Lately in Social Media – 5/23/16
Are you enjoying Facebook Live streaming videos? You will soon, because it’s actually taking over the world. Next time you log into Facebook on desktop, visit the live map on the sidebar and click on a blue dot to jump in on someone’s live stream, in any of the dozens of countries where the feature is available. You know what this means for marketers going forward: Global campaigns! Marketers can seize the opportunities to give their influencers a much larger stage, encourage user generated content from everywhere, and monitor their viewers’ reactions in real time. Start planning your worldwide marketing superteam now.
Live got another big update so you can also now fast forward to the most interesting parts of live videos, judging by the reactions of viewers who already watched. If this doesn’t impact your live video viewing habits, it may change the way you approach shooting live videos (think all killer, no filler). Also, did you catch the platform’s first 3D 360 film? Just imagine the visual content possibilities once this technology goes mainstream.
After months of uncertainty and teasing, the internet rejoiced when Twitter announced that tweets would no longer count images, links and handles toward the 140 character limit. Also, if the tweet begins with a username, it’s no longer necessary to type a period (.) before the handle to ensure all your followers see the message. This means everyone can tweet a little freer now, but marketers especially can put those extra characters to use. Think: More room for mentions, images, GIFs, videos and hashtags! Twitter also stopped auto-cropping photos, a move that embraces the general consensus that tweets with visual content receive more engagement. We’ve heard before that great power comes with great responsibility, so keep crafting your tweets wisely with your intended audience in mind.
The Facebook-owned platform recently began experimenting with business profiles (yay!) and now they’re releasing screenshots of new analytics that are unsurprisingly similar to Facebook Insights. Soon marketers will be able to measure metrics such as impressions and reach, and access valuable targeting data about who and where their followers are. This data will come in extra handy for targeting ads, especially now that Instagram has enabled carousel ads for videos. Video content is only going to keep growing, both on Instagram and outside it, and several brands are running with it.
LinkedIn added new features to their Campaign Manager to make promoted posts and advertising easier to manage. The changes allow marketers to save their audience targeting as a template, restart or archive a completed campaign, and receive social responses to sponsored updates. LinkedIn’s targeting features make it easy to get your company’s message in front of specific potential clients or employees, and these additions should make the advertising processes easier and less repetitive/painful.
SNAPCHAT
A new update released this week allows users to add stickers to their photo and video messages, as well as live broadcasts. The stickers were previously only available in Chat 2.0, but now you can share them with everyone. Because we could all use more stickers. Like most updates regarding Snapchat, do with this information what you will.
TUMBLR
Last week Tumblr rolled out GIF posts, a new post type that’s built around the GIF-creation tools that Tumblr introduced last year and previously hid inside the photo post feature. So far the tool is only available on mobile, but it automatically searches through your camera roll for photo bursts or videos to GIF-ify, and now it lets you draw on your GIF and add emojis. But so far it’s only available on mobile. So it’s basically Snapchat. If your target demographic is under 25, imagine the ways you could create fun and (ir)relevant content for them to share around the platform.