The Human Rights Campaign’s iconic equal sign has gone viral. On the first day of oral arguments in marriage equality cases before the Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users have changed their profile pictures to the red equal sign as a show of support for marriage equality. Stay current on the Supreme Court hearings and find out how you can stand for marriage here.
Facebook might soon be adding hashtags as a part of its popular social media platform. What used to be a Twitter-only phenomenon, the hashtag has evolved past real-time reporting on Twitter into a popular social trend. It’s already been incorporated as a popular tool on the Facebook-owned Instagram, so why not Facebook itself?
From Adweek:
If Facebook adopts the hashtag, it will bring more marketers to its biggest platform yet – more than are on Google+ or Instagram. This would help boost marketing brands through both Facebook and Twitter by increasing the consumer conversation through all channels.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Despite being only a fraction of the size of Facebook, Twitter’s success of the hashtag has perfected real-time advertising. Twitter has been more aggressive on advertising, closing the gap on advertising revenue with Facebook – both within mobile ads and online ads.
Whether this is Facebook’s rebuttal on the feud with Twitter or Facebook finally jumping on the hashtag bandwagon, its use would definitely create a hashtag #revolution for marketing and cultural memes.
Ever wonder what a CPC, CPM, CTR or CPV is? Or maybe you are confused about what remarketing actually does? Every industry has their own terminology with corresponding acronyms, and online advertising is no different. Here is our compilation of some beginner online ad terms and how they might apply to political campaigns:
If you’re among the hundreds of millions of Facebook users, you’ll likely agree that the site doesn’t offer a great search experience. “It’s a little embarrassing for them they hadn’t fixed it before now,” says Nate Elliott, analyst at Forrester Research. According to analysts, Facebook had to do this, as it isn’t growing as fast as it once did. They needed to figure out a way to keep users engaged, because if they aren’t engaged, they’ll likely go somewhere else. Remember Friendster? Once profiles and networks were set up, the site got boring, and users went elsewhere.
Along with the ability to now search for photos posted by friends 5 years ago, Facebook also figures out who your “best pals” are, based on signals in the Facebook system. Emarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson says these new features “might make people aware of how Facebook can compromise their privacy.”
Most analysts don’t currently see Graph Search, which is still in beta, as a major threat to Google. The feature will slowly be rolled out over the next few months, and is currently unavailable on mobile devices.
NPR’s Morning Edition: ‘It’s About Time’: Facebook Reveals New Search Feature
Each month — whether on a mobile device or a computer — the average American spends over 7 hours and 45 minutes on social media, which is about 22% of the total time spent online. Presently, there are over 150 million U.S. adults with a Facebook account – a fact that political campaigns are keenly aware of. This year, almost every serious candidate for federal office invested in a Facebook page and strategy.
Politico analyzed the relationship between fan base and fan engagement in 33 of the most competitive House races and all 33 Senate races over a three-month period, ending with the November 2012 election. For the most part, having more fans than your opponent did not correlate with a victory on Election Day. In all of the Senate races except Arizona, candidates who were more engaged with their Facebook fan base won elections, even when their fan bases were smaller than that of their opponent. The results were similar for the House candidates, although only 20 of the 33 most competitive races were won by candidates with a measurable Facebook fan engagement advantage. The key to activating fans is creatively embracing Facebook: deliver content that connects with voters, motivates your base and drives support, while appealing to core values, emotions and reason.
