The study, published by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, found that almost half of American users click on news in their Facebook feeds. Since 64% of adults in the United States use Facebook, that means one in three Americans consumes news on Facebook.

However, only 22% of the 30% who get their news on Facebook think the site is a useful source for information about the world, and only 4% of those think Facebook is “the most important way” to get their news.

“People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally,” Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research, said in a statement. “The serendipitous nature of news on Facebook may actually increase its importance as a source of news and information, especially among those who do not follow the news closely.”

The study quotes one respondent, who said he believes “Facebook is a good way to find out news without actually looking for it.”

The importance of the social network also depends on how much of a news junkie the user is.

Among those who click on news links in their Facebook news feeds, just 38% of heavy news followers think the social network is “an important way to get the news,” but among those who follow news “less often,” 47% consider Facebook as an important source.

On Monday, Facebook announced that it was driving 170% more traffic to media sites this year than in 2012.

This is the first of a series of studies on social media and news published by Pew in collaboration with the Knight Foundation. For this study, Pew surveyed 5,173 Americans ages 18 and older. You can read the full report here (.PDF).

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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A new tool, offered through Twitter’s API, allows marketers to send targeted tweets to specific geographic locations. For example, a brand could send a tweet to followers in the United States and a separate tweet to users in Japan from the same account. The tweets will not show up to followers in the brand’s Twitter timeline unless those followers reside in the country targeted.

This capability makes it possible for brands to consolidate their Twitter accounts, eliminating the need for different accounts for various countries or languages. It also lets brand target messages more directly to consumers by sending offers or promotions to followers in a specific region or create customized content for a specific country.

With roughly 77% of Twitter’s monthly active users located outside of the U.S., the ability for brands to connect with international users will be key to helping Twitter continually grow its advertising revenue moving forward.

The ability to geo-target messages is available to partners with access to Twitter’s Ads API, which was updated a few weeks ago. London-based TBG, a social media ad management company, first rolled out a country-specific tweeting tool on Oct. 4, although its customers aren’t utilizing the feature yet, according to a spokesperson.

Last week, Austin-based Spredfast, which offers tools that allow clients to better manage multiple social media accounts, became the first U.S.-based company to offer geo-targeted tweets.

“We think this is just the start,” said Jim Rudden, CMO of Spredfast. “The whole focus is on, ‘How do we get relevance in the news feed?’ The more targeted you can get, the better.”

For brands, the benefit is minimizing the number of social accounts to manage, creating a more direct funnel for consumer feedback. Brands would no longer need to manage or monitor regional Twitter handles; all messaging would come from the same account, so all feedback, comments or complaints would be directed to the same place.

However, compacting a brand’s Twitter handles also means consolidating a brand’s current followers and convincing users to follow a different Twitter handle (the brand’s main one).

TBG hopes brands will be willing to look past this issue, even if the process of shifting to a single account takes six months to a year.

“[One handle] is more efficient and it makes it easier for users to find you,” said Ian Cassidy, TBG’s executive creative director, in a statement to Mashable. “It also means that brands that have a global Twitter account can test localized, more specific messaging in different countries, which should increase engagement.”

As brands start to test out this new technology in the coming months, we’ll find out exactly how specific those messages can get.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Mashable composite; Flickr, Kevin M. Gill

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That’s why we asked eight entrepreneurs to weigh in on how to best use Facebook to your company’s advantage. Here’s what they said:

1. Put Other People in the Spotlight

Stacey FerreiraOn the MySocialCloud Facebook page, we try to cross-promote with our partners and highlight our customers a lot. For example, we partnered with a company called Free Bike Project that has students ride bikes around its campuses with our advertisements on the sides of the bikes. We then ask the students to take pictures of themselves with the bikes, and we post the pictures on our Facebook page. We’ve found when we put other people and their friends in the spotlight (rather than our brand or ourselves), people get more excited about our company and engage with us more on social media.

– Stacey Ferreira, MySocialCloud

2. Interact in a Private Facebook Community

Corey BlakeWe invite our customers into a private community on Facebook where they can interact with us and one another, share war stories and where they can turn for support. It’s an amazing way to help them see us as a conduit for them as a united front of crusaders.

– Corey Blake, Round Table Companies

3. Post Video Updates

Torrey Tayenaka.jpgIt’s proven that video posts on Facebook highly increase the chance of user comments, shares and “likes.” Create a weekly company update keeping your customers in the loop on new products, employees, goals, etc. Remember, talk about your company and product as well as the category you are in. Your customers want to see you as the expert in the industry, and they will continue to come back if you have great advice!

