Twitter’s CEO is proud to have made history in the recent elections. As the undisputed favorite news and social network of the future president, Twitter now enjoys a privileged status among social platforms in the USA, the world’s greatest superpower.

On Twitter, company-led consumer engagement depends on two things. One is the contents of a tweet no longer than 140 characters. The other is the reach of said tweet, which depends on the global marketing strategy, the types of influencers involved, and other such factors.

Focusing strictly on the first of these variables, namely the tweet itself, there are a few things to consider before you share information on Twitter with the intention to lure prospective customers. Being courteous is just one aspect of Twitter etiquette. Far more important is complying with the guidelines.

Here are three aspects of Twitter etiquette that many businesses mistakenly shrug off:

1. Full Disclosure

Whenever there are tweets that endorse your product based on the existence of a contest, a sweepstake, a promotion or a freebie, it’s your responsibility to check that they include a disclosure, even if you’re not the author. Something as simple as ‘#contest’ could keep the FTC at bay, so make sure you ask all participants to include it in their tweets. Likewise, if it’s your tweet and it makes reference to a person that’s been paid to take part in the advertisement, steer clear of FTC complaints with a simple tag the likes of #PaidAd.

2. Make Replies Public with @

A common Twitter faux-pas is to forget the @ in your replies. This limits the engagement of your consumers and makes your tweets feel disconnected.

3. Give Credit When You Retweet

Whether you intend to use a tweet to draw attention to your product or you’re simply expressing a personal opinion, you must give credit to the original author. To do so, remember to write your reply in the following format: ‘Retweet @author: original tweet’.

ASA, the UK’s advertising regulator, has been monitoring and policing online claims made by companies on Twitter and other social platforms since 2011. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), regulates US companies’ Twitter activites in much the same way. There are advertising regulators in many of the world’s countries, and they are starting to focus on Twitter alongside other forms of media.

The importance of complying with current guidelines and policies is becoming more apparent by the day. While there are regulators who can monitor online business activities on social media platforms, it’s still the duty of all Twitter users to familiarize themselves and to teach others what online etiquette is and how it applies to business.

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But there’s far more to AR than this. Many agencies and marketers are eager to engage their audiences with AR content. Oddly enough, it has taken years for marketing agencies to develop an interest in the technology.

Absolut Vodka launched its augmented reality app, Absolut Truths, in 2012. Pointing an iPhone at the augmented reality tag on the bottle yielded a 4D visual representation of the company’s history, its sources and some handy cocktail ideas.

Later that year, Current Studios launched the Absolut Greyhound World app where customers would scan Absolut billboards to enable an AR experience of their choice. One was a recipe generator in a virtual social platform that surrounded the user with tweets, news and Facebook posts. Another is the virtual greyhound generator that displayed a larger-than-life robot greyhound in front of the billboard.

A campaign for The Peanuts Movie ran for 24 hours on Halloween and cost $750,000, according to Adweek. Peanuts was also used by USPS in 2015, when a Charlie Brown character would creep up next to the users in a picture. In fact, USPS started adopting AR technology since 2014.

Augmented Reality Comes of Age

It wasn’t until Pokemon Go gamers scoured the streets in search of virtual creatures to hit with a pokeball that it became clear that Millennials have an interest in augmented reality. And the trend quickly caught on with AR enabled apps spreading like wildfire in 2016.

Interactive advertising is slowly taking over social media as well. What Absolut started in 2012 with its billboard tags taking you straight to social media platforms, developers are now trying to bring to perfection. Snapchat geared up for augmented reality recently, and businesses started splurging on sponsored geofilters.

Facebook soon followed with its own brand of selfie masks for its users, TechCrunch reports. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly claimed that virtual reality is potentially the most social platform there is, given how immersive it is. The challenge will be making the technology part of everyday life.

In all probability, AR will be just that, and soon. Interactive advertising is all around us now. Here are some of its most well-known uses today:

• Games (Octaland augmented reality flash cards, ViewMaster AR and VR edutainment experience packs);
• Books (Octaland 4D+ interactive colouring books, My Kingdom Books personalized AR story books);
• Conferences (TED VR Montage);
• Catalogs (Vespa, Ikea);
• Business cards (Augment, Toxin Labs);
• Billboards (Absolut Vodka, Volkswagen, Disney).

it’s not really a question of whether interactive advertising is the future. The question is how soon will it become mainstream. Given the soaring rise in augmented reality and virtual reality apps and devices, the answer seems to be the sooner the better. All that’s left now is for even the most conventional type of business to adapt and come up with new ways to market household products.

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What does Zuckerberg’s denial reveal about content marketing? Not only that hoaxing is a profitable endeavor for people who engage in it, like the self-appointed hoaxing guru who claims to have paved the way for Donald Trump’s electoral win, but also that the masses should and probably will be more careful with their fact-checking.

