate with connections on LinkedIn should differ from how you do so on Facebook. Similarly, the content you’d publish on photo-sharing sites like Instagram, Pinterest or Flickr is completely different from the updates you’d post to a micro‐blogging site like Twitter. Each site has a syntax specific to that particular social media platform, and ignoring that syntax greatly compromises the effectiveness your communication. You absolutely have something to lose – the opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way. Some might argue that since the posts are automated, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying this approach, but that is incorrect. You absolutely have something to lose – the opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way. And that lost opportunity could cost you dearly if the tailored messages of your competitors reach your potential customers where your robotic, automated communications miss the mark or, even worse, alienate your followers. In the end, while automation will save you time, it does so by taking away your ability to customize your message for specific audiences and platforms.

Be social, be specific

Stepping back from social media for a moment, think about human communication in general. We change the way that we speak and the messages that we send depending on who our audience is. You speak to your friends differently than you speak to your family. You communicate with co‐workers and peers differently than with clients and customers. Effective interpersonal communication requires an understanding of how best to convey your desired message to those you are speaking with. This is not something you could ever automate; it requires a human touch. When it comes to communicating via social media, the medium and the methods may be different, but the basic underlying principal remains the same: to be effective, your message must be tailored to the audience that will receive it. Although the channels themselves may be digital, you can’t eliminate the human element. For an example of how different messages should be tailored to different platforms – and why not every update is right for every social media profile you manage – let’s take a look at how my company shares our news and announcements. When we acquire a new certification or receive recognition that’s worthy of a press release, we promote that accomplishment on sites like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook where followers naturally expect to see updates about what’s going on with our company. In each case, we use the specific syntax and conventions of that site – such as hashtags on Twitter – to make sure those updates are in a format that audiences are familiar with and can easily find. We do not, however, share content like this on sites like Flickr or dribbble because those platforms are visual in nature, and these particular announcements have no meaningful visual component to them. If instead we are publishing an update about a new website project that we are launching for a client, we will again post that announcement to Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, but we will also add updates to social media sites that are more visual in nature because, for this update, we do have good image-based content (i.e., a screenshot of the new design) that can accompany the post. Each time we post an update to social media, we consider the nature of the content to decide which sites are most appropriate for those updates. Additionally, each social media post that we make uses the specific syntax of that social media platform.

Forget trying to do it all; focus on doing it right

The concept of automating your social media communication is only an attractive option if you are trying to publish content to so many social media sites that doing so has become unmanageable drain on your time. If this is the case, the solution isn’t to find a way to automate the work; it’s to streamline your activities to include only those sites that are a good fit for your needs. Trying to use every single social media site available to post as much content as possible is not a sound strategy. Why? Because social media platforms are overrun with self-promotional content that is irrelevant to audiences, and users of these platforms are quickly becoming conditioned to tune out this static. Sending automated updates to dozens of sites at once, without ever considering whether or not those updates are appropriate for those sites, just adds to this problem. Is that how you want your company’s news and announcements to be perceived – as part of the useless glut of social media updates? So if taking the time to individually update dozens of social media profiles for your company is not the answer, and automating those updates is also a no‐go, then how can you use social media to effectively communicate your organization’s message? The first step is to speak with a professional team that can help you establish an appropriate social media strategy – one that suits your brand and fits into your overall marketing plan. That team can help you identify which social media sites your audience is actually using and what types of updates you should send to each platform. They can also help you develop a rhythm for social media updates – one that you will be comfortable executing on a regular basis. By identifying the right sites for your organization and understanding how to use those sites effectively, you can capitalize on the power of social media to grow your brand and your business.

Case in point: KLR

KLR is a large accounting and business consulting firm headquartered in New England. In developing their social media strategy, they realized that while their target audience does likely use Facebook (after all, who doesn’t at this point?), they do not use that platform to search for the types of high‐end accounting and business planning services that the firm offers. As a result, promoting their services to that audience on that platform would be inappropriate, and their content would fall on deaf ears. Instead, KLR uses sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, where they have built a network of business connections that recognize them as thought leaders in their industry, to promote their services. Does this mean they turned away from Facebook altogether? Not at all; rather, they determined a more effective use for the platform: communicating with current and prospective employees, including interns whom they were looking to attract to the firm. Recognizing that college-age students would absolutely be using Facebook to research potential employers and positions, KLR decided to use their Facebook profile to showcase their company culture and their standing as a “Best Place to Work” for eight years running. By evaluating different social media sites, which segments of their audience (if any) are using those sites, and how they can most effectively convey their messages across that landscape, KLR has made the most out of the time they spend managing their social media presence.

A final word

Social media can be invaluable in its role as an open line of communication between your company and its customers. However, it can also be one of the surest ways to waste time and resources if you don’t have the right strategy in place. Make sure you’re getting the most from your efforts by contacting a digital marketing specialist to discuss your company’s needs. Together, you’ll be able to define your company’s voice and bring a human touch to your social media strategy.

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