After a busy month of changes and updates across all of the social media platforms we are sure that you may have missed an update or two. So here we are going to put all of the updates from the last month into one condensed post, so that you haven’t missed anything for September 2018.

Facebook

Story Ads:

A simple feature that we have become accustomed to from other social media platforms is now being brought to Facebook Stories. Story Ads are a great way to advertise a product / your company as it is fully immersive.

People viewing stories are interested in what they are watching so they are focusing on their screen, furthermore, the fact that the Ads are full screen further develops the immersive idea of your Ad and finally the numbers really back up the fact that in story Ads are beneficial! Facebook state:  

• 68% of people say they use stories on at least three apps regularly, and 63% plan to use stories more in the future.
• 38% of people said that after seeing a product or service in a story they talked to someone about it, and 34% said they went to a store to look for it

Make sure you consider who your target audience is and what the ultimate goal of your ad is should you decide to use story ads as for some demographics this Facebook feature will be the best option while others might be more suited to Instagram.

Mark Zuckerberg himself said ‘Stories are on track to overtake posts in Feed as the most common way that people share across all social apps’  so expect more updates and more story focused updates from Facebook over the coming months.

Pages Can Now Join Groups:

This simple feature is a relatively subtle change that could improve the way that your company deals with its customers. Facebook previously had made it possible for pages to make groups which would allow them to be able to have conversations with their customers in this group format. However, this would only be possible if your group created the page in the first place.

This new update allows for pages to be added to Facebook groups to join in the community discussion. This feature both helps customer relations as it allows the group to communicate with current customers whilst also generating brand awareness to those that don’t know you.

Whilst this isn’t a drastic change it is something that you can try and see how it works for your business, trying to interact with customers is always beneficial and this could be a minor change that will help to boost your brand’s awareness.

Instagram 

Co-founders part ways with Instagram:

A big change that you might not notice whilst on your Instagram is that co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have parted ways with the social media giant. Systrom said via the Instagram blog:

“Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team. We’ve grown from 13 people to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We’re now ready for our next chapter.”

Instagram Shopping:

Instagram is bringing in features with regards to shopping and it is a really good feature for both awareness and sales.

To begin with, Instagram is rolling out clothing tags. When you were going to tag a friend or a page in an image, instead you tag the item of clothing, which then adds a link for customers to head straight to where the item is tagged from.

This is a great way to get traffic to your store as currently, Instagram does not support links on news feed posts or stories to accounts with less than 10,000 followers.

The second new shopping feature added to Instagram is found on the discover page. When going to the discover page you have a list of ‘topics’ at the top e.g. ‘humour’, ‘travel’, etc. Well soon there will be a shopping topic, this will then allow you to browse items in a shop format, whether this is browsing or shopping it will be a good way for small businesses to branch out.

There is also a lot of news surrounding Instagram bringing out a standalone app dedicated only to shopping. It appears that this is a direction that Instagram is heading in so it will be interesting to see how it can be used to your benefit in the coming months.

Video Tagging:

The final new Instagram feature that we are going to be covering this month is video tagging. It is common to tag people in posts, now you have the ability to be able to tag accounts in videos.

This means if you have an influencer, celebrity or someone that is associated with your brand involved in a video they can be tagged, this then puts it on their own Instagram in the ‘tagged in’ section, This means that you a broadening your potential audience and also making the most out of the video content you have created.

Twitter  

Full-Screen Interactions:

This month, Twitter has introduced the feature to be able to reply to videos whilst in full-screen mode watching the video:

While you might be wondering how this update will be beneficial to your business we feel that it will actually be very important in boosting interaction rates when posting to Twitter. Having this ability to be able to reply whilst still watching the video will lead to more engagement with the audience, they may reply instantly when they see something funny or memorable moment and they can’t wait to tag a friend.

We believe that this new update will be beneficial in boosting your interactions and therefore believe video generated content on Twitter will continue to become more and more popular.