– Torrey Tayenaka, Sparkhouse

4. Offer Discounts and Promo Codes

Andrew SchrageYou can stay connected to your customers through Facebook by posting discounts and promotional codes for your business products and services. But to keep your customers coming back for more, set a limit on the access to a promo code to about 50 people. If a customer sees an expired promo code, they’ll likely check back to see when the next one is posted.

– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

5. Post Unrelated Content

Jay WuThe main purpose of a Facebook page is to communicate company information to customers. However, there’s no reason we can’t make it fun. Posting pictures or videos that have nothing to do with the company tells me a little more about my customers than another promo. Also, it shows the lighter side of the company, which helps customers feel a closer connection to us.


Lots of companies have Facebook pages that offer no real value to those who follow them. Nobody wants to hear about business all the time. They want to be entertained and engaged, and they want to be a part of the companies they follow. What better way than to post content that appeals directly to them? They’ll have some fun while strengthening their ties to the company, which is the entire point of social media.

– Jay Wu, Best Drug Rehabilitation

6. Share Stories

Tyler ArnoldShare stories to build trust and reliability. We share stories and photos of events, charitable contributions, organizational partnerships and the daily activities happening in and around our business.

– Tyler Arnold, SimplySocial Inc.

7. Post Consistently and Respond Quickly

Kuba JewgieniewRealty One Group places a premium on being consistent and responding to engagement. We make a point to post every single day. When a customer notices that you are updating your page with useful information, he is more likely to engage.


Perfect example: An agent wrote on one of our photos asking if we had our logo in a certain format to use for printing. She said the format was not available to her in our back office and reached out via Facebook. Not only did we respond to her — we got her email and sent her the format she needed to carry out her business. She expressed such gratitude for us going out of our way to help her, and that alone was reward enough.

– Kuba Jewgieniew, Realty ONE Group

8. Recruit Talent Socially

Liam MartinWe have a relatively large Facebook page of over 75,000, and the page has been growing quite steadily over the last year. We’ve really focused on using Facebook as a recruitment tool for our company. When we have a difficult posting, we usually throw it up on the Facebook page and sometimes give out rewards for candidates that other users can bring to us. The response is extremely positive and usually results in hundreds of new candidates joining our database. Not only does this strategy grow the page, but it also helps us get great candidates placed in amazing positions.

– Liam Martin, Staff.com

Image: Joel Saget/AFP/GettyImages

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We’ve seen it on MTV’s Catfish. People pretend to be someone their not on Facebook, make another person fall in love with them and potentially ruin the relationship they have found themselves in. Seems to be a bit fishy… I don’t know why people hide behind a photo and are afraid to be who they are. When you look around there are so many different ads, books, and websites that influence you be yourself and love the person you are inside and out. No one should be hiding behind the computer screen. Embrace who you are and forget about the fake profile!

Businesses even buy fake fans & followers to help boost their popularity on their Social Media sites. By getting these high numbers, the account shows an indication of power over other pages and makes you feel like you need to follow the business as well. I get it, you want to get a lot of people to follow you on Twitter and Facebook, but do they really have to buy these followers to achieve it?

Some Social media agencies on the other hand create compelling content to engage current fans and inspire them to share out material. They help to increase a company’s fan volume organically. Why can’t businesses do the same?

It seems as if Turkey has kind of the right idea. The country is cracking down on fake users and banning the opening of “fake” Social Media accounts. Its government is trying to regulate online activity and attempting to stop various protests that have been going on. Turkish people are using Facebook and Twitter to protest against the government and their Prime Minister believes that Social Media is the key element to plot against him. He obviously wants to stop this from happening and is doing everything he legally can to do it… Ok, users from Turkey may not be pulling a catfish or try to buy fake fans &  follower for a business, but the issue of “fake profiles” is seen everywhere!

Twitter has been really trying to crack down on their fake users as well. Digitrock helps you out by auditing  to figure out who is phony and who is real. Digitrock will allow you to see if your fans & followers are real, fake, or inactive. Digitrock also help you to find out whether a friend is fake or not. However, WikiHow explains a couple of ways to investigate and see if someone is phony. Basically, be aware of who you accept as a friend, read their profile, see who their friends are and be alert for instances when they may post something weird. It’s up to you to figure out who is real and fake throughout these sites. Check it out and see how many of your friends or followers aren’t real!

Digitrock helps  out business by auditing their Facebook Fan Pages & Twitter Profiles.

For auditing mail us at info@digitrock.com

Or

Call : 9004809090/ 9654343424 

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