August Social Media Roundup

Instagram took on Snapchat with ‘Instagram Stories’ – Almost 50% of the world’s internet users are on Instagram, a figure which has more than doubled since the same time in 2013. It is no surprise, therefore, that the platform is continually updated and added to. The latest inclusion is Instagram Stories, a new feature that allows users to send out a stream of photos and videos that live for 24 hours before expiring. This mirrors Snapchat’s entire functionality, yet in a way that is simpler and more intuitive to use. The new feature adds more intimacy to Instagram’s vast community, allowing friends, brands and influencers to communicate events from their daily lives, and providing another dimension to filtered photography without affecting users’ feeds in any way. This is not the first time Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) has tried to imitate Snapchat. It recently acquired face filter app MSQRD and released a Snapchat-like app two years ago – Slingshot, which didn’t flourish.

LinkedIn announced it will allow users to edit updates. Made a typo in a LinkedIn update you’ve posted? It’s now easy to resolve, as LinkedIn announced it’s letting people edit updates. Although there’s one catch – this can only be done via mobile. The ‘Edit update’ option now sits between ‘Share via…’ and ‘Delete’. It’s only possible to edit the text itself, which won’t affect the post’s distribution or change any of the photos or articles attached to it. This move means that users can now edit their posts on most of the main social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest. There’s only one major platform left to make this move….

Research showed that 8 in 10 consumers contact customer service online – A new report from Startek, a business process outsourcing provider, looked at how social media and mobile are affecting consumer engagement. The report found that approximately 80% of respondents use social media, email or chat to contact companies’ customer service departments. In addition, 77% said that it’s now easy to contact companies digitally, and most reported having positive customer service experiences through social media. This shows the huge shift away from phoning customer service teams, as well as the huge importance for brands with customer service teams to have – and maintain – a good social media presence.

Twitter introduced Custom Stickers – After introducing stickers (graphics that users can stick onto their visuals) earlier this year, Twitter has announced that it will now allow brands to create and promote custom stickers. Stickers act as virtual hashtags, meaning that any images that include your brand’s sticker can be discovered by other users, helping brands keep track of engagement. This move follows the release of Twitter’s branded emojis last year, which proved successful. Twitter may be emulating Snapchat, which introduced stickers first and monetises photos by allowing brands to create special filters. Facebook has also allowed stickers on photos, although without any involvement from brands.

Journalists said publishing and promoting content are the most important uses for social media – A white paper from Cision, looking at journalists’ use of social media in 2016, found that journalists deem publishing and promoting the most important uses for social media. Nearly two-thirds of respondents rated social media as “very important” in publishing and promotions, followed by 58% who said it was also of high importance for interacting with audiences. Monitoring other media and networking are two other primary uses of social networks. Other findings from the report showed that most participants use at least three different social media platforms for work, with the top two being Facebook and Twitter. The majority of journalists believe social media to have fundamentally changed their role as journalists, allowing them to be more engaged with their audiences. In fact, about half of the US journalists surveyed felt they could not carry out their work without social media. However, despite feeling more engaged, few journalists actually make use of user-generated content on a regular basis.

Pinterest introduced Promoted Videos – Pinterest announced that it’s launching video adverts to managed partners in the UK and the US. Its new Promoted Videos will also contain featured pins – encouraging users to take action after they watch. Having conducted tests with 12 partners, during which the platform found that video ads were four times more memorable than adverts without videos, it is now rolling the service out further. This functionality follows the finding that Pinterest has seen 60% more videos posted to its network over the past year, and the general online trend for increasing amounts of video content.

