Social gripes
Facebook and Google+ tinkering complicates the social landscape (again!)
Here at Dental Media we love social media and fully appreciate its use within the sphere of dental marketing. However, it sometimes becomes a frustrating medium to maintain and optimise due to the continual changes made by the likes of Facebook and Google – these updates are not always useful! Here are a few changes which we’ve found quite frustrating and which you will need to be aware of with your own social channels.
Post filtering by Facebook
Facebook declared that it needed to introduce certain filtering mechanisms to make the quantity of data it handles manageable and to ensure that users streams do not get clogged. Features like “‘Edge Rank’ have been around for a while – this a mechanism whereby Facebook determines who will see your posts dependent on parameters such a the number of fans you have, likes, shares, comments etc. The more ‘popular’ you are, the better your ‘Edge Rank’ and the wider audience your posts are likely to reach.
However, more recently, even pages with relatively good Edge Rank have started to see their post reach falling away quite markedly i.e. their long list of fans are not seeing their posts. Certain very popular pages are reporting that fewer than 15% of their fans are actually seeing their posts – ouch! So what’s actually going on here?
Facebook Sponsored Posts
It would appear that Facebook is really pushing its sponsored post options in an effort to drive revenue improvements following the relatively recent IPO back in May 2012. It now offers the option to pay to ensure that your posts are pushed to all of your fans. Whilst we appreciate the drive for commercial success, this is a rather drastic change that is impacting many – and frankly turning them away from Facebook. There is a way around this but its a little convoluted and relies on all of your fans changing their personal settings to select to receive all of your posts.
Facebook usage and demographics
Whilst we don’t have any data to prove this and its observational only, it seems that huge tranches of younger users are turning away from Facebook in favour of more immediate platforms like Twitter. This apparent trend, alongside the commercial moves being made by Facebook, may well contribute to a slow demise as time passes.
Google+ layout changes
This is more of a usability gripe than a comment about core operating principles. However, its worthy of comment due to the hassle it causes for users, particularly those who are not web and IT “savvy”.
Google+ recently announced an update to their page layout which involves transition to a HUGE new top banner. Take a look on your own G+ page but suffice to say that the new ‘facility’ is not very user friendly and arguably detracts from what is otherwise a nice system. Trying to achieve a decent page layout with the new banner system is not easy unless you are capable with image manipulation – if you aren’t, you can end up with a page that looks rather poor. We suspect Google will realise that the configuration isn’t quite right and will make further changes soon.
Twitter – integration with other platforms
Integration of social accounts with blogs, websites, newsletter systems etc is very useful and also powerful for broadening the overall reach of your on-line real estate. However, the tools we use to integrate the various platforms are subject to change with limited notice and sometimes just switched-off altogether. Twitter is quite frustrating with these types of unannounced updates leading to “broken” integrations out-of-the-blue. Twitter has announced that it will be further rationalising methods for third-party integration soon, so expect more disruptions.
Summary
The web moves at a rapid pace and we should expect technology changes, even some unannounced ones, to impact on what we do from time-to-time. However, some of the changes that are introduced by the major social media platforms are at best frustrating, often quite infuriating and sometimes, arguably ill-conceived.
However, with that said, the overall benefit we gain from active use of social channels is well worth the hassle of contending with the regular updates, even though it does sometimes cause headaches!
We also recognise that busy dental practices may not have time to keep abreast of changes to these important dental marketing channels. This is why we offer our managed social media services to ensure you stay in touch – please call us on 01332 672548 for free guidance.