This month in social media: everything you need to know from September - Fun stuff

For those who missed the social media news from September, here is a roundup with all the updates and changes. Just for you, we review marketing and social media news every month to provide you with actionable suggestions and recommendations on what’s new and what’s hot.

Catch up on September’s social media news: Google Analytics re-introduces improved benchmarking reports, Twitter has begun testing a ‘Buy’ button, YouTube releases real-time analytics, and Facebook lets Pages create News Feed ads to promote Events on desktop and mobile.

Google brings back benchmarking feature

Google Analytics is planning to bring back a reporting feature called ‘Benchmarking’, which was discontinued in 2011. The report will help companies and individuals measure data in context and better understand their online performance in comparison to metrics pulled from 1,600 industry categories and 1,250 markets. Using it will give you more focus on acquisition and engagement metrics for your website, while allowing you to spot trends and set up more actionable goals. The report will also include analysis of data by channel, location, and device category dimension, and a heat map feature.

Most of all you will be able to see how your site compares with others while generating insights on which steps you should take to get to the next level. The ‘Benchmarking’ report can be found in ‘Audience’ section on the left side of Google Analytics navigation.

Study this further feature with this Econsultancy article.

Twitter starts mobile e-commerce with ‘Buy’ button

Twitter has launched its first commerce product which could be beneficial for both small, and large businesses. The new ‘Buy’ button feature, which appears for iPhone and Android, can be embedded into tweets, so that Twitter followers can purchase products directly from their feeds. Once people click the shopping button they will be prompted to enter payment and shipping details. Returning users will have to tap once as usual, and then just tap again to confirm the purchase, as their details will be saved.

For now Twitter has been testing this product on mobile only, with 25 beta partners like Burberry and Home Depot, celebrities and musicians. Users might able to see the ‘Buy’ button on their feeds, but for now the company plans to roll out the feature slowly, starting with some US users before expanding this offering internationally.

YouTube introduces real-time analytics

Video creators can now view and analyse the performance of their video content minute-by-minute, thanks to the introduction of YouTube’s real-time analytics. Previously, measuring how many people are watching videos wasn’t the easiest task due to the slightly ambiguous watch count. The new snapshot is resolving this problem by showcasing two graphs: view count for the last 48 hours and activity over the previous 60 minutes. For data-hungry creators this report may come in handy when thinking about how to promote video content.

For YouTube success, focus as well on analysing time watched, engagement of subscribers (likes, dislikes and comments) and their demographics.

Facebook ads ability to advertise Events

Businesses can now promote their Events within Facebook’s users’ news feeds on mobile and desktop thanks to the launch of new Event ad unit. This addition could be extremely beneficial to local businesses like restaurants and shops who are thinking of running sales-driven events and could combine these sort of activities with location targeted advertising.

What’s more, admins are able to access insights and view data like how many people have seen an event offer, and how many people requested ‘join’, ‘save’ or ‘maybe’.

If you would like to start testing this feature you can access it in both the Ad Create tool and Power Editor.