A recent Buzzfeed article claims fake news engagement nearly tripled in the quarter prior to the election, while objective mainstream news saw nearly half of its normal engagement. You may say that with Trump’s knack for saying outrageous things and Clinton’s perceived frostiness, it’s no wonder that fake news started springing up like mushrooms.

Considering that Facebook, Amazon and other online giants are gatekeepers to a vast amount of information, it should come as no surprise that there have always been outcries against their management of this data. Every other year, some of the largest e-commerce and social groups are asked to step up to the plate and reconsider their privacy policies. Just last year Wired released another story discussing poor big data management practices.

Fake News is Losing Ground

Never before have the masses been so vehement about the effect that content marketing has when it’s unchecked and unrestricted. Content marketing brings with it a range of responsibilities. Whether products are promoted on a website, a social platform or by word of mouth, companies and the platforms they choose for their marketing will soon become accountable for their marketing efforts.

Let’s all agree to disagree, find a way to fact-check before we publish and find ways to teach readers what critical thinking is. Unless we have something to hide, there’s no reason not to empower customers to discern between good and bad, between worthy and irrelevant. After all, what good is a product if we need to use underhanded tactics to promote it?

Unfortunately for marketers, this will be hard to do. Save from actively criticizing a competitor’s product, there really aren’t that many ways to ensure that there’s fairness in content marketing. Still, this is undoubtedly the dawn of an era where online scrutiny will become the best way to distance oneself and one’s products from companies with damaging business practices.

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October 2016 saw the demise of a video sharing service Twitter users had enjoyed for over three years. Acquired in 2012, Vine made headlines and was in the spotlight for several months. Back then, mobile video was such a battery draining and phone data plan price hiking feature that mobile users steered clear of it. That is, until Periscope and Facebook Live took to the stage. From that point on, Vine video broadcasting users bid it farewell, and never looked back.

With third-quarter revenues below sea level, Vine’s days are numbered. In a blog post dated October 27, Twitter promises to cut the cord with the realm of ‘beautiful, looping videos’ ‘the right way’. In other words, it will let its users ‘mourn’ it properly.

The general reaction from the public hasn’t been one of overwhelming disapproval, but rather a sad ‘Awww…too bad’. Some Vine users have reacted to Twitter’s decision to shut it down by sharing a nostalgic suite of clips dear to their hearts. Yet, there seems to have been an unspoken acknowledgment among online media platform users that giving up on 6-second video loops is really nothing to cry about. Why is that? Because six seconds simply won’t do for inspiring material, so people had no practical use for it.

Also, until June 2016, users weren’t compensated for sharing vines that became popular. So, they did it just for the fun of it. In other words, not only did vines not teach or influence others in any way, but they also came without a single financial incentive for users to continue using and promoting the service.

Moreover, six seconds aren’t enough for content marketing. No business out there can promote its product or service in less than the time it takes a narrator to say T&Cs at the end of a commercial. That kind of video is simply not worthy of the product.

So, Vine was not only pointless to the hoards of people who do online surfing expecting to see engaging material, but also worthless to businesses. And business nowadays is all about millennials shopping online.

Vine’s failure to adapt to an emerging trend is perplexing. After all, it was launched at the beginning of 2013. That was a year when virtual reality eyewear and various other technological innovations opened doors to brand new types of marketing. Virtual reality app With.in is a fine example of content marketing reaching countless of users. Accessed on mobile phones, the experience is engaging, immersive and discreetly promotional. It enables users to view and live within a music video, to explore the world, and to witness the work of NGOs, among others.

Had Vine been able to offer a way for users to experience these loops in virtual reality, perhaps it would still be with us ten years from now. The idea is far-fetched, and it doesn’t address the main drawback, which is that the videos are too short. But ultimately, it’s disappointing to witness the demise of a company that reached these many users, with this feeling that it simply didn’t try hard enough.

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It’s the move that took everyone by surprise: Facebook went from social to shopping. For many who have no other means of trading their products locally, this is wonderful news. But how will this change the online social and shopping experience of 1.71 billion active monthly users? And what about businesses? Will it undermine content marketing efforts and push Facebook users to undertake more convenient transactions locally?

The Evolution of the Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace, an online platform for people buying and selling locally, was launched this month in Australia, New Zealand, UK and the USA. Currently available on the mobile app, the platform is due to become available on the desktop version within weeks. A shopping-specific app will also be launched in the next few days.

The official announcement, released on Oct. 3, 2016 claims that it’s trying to tap into a new customer base. That’s the 450 million people who use buy and sell groups every month. Yet Facebook Marketplace had been available to users since May 2007. Two years later, a new version powered by Oodle was featured in the Applications tab. It enabled users to create classified ads that could be seen by people they knew from their Facebook Groups.

