It’s been quite hot in the United States this past week! Here are some cool and important new social media updates you should know about!
Instagram’s test of removing like counts is getting closer to becoming a real thing globally as it is being expanded to more nations! Last week, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand had like counts removed. This is on top of like counts already removed from those living in Canada.
Instagram is looking at removing like counts as a way to bring more positivity and health to the app as many look at the competition of likes in an unhealthy way. This change will impact brands and influencers who rely on “like counts” as a measure of “social proof”. This will be important to watch because it will change marketing on Instagram from a popularity metric based on public “Likes” to one based on engagement (comments) and true influence via impact.
Instagram is making changes to their policy for disabling accounts. Before it was only based on the percentage of violating content, now they are adding that they will also remove accounts with a certain number of violations within a certain period of time.
Instagram is trying to keep the platform clean and it’s important to know the rules! Most marketers should not have any problems with this but it’s good to know.
You will be able to appeal deleted content, but as a business owner you will have faster access to appeal. Just remember if your content knowingly violates Instagram’s policies, don’t expect it to come back with an appeal.
Starting August 19th, Facebook’s mobile News Feed ads “will be compressed in order to match the look and feel of the new Facebook Design earlier this year.” This change aligns with the app redesign unveiled at its F8 conference at the beginning of the year, as well as, creating a more uniform presentation across Instagram and Facebook.
The two major changes that will be coming are:
These are important changes to be aware of as it can affect what your target audience sees. Adapting your ad text and visuals to these changes will be crucial as a large majority of Facebook users view content on their mobile device.
Due to the criticisms of Facebook’s ad tool and lack of transparency over the last year with a UK lawsuit, Facebook recently rolled out a new anti-scam ad reporting process in the UK as a part of their settlement of the lawsuit.
This new feature is not terribly different than other anti-scam features available elsewhere; however, it will provide users with an additional way for users to submit feedback on any ads they see as scammy in their feeds with an option to ‘send a detailed scam report.’ When selected users can add specific details and a new specifically trained team will review the ad.
Again, not something that should impact the vast majority of marketers but you want to keep up on the details.
Pinterest now allows you to add video directly to their platform using Pinterest video tools! Yes, you will begin to see a video tab on business profiles where you can view featured videos.
Before you could pin YouTube videos directly on Pinterest and with the addition of this new tool, people will now be able to upload their videos directly to Pinterest. This will likely expand the content being shared on Pinterest and continue to make it a top social media platform as video continues to become the more popular form of content to share. We’ll need to watch and see if they do what Facebook did and get precedence in search and display to their own video over YouTube videos!
That’s a wrap this time around on social media updates. We’ll keep you posted if Instagram does indeed remove the “Like” count from videos.
