To better serve their users and expand their feature suites, the world’s most widely-accepted social media platforms have rolled out compelling additions in recent months, some of which both delight and annoy. Big Drop’s Senior Director, James Weiss, stated the following:
At its core, marketing doesn’t change – ways to market do. And, if ever there were a trend marketers could rely on, it’s never underestimating the creativity of social media platforms to empower their users further and help them best leverage their communities and reimagine their approaches to communication. Whether impressed, intrigued, or frankly, feeling uneasy by the updates these platforms are deploying, you just can’t argue with how seriously these platforms will always double-down on their technological capabilities to effectively replace traditional marketing methods. Stay tuned, marketers – you’re going to need to.”
Keeping up with all of the new changes can be difficult, but understanding what new tools have been introduced will help your digital marketing strategy stay on track.
Here is a consolidated list of social media platforms and their updates:
LinkedIn is a popular social media platform for professionals in all fields. LinkedIn is introducing tailored solutions whether you’re a B2B marketer or a sales professional, including:
- B2B Edge, part of LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions’ B2B Institute, is a new consultancy service that leverages both LinkedIn’s data assets and think tank to help maximize performance branding efforts.
- LinkedIn Business Manager is a new platform that offers management of people, accounts, Pages, and the businesses you work with in one place, making large-scale marketing and campaign optimization easier.
- All LinkedIn Marketing APIs now have a set of content APIs and versioning to help them build faster and manage changes more predictably.
LinkedIn launched Creator Mode last year, and since then, more than 5.5 million people around the world have used it to establish their voice, find new opportunities, and grow an engaged audience. The number of followers of people who have turned on creator mode has increased by nearly half since it was introduced. LinkedIn recently announced the addition of more tools and features to empower creators, owing to the success of Creator Mode, such as:
New Creator Analytics: Creators can now see what’s working and where they can improve their content strategy, from total impressions to engagement statistics. In the coming months, LinkedIn will release additional insights and analytics to enhance these new data set.
New Content Alerts: Followers will now be able to see every new post. By clicking the “subscription bell” at the top of your profile, audiences can be notified anytime a new post is published.
Feature Your Newsletter: Last year, LinkedIn made it easier to publish newsletters; since then, the number of newsletters published on LinkedIn has increased by 625 percent, and the number of newsletter subscriptions has increased by 89 percent around the world. This can now be done in the featured section of your profile, allowing audiences to quickly find and subscribe to the most recent issue.
As one of the biggest social media platforms, Facebook’s commitment to constantly evolving its features has posed challenges for marketers in the past. Here’s the latest enhancement that sure is exciting:
Send Marketing Messages: Inbox is a useful feature since it collects all messages from customers via Messenger, Instagram Direct, and website chat. Meta recently announced a new option that will allow users to send promotional messages to customers who opt-in, and the Suite will be constantly updated with new features. Customers can, for example, sign up to receive notifications about new product announcements, discounts, and other offers. Small businesses can re-engage their customers and build a strong, loyal base with this new feature.
With new features released seemingly every week, here are a few of the most important, and recent, ones:
Reels Features: Users can now create videos on Reels that are 90 seconds long. Additionally, they can now import their audio into Reels, allowing them to record anything and use it as their soundtrack in the video. Reels also now have quizzes, emoji sliders, and poll stickers, making them more interactive like Stories.
Support Amber Alerts on Instagram: Instagram is launching Amber Alerts through a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. An Amber Alert will appear if a user is in an area where a child has gone missing. The Alert includes:
- A photo of the missing child
- Details about the missing child
- Contact details to report any information about the child
Quote Request on Instagram: Meta announced at their recent Conversations event that they are currently testing the ‘Quote request’ feature, which will allow businesses to add a ‘Get Quote’ button to their Instagram profile. In addition, the ‘Get A Quote’ sticker will be available in Instagram stories, allowing users to quickly request a quote for a product or service that a brand is promoting on their account. Users will be able to include custom questions in their Instagram Direct messages to ask customers before converting. With this feature, Instagram is expanding its lead generation and customer acquisition tools.
