Don’t have time to follow all of the most important social media news? Who does? Check out our round-up of the biggest changes in social media from the last month. We read all of the latest social media news so you don’t have to.
As a value add for our All Access Pass Members, we provide a monthly call where in 30 minutes we share the biggest changes in social media and importantly how they impact your social media strategy.
The top news in social media that we covered this month includes:
Facebook:
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- Facebook launches author tags – Stealing a move from the Google Playbook, Facebook announced author tags – you can now follow an author on Facebook to see more of their content – regardless of where they published it. Add authorship code to your website to allow people to follow you as an author.
- Facebook Moments allows for private sharing and grouping of photos – you may want to share photos from a party with other party goers and not your entire Facebook friend list. Facebook Moments provides a platform to do this – share photo more privately and create groups who can all share photos. It also uses facial recognition to see who is in the photos #Creepy
- Facebook launches place tips – If you have a local business (where people can check-in through a place) you may start to see tips displayed. Tips are customized for each user to provide a more relevant and helpful experience when checking in to a business. As a local business, you can also add a custom message to the tips view – be sure to take advantage of this to optimize your tips.
- Facebook tests saved replies – which would allow businesses to send the same saved reply to multiple people… Stay tuned to see if this rolls out.
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Pinterest:
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- Pinterest search is smarter – it includes autosuggest and includes SPELLCHECK – YAY!!! Make sure your pins and boards are optimized for search.
- Buyable pins announced – Pinterest announced buyable pins – you will be able buy directly from Pinterest (and pay in the app). This could be HUGE for ecommerce companies. Check it out and stay tuned for a launch date.
- Expanded Promoted Pins and Cinematic Pins – these promoted pins include motion to get better results…. Pinterest is getting more serious about their ad platform with more targeting and better ad units.
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- Twitter launches auto-play videos – similar to Facebook, videos uploaded to Twitter will now autoplay in the stream. This means that video can be more impactful on Twitter – consider adding videos to your Twitter strategy, or uploading your Facebook videos directly to Twitter.
- Longer DM (Direct Messages) coming soon – Twitter is removing the character limit from direct messages. This will probably lead to more spam (or at least longer spam messages)…. But as a business this can help to provide more robust customer service through Twitter.
- Twitter now shows you conversations – This has been available in Hootsuite for a while – Twitter is finally catching up and showing conversation threads making it easier to talk to people 😉 This only really matters if you use Twitter.com to access Twitter.
- Share block lists – You can now share lists of accounts you block and others can block your list more easily. This makes it easier to block spammy accounts.
- Twitter ads audience insights – Learn more about your Twitter audience with Twitter insights… Use this info to customize your content or to discover more about your customers.
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- Instagram expands ads and includes calls to action – Instagram ads are now available to more marketers in more places AND they can include call to action buttons (shop now) to make them more effective for more marketing objectives. This is probably worth testing out.
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- Google trends gets a facelift and now includes real-time data – Want to know exactly what is trending right now on Google? Google trends is new and improved and includes real-time data. If your content strategy involves jumping in on hot conversations – Google trends can help you do it better than ever.
- Google launches Google Photos – This is probably the first step of Google piecing out Google Plus with Google Photos getting their own home.
- TrueView for Shopping with Video – Google announced a new shopping feature showing the future of integrated e-commerce where people can buy directly in video.
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Yelp
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- Yelp ads boutique shopping – Integrating ecommerce directly into the platform with boutiques where users can buy right in Yelp.
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FTC Releases New Disclosure Guidelines
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- The FTC has new disclosure guidelines for social media sponsored promotions, contests and employee endorsements – The FTC is getting even more strict on their guidelines for disclosures. Influencers must disclose sponsored content on every platform, actions taken as a part of a contest or sweepstakes must be disclosed and there are stricter guidelines for employee disclosures. Make sure that your business is following these guidelines.
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