It is highly important for brands to be on social media, and it goes without saying that brands and businesses should stay informed about all of the latest changes to the platforms they’re using. Each week we learn about new updates, and each update can affect your social media strategy. To save you time, we’ve rounded up the latest changes occurring to your favorite platforms here:
1. Your page’s “like” count is probably going to drop within the next few days. Facebook has rearranged the way that it counts likes and will no longer be counting likes from deactivated or memorialized Facebook accounts. While this may sound like bad news, it’s actually good news in the long run because your Facebook posts will now only reach active users. You can read more about the change in a blog post from Facebook here.
1. If your brand is using WordPress (and really, we can’t recommend this platform enough), then we have some good news for you! Twitter has just released an official WordPress plugin, so now brands can share their feed through a platform-verified plugin.
2. On the note of websites, Twitter just made it easier to share Twitter videos to any website. The platform just released an update that allows for Twitter videos to be easily embedded on all sites.
1. In a move that we think should have been expanded to all users, Instagram now allows carousel-style clickable ads on their platform. This is an awesome new functionality for advertisers on the platform, but we’re hoping it will be rolled out to all users soon.
1. Speaking of social media advertising, Pinterest is really stepping up their game. The platform has narrowed advertising targeting, making it easier to reach the audience that you want to communicate with. Pinterest is also testing animated ads as well, which we think sounds very promising.
Google+
1. What in the world is going on with Google+? The leadership of the platform was just rearranged, and with that comes some changes. Will these changes be the end of Google+ as we know it? We aren’t sure, because there hasn’t been much talk from Google about what is going on with the platform. All we know for sure is that it is being broken up into two parts: Google Streams and Photos. We’ll be keeping an eye on this change and will cover any updates that occur.
As always, the world of social media is consistently shifting, and this week is no different. If you want to stay on top of the latest social media changes (and the possible demise of Google+) then check back in each week for our social media roundup!