Filling that Void

So, why is the social media platform making this bold move, and re-branding itself in the process? Seemingly because peer-to-peer shopping platforms always seem to lack one thing. In the case of eBay, it’s real-time communication. In the case of Craigslist, it’s sociability.

More convenient than an e-commerce platform like eBay, Facebook Messenger enables users to chat in real time with the sellers prior to making their offer. Alternatively, they can send their initial offer and haggle right away, if the sellers are online.

So, instead of frantically trying to outbid other eBay users and hoping that they have the best bid after days of waiting, buyers can reach an agreement within seconds. Of course, some eBay listings feature a bid button that works in much the same way, except the seller is notified of the offer by email.

Secondly, far more child-friendly than Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace does not feature personal ads. It also enables buyers to connect with the sellers, to communicate, and to even see the sellers and the products at work in real-time via messenger. The transparency, the safety and the friendliness that a simple messenger can facilitate are obvious. And their value in a transaction are not to be underestimated.

The Drawbacks Described

Unlike eBay, this marketplace doesn’t allow seller and buyer to rate each other’s input in the transaction. Also, the listing process is rushed and amateurish, making the platform a breeding ground for listing inaccuracies. This, in turn, is bound to affect customer satisfaction. But since there’s no way for buyers to review products, that may not be so terrible for Facebook just yet.

Project Partners

Within weeks of the launch, Paypal announced that it will soon be rolling out its payment option for Facebook Marketplace users in the USA. At the moment, Marketplace doesn’t feature native payment, but it accepts debit card payments.

Users will be able to link their Paypal and Facebook accounts at the checkout, receiving instant notifications in Messenger as well. With Uber and Braintree teaming up with Facebook recently to allow users to book and pay their cab fares via messenger, this rounds off a very nice package.

Effect on Business

Unfortunately for businesses currently marketing their products on Facebook or selling them outright on eBay, Facebook Marketplace poses a serious threat. But let’s not underestimate their power to adapt. There’s virtually nothing stopping them from adapting their content marketing strategies in this context.

One option for them would be to sell returned, refurbished and reconditioned items on Facebook Marketplace rather than dispose of them. Another would be to use Facebook Marketplace as a means of attracting reviews on other websites that accept the opinions of those who bought elsewhere, such as Amazon.

The possibilities are endless, and it’s hard to estimate the long-term impact of Facebook Marketplace. One thing is certain, though: it gives buyers more options in terms of where to source and sell their goods, so that virtually everyone over the age of 18 can become an entrepreneur. And that opens up a Pandora’s box for large businesses that aren’t flexible enough to adapt.

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If you’re reading this, you undoubtedly grasp the importance of writing a blog that readers can consistently relate to.

Because reach and reader engagement are two very important factors in gaining awareness, we thought we’d reveal 10 of the content creation tools often used by viral blog writers.

1. Site Explorers

Whenever you’re curious to know what your competitors are up to, give the Moz Open Site Explorer tool a try. Subscribe to browse through back links to check their content for similarities to yours. Use Top Pages to see if any authoritative sites you were hoping to draw to your website have been linking back to them. Learn from their successes and mistakes.

2. Search Engine Aggregators

Use Soolve, Ubbersuggest or other free tools to research trending words across various platforms, and to display the ideal keyword suggestions for your particular requirements. Some can save your searches for future comparison, they can be geo-specific, and they may allow you to check if a certain keyword phrase reached the Internet keyword top list that day.

3. Schedulers

Various content management systems enable blog post scheduling. Buzzsumo claims the optimum time to publish is Tuesday, Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella claims it’s Friday, and the Zimmerman Agency suggests 9 a.m. and lunch time are best. But what it all boils down to is research and getting to know your own readers, regardless of others’ opinions.

4. Visuals

There’s no shortage of royalty-free stock photos out there, and some virtual photo vaults even offer freebies. Enjoy templates, icons and full-size, high-resolution images, some of which are free, courtesy of Canva and PicMonkey. The latter even offers an editing tool on the spot and a free trial.

5. Quizzes and Surveys

Interactive features are nothing to snigger at, especially as some are free. QuizzRevolution, Quizworks and PollDaddy are some fine examples of content creation tools on a budget, with some limited features offered free of charge.

6. Social Media Monitors

Know what to expect in terms of competition and how readers will receive your blog post when you use the Keyhole tool to check a specific URL, a hashtag or a keyword for its Twitter, Instagram and Facebook trending patterns. This is a paid service, and while it may be a bit pricey, there are others out there to explore.

7. Toolbar Plugins

The SEOQuake toolbar plugin and extension turns everything into SEO content for you. Control query results, find specific content and turn your desktop into an SEO dashboard with this simple extension for Chrome, Opera and Safari browsers.

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