December 2021 Digital Marketing News Updates: IG Participative Stories, LinkedIn Product Pages, and 2022 Trend Reports

Krista Neher

Dec 03 2021

Members of our All Access Pass and Digital Marketing Insiders get the first look at the latest digital marketing news updates each month. During a live, interactive webinar we cover what matters to marketers and answer questions. We spend hours combing industry news sites looking for the most important updates so you don’t have to!

Facebook News Updates

• Facebook Launches Shopping Features – The features allow for shopping and product recommendations in groups as well as opportunities for creators to host live shopping events. These features are designed to increase the e-commerce applications on the platform and moving early if you have an e-commerce site could have advantages.

Instagram News Updates

• Create Participative Stories – Instagram launched a new Stories sticker that allows anyone to participate in a story. The new sticker is called “Add Yours” and it allows people to add threaded public responses to a story.
• Instagram Focuses on Video – Instagram has made it clear that they view video as the future and will be more prominently featured in the newsfeed. If video isn’t on your radar for content trends it should be. Reels are also currently displayed prominently in the Facebook app, showing Meta is committed to driving exposure to video creators on the platform.

LinkedIn Updates

• Creator Mode Gives Access to Live and Newsletters – If you have a LinkedIn creator account you’ll get access to even more features. It remains to be seen the reach potential that these tools have, however they provide new ways to get in front of your audience. You need a creator account to activate these features – you can easily switch your account over to unlock them.
• Linkedin TEST Product Pages – The TEST is designed for businesses to share details about their products to drive conversations and recommendations. While only in the test stage this could be a huge opportunity for B2B businesses to grow credibility.

Google News Updates

• Google Doesn’t Provide Timeline on Mobile First Indexing – Google has been talking about this for years – as mobile has become the primary place where people are searching. The change would make mobile rankings more important than desktop. For now, there isn’t a timeline, BUT since most searches and web visitors are mobile, it makes sense for businesses to focus on it.

Industry News Updates

• Twitter Study Shows 25% of Users Create 97% of Tweets – This shows that the platform heavily relies on a small portion of its users to create content. The network struggles with relevance, this highlights the fact that many users aren’t actively engaged.
• Hubspot Shares 2022 Trends – The trends aren’t necessarily surprising, although it is helpful to see where the industry is headed and what marketers are thinking about for the year ahead. Not surprisingly we see influencer marketing, AR/VR, and measurement on the list.
• TikTok Projected to Break 1.5 Billion Users Next Year – Speaking of trends….. TikTok continues to grow — these numbers would make it the third biggest social network behind Facebook and Instagram.
• B2B Buyers Engage Sales Reps Later in the Process – This means that the decision is closer to being made before a sales rep is involved. Buyers are doing self-search and are influenced by marketing touchpoints. This highlights the importance of content marketing, strong digital assets, and a clear marketing strategy for B2B businesses.
• Google, Facebook, and Amazon make up 64% of Digital Ad Spend – Clearly, the big players are dominating the industry. To break through the noise, focus on winning big with the big guys or finding the unicorn opportunities. A unicorn opportunity is a smaller network with big potential that isn’t so cluttered yet.
• Most People Watch Mobile Video on Mute – This shows the importance of captioning. Most people are watching on mute so make sure your videos work with sound off. As a side note, over 1/3 of people watch TV with captions (I thought I was strange) showing that captioning is a part of media consumption – even with sound on.

Read some more of our recent posts

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• December 2024 Digital Updates - Meta Andromeda Ads, TikTok Affiliate Marketing, and Latest Trends in Social Media
• November 2024 Digital Updates - Meta Movie Gen, Influencing TikTok's Algorithm, and LinkedIn's Record Engagement
• October 2024 Digital Updates - Meta Upgrades AI, TikTok Search Ads Campaign, and Google Rolls Out AI Ad Image Editing Across Platforms
• 5 Digital Trends That Will Take Us Into 2025