Here are a few ways Twitter is exploring ways to take its experience to the next level:
Communities: Twitter has been working on several features to make it easier for users to manage and customize Communities. Themes, banners, rules, and whether the Community is open or invite-only are all now editable by Community admins.
DMs: A lot of work has gone into making the scrolling experience in DMs better. Scrolling through historical information should be a lot easier now, and the dialogue will always stay pinned to the bottom when necessary.
Super Follows: The ability to compose exclusive Tweets for your Super Followers is now available to all creators.
Twitter Blue: Twitter Blue is an opt-in, monthly paid subscription that gives you access to special tools to let users tailor their Twitter experiences. It’s already available in a few regions, and features include: undo Tweet, top articles, reader mode, ad-free articles, and Bookmark folders, in addition to sign-up and subscription management.
Tweets: New Tweets will be grouped beneath a new Tweets bar as they arrive on timelines. This allows you to keep your place while browsing and access new content when you’re ready. If your browser supports location services, you may now add a location to your Tweets using the Tweet composer on the web.
YouTube
With updates for both creators and viewers, YouTube knows how to enhance user experience to keep its audiences engaged.
Privacy Updates: Parents can specify a special content setting for supervised accounts to prevent complete access to movies and music that can be searched and played by children under the age of 13. They may also choose which features, default account settings, and adverts their children can view. These supervised accounts can now utilize the video-sharing platform as an app or through a web browser on compatible smart TVs and other devices.
Introducing Shorts: With attention spans dwindling, users prefer to watch shorter video content Whether it’s Instagram Reels or TikTok, the need for micro-video content is growing every day. YouTube, too, has opted to incorporate this into their platform in the form of ‘Shorts’ in 2020. YouTube Shorts has had a lot of success, according to its official blog, with 5 trillion views.
Improving YouTube Studio Editor: YouTube’s Studio Editor feature was updated in February with some optimizations to help video content creators even more. Video thumbnails, end screens, audio tracks, and info cards can now be easily added to videos. Creators can also crop and blur videos to their liking. The goal of this improvement is to make the video editing process for each YouTube channel more efficient.
Empowering Subtitle Editors: “Subtitle Editor is a new channel permission in YouTube Studio that allows creators to delegate subtitle creation on their channel to others,” according to YouTube. Subtitle Editors’ access was upgraded with some measures in April. Creators can allow trusted individuals to add and edit subtitles to their videos, as well as change subtitles in videos that were initially set in a default language.
TikTok
TikTok Avatars: From outfits to skin tones and hair color down to texture, Tiktok is building an inclusive feature and experience. Avatars can be used to express creativity; building spaces across TikTok for self-expression, and expanding on the ways people connect and create across our global community.
Introducing TikTok Branded Mission: TikTok has launched Branded Mission to make it easier for brands to tap into TikTok communities’ creative power and co-create authentic branded content that resonates with users. Branded Mission is a first-of-its-kind ad platform that allows advertisers to crowdsource authentic content from TikTok creators, turn top-performing videos into ads, and increase brand affinity with media impressions. This new form of two-way engagement between brands and creators allows the TikTok community to have a creative hand in the ads that are part of a brand campaign, as well as assisting brands in discovering new creators across TikTok.
TikTok Pulse: Tiktok has introduced a new contextual advertising solution that allows businesses to place their logo next to the most popular content in the For You Feed. TikTok Pulse is designed to provide brands with the tools and controls they need to participate in these everyday moments and trends that engage the public.
Snapchat
Snapchat was created as a way to use the Camera for self-expression and communication. Recently, Snapchat has taken the power and magic of its platform to new heights:
Pixy: Pixy can fly in four different flight paths by simply pressing a button. It can float, orbit, and follow you without a controller or any other setup. Everything you need to capture the moment from a new angle is right in the palm of your hand.
The Infatuation: Snapchatters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Denver, D.C., and London can now find restaurants nearby with this new experience. In addition, Snapchatters from all over the world will now automatically see Infatuation reviews in over 50 cities. Snapchatters will be able to view all of their favorite local restaurants and share them with friends via chat or add restaurants to their favorites to return to later.
For more on social media platform updates and to implement a proven social media strategy get in touch with our team at Big Drop.