Loli Gómez: I'm going to manage the social networks of a franchise, but each one has its own social network. On Facebook in particular, could I merge all the profiles into one?
Alicia : If we're talking about user profiles, we should know that Facebook doesn't allow us to merge several profiles. I don't know if you're referring to that or to fan pages. What we can merge is, as we said before, a profile and a fan page, but not several profiles. In case you were referring to fan pages, you should know that yes, you can merge up to six in total, but there are some rules regarding this. For example, if those fan pages have a personalized URL, Facebook will only allow you to merge those that have a very similar URL, okay? If they have a completely different URL, they might not allow you to merge those pages.
Instagram advertising23. Advertising on Instagram
Javi López: Instagram has recently introduced the possibility of publishing sponsored images, just like on Twitter and Facebook. How will this new change affect both the social media strategies of companies and the user? Will it be positive or negative?
Alicia : I think it's very positive. It's true, Javi. Instagram has already been advertising for several months in countries like the United States, France and the United Kingdom and has already announced that it will also start advertising on Instagram in Spain. In fact, yesterday or the day before yesterday, it announced it to its followers. I think it's very mobile directory for brands. Why? Because Instagram has proven to be a social network with a lot of growth, that its participation rate is very high, so it's a great opportunity for brands to be there. And the option of making ads is also fantastic. They will be able to include up to four images, which will be seen in the form of a carousel, and they will be able to add a link at the end, in the final image, to their website with different calls to action. So it's great.
So, how are users going to take this? Well, look, I know they are taking it a bit badly. Yesterday I also saw news saying that many are protesting and threatening to leave the platform. I would reassure them and tell them “don’t worry, you will be able to hide the ads that appear on your Instagram that you don’t want to see.” How? Very easy, sponsored images on Instagram will have a little sign in the top right corner, an indicator that will say “sponsored.” So the user, if he doesn’t want to see that ad, all he has to do is click on “sponsored” and the ad will be hidden from his timeline .
Fernando : People complain a lot about brands suddenly appearing on their social network, ads appearing, etc. It's true that most of the social networks we use today are the horizontal type, which are from user to user. What's going on? It's a showcase for any of us as a brand, but also for brands to promote themselves, and above all, these services cost money. We can't expect to have a high-performance service to share our photos, for someone to make an application that we can use on our mobile phone for free and for this to be done for altruistic reasons, unless they have some patronage out there that we don't know about. Things cost money and they have to pay for them somehow. If we want to continue having great applications and great alternatives to share with our friends, we'll have to assume that the person offering them to us has to pay for them somehow.
Bruno : None of us are saying that if they take the ads off TV we'll stop watching TV, right? We all understand that, from time to time, there are ads. And we're not saying that a newspaper doesn't show ads or that the radio never shows advertising. So this is just another environment, another channel, and we have to get used to it.
Fernando : Also, we are very Cainite. We complain that the services we offer cover their expenses, but that service that has decided at some point to make its content or access payable has plummeted. We don't want them to charge us, but we don't want it to cost those people money either. We are quite Cainite in everything that is Internet, there is a concept that everything is free on the Internet and that is not true, free is everything that you can afford to offer for free.