Live Streaming:

Another simple but potentially very effective feature is the decision to highlight live-stream videos at the top of your Twitter’s newsfeeds.

This new feature means that live-streaming is going to be able to become much more popular on the platform. If when a live-stream is live it is placed at the top of the newsfeed of everyone who follows the account, the likelihood of people clicking it increases exponentially.

Read our ultimate guide to live-streaming

If you are going to make an announcement or have some important breaking news, an interview, an exclusive, anything! Live-streaming is an excellent way of doing this and with this new feature being added to Twitter, this could be the platform for your next stream!

Audio Streaming:

Podcast popularity is growing rapidly and the easy to access format makes it perfect for people that have little free time. Twitter have noticed this and don’t want to miss out on the action, they, therefore, have added a new audio-only streaming service.

We aren’t sure exactly what kind of success this is going to get as it is still in a trial phase however the idea is simple but effective, how many people listen to the radio on a morning and get frustrated by the adverts. This new feature could be something that draws in an audience that wouldn’t usually be attracted to the formatting of Twitter and this helps everyone on the platform.

Pinterest 

250 Million Users:

This is why it doesn’t surprise us at all the app recently surpassed 250 million users and is actually  growing at a faster rate than Snapchat and Twitter. If you don’t know what all the fuss is about it might be time for you to venture to Pinterest and see how the app works.

Shop the look:

You might be feeling a little bit of deja vu with this update as the ‘shop the look’ feature and Instagram’s clothing tagging are very similar. However, Pinterest already has a lot of experience in this kind of field and therefore we feel that there may slightly edge it, currently.

The reason that we like this feature is the steps you can make along the way. First, it prompts users to view the outfit in individual photos as opposed to, on somebody in an image. Following on from this is then prompts you to make the purchase. This not so in your face attitude is a nice way of dealing with customers and showing that you are putting their enjoyment before your conversions.

YouTube 

Vertical Ads:

YouTube always seemed to be untouchable, like it would never go away, but now as video content appears to spread to more platforms YouTube need to make changes to ensure they stay relevant.

With this new update, YouTube has acknowledged that user viewing habits are changing and people tend to watch YouTube videos without actually rotating their screen. This has brought about a new form of Ad that is shown vertically, suiting mobile usage much better.

If one of the reasons you have been staying away from using YouTube advertisements is because of the landscape format. This could be something that interests and benefits you in the future.

Snapchat 

E-commerce Update:

Snapchat has brought out their own version of the Instagram clothing tag and the Pinterest ‘shop the look’ feature. However, Snapchat introduces theirs in a partnership with Amazon. The way that the software works appears to run really smoothly and looks like a very interesting feature.

As shown in this image you hold down on an item and it brings you to the Amazon page where you can complete the purchase in a matter of minutes, which is really quite impressive. These features whether they are on Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest or anything are really quite cool and are going to bring around a new type of shopping that is incredibly easy.

Collection Like Ads.

This next feature is something new to Snapchat, but a concept we have seen before. Snapchat introduces ‘collection’ type Ads, similar to those that we have seen on Facebook.

The reason that these Ads are so successful is that it takes the audience into a shopping like an experience, they almost forget that they were on another platform and become engrossed in the shopping they are doing.

To make this even better, when you select the item from the scrollable bar along the bottom the app takes you straight to a place that you can purchase it. All three of these shopping features integrated into the social media platforms are huge improvements for e-commerce and will be great for developing your company if using ads effectively.

With a lot of focus on E-commerce in this month’s updates, we look forward to next month where we will give you October 2018 Monthly update to see what can work for you!

We know that it is difficult to keep up with all of the latest updates that come out for all of the social media platforms each month and that’s why we want to give you monthly updates that we think will benefit you and your business.

Facebook

Facebook is in a real transitioning period at the minute after the very public issues that they had with their privacy settings, this has resulted in a whole bunch of changes and therefore this months post focuses heavily on the updates that Facebook has provided us with over the last month.

