---

Facebook launches its “Widely Viewed Content Report”

Last week, Facebook published the first edition of its “Widely Viewed Content Report,” a quarterly report that provides statistics on the content users are viewing in their News Feeds. The report is seen by many media outlets as a way to counter data from its own CrowdTangle tool that often shows posts from conservative commentators among the 10 top-performing link posts (ranked by total interactions). But, for marketers, the report may also contain useful insights into how users are interacting with content on their News Feeds.

Why we care. There’s a breakdown of News Feed content sources (shown above) and other interesting stats, such as views on posts with links vs. views on posts with no links, the top domains that accounted for News Feed content (YouTube, Amazon and Unicef were among the top three) and more. The “Widely viewed posts” section might also provide social media marketers with a look at the types of content that attract millions of views — there’s no surprise here, the majority of the most-viewed posts contained either a photo or a video.

There is a caveat: The posts that had the most content views during Q2 represented about 0.1% of all content views on Facebook. The company attributes this to personalization: “Given the customized nature of News Feed, most of what people see on Facebook is personalized for them specifically,” Facebook said in the report. Knowing your audience may help you increase the odds that the personalization systems work in your favor.

---

Small businesses and consumers are on different wavelengths, new survey finds

Survey data from Constant Contact indicates that “84 percent of small businesses feel confident that they know what their customers are looking for.” But the survey data shows that consumers actually disagree. Some of the top disconnects include the following marketing areas:

• Small businesses are relying heavily on social media to drive financial results, but consumers say that channel isn’t where they typically buy
• 47% of small businesses believe emails checking in on a customer’s well-being are the most likely type to lead to a sale
• But 40% of consumers say emails checking on their well-being don’t influence their purchasing decisions – instead, emails with a clear discount code or coupon are most likely to be opened (77%) and lead to purchase (67%)
• 35% of consumers say an issue with a small business’s website, or the inability to buy online, would discourage them from shopping with that business

Why we care. If there’s one thing we keep learning from our experts at SMX events, it’s that knowing your audience is critical (and constant testing is mandatory). We always like to claim that we’re data-driven marketers, but, to us, this data indicates that it’s something we need to continue to work on.