Call it an epiphany: Social is officially mobile.

Several weeks ago, I was looking at the user data for one of the brands that I manage and one statistic stuck out more than others. Nearly 60 percent of the people who interact with that brand do so via smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. I started checking other brands, and the numbers were all similar.


The majority of people interacting with our content were doing so from a mobile device.

Nielsen’s State of the Media: Social Media Report confirms that our brands aren't alone.

In 2012, the time spent accessing Facebook via mobile increased 85 percent, Twitter 140 percent, LinkedIn 114 percent, and Pinterest 4,225 percent. That’s a staggering increase. Forty-six percent of social media users say they use their smartphone to access social media; 16 percent say they connect to social media using a tablet.

Here are a five easy tips to help you optimize your social media content for mobile readers:

1. Be much more thoughtful about when you’re posting.

The average Facebook post gets 50 percent of its reach and engagement in the first 30 minutes of being posted, according to Socialbakers. It’s all downhill from there.

Start asking yourself: Where is my audience going to be in the hour or so after we post this? Is there an opportunity to capture them where they are at that moment and inspire action or tap into an emotion that you know a large number of your fans are experiencing at that time?

Don’t limit it to experimenting with when you post, either. If you have an assumption about where your audience is consuming your content (specifically, where they are on Earth), you can create some calls to action and inspire them to engage that way.

For instance, Instagram, where the mobile engagement is close to 100 percent, is great for this: “Show us what you’re doing now and how our product fits into that.”

2. Add value to the mobile experience -- which differs from adding value to the desktop or laptop experience.

The greater the distance you make your fans travel in mobile, the worse the experience becomes. No one wants to hop from one app to another—to another—to download your app that, let’s be honest, isn’t all that cool in the first place. On a desktop or laptop, people are more forgiving when it comes to bouncing around the Web. You have to be more respectful of the mobile experience.

Similarly, if you’re in the Facebook or Pinterest app and you click on a brand’s link, it’s going to send you to a website. Unless you’ve checked that link in social, you’re not 100 percent sure where you’re sending them. It might look great on your laptop, but on mobile it could look like a Geocities site and do your brand a huge disservice.

Keep your posts simple and undeniably specific to your brand.

3. Design for mobile first.

Keep your font sizes legible on your graphics. If you’re tapping through to a photo, you don’t want to have to zoom in on something just to read it. If you’re taking the time to design an asset, make sure you’re taking the time to design it so that mobile users can read it.

The default has been to design social assets for the desktop or laptop experience and back into mobile. Reverse that. Design for mobile, and it will back into the desktop experience.

4. Test different mobile platforms to understand the differences.

If you post a photo album on Facebook, you can’t click on the links that you've put in the captions of the individual photos if you’re using an iPhone or Android phone. However, those links work when you’re using most tablets. That’s good to know if you want to drive traffic in mobile.

Of course, that’s just one of the many quirks and intricacies when it comes to presenting social content in mobile. Understanding the user experience across devices is important in making sure your posts are accomplishing their desired outcomes.

5. Check your analytics.

Every brand is different, and every audience is different. Before you completely shift the way you’ve been creating and posting content, take the time to dig deep into your metrics and understand where your engagement is coming from. Certain demographics will use mobile more than others.

For the brand I mentioned earlier, males 18-34 had the highest instance of engaging with our content through mobile (nearly 75 percent). We were able to make some assumptions based on that and test some content around those assumptions.

Test, measure, analyze, optimize, rinse, repeat.

















This story originally appeared on PR Daily

Facebook unveiled its "new" News Feed Thursday, and while we won't know the full range of effects it will have on the pages of brands and publishers for some time, Facebook has provided a few clues to help administrators optimize their pages ahead of its rollout.

First, let's take a look at the changes. The new News Feed is cleaner, more visual and has more filtering controls. The size of photos and videos have been enlarged, making the quality of visual media more important than ever before. That's great news for magazines and other publishers with deep photo resources; for publishers that rely largely on Creative Commons or stock imagery, the challenge is greater.



In addition to larger photos and videos, Facebook has introduced a number of "sub feeds" to give users greater control over what updates appear in their streams. Users can opt to view updates from All or just Close Friends, only photo updates, only music updates, only updates from pages and public figures they follow (i.e., subscribe to), only updates from Groups and only updates from game apps. They can also view updates in reverse-chronological order.

While these changes could have a negative impact on publishers' pages, particularly if users opt to spend all or most of their time viewing updates from their Close Friends, Facebook insists it could be a boon as well, because users can switch over to the "Following" feed to get updates outside their friend circles precisely when they want them.



Beyond those changes, the look of the new News Feed is far more consistent across smartphones, tablets and desktops than previously. For a visual overview of the alterations, click through our slideshow, or check out Facebook's official overview.

Optimization Strategies

Publishers can make some changes to their content to take advantage of the coming changes. Here's a few recommendations:

1. Invest in high-quality, high-resolution images. High-quality imagery is more important than ever before. Photos now make up nearly half of all News Feed stories, according to Facebook, up from 30% just a year ago. That growth is likely to accelerate now that Facebook is enlarging the size of photos in the News Feed. Facebook recommends publishers use images with a width of at least 552 pixels. As a bonus, publishers no longer need to upload full-sized images next to their story links. According to one Facebook source, Facebook will now display thumbnail photos pulled from story pages at the same size as images uploaded directly to the News Feed. As such, it's important for publishers to upload thumbnail images with a width of at least 552 pixels on their sites.

