Facebook is set to trial hiding likes from posts, the company has said, following on from tests conducted by subsidiary Instagram earlier this year. It's not yet known if this will be on profiles only or also on pages? The trial will be conducted in Australia initially and is based on positive feedback from mental health professionals around boosting users’ wellbeing. Users will still be able to see how many likes a post garnered if so desired. Instagram’s trial for hiding li

If you run your own Facebook business page or not you have probably seen the response time listed next to a business online "business usually replies within minutes" and think great ill drop them a message now and get an answer to a question I need to ask them. Great for the end user, but I have heard some stories from business owners who are panicking when they see a a message come through to their page at 2am and they think they have to reply there and then. No you don't! I

Standing out from everyone else on Instagram is pretty tough, nearly impossible from a small business perspective, unless you have big budgets for advertising and you're using Instagram influencers; you're going to struggle! But, don't give up before you start, get on there and set up your profile. Make it on brand, create it as a business account as this allows you to see insights and have call to actions on your profile. Now think of a theme you want to run throughout your

We are really pleased to announce we have started working and supporting Bullies Out charity, the national charity helps and supports victims of bullying as well as offer training in the workplace. Bullying happens in all walks of life and increasingly online and social media in particular, we see it so much and want to stop it and help Bullies Out charity increasing their awareness. Established in May 2006, Bullies Out are one of the UK's most dedicated and ambitious anti-bu

Quick Social Media Tip - It may seem like a great idea and save you some time but automatic cross posting from social media channels to others doesn't work! So many businesses who contact me every day ask for the quickest way possible to post across all social media channels at once, why? It may save you 45 seconds or so by doing it but believe me it doesn't work, and worse still looks bad. Images from Facebook or Instagram won't appear correctly on Twitter, links may be lost

If you're like me and manage over two dozen pages for businesses and brands then you know the importance of keeping everything in one easy place to see insights and notifications. For Instagram and Twitter accounts I use Buffer but Facebook I have always used the business manager tool. Now Facebook is giving us the Creator Studio, perfect for social media managers of multiple pages, it keeps all your valuable content in one place to see and measure. The tool allows you to see

We mentioned in our last blog about changes to Facebook pages and their reviews and recommendations, they have also changes how they rank pages in their nifty little feature of "Pages to Watch" The way that facebook previously ranked pages on here were by number of page likes, this was so frustrating for social media managers like myself who would always inform clients that number of likes isn't a vital stat only for Facebook to throw it back at us and rank pages by that numb

Your a new business, you have a brand name and great new logo, you're thinking of having a new website, you've got the team uniform ready and you're now on social media.. it's one of the key elements of having a business these days. We speak to new businesses and business people every week in Aberystwyth and Cardiff and help them take their first steps in to social media and marketing their business. Now we all start at the bottom, no fans, no followers and no likes...GULP!!

So you've probably seen the news or read the newspaper reports on Facebook and it misusing YOUR data... But has it and will it change how you use the social network? Do you even care about how it uses all your data and offloads it to third parties? Have you used Facebook less over the last week or even contemplated leaving the site all together? Has it been damaging to your business page? We have spoken to clients and other business over the last week, some have been panicked

Over the weekend our client Squash Wales held it's annual National Championships, attracting the best squash players from around Wales to compete to be the 2018 National Champion. Over the last few months we have been working with Squash Wales to develop their social media presence, update and freshen their branding and logo as well as create their new website that's due to go live in May. The championships on the weekend gave Squash Wales a chance to showcase their talent to

We have been flooded with questions regarding the new change to Facebook and what it means for Facebook pages, the businesses that run them and fellow Social Media managers. Social media managers are going to spend a lot less time focusing on their Facebook Business Page this year, instead building communities via Facebook Groups and focusing everything on engagement. The news last week doesn't mean we are all jumping the Facebook ship, just steering the ship differently. Wha

Want to know what the HUGE Facebook changes mean to you in a nutshell> Here’s some of our translation on Mark Zuckerberg’s points: “…you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people” *Nutshell: business content that creates community will be favoured. Business content that creates community is key– content that sparks a

We had the pleasure this week talking at the Design Swansea event hosted in Tech Hub Swansea, talking to over 60 students, creatives and businesses about the importance of social media and how it has helped Red Squirrel Marketing grow and be seen. The talk was titled Me, Myself and Social Media. Discussing how social media and being active on a number of channels have helped us to grow as a business and how it has been so important for us to talk to other businesses or people

Facebook changes all the time, believe me it's a good thing and it is improving the way you can advertise your small business to the masses. Facebook announced that it is enhancing its collections ad format to help drive sales by adding a new lifestyle template that will help advertisers inspire product discovery through their ads. We manage a number of business accounts on Facebook for our clients and we always encourage the use of ads, not just the basic boost post, but a w

It's Friday morning, and before I head off to a meeting I take a look at my social media analytics, I try and do this detailed look every week but haven't seen the stats in detail for over 10 days now.... It's good news, all the stats are green, we're up on interaction and engagement and our video views are up too, that and a couple of extra likes and followers. One thing I do look at when I'm on the Red Squirrel Marketing Facebook business page analytics is 'Pages to Watch',

Facebook has been all over 360 images and video for some time now, offering a perfect platform to upload and share immersive 360 content for businesses and end users since the middle of 2016. Previously 360 images were taken outside the app and then uploaded, now you can shoot 360 straight from the phone, head to your status update and select the 360 photo option, a camera box will open and allow you to capture an image. If you have used the panaramic mode on iPhone this will

Nothing much changes more in marketing than social media, mainly the updates and opportunities they offer as they look to improve their service to the end user and business user. We manage a number of social media accounts for a variety of businesses in Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Swansea and London and we see the changes happened on a daily basis. Some of you would have noticed that some of the social media channels are merging in to one with the introduction of the "story feature

The Aber First Awards presentation was held on Friday night at the Old College Aberystwyth, where 10 awards were handed out, along with a top award for overall business of the year. Red Squirrel Marketing were proud to sponsor one of the awards as well as being nominated for another; the highlight of our night though was when our Social Media client Alexanders won the Social Media award. The awards, which are now held annually, after previously being held biennially, are orga

GlobalWebIndex’s latest social media usage report shows that more than 40% of people use social media platforms to keep in touch with friends, making this the top reason for social media use globally. Among 16 to 24 year-olds, the key reason for using social media is not to keep in touch, but rather to fill spare time (too much spare time obviously) while among 25 to 34 year-olds, staying in touch with friends proves more important. (if you plan or run events, Facebook is the

Marketing changes all the time, we discuss this with our clients in Cardiff and Aberystwyth all the time; nothing changes much quicker than Social Media. This week along there have been updates and changes to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube as well as announcements for iOS 11 coming in September. FACEBOOK Facebook has finally added a dedicated GIF button to comments. All users on Facebook can now use the new GIF comment button that the platform started test