Twitter’s New Follow Button

Currently, most websites include social media icons that link to their social media profiles; typically you will see icons for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Twitter has just launched a Follow button, that when placed on your website, allows visitors to follow your Twitter account with a single click. No longer do you need to worry about your visitors being taken offsite to Twitter.com and then not making their way back to your webpage.



The current Twitter icon is second from the left, amongst typical social media icons:



The new Follow button is pretty straight forward. It keeps the two-tone Twitter blues and bird and will automatically have your account follow the account connected to the button if you are logged in to Twitter.



You can access the code for the Follow button to add to your website here: https://twitter.com/about/resources/followbutton

Vanity Fair’s main page is an example of the new Follow button in action:




The new process of following through the use of the Twitter Follow button:



The process of following through the use of the Twitter icon:



Don’t confuse the Follow button with the Tweet button. The Tweet button allows visitors to your website to share content from your website to their Twitter followers with a click of a button your website.

Examples of Tweet buttons:



http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton

There are many benefits to using easily identifiable Twitter icons, the new one click Twitter Follow button and the Tweet button. Twitter continues to release new ways to enhance your website and increase engagement with your audience. We look forward to seeing how these onsite buttons will progress in the future.

Facebook Testing Real-Time “Happening Now” Feed

Facebook has begun testing a new feature in the news feed that allow users to see what their friends are liking, sharing and commenting on in real time.

The Happening Now sidebar appears in a column to the right of the primary news feed, duplicating much of that content in shorter form, as shown in the screenshot above from Dazeinfo.

Users can click on an update to pull up more information without leaving the feed:

At present, most users see a list of upcoming events, recommended Pages, ads and pokes:

It’s not yet clear whether the updates on the sidebar have character limits, a la Twitter, but the resemblance to the Twitter feed is unmistakable.

Facebook says that it is only testing the feature with a “fraction of a percent” of Facebook users, but “may expand it to more people” in the coming weeks.

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The Social Media Simplicity Toolkit

New York Internet Week is upon us again. On Monday morning, there was a panel hosted at the Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Chelsea titled, “Social Media Simplicity Toolkit: How to Avoid Over Complicating your Brand Online”.

The panel consisted of Stephen Zangre, Manager of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook; Jared Feldman, CEO & Founder of Mashwork, a social media listening software solution; Myles Kleeger, General Manager of Strategic Brand Partnerships at Buddy Media; and Chris Phenner, Vice President of Business Development at digital advertising firm TBG Digital. Karen Robinovitz, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer at Digital Brand Architects acted as moderator.

The majority of the interactive discussion focused on brand presence on Facebook. Here are a few of the top takeaways from the discussion:

1. Less is More

All the panelists agreed: brands that keep things simple garner the most engagement. “More complicated is not the best course,” Zangre said. He noted than a simple, sharable consumer experience is often better than an advanced, complicated custom application. For contests, promotions and sweepstakes, the lower the barrier for entry is, the greater the engagement from consumers will be.

Kleeger also reinforced that brevity is aligned with success. In a recent study conducted by Buddy Media, Facebook Wall updates that were under 80 characters in length received 27% more engagement from consumers.

2. Don’t Sell, Engage

“Hard selling is a big mistake,” said Zangre. “Brands, it’s not all about you here [on Facebook].” Brands have to give their target consumers something useful and interactive to continually win over their attention on the platform and hopefully turn them into brand advocates. Brands should be cultivating relationships with their consumers, not barraging them by simply broadcasting only self-serving messages.

Feldman put it best with an interesting quote: “You don’t follow a comedian’s page because they are funny – you follow them because you want to laugh.”

3. Know Your Target Audience

The inevitable question of “how does my brand get more Likes” was asked. Phenner, a self-professed ‘Likes arms dealer’, discussed how knowing who your audience is and what their interests are is key. Research is paramount. “Know what the people you want to target are interested in, and then give it to them,” Kleeger added.

4. Be Able to Answer the Question, “Why are we on this Platform?”

It sounds like a simple question, but many brands jump into Facebook and other social media platforms (due to hype, because their competitors are there, because they saw an article about it) without being able to answer, “What does your brand want to accomplish by being on Facebook?”

The answer can vary widely based on the brand’s greater business goals, but there needs to be a clear underlying purpose for that brand’s presence on a social media platform that can then be measured against. All the panelists agreed that brands need to have goals and a comprehensive content strategy that caters to those goals before their Facebook presence even launches.