Another month, another set of changes to rock the world of social media marketing. We’re back with the latest updates on your favorite social media platforms. Check out all the major updates you might have missed on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more, and what these changes mean for your social media marketing strategy.
Snapchat Is Doing Everything To Stay Afloat
It’s no surprise that Snapchat has been struggling since its latest redesign to retain its users’ attention. After all, its value plummeted by $1.3 billion last week after a single tweet from Kylie Jenner, where she stated that she doesn’t open the app as often anymore. For whatever reason, Snapchat just isn’t clicking the way it used to.
But they’re not sitting back waiting for their app to die. Snapchat has released a number of updates and changes this month, including:
- New ways to style your Snaps with overlay text and captions
- Snap Map made available on web with embed options allowing users and marketers to see individual Stories or a collection of Stories from a geographic location or event
- Creator analytics are finally available so users can access stats like total story views, time spent viewing stories, daily unique story viewers, audience demographics, and audience interests
- In-App Snap Store selling Snapchat merchandise, which can potentially lead to brand stores or sponsored listings within the store
That’s definitely a lot of changes in a single month, so props to them for trying to stay ahead of the curve.
Many of these changes open up new avenues for you to explore. We would like to take special note of the creator analytics, which is amazing because you can finally have solid numbers to measure the success of a Snapchat influencer campaign!
Make the most of the new creator analytics to find the demographics that engage most actively with your brand, and respond to that information accordingly.
Facebook Is Aiming To Help Small Businesses and Gaming Creators
Facebook has faced a lot of criticism lately for killing traffic to larger sites, so to hear that they’re starting to take steps to help redistribute that lost traffic is great news. Over the last few weeks, Facebook has announced quite a few changes that all contribute to the growth of small businesses.
In an effort to fight bad news, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote that Facebook would be weeding out the bad and fake news. He wrote, “Starting today, we’re going to show more stories from news sources in your local town or city. If you follow a local publisher or if someone shares a local story, it may show up higher in News Feed.”
So what does this mean? Brands, start thinking locally. Local news, local updates, local events – share these bits of information with your followers and Facebook will reward you accordingly.
In other news, Facebook wants to take some of Twitch’s success (the popular live streaming platform) by offering the newly announced “Gaming Creator Pilot Program”. The pilot program is intended to help game creators on Facebook build and connect with their audiences while monetizing their live streams by receiving tips (similar to YouTube’s Super Chat tipping and Twitch’s Cheering tip). We’ll keep you updated on this as this may very well create another surge of Facebook influencers, opening more doors for brand and creator collaborations.
Another biggie for marketers is how Facebook is changing the way it reports organic reach for page posts along with a redesign of page insights. Instead of calculating “reach based on how many times a post was delivered in News Feed”, they’ll use “a stricter definition that only counts reach once a post enters a person’s screen”, similar to how paid ads are calculated.
(Facebook’s Page Insights Redesign)
New Challenger On the Block: Vero?
We’re always on the look-out for the latest player in the social media world, and we might finally have the newest challenger. It’s known as Vero, and artists and social media lovers have already started flocking to it.
So what’s Vero? It’s being hyped up as the new Instagram, but the biggest difference is their interesting business model: Vero is free for now, but someday soon, users will have to pay to sign up.
Launched in 2015, Vero is aimed at “people who want a safe, genuine reflection of their real-life relationships in an online setting,” according to the company’s manifesto. Vero seeks to create a more authentic social media experience by displaying posts in chronological order rather than based on popularity, and they don’t have “boost your post” or other advertising options.
What does this mean for the social media marketing world? We’re not entirely sure, but there’s one thing we can say for certain: make your account on Vero right now while it’s free and start experimenting as soon as possible.
Pinterest Lens Text-Based Search
The one-year anniversary of Pinterest Lens is bringing with it a new feature: adding text to your photo searches. This means that you can refine any search on Lens with a certain keyword to help you get the best out of your results.
Don’t just rely on a photo for your results anymore; a photo and a keyword makes it that much easier. While this has only been launched for iOS users this month, Android users should expect it soon enough.
If you weren’t using Pinterest before, now might be the time to jump on. Users will have better mobility and flexibility with Pinterest Lens, and if your brand content is something that would appeal to Pinterest users, you lose absolutely nothing by trying.
And here’s how you do it.
Instagram Makes It Easier For Brands To Tell Stories
Have you ever been frustrated with running ads on Instagram? A single photo or video on the Stories feed makes it difficult to truly connect with your audience, making your reach less effective.
Instagram has heard the complaints and they’re changing the Story ads accordingly. Instead of a standard single video or photo, they now offer “carousel ads for Instagram Stories” to brands that purchase ads through the Facebook Marketing Partners program. Unfortunately, they have yet to announce a timeline as to when this feature will be available to self-serve advertisers.
With this change, we can start to expect to see more creativity and love when it comes to Instagram Story ads. With three 15-second consecutive videos, that’s longer than most commercials on television these days.
Instagram has also made it easier for users to share other people’s posts on Stories – similar to retweeting. So if your brand has killer content, here’s another way to increase organic reach.
Twitter Is Putting An End To Tweetdecking
Looks like Twitter might start to be more effective for marketers because Twitter management is finally putting its foot down when it comes to spam. One of the biggest problems Twitter has is all the spam, and this is largely due to a platform called Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows users on desktops to connect multiple accounts from a single browser, allowing them to automatically retweet Tweets en masse.
Twitter announced this month that they would be making changes that would put an end to this. Specifically, there will now be a ban on “posting duplicative or substantially similar content, replies, or mentions over multiple accounts you control.”
While this news may have little effect on our daily Twitter routines as social media marketers, it’s always nice to see platforms acknowledge and end practices that make our Tweets less effective.
If you’ve been slacking on your Twitter game lately, it may be time to start brushing up on your marketable Tweets.
February: A Month of Change, Or?
How impressed are you with the latest updates and changes for this month? Anything that will radically change the way you approach your favorite platforms or is it all still roughly the same? Let us know what you think!
