Social media platforms move as fast as their users. Analytics Manager, Ala Shashaa at the regional digital marketing agency, Netizency shares with Communicate all the relevant updates for your business so you don’t have to look for them yourself.
The latest updates to social media platforms include:
- Removes ‘Premieres’ to consolidate the platform’s video offerings.
- Adds assigning a ‘Community Manager’ option to moderate comments during a Live stream.
- Tests a new avatar cover image feature.
- Allows users to create alternative profiles.
- Launches a new ‘Feeds’ tab and revamps its ‘Home’ tab into a TikTok-esque experience.
- Adds ‘Creator Collaborations’ allowing multiple creators to be listed on one post.
Our thoughts: Facebook continues to bend over backward to be the cool platform again and increase active usage and break TikTok’s current dominance by imitating some of its services. Will Facebook succeed? We are yet to see!
TikTok
- Adds new closed caption and translation tools.
- Partners with NCSolutions to provide advertisers with a new sales lift measurement for their ad campaigns.
- Tests a ‘Shop’ tab that allows users to explore and shop products from several categories.
- Adds ‘Follow Me’ educational program to help businesses improve their TikTok marketing approach.
- Introduces ‘Inventory Filter’ giving brands more control over their ad placements.
Our thoughts: TikTok is catching up on some of the features that have been well-established across other social media platforms, such as Inventory Filter or closed captions tools. However, we are particularly excited about the new ‘Shop’ tab and betting that it will evolve to place TikTok as a solid e-commerce platform capitalizing on the #TiktokMadeMeBuyIt fad.
- Adds a boosting option to Reels.
- Turns all video uploads into Reels.
- Opens Reels API access allowing brands to track, schedule, analyze, and moderate Reels via third-party platforms.
- Tests a ‘Live Producer’ tool enabling users to go live via desktop using streaming software.
- Experiments with more subscription-based features, such as Subscriber Chats, Subscriber Reels, Subscriber Posts, and Subscriber Home.
- Tests ‘Notes’ allowing users to post 60-character updates.
- Considers showing ads on users’ profiles.
Our thoughts: This hasn’t been a great month for Instagram where it faced immense backlash after testing several new features that made the app experience resemble its toughest competitor, TikTok. A photo that calls to “Make Instagram Instagram again” has gone viral forcing the platform to pause for a bit, take a step back, and reconsider its approach. We, too, miss the old days when Instagram was just about beautiful images! Besides that, as you can now promote Reels, it’s worth keeping an eye out for a drop in your Reels’ organic impressions over the coming months to see whether Instagram will use that strategy to push businesses to spend more on Reels or not.
- Lets users ‘Unmention’ themselves from unwanted conversations.
- Tests ‘Co-Tweets’ allowing users to collaborate on a single tweet.
Our thoughts: There is not much from Twitter this month, but it is interesting to see how it is putting users in control of their own experiences and conversations on the platform. Big thumbs up!
- Introduces a native Carousel posting option.
- Unveils it's Business Manager’ platform allowing users to easily manage and moderate multiple accounts from a single dashboard.
Our thoughts: Slowly but surely! The more options and streamlined the managing process is, the better – LinkedIn is catching up.
YouTube
- Stops letting channels hide subscriber counts to reduce spam accounts and impersonators.
- Adds text markup options enabling creators to add bold, italic, and strikethrough text in video descriptions.
- Expands test of product tagging with select creators.
- Tests expiring Community posts.
- Updates Shorts analytics display so that it’s visually consistent with the other Channel analytics tools.
Our thoughts: While Shorts are the “biggest” thing for YouTube at the moment, we like how these updates are focusing on enhancing different elements of the platform’s experience for both viewers and creators. We are particularly excited about the expiring Community post feature and the different uses that it opens doors for. These include exclusive product drops, discount coupons or special offers. It could really give users a sense of urgency to check and act on them right away, which will ultimately drive more conversions.
Snapchat
- Introduces Snapchat+ to all users.
- Launches Snapchat for Web for Snapchat+ subscribers.
- Allows users to turn their NFTs into Snapchat AR filters and background items.
Our thoughts: Snapchat takes an edge over other platforms by working on creative new features that keep it true to its core services and users’ unique usage trends.
- Makes ‘Ads Creative Studio’ available to all.
Our thoughts: Google is all about simplifying things, and this certainly seems like a convenient tool with features that are designed to help advertisers easily create multiple variations of an ad and explore different formats for their campaigns.
