Lately in Social Media – 12/22/16
- Users can share live video without having to create a Periscope account first. Like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is quickly becoming a destination for live video events, and making this feature more prominent also enhances Twitter’s growth as a breaking news source. If you’re already using Periscope on Twitter, consider making the switch to Twitter proper because with this integration, it looks like Periscope might become obsolete before too long. Get more detailed instructions on how to go live here.
- Without much fanfare, Twitter changed their search results from listing in chronological order to listing by relevance, so that tweets with higher engagement will rank more prominently in the results. Twitter hopes this change will better display tweets that users are most likely to engage with, and it also means that marketers could get more exposure and longer life out of their best tweets. Just one more incentive to focus on creating tweets that are highly engaging from the start.
- After February 2017, Twitter will no longer allow advertisers to create lead generation campaigns or cards. It’s an option that lots of advertisers used to grow their email lists, but apparently it wasn’t popular enough to keep around. Consider moving those campaigns to Facebook or LinkedIn instead.
- Retweeting may become a thing of the past, as some users spied Twitter experimenting with a new sharing icon in the retweet button’s place. Twitter says wants to see if this change impacts how users interact with it, and if more universally familiar icons enhance the learning curve for new users. If the change sticks and all goes well, the new icon might encourage users to share more of your marketing tweets.
Users are gaining more options to block the advertising they see. While anyone can update their ad preferences to update their interests, Facebook is now enabling users to block ads about entire subjects. Currently, the two subjects you can block are “alcohol” and “parenting,” following the notion that these subjects could be particularly painful for some users to see in their feeds. Advertisers might lose some of their reach down the road as the list of block-able subjects grows.- The platform is finally acknowledging it’s “fake news problem” and taking steps to reduce the number of spam stories that circulate. This shouldn’t impact marketers who aren’t producing or distributing fake news, but there’s a small possibility that Facebook’s “Informed Sharing” measure could impact regular marketers. As Facebook’s rep explains it, when people read stories and don’t share them, that could be an indication that the story is misleading in some way, and so stories that don’t receive enough shares won’t generate much reach either. Technically this already happens because of the algorithm, but this new measure might impact organic reach for marketers even further.
- If you aren’t using the Live video feature yet, Facebook REALLY wants you to. And now it’s showing users little, unobtrusive notifications when their connections or followed Pages are streaming a live video they may be interested in watching. So if/when you do go live, there’s a chance your followers will get a reminder to tune into your show.
Your regular video content may get a discoverability boost if Facebook follows through with the release of a video tab that heavily imitates the older look of Snapchat’s Discover section. Since Facebook seems to be all about innovating their video experience (or copying it from Snapchat), we’re thinking it’s only a matter of time before this feature is a reality.- Wanna do a live podcast? You’ll be able to when Facebook releases the new Live Audio feature more broadly sometime next year. Start planning your talk shows now!
- Not sure what kind of marketing value we’ll gain from being able to add background colors to our status updates, but apparently this is intended to encourage more personal sharing. Let us know if it works for you.
- Messenger is adding a lot of silly visual features lately to compete with Snapchat. Can you use them in your marketing efforts? We’re not sure yet, you be the judge.
- The platform hit 600 million users – that’s almost 10% of the world population. And the user base is still growing pretty fast. So if it’s not part of your 2017 social media marketing strategy, maybe you should reconsider because your target audience is very likely to be there.
Shoppable posts are on their way, which will look like normal posts but contain a button to “Tap to view products.” If a user taps on the button, they’ll be able to see the brand name, product name and cost of the tagged product within a text bubble over the image. Tapping on that bubble will give the user an option to visit the retailer’s site or hit “Shop Now” to make a purchase. Keep this in mind for your eCommerce strategy once it becomes available to more accounts.- Sponsored posts are now more clearly labeled with a new look, which places the “Sponsored” label underneath the profile name and adds a menu icon on the right side of the header, which contains options for hiding, learning more or sharing that content. This ought to help users distinguish between regular and advertising content, since that murkiness has been getting Instagram in hot water lately.
- Users can now save posts to view them again later, which is positive considering 60% of Instagram users discover new products and brands on the platform. This feature could be very promising for advertisers using Instagram to spread brand or product awareness: For example, a user could save a post of an outfit they like, and later view the post again to buy the clothing featured in it.
SNAPCHAT
- And if you aren’t squeamish, get some marketing inspiration from this doctor, who wore Spectacles to record a surgical procedure.
This is our last Lately in Social Media post for 2016, and we’ve had quite a flurry of activity and excitement to share here over the past year. We can’t wait to see how social media changes in the year to come, and we’ll keep you posted when it does!