2. Improve your cover photo. Publishers may have had little incentive to invest in a great cover photo until now because it never showed up in the News Feed. That's about to change. When a group of friends Like or otherwise interact with a Facebook page, that Page may be highlighted in the News Feed with its cover photo on display. As Facebook says, "Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page's story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories."



3. Post about trending topics. News stories about a single topic will be highlighted in thumbnail-rich carousels in the News Feed, like the one featuring Taylor Swift stories, below. Thus it may be more advantageous to share trending rather than outlier stories on Facebook.



4. Share different types of media. If publishers want to have a presence in users' sub feeds — namely, their photo and music feeds — consider sharing more photos, and linking a company Spotify or Rdio account to Facebook.





























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Pinterest has been on our social media consciousness radar for about 18 months when it started to gain traction.

According to a recent study, Pinterest is now used by 15% of USA web users. To put this in perspective, Twitter usage is only 1% higher at 16 percent.

Pinterest launched pages for business, which include the new terms of service, allowing you to use Pinterest commercially. If you haven’t yet converted your business profile into a business page, you can do so by visiting this page and clicking the red button “Convert your existing account” and then following the steps on the page.

Now that the business pages are out, I am going to share four tips on how to promote your business with Pinterest below…

1. Promote your products and services directly

Now that you have agreed to the new terms of service, you can directly promote your products and services on Pinterest without a worry. You can pin images of your products and have a call to action in the description, urging them to visit your site and buy your products. You can also add the price of the product along with the dollar sign ($), as this will get the price of the product to appear on the left corner of the pin. You get a similar effect when you use the pound sign (£), too. This way, people will know whether they can afford the product even before they visit your website.



An example is the board “Top Sellers” on Topman’s (a chain of clothing stores located throughout the United Kingdom) Pinterest brand page. On this board, they share images of some of the best selling products on their website. This is a great way to market their products.

2. Share a lot of content

Now that you’re allowed to use Pinterest commercially – it doesn’t mean that you should stop sharing content. Social media and content together form a powerful marketing tool. Content is one of the best ways to engage your audience and drive traffic to your site through social media. This applies to Pinterest, too – sharing a lot of beautiful images and pictures that lead to quality content can be a great way to engage your audience on Pinterest. Don’t just share the content you create, but what others create too, if you want this method to be effective.



A great example is Hershey’s Pinterest brand page, where they share a lot of images on their various boards that lead to recipes. Many of these recipes contain chocolate. This is a great way for Hershey’s to attract chocolate lovers who might be interested in buying their products—after all, they sell chocolate.

3. Optimize your site for Pinterest

It’s not just enough if you keep pinning, repinning, liking, and commenting on images on Pinterest. You need to also optimize your site for Pinterest to encourage others to actively share your content with their followers. This will help you attract a lot of website traffic.

A couple of things you could do are:

a) Add the “Pin it” button

A study shows that web pages with share buttons are up to seven times more likely to be shared. Therefore, if you add the “Pin it” button to your site, people will be more likely to share the images on your web pages, too. A couple of great places to add this button are your blog posts and the landing pages to your products.



b) Add the follow button

Adding the follow button can be another great way to optimize your website, as people who visit it will be able to easily find you on Pinterest. From there they can check out your page and your pins and follow you if they like it. This can be a great way to get lots of followers.



4. Optimize your brand page

Having a great brand page is the key to getting more followers and developing your very own Pinterest brand. So make an effort to improving your profile.

You can do this by:

Displaying a good profile image

The best thing to do is to display your logo or an image with your company name. It needs to be something your audience can easily identify you by.

Setting board covers and rearranging them

Board covers can make your boards appear attractive. So pick the most attractive pins on your boards and set them as your board covers. Also rearrange your boards so that your most important boards are conspicuous.

Adding categories to your boards

Adding categories to your boards will improve your pins’ visibility, as your pins will be displayed in the categories section of Pinterest and someone browsing through these categories can come across your pins even if they are not following you.

Have a relevant user name

The username appears in the URL of your Pinterest profile; therefore, if you use something similar to your business name, it will be easy to locate your profile when someone performs an online search.

Add keywords to the “About” section

Adding keywords to the ‘About’ section can be a great way to improve your profile’s visibility, as the next time someone performs an online search with those keywords, your profile could be one of the top results – this can aid you in getting more followers.

Hubspot’s Pinterest brand page is a great example of a well optimized page. If you observe it closely, you will notice that their profile image is their logo which makes it easy for their fans to identify the page.



In case they don’t notice it, their name ‘Hubspot’ is their page’s name and user name too. The name also appears in the ‘About’ section which not only makes it easy to recognize the page, but to also locate it through search engines. They have also added other important keywords to their about section.

These are just a few ways to build and promote your brand on Pinterest. Because Pinterest is image based, it gives you the opportunity to create innovative ways to promote your business. So don’t be afraid to try out new marketing methods.
































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