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Home Sweet Facebook Home

On April 4th, Facebook once again gathered tech reporters from around the globe for another big reveal. This time they announced Facebook Home, their new Home for Android. Many speculated about a Facebook phone, envisioning the design and how Facebook would integrate with the Android operating system.

Mark Zuckerberg began the announcement by stressing the idea of getting back to the basics with our mobile experiences and that we need to turn our focus to be more people-focused, rather than app-focused. He showed users a new way to integrate the Facebook experience into their Android devices. He talked about how you can turn your android into a simple social device with Facebook Home.

Home redesigns your phone’s home and lock screen to improve your Facebook experience. It involves four key features:

Cover Feed

The first element of Home involves a rich News Feed called Cover Feed. Cover Feed is the Foundation of Home. It aims to show you the most important elements from your Facebook community.

Notifications

Notifications work similar to your notification center on Facebook. It makes sure you don’t miss critical things. When someone writes on your timeline or sends you a Facebook Message, it will all collect in your Notifications.

App Launcher

The App Launcher has three components:

  1. Messenger

The first component of the App Launcher includes your messages. This includes both your messages through Facebook, as well as your SMSs.

  1. Apps

Apps includes pages of bookmarks managed by the user. The user can choose which apps they use most and place them on the forefront. The last pages in the Apps includes a comprehensive list of all the apps on the users phone.

Most recently used app

The last element in the App Launcher includes a shortcut to the most recently used app. This allows the user to quickly return to a task if they’ve been interrupted by a notification or they were pulled away to a new task.

Chat Heads

Chat Heads can be used for both Facebook Messages and SMS. You can talk to whoever you want form anywhere on your phone. A Chat Head shows up on your screen as the sender’s Profile Picture. As soon as the message pops up, it shows you a preview of the message where you have the option of reading it or continuing with what you were doing. The Chat Head can follow you to other apps until you choose to close it.

 

Tacked on to the end of the announcement was a presentation by HTC. Peter Chou, CEO of HTC spoke at the event about the new HTC first. He talked about how it will help bring social and mobile closer. The new device will combine great HTC design and Facebook Home, giving you the best Facebook experience on your mobile device. HTC and AT&T will be the first to pre-load Facebook Home onto new devices with the HTC first. The HTC first will be available in four colors and will run on AT&T’s LTE network. The HTC first will be available for $99.99 on April 12th, exclusively at AT&T. It’s available for pre-order starting today.

Facebook Home can easily be installed in the Google Play Store and will be available in about a week. Facebook Home currently only available on Android mobile devices, but will soon be made available on tablets in the coming months. Facebook hopes to release frequent updates and for Facebook Home to be made available on more devices each month.

 

To learn more about Facebook Home and to find out if it’s available on your android device, click here.

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What You Missed at Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013

On March 27th, we partnered with AdParlor to present Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013. The conference explored insights from some of the biggest brands and agencies using Facebook to market their brands.

For those of you who missed it, some of the brands that presented at the conference were MLSE, Canadian Tire, Virgin Mobile, Corel Software, Ford Canada, Hailo Toronto, and Beyond The Rack.These brands took us through recent case studies and shared tips on how to increase fans and engagement. For the full list of speakers, click here.

One of the highlights of the conference was our fireside chat with Facebook. AdParlor CEO Hussein Fazal sat down with Facebook’s Steve Irvine to discuss keys to Facebook marketing success. He shared insights to Canadian Facebook users and how there one of the most enaged audiences on Facebook. He said there are 18 million Canadians on Facebook and that 12 million of them are engaged every day. He also shared that one of the keys to successful Facebook marketing is page publishing with genuine and quality content.

The conference also included two panel discussions. The first panel was moderated by Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell. She sat down with agency directors from Critical Mass, MediaCom, Carat Canda, and OMD. They explored trends they’ve seen on Facebook and predictions for the future.

The second panel was moderated by Majestic Media’s Managing Director, Mario Zelaya. He spoke with MLSE’s Head of Digital Content & Social Media, NHL’s Director of Digital Sales and Chapters & Indigo’s Social Media Specialist. They explored Facebook’s role in the day-to-day life of the brand. One of the topics of discussion was the NHL Lockout and how the NHL and The Toronto Maple Leafs used Facebook to navigate through it.

To see what people were saying during the conference, click here.

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What’s the best way to market on Instagram?

Visual content provides a great way to grab the attention of your users and add variety to the content you provide. MBooth recently looked at Facebook’s top 10 brand pages and noticed that posts with photos were liked 200% more than text updates. Facebook has also picked up on this fact, highlighting more visual content in their recently unveiled News Feed redesign.

Instagram is a great place to create visual content that is compelling and engaging. Along with the variety of photo filters, Instagram is a great place to create content that can be easily consumed and shared.

