What Do Millennials Like on Facebook?

What you like on Facebook says a lot about you - it outlines the movies you watch, the books you read, and your favorite activities. This psychographic profile that every Facebook user creates for him/herself provides a data rich opportunity for marketers. Socialtyze went through our database and pulled a representative sample on what the elusive Millennial (defined here as 25-34 year olds) group has listed as an “Interest” on Facebook.“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films - these things matter. Call me shallow but it's the truth.” - John Cusack in "High Fidelity"

The Big Picture

More than any other category, Millennials self-identify through music. Nearly a quarter of their interests are singers, bands, or instruments. This is in direct contrast to sports, which occupies only 4.1% of the interests listed (probably explained by the fact that people only have one sports team they really identify with, while music is a much longer list). Activities like “Hanging with friends” were a close second place at 23%.As if we needed any more confirmation that the written word was dead, reading was ranked 6th out of 9 categories, and was roughly 1% away from being last. TV and TV shows are 4X more popular.What this means for advertisers is that the best way to reach your fan base is to know what kind of music they listen to - Millennials are quick to build their image based on their playlist. Here's a list of their top music, TV, and movie choices.

What's On Their IPod?

Millennials love their rap. Their favorite artist is Lil Wayne, with his other rap colleagues comprising three of the top six artists. Rihanna follows them as the fourth on the list. With a 26.6% share of the music community they’re 6% ahead of the next strongest category (Pop).Justin Bieber, who is ranked number one by Klout, vastly underperforms among Millennials at number 5 and is beat by his former girlfriend Selena Gomez. Millennials just don’t seem to be Beliebers.Rock acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Matthews Band boosted rock to an impressive 18.5%, beating out Country by roughly 3%.The big takeaway is that if you are a brand targeting 25-34 year olds do not be afraid to tie hip hop into your strategy - especially if your target is male.

What's On Their DVR?

The top ten shows on their DVR were littered with the expected Jersey Shore and The Office, comedies like Sex and the City, Weeds, and How I Met Your Mother, and the completely unexpected Family Feud.Overall, Dramas dominated the field, fueled by the CBS lineup of CSI shows and a considerable long tail that included premium cable shows like Dexter and the Sopranos.One surprise from the data was the real affection that Millennials had for the cartoons of their youth (13.8% share). Shows like “Doug” and “Rugrats” performed surprisingly well for shows that have been off the air for more than 15 years.Leverage their nostalgia in your ads and content to engage Millennials on your page.

What's In Their Netflix Queue?

At 64MM and 41MM likes on Facebook, it is no surprise that Harry Potter and Twilight occupied the top spots in our rankings. They also inflated the results of the “Fantasy” category to 24%, which still ranked second after “Comedies” overall.Dirty Dancing was the only movie made before the year 2000 to crack the top ten rankings, while the rest of the movies were made with in the last 10 years. While you can’t put baby in the corner, it seems that the rest of the movies of her generation are underrepresented.In sum, every marketer needs to know their audience. Millennials are tough to reach, and the more information you have about them the better.Want to know more about our robust data abilities? Contact us! Jake@Socialtyze.com

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When Brands Meet Content Providers

Ever wonder how many times you have to hear “We want our content to be viral” before you get to see it happen? A brand’s biggest obstacle in the social space is to not only to create enticing content, but to somehow get people interested. It’s easier said then done. As of late, it’s been an exciting time here at Socialtyze, because we’ve been fortunate to work with two top brands to make this magic happen.Introducing “Trick or Trivia” presented by the Cheesecake Factory, brought to you by Warner Bros.

Fans are brought into the halloween themed experience and presented with a challenge: answer the halloween movie and pumpkin trivia to earn entries. 3 lucky first round winners will receive 16 WB Ultra movie Downloads and a $50 Gift Card from The Cheesecake Factory. The grand prize winner will receive a Best of Warner Bros. 50 Film Collection and a $500 Gift Card from The Cheesecake Factory.

