Any change in features or design on social media sites can have a big impact on business. But it can be difficult to keep track of all the changes so for your convenience, here are the biggest updates in the last month:
Live streaming is the trend, and Facebook is at the helm!
The social network giant announced that their Facebook Live feature would be available for two-person broadcasts. Verified users (the ones with the blue tick mark) already have access to this change, but soon, everyone will be able to use it.
Speaking of videos, Facebook’s new app, Lifestage, lets users fill out profiles composed of video fields. This reinforces the visual profile which young folks love. It’s no wonder why Lifestage is available only to high schoolers.
Of course, Facebook has something for everyone. Parents can now create and organize photo collections of their child with the new Scrapbook feature. When you tag your kid in a photo, it will be added to a customizable scrapbook that’s shareable with family and friends.
For entrepreneurs, there’s good news, too. Facebook Carousel Ads can now support up to 10 photos and videos, a jump from the previous five. Facebook has added new features to their Dynamic Ads to drive in-store traffic for retailers. Retailers will now be able to upload their store inventory to Facebook. Once uploaded, the ad campaigns will be updated automatically to reflect the inventory and the ad viewer's location. A targeting feature has also been added to help retailers target those who are most likely to visit their brick-and-mortar locations.
Google got rid of Hangouts on Air, a service that let you broadcast one-to-many for webinars. But there’s a replacement for it, and that’s YouTube Live intended for video and live streaming.
Speaking of YouTube, YouTube's Creator Studio app has introduced actionable data insights to creator's channels. Users will now receive personalized updates when major events happen on their channel, (like spikes in views or increased engagement).
Don’t confuse this with Google Hangouts for one-to-one communication – this feature is still alive. In line with this, Google announced Allo, a new messaging app, and Duo, a video calling app.
On an unrelated (but still relevant note), Google will penalize sites with hard-to-close pop-ups by making them rank lower in search results starting in January 2017! More to come on that one.
Instagram is set to steal the crown from Snapchat with, Instagram Stories, a feature which lets users upload video clips or photo collages up to 10 seconds long. These uploads stay on the site for 24 hours; after that, they’ll disappear.
This is obviously an attempt on Instagram’s part to be more than just an image curation site. With its huge user base, it makes sense why they want people post often and be more active once they’re logged in.
Instagram is also rolling out “drafts” for accounts which is great for businesses to be able to create and plan ahead of time. Now you can create images in draft mode and then spread out the posting. It’s not scheduling but a step in the right direction.
Great pictures make for great Pinterest boards – and so do great videos. You can add YouTube videos straight onto your Pinterest and organize them in boards.
Also, if you have a blog, you’ll be thrilled to know that blogs generate the most traffic on Pinterest. People on this site are keen on finding information, and so are likely to read new blogs they find interesting.
Pinterest makes it super fast now to promote (advertise) a pin. In four quick steps, you can basically “boost” a pin to get it more exposure to a demographic for a set dollar amount. By simply adding your daily ad budget and verifying the URL, regular pins can be promoted. Pinterest also noted that brands will only pay for the promoted pin if the visitor clicks through to their website from the pin. Again, another quality business-friendly tool.
Spammers and bots have taken up more space on people’s feed, but Twitter is taking action against them with the introduction of a new filter. This helpful tool will hide spammers’ duplicate posts, bots’ activities, and trolls’ online harassment.
Your Twitter feed will be much cleaner and far less toxic, which is awesome for everyone but more so for active users with huge followings.
Twitter also loosened up restrictions on the 140 characters! No longer do photos, videos, and @ mentions count in the 140 quota. That’s huge for marketers.
Twitter now allows brands to activate a customer support setting to display support hours and it allows your account to receive direct messages even if you are not following the user. That’s a great add for many businesses.
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