Instagram also provides a way to connect with users in a variety of loccations. Once just a mobile app, Instagram now has a desktop counterpart that allows more users to enjoy more of your content without having to switch back and forth from their smartphone. With their many sharing features, you can also use your Instagrams to connect with users on other social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

 

3 Tips to Better Market Your Brand on Instagram:

Here are a few tips to help you market your brand on Instagram:

1.     Tell Your Brand’s Story

Tell your brand’s story visually through the many feature available on Instagram. Give your users behind the scenes access, showing the the day in the life of your brand. Take them through your office and show them the faces that work hard to make the brand your followers love. Show your followers what you’re working on or what inspires you. Another great way to tell your brand’s story is to educate your followers on your brand’s history, showing them old photos and vintage pieces that launched your brand.

2.      Post Consistently

Like marketing on other social networks, it’s important to find the balance between posting too often and being forgotten. You want to post enough to keep users engaged, but you also want to keep them wanting more.

3.      Engage With The Community

One of the great things about Instagram is its community. It’s important to not only provide them with great content, but to engage with them and pay attention to the posts they like and comment on the most.

 

If you’d like to learn more about best practices for using Instagram for business, you can visit Instagram’s Help Center.

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Does Your Cover Photo Follow Facebook’s New Guidelines?

Facebook recently altered their Cover Photo policy. Your Cover Photo must now comply with the same 20% text rule that your ad images do. It’s important that your Cover Photo doesn’t consist of more than 20% text in order for it to stay on Facebook and continue to improve to the overall feel of your Page.

Facebook states their Cover Photo guidelines as follows:

“All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.”

So what happens if your cover photo violates Facebook’s new guidelines? According to Facebook, after your first offense, your cover photo will not be deleted right away. Facebook will let you know that your Cover Photo is in violation and they’ll give you some tools to help you to create an image that is compliant with the 20% text rule. If you haven’t uploaded a new photo that follows their policy within 48 hours, it will be removed.

To learn more about Facebook’s Cover Photo guidelines, as well as other guidelines on Facebook, visit Facebook’s Help Center.

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Facebook’s Latest Effort to Eliminate Clutter: Simplifying your Timeline

Moving towards their goal of eliminating clutter, Facebook has started rolling out improvements to Timeline, helping to give people a cleaner view of their content and what they care about. The improvements gives users bigger images and a more visual way to share the things they do. The new design helps users to easily see music, movies, TV shows, the books they enjoy, as well as their fitness activity.

Although these changes will not affect brand pages, it will allow users to better highlight the business pages they like on their Timeline. Instead of simply liking brands and businesses, they can categorize them in areas of interest, helping them not to get lost in large amounts of user activity.

If you’d like to learn more about the improvements to Timeline, click here.

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Facebook Unveils Redesigned News Feed

On March 7th, Facebook announced the biggest redesign to the Facebook News Feed since 2009. After 3 years of slight tweaks and improvements, Facebook has made some drastic changes to their News Feed.

In the Live Facebook Event, Zuckerberg started off by saying how they want to create a “personal newspaper” experience for their users. Their goal in the redesign was to eliminate clutter and place more focus on visuals.

The redesign focuses on streamlining the desktop and mobile experience, taking many of the features from the mobile platform and applying them to the desktop. The redesign also allows users to tailor their Facebook experience, offering customized feeds for groups of friends and various interests.

 

How can marketers use the redesign to their advantage?

Like many changes on Facebook, marketers wonder how they’ll adapt to the redesign in order to remain in sight of the user. With the new focus on visuals, users and brands are able to create larger images and take advantage of a larger canvas. Current ad units don’t allow brands to take up this much space in the News Feed. The best thing that marketers can do to adapt to the new redesign is to focus on creating more engaging visual posts, keeping in mind Facebook’s 20% policy.

The revamped interface will be released on desktop first, and will later roll out on various mobile devices.

 

If you’d like to learn more about the Facebook’s News Feed redesign, click here.

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5 Things You Don’t Want to Miss at Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013

 

Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013 is right around the corner and we’re already 75% sold! It’s going to be a great conference and we want you to be a part of it.We’ve got a great line-up of speakers from brands like Ford, Canadian Tire, Virgin Mobile, ING Direct, and many more.

Here are 5 things you won’t want to miss at Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013:

1.)    FREE 1-on-1 Social Media Consultation

Something you definitely don’t want to miss at Marketing on Facebook, Toronto 2013 is the opportunity to win a FREE social media consultation. We’ll be giving away 3 private sessions with either Ford’s Ammar Khan, AdParlor Ceo Hussein Fazal, or Majestic Media’s Managing Director Mario Zelaya.

2.)    Tactics To Increase Engagement on Facebook

Facebook is a great tool to increase engagement between consumers and your brand. Learn how to use Facebook as a way to increase engagement with your brand from those who are doing it best.

3.)    Learn from Big Brands on Facebook

Many of our speakers work directly for one brand. They manage the day-to-day life of a brand and are responsible for establishing their brand’s voice. Learn about how they use Facebook as an effective customer service tool and a way to interact and learn more about consumers.

 4.)   Hear from International Agencies

We have a number of speakers and panel members from international agencies working to extend a big brand campaign across the social media space. Learn about the trends they’ve seen from a variety of industries and how they build strategies according to needs of each brand.

