Welcome to the Raka Weekly Roundup, where we cover the week’s news and trends and tell you exactly what you need to know. This week, a look at Facebook’s changes to Pages, Bing’s growth as a search engine contender, and Reddit’s redesign.
Facebook giving Pages a facelift
It’s no surprise Facebook is in the Raka Weekly Roundup again as they try to strengthen their hold on their audience. What are they doing now?
They are redesigning the Pages of the 80 million small businesses on its platform and the 1.6 billion people connected to them. Businesses can opt to start using the template now or wait until August 24 when their Page will automatically be updated.
Why the changes?
Facebook claims the changes are being made to “help people get the information they need easier and faster,” but some would say it’s because Facebook’s revenue is declining and they need to do something to create some more income streams. They’re hoping these changes will champion more advertising opportunities and keep businesses from jumping off the Facebook ship.
The good: Facebook is adding a utility related to the business like “make an appointment” or “make a reservation” to make it easier for customers. They’re also making it possible for people to post a Recommendation for a business directly on the business Page and help them reach those searching for or talking about that business.
Need a job? Pages will now have a job applications tab. Looking for events? Check out the local bookmark to see what events are happening near you and buy tickets.
Stories have already launched on Facebook, but they’re now making them more visible on business Pages. If someone clicks on a business profile image they’ll launch their story, making for a more immersive experience.
The controversial: Facebook will start showing a “Related Pages” on business Pages. Problem is, if this related page competes with the business Page it’s on, it might be good for users, not so good for that particular business.
All in all, the changes are positive, but time will tell if this works in favor of businesses or in favor of Facebook’s pocketbook.
Bing bong, this search engine isn’t dead
Bing may seem like Google’s pesky baby brother when it comes to search engines, but they’re working hard to follow in their big brother’s footsteps.
When Microsoft announced promising financial results in July, the company’s cloud services was the big head turner, but Bing’s 17% year-over-year growth raised some enthusiastic eyebrows as well.
What’s this mean for businesses?
It gives them another viable platform to increase their visibility to the world. Everybody likes choices. Bing has improved their basic search algorithm to go beyond top-level search results to give the user a more in-depth experience.
If you’ve never really explored Bing, give it a shot and see if you can spot the differences between its search results vs. Google. See something they’re doing that you love, capitalize on it. What happens when you search for your business? Like what you see? Great! Not so psyched? Try creating or optimizing your Bing Places for Business page.
Basically, it’s time to give Bing another look and take advantage of their upward trend to give your business a boost as well.
Read all about Reddit’s redesign
Ten years is a long time, but it’s really a long time when it comes to a website redesign. That’s how long it took Reddit to give their website a new look. Why now? Like most businesses with a website, they were looking for a way to keep people on their website longer.
Technically this redesign was launched in April of this year, but now they have enough data to see if their changes moved the needle. Good news! They did! The engagement on the site has improved its user engagement by 3-7 percent.
The impact on advertisers is what’s interesting.
Reddit’s VP of brand partnerships, Zubair Jandali, says, “we’re seeing much stronger engagement on ads by virtue of the fact the core organic experience is more engaging.” Logic might then make you expect that businesses are running to spend ad dollars on Reddit.
Not so. Even in light of improved engagement numbers, companies are hesitating because the nature of the website hasn’t changed. Many subreddits delve into controversial topics and are manned by users that advertisers don’t always want to appeal to.
It’s still early though. Only time will tell if Reddit’s redesign and realignment efforts will draw advertisers in. Will this perhaps be the topic of an upcoming Raka Weekly Roundup post?
Stay tuned!
If you’d like to talk about these trends, or need help getting any of your marketing initiatives off the ground, reach out to us!
