Check out our round-up of the biggest changes in social media and digital marketing from the last month. Let us do the work for you, we gather the updates, you reap the benefit of having all of them in one place!
We read all of the latest social media news so you don’t have to.
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The top news in social media that we covered this month includes:
- Facebook launches new video ad tools – Each day on average 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook and it’s estimated that mobile video will account for 75% of total mobile data traffic by 2020. Facebook shares best practices for mobile video based on testing.
- Facebook enhances ad features – On both Facebook and Instagram Facebook announced a variety of ad improvements. These are probably mostly relevant to advanced advertisers.
- LinkedIn launches new student app – The app is mobile only and is geared towards college students. This shows LinkedIn is looking at really connecting with college students who don’t currently heavily use the site.
- Instagram changed their logo – And the internet went crazy.
- Twitter adds connections to mobile app – In an attempt to make it easier to find people and accounts you are interested in, Twitter has added a connections feature that connects you with things you may be interested in.
- Twitter announces Omnisearch – Twitter is looking to make searching even better, and this is where they are investing their time and effort.
SnapChat
- SnapChat stories drive 10 Billion daily video views – Snapchat is becoming a bigger and bigger player in social media (although it remains elusive to most businesses). Stories show videos or photos for 24 hours, making them more permanent then regular snaps. This also emphasizes the importance of video.
- SnapChat lets you FaceSwap from the camera roll – SnapChat is building its features to make it more fun to customize pictures and really express yourself with snaps. The new FaceSwap feature builds upon this.
Periscope
- Periscope ads viewer stats – Giving broadcasters more information about performance.
- Periscope launches sketch while you scope – This feature allows broadcasters the ability to draw on the screen while scoping. This functionality is similar to SnapChat – where people love drawing on photos. It will be interesting to see how heavily this feature is used and if people can actually draw and record at the same time…
- Periscope experiments with archived streams – Periscope is experimenting with a feature that will archive streams forever.
- Pinterest allows affiliate links – Pinterest has announced that they will now allow affiliate links in pins. They were previously removed as Pinterest tried to reduce spam. Pinterest now feels that they have a great spam control program so they will not allow affiliate links.
YouTube
- Video Bumper 6 Second Ads – YouTube knows that mobile first is the key to marketing – their new video ads build on this strategy with short 6 second ads to drive ads on short mobile video views.
- Amazon allows video uploads – Amazon launched a service to compete with YouTube – you can now upload a video and earn money from ads. This puts Amazon in direct competition to YouTube.
- Google Play Music adds Podcasts – This shows that Google sees delivering podcasts as important to invest in development.
- AMP Stories are Prioritized in Google News Search – Google is putting emphasis behind mobile and behind AMP pages and sites. It may be worthwhile to look at how to optimize your site for mobile.
Interesting Research
- User Generated Content Sells – BazaarVoice released a study that shows the impact of user generated content – both in driving sales and social media. Check it out if you still aren’t convinced that UGC must be on your menu.
