This week we have two sensational titles. That’s it. Two crazy things.
Amazing Video!
Yeah, we know – that’s how a lot of sites lure you in to read articles about miracle foods, shocking photos of celebrities and other nonsense that you don’t care about but this one – it really is amazing….or at least really interesting.
Demy de Zeeuw (yes that’s his real name), a popular Instagram user (@433) recently posted a video that is only 37 seconds in length that you “just have to see.”
De Zeeuw is known as “the” soccer guy, with a follower count of a whopping 8 million users over all of his accounts that include not only the @433, but also” @Balr, @Wannahaves, @Amsterdam and @Hotels.
Normally, he keeps his social media notifications turned “off” but as a demonstration, he turned notifications “on” and videoed the results.
We thought it was pretty amazing – and the video just shows his Instagram account notifications – not including Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. When you see it, you may think it is amazing that his phone didn’t overheat. An even more amazing thing is that once he posted the video, his total follower count went up by a couple of million people within a week.
De Zeeuw is a huge social media “star” and spends a lot of time posting on multiple accounts – which you probably don’t have the time or desire to do. That doesn’t mean none of this applies to you though.
Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all allow you to have multiple accounts or “pages”. Twitter requires that you use a different sign-in email, Instagram now lets you manage multiple accounts from the single app, and Facebook Pages are created from your personal account. This makes Instagram and Facebook a bit easier when managing multiple accounts, but not so much for Twitter.
There are Apps that can share your Tweets to Facebook or your Facebook posts to Twitter and Instagram etc. but Facebook posts aren’t “twitterized” for character count and #hashtags and twitterized posts don’t work that well on Facebook – so it’s best to avoid this route.
A third-party App like Buffer, Sprout Social or Hootsuite can manage multiple accounts on multiple social media platforms. You can preschedule your Posts and Tweets, monitor messages – and get analytics as well. It may cost a bit – depending on what platform and what all you need; prices range from free to $10 to $99 per month.
These Apps can also help you manage your notification settings – because when you have all notifications turned “on” – it can get overwhelming. Not as bad as de Zeeuw – but still.
Watch and be prepared for shock by how notifications from 8 million users looks on a mobile phone at Booooooom.
Point is: Sometimes doing something outrageous – like posting this video was, can increase your engagement a lot. Make sure it is something outrageous that fits with your business.
Aside from that, social media is more than just a way to spread your good news and sell your product. A lot of people use social media to address customer service concerns and they expect a personal response. Millennials want it right away.
You want that customer feedback. If it is bad, you want it right now – so you can address it, right now. You may be able to turn a negative customer opinion into a positive if you respond right away.
You probably can’t monitor your social media accounts 24 hours a day so notifications are good. You need them to “hear” what is happening – but too many will simply annoy you and cause you to ignore them all together.
Make sure that you can manage your social media accounts and get some help if you need it.
Will 2016 bring the end to phone numbers?
Another sensational headline right? Really, someone is predicting that phone numbers will disappear…can you guess who?
Facebook of course.
Facebook’s VP of Messaging Products, David Marcus, posted in a recent news release that one of the “trends” for 2016 will be “The disappearance of the phone number.” Yep, he said this year.
The article actually includes a lot of self-congratulations for Facebook’s Messenger App, starting with the fact that the service has passed the 800 million users point.
Facebook drew serious attention a while back when it eliminated the ability of users to send private messages through the Facebook App on mobile devices – forcing them to use Messenger. Not that most people had objected to using the standalone Messenger App – but a lot of people objected to the required privacy settings which give Facebook access to your location, contacts, photos, etc. This bothered a whole bunch of users but Facebook didn’t give anyone a choice. In order to use Facebook for private messages – you have to accept the privacy invasion. (Truthfully – is it really privacy invasion? It is, but no more so than anything else you do electronically.)
No matter, apparently even the paranoid lost interest in the fear of monitoring. After a short period of noisily boycotting Messenger, nearly half of Facebook users have downloaded it anyway. Over 800 million of them.
In 2015, the Messenger guys at Facebook were busy. They brought us “M”, the Facebook version of Siri, added video calling, a transportation bridge to Uber, services for business, money transfer, photo editing, messages from non-friends…what next? Keep reading.
Over the past decade, communication has changed, big time.
Landlines are no longer in every home, email use has been cut way back, a lot of people do only virtual banking, shopping malls are going out of business, fewer people watch TV, few people send greeting cards, hardly anyone still gets newspapers or magazines, reading is done by Kindle or Nook, and music is only obtained through downloads. In addition to dropping the landline – fewer people are making actual calls – in favor of SMS text messaging. Facebook emerged at the same time as all of this started, and they have seized every opportunity presented so far.
Now, Facebook hopes you’ll quit using your cell service for any communication….in favor of Messenger which allows you to text, call or video call.
You don’t even have to have a Facebook account to get a Messenger account and you don’t have to be Facebook friends. Messenger users don’t have to “like” your business page to communicate with you and they don’t even have to use Google to find you. If users are too lazy, M will even search for them – on Facebook of course.
Actually Facebook hopes you’ll quit doing anything that isn’t on Facebook.
Facebook is now in competition at some level with Google, Apple, Skype, Android, Samsung, Microsoft, Yelp, YouTube and PayPal, along with every taxi service, news outlet, online retailer, credit card company, bank and a whole bunch of others that we can’t bring to mind. Now they want all of your voice and text service too – which brings in Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint.
Obviously, they can’t really eliminate the wireless providers which means phone numbers aren’t really disappearing…yet. But if cities and municipalities continue their free Wi-Fi expansion, and someone comes up with nationwide Wi-Fi that doesn’t rely on wireless…odd. Follow us for a sec.
Google has been expanding Wi-Fi provision, even tinkering with Wi-Fi in rural areas and unserved countries by atmospheric balloons (really) which means Facebook Messenger would be transmitted by Google? Not likely.
Will Facebook buy up all the wireless providers? That is worth some thought.
We certainly won’t be surprised when Facebook introduces Facebook smart-devices. When, not if. They are already looking to establish an app store, just in case Google and Apple decide to eliminate Facebook’s ability to put their Apps (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) in Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
Facebook is definitely eating the internet.
See the actual news from the actual guy at Facebook.
Point is: Why, why, why? Simple. Advertising. The more services they provide; the longer people stay on Facebook. The longer people stay on Facebook, the more advertising they will see – which makes money for Facebook. Period.
What does that mean for you? It means that you have to have a presence on Facebook. You absolutely need a business page and you really need to think about an advertising strategy.
As a business, Facebook offers you all kinds of metrics to know who you are reaching through your ads – and who you aren’t. But if they get their way, using Facebook won’t give you a leg up, if you aren’t there – you might as well cut your leg off.
Next up – More crazy news about Twitter? Maybe.
