Hello readers and welcome to this week’s social media brief. In this week’s brief, we have stories about mobile sharing, Facebook beacons, and video ads. Also, next Monday on the Ask Darrel Podcast we’ll talk about the how to run your church’s social media on a tight budget.
Study claims 99 percent of users ignore sharing buttons on mobile
What this means for your church: As the article points out, sharing using share buttons on mobile browsers is a bad user experience. You need to be logged into Twitter or Facebook to use them, otherwise it becomes a pain. I don’t think this means that your church should abandon them, but it does mean that you need to be tracking how often they’re being used.
Ad Blocking Could Be Coming to Apple’s Mobile Browser
What this means for your church:I understand why people continue to use ad blockers. The web is becoming littered with ads that ruin the viewer experience. While your church probably doesn’t run “ads” on it’s website. Advertisements for events or other programs on your church website could get incorrectly labeled by ad blockers. (I would know, we experienced this with our website launch.)
Facebook Is Handing Out Free Beacons to Retailers
What this means for your church: This is really an interesting development. It seems that with this technology, you could notify people entering your church to check-in via Facebook or update their status. I’m not sure what all the implications will be, however it will be interesting to see how it develops.
Twitter Tweaks Tweet Page Conversations With More Algorithmic Surfacing
What this means for your church: It’s great to see Twitter continue to add additional user interface tweaks. However, I get the feeling that we’re not far off from a more curated newsfeed like Facebook. This of course would mean that not everyone would see your content like they currently do on Twitter.
Marketers, Creative Ad Execs Adjust to Video Ads With No Sound
What this means for your church: We tend to think of video as both a visual and audible medium. However, as I’ve seen first hand, most people when on a mobile device in public place don’t want audio coming from their phone. This means that your church will think through the visuals of the videos as if there was no audio.
Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Pay for Facebook
What this means for your church: Interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times. I’ve always reminded churches that Facebook and Twitter are free for a reason, and if you’re planning on building your platform on these networks know that this free comes with a price.