Facebook Overhauls Its News Feed, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week

There were some serious changes this week from Facebook, Google, and Twitter that are going to have an impact on the inbound marketing world. What's the scoop, and how will it impact your marketing tactics and campaigns? So glad you asked.

In this week's round-up, we'll give you the juicy details on what you need to know about the big news from the social media behemoths we all know and love, as well as some other news that will help you stay on-point and up to date. Read on to learn what you need to know!

Facebook Update Gives Users More Control Over News Feed: What Marketers Should Know, From HubSpot

Mark Zuckerberg and his team unveiled some pretty cool changes this week to the design and functionality of the News Feed. These changes include Rich Stories, which will display photos and visual content more prominently; Choice of Feeds, which will give users more control over the topics of stories that appear; and better Mobile Consistency (finally!), making your Facebook experience more natural from mobile to desktop devices.

We have some ideas as to how this will affect marketers' content strategy - in both our blog post covering the subject and our newest free ebook dedicated to this new Facebook rollout -- but I think quantity is going to play a big part in marketers' success here. Read everything you'll need to know about the update in that ebook, or for some quick coverage, check out the blog post.

Google Plus Releases New Layout for Profiles, From Marketing Pilgrim

It looks like Facebook isn’t the only one getting a makeover. Google+ went ahead and did a little redesign of their own on Wednesday, when Google+ users were greeted by a completely new layout for their profile pages and news streams. One of the big changes was the larger cover photo, which now makes enough room for images with resolutions up to 2,120 x 1,192. The next addition is the new “cards” style design for the About tab that nicely displays your content in a more readable layout. The third change brings Google+ into the online reviews game by adding a new tab for “Reviews” to your profile. You’ll most likely see these reviews popping up in Google searches from friends in your Google+ circles.

With this new redesign, the most important change for marketers is the larger cover image. Although this may not seem like a huge benefit for marketers, it offers companies much more screen real estate for branding and engagement. If you're interested in learning more about the new Google+ layout, read the full article at Marketing Pilgrim.

Amazon Expands Its Mobile Ad Network, From Ad Week

Amazon has been making some major moves in the world of mobile advertising recently. As of Monday, Amazon will be extending its mobile ad network to any Android app available on the Amazon app store. The new Amazon Mobile Ads API will give developers the ability to sell in-app inventory through Amazon. At the moment, the Amazon mobile ad platform is currently in its earlier stages, but promises to provide its developers with a powerful ad delivery platform.

The expansion of Amazon’s mobile ad network will give marketers the ability to tap into Android users by simply downloading the app through the Google Play store. Marketers and developers can create customized ad targeting criteria to better serve mobile ads to their audiences. Read the full article at Ad Week.

Microsoft Unveils ViralSearch, a Twitter Search Tool for Finding Viral Content

Ever wonder what makes content "go viral" on Twitter? Of course you have. And so have tons of other marketers, publishers, and web users. Well lucky for us, Microsoft has been working on a new project called ViralSearch that determines the most popular content on Twitter by using a search engine. The project looks through billions of news articles, photos, videos, and other pieces of information that they pair with a virality rating based on how content is shared via Twitter.

ViralSearch will give marketers the ability to track how and when content goes viral on Twitter. Although the project is still in its testing phases, the tool does offer great potential for marketers to analyze their Twitter campaigns much more effectively. Read the full article at Venture Beat.

Twitter to Shut Down Older & Mobile Versions of TweetDeck

This could be sad news to all of our inbound marketers on-the-go currently using the TweetDeck Android or iPhone apps. Twitter will be shutting down both versions of the mobile app and giving users their choice of the web-based, Mac, or PC versions of the Twitter app. Although Twitter will be getting rid of its older and mobile versions of the popular app, they promise to continue providing support for desktop versions. Many marketers and regular web users have come to use the mobile TweetDeck apps because of its "official" app status with Twitter, but they’ll soon have to move on to another mobile solution.

Our suggestion to mobile marketers currently using TweetDeck is to start doing your research on some alternatives while you still have the time to reschedule any remaining tweets. Read the full article at Marketing Land to learn more.

What other marketing news or stories did you love from this past week?

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