Feedback on Social Promotions / Our Picks

[CheersnGears]

I'm pretty disappointed that it seems like not even one of the many great suggestions in this thread made it into the recent update.

My top contenders

1. Setting an expiration date on the promotion

2. ability to remove "Promoted by" from everywhere.  

[Joel R]

45 minutes ago, CheersnGears said:

Setting an expiration date on the promotion

I don't know if I agree with this, on a conceptual basis.  

Once you push something to social media, you can't take it back.  And the same philosophy should apply to pushes to Our Picks.  It'll simply exist until it fades ... 

With that said, I can understand more control over your community, including editing and deleting Our Picks.  

46 minutes ago, CheersnGears said:

ability to remove "Promoted by" from everywhere

I agree.  "Promoted by" confers no useful information, especially on small communities where it's always the admin or mod promoting.  

[CheersnGears]

20 hours ago, Joel R said:

I don't know if I agree with this, on a conceptual basis.  

Once you push something to social media, you can't take it back.  And the same philosophy should apply to pushes to Our Picks.  It'll simply exist until it fades ... 

With that said, I can understand more control over your community, including editing and deleting Our Picks.  

I agree.  "Promoted by" confers no useful information, especially on small communities where it's always the admin or mod promoting.  

It's because if promotions have been light (summer is our light news time of year) you may not want things going out in the "You may also be interested" part of the email blasts that go out.

It's more that I may only want to be "pushing" a story for a certain amount of time in emails and such and then have it expire.  This would be particularly useful for sponsored content.

I know it won't delete it from the social media networks.  

[Joel R]

So you're using Our Picks for sponsored advertorials? That's interesting.  

[CheersnGears]

3 minutes ago, Joel R said:

So you're using Our Picks for sponsored advertorials? That's interesting.  

Not yet, but I'd like to. We mostly use it to promote our car reviews.  It's also why I'd like to change the way "Promoted by" works. 

[jair101]

Some feedback from me as well:

The new option to promote to keep a second FB app in dev mode does not seem to work. I have promoted two items, both of them have only 1 reach (me, I guess). Also not visible on the public page, even though they are shared as public. Setting it up was also a bit of PITA, but thats another issue... I suspect that facebook is limiting the reach of stuff posted through in dev apps only to the admin. Would like if someone can confirm that. 

When you select images in the promoted content, they are automatically shared as images/albums on FB and not as links. This is pointless - I don't want to share my images to facebook, I want to attract clicks back to my community. If you don't add pictures, then the link is shared but it looks dull in Our Picks. So it seems that you either share a link on FB and get dull looking Our Picks post, or you share pointless pics on FB and get nice looking post in Our Picks. Pick your poison basically. 

[jair101]

IPS has updated their guides, now the process is much more clear:

 

However, my promoted items are still "hidden", i.e. visible only by me. I feel there is no way around asking for review and getting the permissions now, I would be glad if someone can prove me wrong. 

WIth the useless organic reach and constantly changing requirements, I feel like I won't bother anymore. 

[Joel R]

Suggestion: 

• Lazy load of Our Picks page -- This is important to me since I use Our Picks on the homepage, and the IPS default is 25 images.  That means 25 image attachments need to be loaded before the website becomes complete, which is a very graphic-intensive homepage.  If you could lazy load, that would reduce the page's weight to only the first one or two images on mobile versus 25. That makes a huge difference.  

[steadyoptions]

I don't see the Promote button in Pages articles. Can someone help please? I was told by support that I have modified templates, but I don't know how should I modify them in order to include the Promote button.

Any help would be appreciated.

[opentype]

4 minutes ago, steadyoptions said:

 I was told by support that I have modified templates, but I don't know how should I modify them in order to include the Promote button.

Check out the template of the default display template and then add this part at the same spot to your custom template. 

<div class='ipsPos_right ipsResponsive_noFloat ipsResponsive_hidePhone'>
		{template="promote" app="core" group="global" params="$record"}
</div>

 

[steadyoptions]

Thank you!

This is how my template looks like:

Quote

<div class='hero-grid__item'>
  
    <article class='cCmsCategoryFeaturedEntry {{if $record->hidden()}}ipsModerated{{endif}} cms3ColImageFeature'>
        {{if $record->record_image}}
            <div class="cCmsRecord_image">
                <a href="{$record->url()}" title="{lang="read_more_about" sprintf="$record->_title"}"><img class="ipsImage" src="{file="$record->_record_image_thumb" extension="cms_Records"}"></a>
            </div>
              
        {{endif}}
        {{if $record->prefix()}}
            {template="prefix" group="global" app="core" params="$record->prefix( TRUE ), $record->prefix()"}
        {{endif}}
        <div class="paddingBox"><h2 class='ipsType_pageTitle'><a href="{$record->url()}" title="{lang="read_more_about" sprintf="$record->_title"}">
        {wordbreak="$record->_title"}
        </a></h2>    
    
              {{if count( $record->customFieldsForDisplay('listing') )}}
            <div class='ipsDataItem_meta'>
            {{foreach $record->customFieldsForDisplay('listing') as $fieldId => $fieldValue}}
                {{if $fieldValue}}
                    {$fieldValue|raw}
                {{endif}}
            {{endforeach}}
              <div class="blog-read">{template="tags" group="global" app="core" params="$record->tags()"}<a href="{$record->url()}" title="{lang="read_more_about" sprintf="$record->_title"}">Read More</a></div>
          </div></div>
        {{endif}}
    </article>
</div>

Where should I add the code for Promote?

[steadyoptions]

Found it, thank you very much!

[Mousie]

On 7/1/2017 at 2:43 PM, Joel R said:

 

• Manage Promoted Items -- I'd like to be able to 1. rearrange the order of picks

Seconding this. Drag & drop reordering would be amazing. 

On 9/5/2017 at 8:17 AM, Joel R said:

More suggestions:

• I made this suggestion during the beta / preview phase, and I still believe in its value: auto-promotion of items in certain categories.

 

And this too. For things like site news, etc, it'd be nice to have that just automatically go to social media.

Maybe a "Promote Options" box in the post view? (similar to the Moderator Options box). That way users that have the ability and permissions to promote content can do so in one step, rather than two -- plus giving content creators the ability to control how it appears on social media that a straight-to-social solution might not offer.

Also, a "Suggest Promotion" button for general users to suggest content they found useful. Create a queue that members can submit to, users with promotion permissions can review and add/reject.