Social Media Updates through March 28th
Spring is officially here and April is right around the corner, that means more social media updates! This time around, not too many to take note of but let’s dive into the social media updates worth noting….
Instagram In-App Checkout
Instagram is rolling out Instagram in-app checkout.
Currently, Instagram is only working with some of the top brands and hopefully, it will roll out to everyone soon! In-app checkout simplifies the checkout process. As your followers scroll through their feed, watch their stories, or view it through Explore you can add checkout tags on products and your followers can purchase the items right there without getting redirected to your website.
Why It Matters
This is great news! Saving time and possibly helping your business get more sales, the Instagram in-app checkout is another consistent example of Instagram adding more and more eCommerce opportunities on the platform. Even though it may seem that traffic not going directly to your site could result in fewer sales and less traffic, Instagram’s in-app checkout process gives customers the ability to “track checkout tags from a new ‘orders’ tab” or opt-in to your email newsletter during checkout.
I’m excited to ‘check-out’ this new feature! How about you?
Metric Updates for Facebook Ads
Facebook has made 3 major changes to Facebook Ad metrics. The first is Facebook changed the relevance score to encompass three specific areas; quality ranking, engagement rate ranking, and conversion rate ranking.
The quality ranking looks at your ad’s quality compared to other competitors ads with the same audience. Engagement rate ranking determines you expected engagement rate and compares it to other ads with the same audience. Lastly, the conversion rate ranking compares your ad’s expected conversion rate to other ads with “the same optimization goal and competed for the same audience.”
The second update Facebook is making to their ad metrics is changing how they calculate potential reach. Currently, Facebook uses the total number of active monthly users to calculate the potential reach, but they will be updating it to only include people in potential reach who have seen a Facebook ad in the past 30 days.
The last way Facebook is updating the Facebook ad metrics will be by removing metrics that are not often used and will have a new or improved metric to replace it. To see the full list you can check it out here.
These changes will take effect on April 30.
Why It Matters
This is more of an “FYI”. Like it or not, these changes are coming so be prepared and see if this impacts any monthly reports you normally do for clients.
Google+
It’s the end! Just a reminder that on April 2, 2019, the consumer version of Google+ will officially be shut down. No more “social network” on Google.
Why It Matters
Google+ never really took off and reached a peak about 3 years ago. I’ll miss it for quick Google indexing of web pages into Google Search! That’s about all I’ll miss it for. It was an SEO tool for the last few years and now I have to find another means to quickly get a new web page or blog post indexed by Google.
It has been a slower time of updates but if you enjoy these updates and want to get more in-person, you can catch me talking about Social Media Lead Generation LIVE at these two events:
Social Media Camp, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on April 25-26 (largest social media conference in Canada!)
Social Media Week Lima, Lima, OH, in June (largest social media conference in the Midwest!)
Come join me and other great speakers at these fine events!
Also, in case this is of interest, I have a new ebook out on how to get started and maximize your efforts on Instagram. Find it here.