The app is being promoted through out The Cheesecake Factory’s social presence and on over 17 different Warner Bros Facebook movie pages in celebration of the October festivities. This widespread promotion gives the potential audience size a huge boost, promoting viral buzz.Interested to see how Socialtyze can help you create viral content? Contact us: John@Socialtyze.comWant more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

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The Power of Facebook App Data

When it comes to Facebook applications, you guys are doing it wrong. Brands, marketers, agencies, media mavens gurus yogis and ninjas - you guys are all looking at the wrong place.When an RFP floats on my desk, 99.9% of the time, the client is looking for a simple solution to the question of "What do I do with these fans?" But, the smart money knows that the real value of an application is AFTER its run is over. For the initiated, Facebook is the apogee of consumer research.Scenario A: Your team launches their latest Facebook gizmo for its four weeks of fame. When it wraps, you take the same tired measurements and call it a day.Scenario B: The same app is built with OAuth or Social Sign on, and now after four weeks, your team is sitting on a pile of data gold.But, the real magic occurs when the Facebook data is tied to those engagements. We can look at the users who played the app the most, and map their other page likes and interests (wow, 81% of users also liked Target, Chevy and Skittles.) Education level important to you? We have that. What about work history? Got that too. Relationship status? Check. In fact, almost an entire user’s profile is available with the proper permissions - including email addresses (a CRM goldmine.)

Pretty powerful right? One more thing...

You can also request permissions for friends data. So when the application has ended, and your crack analytics team has determined that Women, ages 25-34, living in a coastal area, who like Oprah and shop at Target are the PERFECT fan of your brand, you can find out how many of those people live in your app users’ network.

How does that scale? A recent application at Socialtyze netted 21,000 users in 9 days. We were able to identify an incredibly detailed profile for the perfect fan of our brand - and noted that 1,800 of these 21,000 were a match. But, because we looked at friend data, we found 27,000 matches from the pool of 500,000 friends that we had access to.If we can do all of that with one application in 9 days - imagine what a year with us can do for your brand.Interested? Contact us! Kyle@Socialtyze.com

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7 Facebook Data Points You Should Pay Attention To

Experiencing lackluster engagement results on your Facebook page and Promoted Posts? No worries, we've got tips on the 7 data points you need to pay closer attention to if you want to turn things around:

1. Character Count

It could be that fans don’t have the time to read everything in their newsfeeds, or it could be a factor of Facebook's algorithm, but research shows that post engagement is highest when posts are 100 characters or less. It also allows for easy cross platform promotion.

2. Category Type Performance

It’s helpful to categorize your posts by initiative. For example, sharing an offer can be categorized as “promotional.” Once you know the different categories of content you’re utilizing, you can compare their performance. You might just find that your fans don’t appreciate a certain type of content like you thought they did.

3. Photo Type Performance

You need a method for figuring out what kind of pictures you should be posting, and why. If your audience is suddenly very interested in 3 of your recent pictures, find out why and what element(s) they all have in common. This should be one of your best indicators of success; content is king (or queen.)

4. Engaged Users and Impressions

Gauging the efficiency of your content can help you truly understand which of it is working best. Maybe a semi-successful post went out at a low traffic time, but the engagement rate (engagement/reach) was high. What can you learn from that? Don’t change the content, just the posting time.

5. Posting Cadence

Every community has an inherent rate at which they consume content. Some expect a post first thing in the morning and everyday. Some expect lots of activity at a certain time of year. Whatever the case, they have a preference, and paying attention to what your engagement is like on a certain time of day, week and year can help you figure that out.

6. Fatigue

Believe it or not, your audience can experience fatigue. Ask yourself “at what point are we posting too much?” Fatigue can often lead to as much as (possibly more) a 30% decrease in engagement. No one likes the guy at the party who only talks about him self incessantly… so don’t be that guy.

7. Post Sentiment

Pay close attention to your fans’ reactions and engagements between each other. What’s their language like? If the sentiment is beginning to turn negative, it could be that a certain piece of content is slowly poisoning the well. Sharing lots of content about a contest? This could be the reason.Want to know more? Feel free to reach out to Cheristy at Cheristy@Socialtyze.com

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Back to the Basics - A Guide to Facebook Ad Optimization

So you have a campaign goal. You’ve chosen your ad types and dispersed your budget accordingly. Now how do you make the most of your ad dollars while your campaign is live?The answer is: there is no one answer. You plug things in. You find out what works. You experiment…and then, you optimize.Optimizations can come in many shapes and forms. They can be manual optimizations or automatic optimizations that are performed by a third party platform. In this article, we will be focusing solely on manual optimizations.

