Platform by Platform - Facebook

Over the past few years, we have watched a tremendous transition in both how people communicate and consume media. People forget that just a few years ago, we didn't give much thought to how many "followers" people or brands had on a social-media platform.

As the first part of a four-part series, I will be breaking down what tools on different social-media platforms, will be beneficial for marketers in 2017.

Facebook Live

It can be argued that Facebook Live is one of, if not the, most impactful tool for social media marketers at the start of 2017. Brands can receive instant rewards for posting quality content, whilst growing and engaging their audience.

Due to the current algorithm, it is clear that Facebook Live Streams have a higher edge rank within the newsfeed and therefore reach hundreds of thousands more people than typical images or videos.

Towards the end of last year, my team and I were able to pioneer a live streaming strategy which resulted in us creating the top 4 most engaged Facebook Live streams for brands, ever. As well as the 3rd most engaged live stream of all time.

Using our social insight, our bespoke strategy and amplification techniques, we created a stream which accumulated 1.8 million views and more than 2.5 million comments.

Our clients page grew by more than 18,000 likes within 24 hours and helped them establish themselves as a market leader. When you consider the amount of time and investment needed for such giant returns, it really does highlight how beneficial a tool Facebook Live can be.

Another incredible benefit of using Facebook Live, for marketers, is that you can use third party software to create more bespoke streams for clients.

For one of the biggest fashion brands in the UK, we pioneered a live quiz, in which viewers could answer questions and be selected as winners, in real time. This generated outrageous levels of engagement and retention, resulting in a significant spike in both sales and searchers for boohoo.

Ads during live

The next step for Facebook is monetising live streams and this feature is likely to arrive in the next few months.

The major thrust around Facebook video, is Facebook looking to displace (or attempt to displace) traditional TV investment. With Facebook Live, the platform is trying to create engaging content for users that is either scheduled or impromptu.

Facebook has always been reluctant to show pre-roll spots - ads directly before videos - because CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he thinks that ruins the viewing experience. However, last month advertisers were made aware that their commercials could start showing up during live video streams. The ads are eligible to appear five minutes into a broadcast, and they last up to 15 seconds or shorter.

Facebook 360

Facebook Live 360 has only been rolled out to specific pages as of yet. But if the engagements on other 360 content are anything to go by, then this type of content will be the holy grail for marketers in 2017.

This is because creating content which uses the Facebook 360 feature, allows users to immerse themselves in the landscape and experience of those who’ve captured them, elevating a marketers storytelling abilities to unprecedented levels.

This medium has had an immense impact on how we consume content moving forward as the interactive format is scarcely different from how content has been both imagined and consumed previously.

This gives marketers the opportunity for an entirely new and different approach to storytelling.

This is currently the most viewed 360-degree video on Facebook and you can see why.

Cost per click (CPC)

Facebook ads have been one of the most effective forms of marketing for the past few years, but now Facebook is essentially running out of places to put ads and new users to reach.

22% of the global population is already on Facebook and despite the predicted slowdown in growth, Facebook ad spend has gone up nearly 60%—from 4.3 to 6.8 billion in Q3 of 2016, compared with Q3 of 2015.

This indicates brands and marketers are still receiving significant value from these ads and therefore are wanting to increase their investment on the platform. As Facebook ads are biddable, this increase in ad spend means more competition, resulting in the fact that it’ll be more expensive for everyone to maintain the same volume of clicks as before.

Those who will prosper in the increasingly competitive Facebook Ads space are those who utilise a combination of compelling creative and hyper-targeted optimisation strategies. With Facebook ads the key has always been strong creative, as this produces higher engagement rates and therefore better relevance scores, which lower the CPE and CPC.

Messenger vs Snapchat

It’s no secret that Facebook tried to purchase Snapchat for more than $3billion, but ever since that offer was turned down, Mark Zuckerberg has been doing everything he can to rival Snap.

This saga continues into 2017, following substantial Facebook Messenger updates which have a sneaky similarity to a number of Snapchat features.

Custom lenses, ability to write on images and the entire layout have been inspired by Snapchat, so it will be interesting to see if any advertisers can harness these tools throughout 2017 – I suspect they can.

Chat bots

Facebook has made huge strides in its Messenger product and with the rise of chat-bots and AI technology, Facebook are hoping to provide a personalised customer service offering, on a large scale.

To drive users to opt into interacting with brands through Messenger, Facebook released a new ad unit in which the call-to-action is to chat with the brand. Publishers such as Complex have used the feature to get fans to engage with polls.

Video Revenue

Something that could potentially alter the social landscape as we know it, is Facebook's new video-revenue model. Similarly to YouTube’s previous strategy, publishers will now be paid depending on the number of views they accumulate. This feature has the potential significantly increase the amount of original content on Facebook’s platform and will make it harder for marketers to grab consumer’s attention in the vast sea of content.

Like most new Facebook features, this is only available to certain publishers at the moment, with a full roll out expected in the next few months.