{"id":1642,"date":"2015-12-31T11:42:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T06:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2024-04-24T16:40:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T11:10:31","slug":"facebook-launches-signal-a-content-insights-tool-for-facebook-and-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/facebook-launches-signal-a-content-insights-tool-for-facebook-and-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Launches \u2018Signal\u2019, a Content Insights Tool for Facebook and Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Pew Research released a\u00a0<\/span>report<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>which showed that the percentage of Twitter users who follow breaking news on the platform is twice as high as those who do the same on Facebook. The finding underlined that Twitter is\u00a0<\/span>the<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>place for breaking news coverage, the platform\u00a0social media users turn\u00a0to for updates on developing stories and issues. Twitter\u2019s real-time, fast paced news stream makes it the perfect medium for users to get quick updates as events unfold, and a large part of that, of course, is Twitter\u2019s openness, the fact that (almost) everything published via tweet is made public and accessible to all. If you want to add your thoughts to a trending news story, Twitter’s where you go to do it.<\/p>\n

But Facebook wants to make itself a bigger part of that process. In recent months, Facebook has introduced a range of tools and additions to better position itself as the place to be for journalists and news makers \u2013 and by extension, news consumers. There was the introduction of \u2018Instant Articles<\/a>\u2019, which encourages journalists to post content direct to Facebook by providing better publishing tools to improve the reading experience. Then Facebook\u00a0<\/span>updated their algorithm<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>to factor in time spent reading, which, of course, benefits longer form content, giving journalists more incentive to post inside Facebook. More recently, Facebook opened up access to their new\u00a0<\/span>live-streaming tool<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>to journalists, urging them to post breaking news and content direct to Facebook, and Facebook\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>1.49 billion users<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clearly, Facebook is very keen to have more journalists posting more news content on the site \u2013 more exclusive material means more content for users to read, which means users stay on-platform for longer. In line with this, Facebook has launched a new tool for journalists to help them discover trending content and information on the\u00a0stories and issues resonating with the Facebook audience. And given Facebook is now the leading source of referral traffic<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for a great many sites, reaching that audience is increasingly critical.<\/p>\n

Building Context<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Called \u2018Signal\u2019, Facebook\u2019s new tool is a dashboard which journalists can use to discover relevant content from across the Facebook network.<\/p>\n

From the\u00a0<\/span>official announcement:<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalists interested in seeing what conversations are resonating on Facebook can monitor which topics are trending and then quickly display related content that has been shared publicly\u2014unranked and in chronological order\u2014 from both people and Pages for deeper context on those trends.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This type of search functionality has traditionally been difficult to navigate\u00a0on Facebook \u2013 while you can use the \u2018Trending Content\u2019 tab\u00a0to find out what\u2019s being posted about current\u00a0topics on the platform, what\u2019s displayed via Trending Content\u00a0is specific to you, based on your historic actions and preferences. Signal\u2019s listings provide a more general, unfiltered perspective on what\u2019s popular, enabling users to find wider insights and trends.<\/p>\n

As you can see in the\u00a0image above, the Signal’s main dashboard is, essentially, a bigger version of the Trending Topics page, with the option to take a deeper look at the issues generating the most conversation on the platform\u00a0and a separate tab to look at stories\u00a0which are ’emerging’, based on mention velocity. In\u00a0left\u00a0sidebar, you can see a range of options\u00a0including \u2018Leaderboards\u2019, search\u00a0and display publishing tools. Each of these elements\u00a0(aside from publishing) helps users narrow\u00a0their\u00a0content listings to more specific, targeted topics and data, enabling more refined topic search to\u00a0locate the most relevant material.<\/p>\n

Finding the Signal<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Where Signal sets itself apart is in these deeper search options, in adding\u00a0new capabilities to help users find more specific information about the most resonant content across the Facebook eco-sphere. For instance, in \u2018Leaderboards\u2019, users are able to access lists of public figures ranked by who’s being mentioned most across the platform in real-time.<\/p>\n

The leaderboards listings can be filtered by various entity options, including actors, authors, influencers and journalists, providing solid oversight on\u00a0who’s being most discussed and the percentage of the conversation they currently hold. While many of these will be obvious \u2013 Kanye West, for example, would have held a big percentage of the Facebook conversation when he recently announced his plans to run for President\u00a0\u2013 but the most important part of this data is it\u2019s Facebook-specific. These are the entities and topics driving conversation on the largest social media network in the world \u2013 insight like this can be extremely valuable when used in a targeted way.<\/p>\n

And it’s worth noting that while the focus of Signal is journalists right now, at some stage this is likely to\u00a0change \u2013 as per\u00a0the wording of the\u00a0official release:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a first step in helping journalists use Facebook and Instagram more effectively and we\u2019ll gather feedback and iterate to make Signal as useful as possible for industry professionals.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the utility of being able to search for trending content and people of influence, there\u2019s no doubt significant value in\u00a0the tool for marketers and advertisers-alike, and that access will hopefully come in time.<\/p>\n

In the Post<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Another key element of Signal is a new search functionality, with separate search streams for both Facebook and Instagram and the ability to search for posts from different source categories – for example ‘Public Figures – Musicians’.<\/p>\n

Using location-tag and topic-related search functionality, journalists can search Instagram for public posts related to specific hashtags, associated with specific public accounts, or tagged with locations using an interactive global map.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These tools will help uncover more targeted and refined content, which journalists will then be able to use as reference material for\u00a0their work. The use of location tags is particularly interesting \u2013 in a journalistic sense, this will enable creators to find relevant content around news events and add that to their posts for context, quickly and easily. In a marketing sense (if\/when Signal is opened to more users), it could\u00a0give marketers and advertisers the ability to look at how other businesses and individuals are discussing specific events and what\u2019s resonating, helping to create better content.<\/p>\n

Signal will also provide demographic data for specific topics, which will likely provide similar insights to the monthly Facebook \u2018Hot Topics<\/a>\u2019 reports.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.socialmediatoday.com\/social-business\/adhutchinson\/2015-09-18\/facebook-launches-signal-content-insights-tool-facebook-and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Pew Research released a\u00a0report\u00a0which showed that the percentage of Twitter users who follow breaking news on the platform is twice as high as those who do the same on Facebook. The finding underlined that Twitter is\u00a0the\u00a0place for breaking news coverage, the platform\u00a0social media users turn\u00a0to for updates on developing stories and issues. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,31],"tags":[317,60,316],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-posts","category-social-networking","tag-facebook-and-instagram","tag-facebook-marketing","tag-instagram-marketing-services"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3458,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/3458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nispaara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}