As we have already mentioned there has been a lot of updates to Facebook over the last month that you will want to know about, a lot of these updates have cool features that you can use to either promote your brand or to get the most out of your business’ Facebook and these are the kinds of updates we are going to focus on, the ones that can benefit you.

Video.

Video advertising is something that we promote quite heavily here as we have seen the shift in focus of advertising strategies for social media heading over to video advertising. You might be sick of reading this as the budget that you have for advertising doesn’t usually cover video, well then this update is for you.

Facebook has introduced a new feature that enables you to be able to turn still images into simple, but attractive, video that could help you when developing an advertising campaign enormously.

Here are your three options for video creation:

1. Video Creation Kit

To access this feature all you have to do is simple; go to Ads Manager, select ‘single video’ or ‘slideshow’ and then click Templates. This will then give you a drop down of 4 different templates that you can choose from, all of which have been targeted for different reasons to help promote your business.

Promote a Product (6 Seconds): Promote one specific product to help drive the products sales up.

Sell Multiple Products (6 Seconds): Show the selection of quality goods you have an offer, here you can highlight a special offer to drive sales.

Show Product Benefit (15 Seconds): Highlight the different features of your goods, explain how to use your product or use previous customers to promote a case study.

Drive Product Discovery (15 Seconds): Reach as many people and show the individuality of your business.

After selecting the images and text that you want to use the video creation kit will do the rest, this now gives you the ability to use moving image in your future advertising campaigns which will undoubtedly make you stand out from the crowd.

2. Video Cropping 

The second new feature available which is equally as beneficial as it could save you a lot of time and frustration is the video cropping tool. We understand how frustrating it is to have a video that you want to post somewhere but the dimensions of the video don’t fit well with the platform you are trying to post it to, well Facebook is here to help with that. You can now crop your video to, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16, this means that you will have no problem when trying to use your videos across a number of platforms, on stories, whatever it is you want to do you can make it look very professional as it is the size that you are desiring. Where this feature will be most effective will be stories, this gives you the ability to reuse videos on stories from previous Ad campaigns but also have a little bit less to worry about when planning your campaigns themselves, however always remember that this isn’t going to be perfect and if you can get it right the first time then it’s better to not need these features at all.

3. Simple Video Tools

Another addition to Facebooks new video elements is a mobile-focused, video creation tool for Ads. When you are creating your Ad you will now see ‘Animate’ next to the images that you have selected, this then takes you to the next step of creating the animation. At this point you choose; background colours, framing, images, text and then Facebook creates you essentially an animated slideshow.

Very simple to do but could be that little thing that you need to stand out from the rest.

Group Admins Can Now Pin Comments. 

Facebook has noticed that people are moving away from public sharing but aren’t necessarily leaving the site, maybe just taking their public sharing to other social media platforms. While people are sharing less there is still over a billion users that are engaged in groups this is why they are still rolling out good quality updates with regards to groups, they hope that this will keep their users happy and it should!

A small but highly effective new feature of Facebook groups is that admins can now pin a comment to the top of the comments section on their posts. The two most effective ways that we can see this being used;

1. With Customers – if you have a group that includes your customers you can then promote their comments to the top of the feed. This could be something of really high praise, an example of someone using it or a question that a lot of people might have been asking. Whatever it is it allows you to address a customer comment directly, which is always good for customer service, but also a free advertisement from a real-life person that everyone who clicks on the post will see.

2. With Your Employees: This is more of a creative thinking tool when for the benefits of your employees. If for example, you are in a closed group with people you work with and are trying to brainstorm a new idea, by pinning the objective or an idea that you want to develop on from the top it keeps the most creative of ideas at the surface for your workforce.

Facebook Looks to Stamp Out Ad Discrimination.

Ad manager has an absolutely enormous amount of targeting options, however, while a lot of people do use these legitimately to reach out to target people who they think will be interested in their company it can also be used negatively. This is the reason why Facebook has decided to pull 5,000 Ad Targeting options in an attempt to stamp out discrimination.