5.)    Ask Your Questions

Each of our sessions will include time for your questions. You’ll be able to ask our professionals about how their experiences and insights can benefit your brand.

 

You can learn more about the conference at www.marketingonfbtoronto.com.

If you’d like to go directly to our Eventbrite page where you can register for the event, you can click here http://fbmarketingto.eventbrite.com/. For 25% off, enter the promo code: INSIGHTS

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Majestic Media Announces Beherengaray As New Creative Director

We’ve added a new creative director to out team of designers, web developers and marketing professionals. Guido Beherengaray (the one on the left) joins the Majestic Media from Buenos Aires, Argentina where his extensive background led him from small creative boutiques to large international agencies like JWT.

As a marketing and technology agency, we hope that Guido’s experience will bring our agency to new heights with further creativity and efficiency. We hope to offer more creative services to out clients and agency partners with Guido’s help.

Guido’s experience working as both a copywriter and a creative director has led him to work with large brands like Toyota, Garnier, Redken, and Playstation. He’s worked with a number of agencies in Argentina both small and international, including AMOR, and JWT.

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What Mobile Can Do For Your Brand

Once thought to be a youthful trend, smartphones and tablets are taking up more and more of our everyday lives. They have even  started to make their way into schools and offices. According to a study done by PewInternet,  45% of American adults have a smartphone and 31% of Americans own a tablet computer.

According to Business Insider the majority of Facebook users are now coming from mobile devices. Instead of pushing their users to the ways of yesterday, they’ve taken these numbers and focused on creating a great experience for their mobile users.

 

5 Ways to Get Started With Mobile Marketing

Mobile is an important piece of the digital marketing puzzle, but how do you get started? Here are a few quick tips to help you start incorporating mobile into your marketing strategy.

1.      A Mobile-Friendly Site

First and foremost, it’s important that your site is mobile-friendly. According to a study done by Google, users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site. They also noticed that after users visited a mobile-friendly site, 74% of them said that they were more likely to return to that site in the future. By failing to make your site mobile-friendly, you could be eliminating a huge group of potential customers.

2.      Optimize Videos for Mobile Devices

Videos can be a great way to engage with your audience and provide an entertaining element to your brand. With the majority of online videos being viewed through smartphones and tablets, it’s important that your videos are optimized for mobile viewing. Your video has a much higher chance of being seen and shared if users can view it on their smartphones and tablets.

3.      Mobile App

Mobile Apps can be a great way to take user engagement to the next level. They’re often created to make the life of your consumers a little easier. They can be created to help make the consumers life easier, from easy list making to shopping and games.

4.      Push Notifications

Push notifications are a great way to keep users engaged with your mobile app. They can be utilized through the mobile operating system or through Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect allows apps that don’t live on the Facebook platform to enjoy the benefits of those that do. Push notifications can be sent to for a variety of reasons. They’re often sent to users who haven’t engaged with your app in a while, inviting them to return.

5.      Facebook Nearby

Facebook has recently added a feature to their mobile app. Nearby takes the likes and check-ins of Facebook friends to make it easier for users to discover new businesses and make recommendations. Nearby also takes locations and categories of interest to direct users to businesses in their area. Nearby is not only a great way to get discovered, but it can help provide your business with feedback. If your brand has a Facebook page with a location, you now have a new way to be discovered by over 1 billion Facebook users.

 

To learn more about mobile and how it can be used to improve your business, click here.

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Don’t Work Longer. Work Smarter.

Most people would agree that in order to be successful, especially in advertising, you need to say goodbye to your friends and family. You need to be prepared to work long hours and prepare yourself to enjoy fewer weekends, but is this really necessary? How much are you really accomplishing when you extend your workday?

At Majestic Media, we believe that a happy employee is a productive employee. We believe in working smarter rather than longer. We’ve found that if we focus on be productive during work hours, there’s no need to take our work into our evenings.

It’s a common thought that you’ll get more done if you work more, but recent studies have shown otherwise. The American Journal of Epidemiology recently did a study looking at the effects of working long hours. They found that people who worked more than 55-hours a week scored lower on vocabulary and reasoning tests than people who worked normal 40-hour work weeks. The study also found that those who were hard workers [those that worked longer] had problems with short-term memory and word recall.

Along with lower cognitive functions, working longer hours can also lead to more serious health risks. The study also found that the stress of working long hours can lead to depression and heart disease. Researchers also believe that the increased stress can also increase your chances of developing dementia.

At Majestic, we’ve found that exhausted minds aren’t as efficient and creative as well-rested minds. Overtime may add more hours to your paycheck, but it rarely results in quality work. Your mind isn’t at it’s sharpest and your body is thinking about when it’s when it will be able to rest.

What’s the moral of the story? Don’t work yourself into the ground. Learn how to focus and be more productive during the day and make time for non-work related activities in the afternoon and on weekends. Learning how to rest and unwind after your work day can help to eliminate stress and increase your productivity.