Facebook Turns 10! Have You Learned To Leverage It Yet?

Facebook Turns 10! Have You Learned To Leverage It Yet?

Can you believe it’s been ten years since a dorm room project at Stanford took off?
Facebook, the social media platform that could, is now a $120 billion dollar company, and it’s not stopping there.
Analysts are expecting an excellent fourth quarter report from the company.
Yet the company isn’t resting on its laurels. Despite rumblings that younger teens are shying away from the service, a fifth of the planet has a Facebook account and 61% of them check it every single day.
That’s a huge advertising audience.
In 2011, Facebook decided to pivot away from PCs and started looking at smartphones and tablets. That gamble has paid off. More and more people are using their smartphones for net access rather than a traditional PC.
However, that has required Facebook to pivot their business into new realms.
Older versions of Facebook were meant to be open all the time. The smartphone environment doesn’t work that way.
Two big things to watch for
The two most important things to watch from the company this year are its new video ads and the applications coming from its Creative Labs division.
You may have noticed in your feed that people are able to post videos that automatically start playing (on mute) when you pass by. This was a test run for advertisers to do the same thing.
The hope is that Facebook will be able to offer television-like ads to a huge audience for a fraction of traditional television ad costs.
If you plan on using Facebook as part of your social media strategy, this is the year to really start getting into videos. From Facebook’s analysis, video is becoming more and more accepted in the main news feed.
Businesses than can leverage this will have an advantage. Already, entertainment companies are seeing a great response to this new ad form.
The applications are new ways of distributing Facebook over a mobile phone. Facebook is hoping that it can develop a suite of applications that people will keep moving between that will mimic the old way of viewing Facebook.
The first is Paper, a magazine-like view of your news feed along with curated content with some very interesting UI features. I haven’t tried it yet at the time this article was written, but it has been getting excellent reviews.
As PCs sales continue to slump and people continue to move toward smartphones and tablets, this means you’ll really need to get knowledge about how to work on the mobile web. Having mobile-ready landing pages and other mobile-friendly features on your business blogs will be key over the next few years.
If you don’t already have a responsive theme in place, get one!
In fact, there are several things you can do right now to improve your conversions in general. I want to share with you a video between my mentor, John Chow, and the CEO of LeadPages. It’s a free video, and well worth the time. Get a pen and paper to take some notes.
Also, if you’re just starting out and you’re wondering how to get started with a blogging business, I have a free video series about how to build up your first list.
Your Turn
Are you ready for Facebook’s changes? Do you have any strategies and tips on how to leverage Facebook Ads and videos? Tell me about it in the comments.