We support this decision as it is too easy for people to be targeted with the current format, but this won’t make a difference to your advertising campaigns as they still have an abundance of different ways to edit your campaign to target the right audience.

Pinterest. 

The next platform we are going to look at is Pinterest, a platform that doesn’t get covered quite as regularly as some of the bigger platforms, however, the new updates added to Pinterest are both hugely beneficial for advertisers and users.

Pinterest Increases Engagement. 

People are always focusing on the algorithm shifts of each platform and are usually focusing on how to get their content to the top of everyone’s feed, however, this update is hugely beneficial for your average user as it is to do with the recommended ‘pin’. Pinterest works by trying to show you images that it thinks that you will like based on what you have viewed in the past, people you follow and pins that you are viewing. This update specifically focuses on the ‘related pin’ feature a quote from Pinterest: 

“The benefit of our approach is that by borrowing information from nearby nodes/Pins the resulting embedding of a node becomes more accurate and more robust. For example, a bed rail Pin might look like a garden fence, but gates and beds are rarely adjacent in the graph. Our model relies on this graph information to provide the context and allows us to disambiguate Pins that are (visually) similar, but semantically different.”

This best explains the update, where before the algorithm used images that looked similar they are now showing images that actually are similar (it isn’t as complicated as it sounds). The best way to show the success of the update is to highlight that there has been an improvement of 30% relative improvement in user engagement rate and 25% increase on impressions from the platforms ‘shop the look’ product. This stat is especially impressive when you take note of the fact that people go to Pinterest to buy things, this new update is not only creating a friendlier user interface but also broadening business potential as it is connecting you with the people who want to buy your goods. Overall an excellent update by Pinterest which will help develop the app’s popularity.

Full-Screen Ads. 

Having had a test period of the ad format Pinterest are now ready to roll out the max width ad format to advertisers globally.

While ‘max-width’ might sound a little bit over the top to someone who doesn’t regularly use Pinterest the reason that this will develop into a really successful feature is that things don’t tend to really be full screen on Pinterest. The purpose of the platform is to create your own digital ‘pinboard’ and therefore there is usually a lot of images on the screen, this means that should your full-screen Ad come onto the page it is difficult for audiences to not notice the advert. If you are an artistic company or have an Ad that will appeal to the average Pinterest user then we recommend using this new Ad feature as everything about it suggests it will be good for conversion rates as the app itself has a higher potential of monetizing you Ads than some of the other social media platforms.

Pinterest has released a set of recommendations to include in your advertisement:

– Videos should include a logo and strong branding, ideally visible in the first few seconds. People will engage even more if products are integrated into the video.

– Instructional videos to generate longer watch times and people save them more.

– Keep your videos short, simple and focused on a key idea or message. 6-20 seconds is the sweet spot.

Is Pinterest advertising something that you had considered previously or as one of the more unknown apps has it gone underneath your radar as we feel that this advertising platform could be a great new feature for businesses!

LinkedIn

Platform reaches 575,000,000+ members. 

Linked in has reached a milestone after hitting 575 million members also supplying a map of the breakdown of where all of their users are based.

This shows the LinkedIn is still growing and still something that you should be updating and connecting to new people constantly, this business profile can often be the first part of your business that people come across and therefore ensure that you keep it up to date and full of important information.

It has taken the platform 16 months to get from 500 million to 575 million which shows it is still growing at a reasonable rate, should you not be part of this platform yet then we recommend that it is something you sign up for, because as shown it can connect you to businesses and potential clients from all over the world.

Whatsapp

Introduction of Group Calls. 

The messaging App has just had a new update which allows for group calls both with or without video. This new feature will allow your team to have conference calls or even meetings via video in a very easy to use format.

To make a group call you simply call one person and then after that click the ‘add participant’ button. This will then allow you to add more people to your call (Up to 4).

As WhatsApp has 1.3bn active users, this could compete with the likes of FaceTime and Messenger. It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

That’s it for our Social Media round up this month, we hope you enjoyed it! We’ll see you same time next month!