Twitter unveiled new ‘Instant Unlock Cards’ – Twitter introduced another new tool, available to all advertisers. The ‘Instant Unlock Card’ encourages users to tweet about a company or brand to receive extra content or special rewards. These cards use ‘conversational ads’ (promoted posts that include customised hashtags and a call-to-action button so that users can post a tweet that is pre-written by the brand publishing the ad) to encourage users to tweet a particular message. Twitter has said that, during a beta test, the Cards resulted in an average earned media rate of 34%: for every 100 paid impressions, companies achieved 34 non-paid impressions. The new Instant Unlock Cards mean that when a user posts a tweet using a brand’s conversational ad, a exclusive piece of content is unlocked for them. This new feature is accompanied by advanced analytics, so that advertisers can keep a close eye on the effects of their paid promotion.

Facebook introduced a new video metric to give publishers better insights – Facebook announced new video metrics, which allow publishers to better understand the audience and engagement of their Facebook videos. These metrics, in Page Insights and Video Library, will paint a clearer picture of who’s watching videos, how viewers are engaging with live streams, and how sharing contributes to a video’s distribution. This, in turn, gives publishers better data for them to create videos that both foster stronger relationships with their viewers and engage with new audiences. These new in-depth analytics will show publishers – minute-by-minute – the age, gender and top geographic locations of their videos’ viewers. Not only this, but they will be able to make demographic comparisons between a particular video and a typical video hosted on their Page. Likewise, it will be possible to see detailed breakdowns of live broadcasts, including when people reacted to, commented on, or shared a particular video.

Twitter Moments announced it is opening to thousands of businesses – Twitter confirmed that it is opening up Moments, the platform’s live stories portal, to thousands more brands and influencers – and intends to make it available to all Twitter users in the next few months. Moments, which was introduced last October, allows users to follow certain events (e.g. the Olympics) through a collection of tweets, images and videos that are sourced from the social network. Up until this point, the capability was entirely curated by Twitter alongside a select group of partners (including Buzzfeed, NASA, Vogue and The New York Times). Opening Moments up to all users will only help Twitter gain a competitive edge: the content available will be diverse and moulded to each individual user; it will position the platform as more of a real-time news source than ever before; and it will place Twitter on more of a level playing field with Snapchat and Instagram in terms of user-generated content and engagement – it is a portal both for publishers’ content and posts by regular users, and is similar to a hybrid of Snapchat’s Live Stories and Discover.

LinkedIn developed native video capability – LinkedIn now allows certain users to upload video straight to the site. The social network has released an iOS app called ‘Record’ that allows users to publish 30-second video clips in response to topics that are curated by the platform’s editorial team, or even to start their own. This is initially being made available to just over 500 influencers, but could be introduced to more users over time. These videos can be shared with others, but not embedded yet; it is also not yet possible to thread replies and therefore link together different influencers’ clips. Senior product manager Jasper Sherman-Presser has described this development as “like diving into a multiple-minute panel”. They plan to move this feature inside the core social network rather than utilising a separate app. Additionally, LinkedIn will not make use of an algorithm to prioritise video content, as Facebook does.

Pinterest announced it’s focusing on articles by partnering with Instapaper – Pinterest, the visual social network with more than 100 million active users, has acquired the team and technology of Instapaper (the article-saving app). Two of the three-strong Instapaper team will join Pinterest to work on both apps, with the aim being that the fusion of technologies will help serve users better article recommendations. Instapaper’s technology analyses and predicts readers’ behaviours and Pinterest intends to make the most of this, making it easier to save and discover content on any device.

Facebook improved its slideshow capability – Facebook introduced some new features to Slideshow, which was launched on both Facebook and Instagram in October 2015 to let advertisers create videos from a set of photos or an existing video. It has been expanded to include new features as well as a new tool, requested by advertisers in emerging and high-growth markets, allowing them to turn existing video assets into a slideshow that will play on lower connection speeds. Now, advertisers can add text, custom colours and music – this is currently only stock music, but soon advertisers will be able to upload their own audio tracks. They will also be able to use assets from Facebook’s stock image database to create slideshows even without their own visuals. Advertisers will be able to create slideshows on-the-go on their mobile devices with just a few clicks, and the new tool gives them the option to publish videos to users on every connection speed, including 2G targeting for those on low-bandwitch connections.

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