It’s been a very busy week in the world of social media! Take a look at the Social Media News and what’s happening with each platform…
Exploring Collaboration
In a bid to encourage yet more video content on the platform, Facebook is looking to extend the functionality of Facebook Reels by encouraging collaborations between creators. As part of the posting process, the aim is to ‘invite collaborators’ to share credit with any other co-creators of the content.
You may have already spotted a similar concept on Instagram where users can collaborate with one another and share one post under both accounts. This has been great in particular for influencer marketing and close collaborations, offering exposure to both relevant accounts to followers of either account and extending the reach of the ideal audiences.
Saying Goodbye to Long Form?
By April 2023, Facebook ‘Instant Articles’ will no longer be available as meta takes steps to move away from long-form content.
On top of this, Meta also recently announced plans to cut funding agreements with US publishers, as well as getting rid of the ‘Bulletin’, a newsletter platform for journalists and other content writers.
Meta have explained how the platform is currently “not being utilised to its full potential”. A spokesperson further explained; “Currently less than 3% of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed posts with links to news articles. And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences,”
With a more video-focused generation of social media users, quick, accessible, and engaging content is favoured and championed seemingly across the board and doesn’t appear to be a short-lived trend.
Experimenting with Call to Action
As marketers, we love a call to action! Guiding customers, clients, and other users to where we want them to go allows us to streamline our strategies and encourage immediate action. So we’re pleased to see more direct opportunities potentially coming to Twitter profiles.
The new ‘Link Spotlight’ feature is said to be in the works. Accounts will be able to add variable Call to Action buttons which will appear on profiles, just above tweets. The concept is essentially providing URLs but with direct labels, such as ‘book an appointment’ or ‘watch now’.
In the testing phase, the option is only available to US-based professional accounts and only 34 domains are available as final destinations.
There is exciting social media news for Instagram creatives as the platform looks to encourage more creators onto the app with some fun new features.
Encouraging Creators
As we’ve already discovered, Meta’s plans to delve into more video content promotion is a high priority for the platform, but the next step is encouraging users to keep on creating.
So in order to encourage organic content from Instagram users and creatives, Instagram are hoping to finish developing ‘achievements’ as a reward or incentive to keep users posting. The rewards will be things such as ‘trendsetter’ or ‘creative streak’.
By rewarding creatives, this could help Instagram to identify high-performing creators for the Reels Play Bonus Scheme. And of course, probably more than anything else, it will encourage users to use their platform for video content over competitors like TikTok and scroll below to see TikTok social media news for this week.
The Instagram Time Machine
Following their announcement this week, Instagram has put us in a bit of a time warp by announcing the testing of allowing users to add music to profiles within the app.
We’re yet to find out official details and if the song will autoplay. But it’s definitely throwing us right back to the MySpace era! Can you remember what song you had on your MySpace profile?
TikTok
Live Stream Restrictions
In an attempt to improve user safety, especially for younger users who are typically drawn to the app, from November 23rd, TikTok are adding an age restriction whereby only users who are 18+ can actually host a livestream.
There will also be an option for ‘adults only’ filters for livestream. This doesn’t mean sexually explicit content will be available on the app (if that’s where your mind went to!), it’s more like colourful language and mature or potentially triggering topics. These filtered videos will not automatically feature on underage users ‘For You’ page.
Building Links
While having Linktree links on the app isn’t a new feature, the official partnership between Linktree and TikTok certainly is! The collaboration between the two platforms allows creators to log into TikTok via Linktree with TikTok Profile Kits.
According to Linktree, the platform already sees more than 5 million views from Linktree profiles every day, so the alliance between the two seems to be a no-brainer. Within a profile, up to six videos can be displayed and these can be individually selected by creators; be it latest or most popular. The videos can still be played within the Linktree app – offering a more seamless experience for Linktree users and continued engagement for TikTok with is more great social media news for TikTok as it continues to grow.
Everyone Can Be a DJ
TikTok are collaborating with Max Martin, and what they call “one of the greatest songwriting teams in history” to up the sound game within the app. Coming from musical beginnings, its great to see TikTok championing its experience with sound through its new proposed ‘StemDrop’ remixing feature.
With these ‘Music Stems’, creators can take elements of songs and customising, remixing and recreating new versions of songs within the app. It’s a new way to engage with music and potentially offer engaging promotional opportunities to singers or songwriters who are sharing new music.
For creatives, it’s an exciting feature that will open new opportunities for content as well as becoming a hub for existing and upcoming undiscovered talents – hopefully inspiring a new generation of creatives at all levels!
YouTube
Unique Handles for Channels
YouTube have this week announced the launch of ‘YouTube Handles’ – expected to begin rolling out in the coming weeks. Similar to most other social media platforms, YouTube is introducing unique channel handles in what they describe as a way for the YouTube community to find and connect with one another.
The move will ultimately provide more and better visibility for YouTube channels, with the unique names creating transparency around channels. It will also mean better communication throughout the platform as users can tag and mention other channels in posts, comments, descriptions and more.
YouTube will be reserving usernames for channels with personalised URLs, but these can be changed. They have announced that any channels without a chosen handle will be auto assigned by 14th November 2022. However, these can again be changed by signing into YouTube Studio moving forward.
New Music Partnerships
A huge collaboration between Pinterest and Warner Music Group to bring a new kind of experience to the platform. Boards and ideas can now be brought to life with another level of interactivity as users can now add music from a range of popular tracks to accompany their content.
But it doesn’t stop there! Pinterest is also looking to expand the selection of royalty-free music by partnering with 7Digital. Users will be able to locate the tracks through searches for artists, track names and keyword searches.
Major Updates in Ads Manager
For businesses using or wanting to use Reddit’s advertisement services, there are some great additions to the Ads Manager tool to encourage new campaigns and help to build effective audiences. They have even added over 1000 new communities that advertisers can target directly within the platform, better specifying interests.
There will also be some new useful updates within the platform for a better all-round advertising experience for marketers, including:
- Audience Manager – to create and edit target audiences
- Editable ads – to update existing ads
- Redesigned performance estimate tool – including impressions, reach and click throughs
- Post library, to store existing creative content in one place
Due to the smaller base of clients within the platforms, Reddit will offer readily available (human!) support services within the Ads Manager through a live chat feature where help and advice for any ad campaign queries can be found. Reddit also has an option to integrate a pixel for more accurate data tracking and is also looking to provide further assistance for this.
Conclusion
So that concludes this week’s social media news. There is continuous movement and development across the platforms as they continue to battle to stay on top. We’ll be back soon for more updates!