The capacity to optimize is based on various pieces of the initial campaign setup. Two of the key elements for optimizing manually are targeting and creative. Strategic planning in both of these areas is an important preemptive measure that will increase opportunities for optimization later on in the campaign. To better understand these elements let’s examine the following example:You are getting ready to launch a campaign for Bling.com, an online shopping website. The goal of the campaign is to increase the number of fans on the Bling.com Facebook fan page through the use of Facebook Like Ads.

TARGETING

Effective advertising focuses on reaching the people who are most interested in your brand. The more precise your targeting, the more successful the campaign will be.

Bling.com’s target audience is females ages 25-45. The Facebook target audience size for this demographic is 40,000,000 users. You may think, perfect! An audience size this large will surely generate fan growth. This is a common mistake in Facebook targeting. Remember, your goal is to find quality users who will be most interested in the Bling.com brand. Instead of wasting dollars promoting ads to random users, you should narrow your focus to users that are interested in the characteristics of your brand.There are several ways to hone in on potential fans. Targeting can be refined by delivery location, age, gender, geography, language, various psychographic options like Facebook’s broad & partner categories or more specific keyword lists created by a third party technology.Let’s dive a little deeper and take a look at interest keyword targeting as an example. To create a keyword list for Bling.com, you must first answer a few questions:How would you describe a Bling.com fan? What do your fans love? What kind of music, movies or other entertainment are they into?What kind of activities are they most involved in?We know the Bling.com fan is a female between the ages of 25-45 years old (assuming the target audience is an accurate representation of the demo of the current fan base). We can safely assume they like to shop. You might also know that they love chick flicks and yoga. Details like these can be used to craft a number of keyword lists that can be tested throughout the campaign.If you want to create a “Shopping Keywords” list, you might choose to use the following interest keywords: #Piperlime #ShoeDazzle #Nordstrom and #Bloomingdale’s. By overlaying these four keywords, the target audience size is reduced to 4,800,000 users. At the same time, the relevancy of each impression served has become more valuable. The likelihood of a user clicking on the Bling.com ad (CTR) has increased and the cost per fan acquired has now gone down. The more niche your brand, the more specific you will want to be with precise interest keywords and therefore, the smaller your target audience will be.

Best Practices:

  • When setting up your campaign, break out targeting categories on a more granular level. For example, break out the age range to (25-30), (31-45) and (46-54). By doing so, you are able to test various combinations of targeting to optimize towards the best performing parameters.
  • Consider testing brand related keywords, competitor keywords and keywords related to the demographic you are trying to reach.

Based on the goals of your campaign, determine whether or not you will be targeting current fans, or non-fans and friends of fans. For Bling.com the goal is fan growth so you will want to target non-fans and friends of fans.

Creative

The next piece of the puzzle is the ad itself. Your targeting can be right on point but very useless if your ad doesn’t utilize the brand’s content appropriately to attract clicks. Therefore, the three variables you must consider in ad creation are title, copy and image.

Title

The title character limit is 25, but do not feel required to use all 25 characters. Get creative and test various titles. Try the brand name, applicable slogans or a Call to Action.

Copy

Facebook Like Ad copy is limited to 90 characters. For most campaigns, ad performance usually peaks between 70-80 characters. Copy is an important vehicle for testing your brand message. Experiment with messaging techniques as you draft your copy. Use copy to highlight specific promotions or features of your brand. Test capital letters to draw attention to key words or phrases. Include incentivized terminology in the Call to Action like “download” and “win”. Engage fans by asking a question, using trivia or other exclusive content. Attract users to your ad by incorporating time sensitive messaging such as “In TWO DAYS…”.

Images

Use bright, clear images that display the product or model. The use of close-up images is typically the most attractive. Whenever possible test a familiar image or well-known character. Avoid using generic images. Finally, it is always a good idea to test the brand logo.

Best Practices:

  • Testing multiple versions of each variable at the beginning of the campaign to see what works creates the most opportunities for optimization. By the end of the campaign, it should be clear which title, copy and image are best received by your target audience.
  • When possible, play on the popularity of images and phrases that your target audience can relate to.

In a nutshell, you need to know who your fans are and what they like in order to find them online and increase the value of your ad impressions. Begin by strategizing the best ways to reach your fans and then as the campaign progresses, pause out the variables that are not working.If you are interested in understanding your fans better, try our new social intelligence tool – Qu. Click here to learn more.

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