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 Creative Hub – Where marketers can share and collaborate around advertising best practices. Share your email to get in first.
Facebook Live Includes Maps – Facebook Live now shows maps – this makes Facebook Live more discoverable and could mean more views for your live streams.
Facebook Launches 360 Photos – This is a first step towards virtual reality in the Facebook newsfeed – users can interact with 360 photos on their devices for a deeper and more interactive experience with the content.
Facebook Looks to Alter Text in Image Ads Rule – Facebook has said that they are looking into alternative solutions for the amount of text allowed in images. The current rule is only 20% of an image may be text (based on a grid system) but they are exploring allowing more text but charging more for ads that have more text.
Instagram
Instagram Launches Business Tools – This includes business profiles, analytics and ads. This is a big change for marketers and may signal the platform is moving to a Facebook-style approach to differentiating between businesses and people.
Instagram Rolls Out Analytics – Instagram launched analytics – this is great news for business managers as they can now see how their images are performing on Instagram and compare their Instagram performance to other social networks.
Instagram Ads Visual Carousel Ads – This means you can test the new format to share even more compelling video ads to improve your results.
Instagram Shuts Down Stream API – Third party tools will no longer be able to stream Instagram photos. The features wasn’t heavily used, but this shows a desire by Instagram to keep content on their own platform.
Twitter Ads Live Button – Making it easy for people to broadcast through Periscope directly in Twitter. This should increase the relevance of Periscope making it easier to LiveStream and taking advantage of the Twitter audience.
Twitter
Twitter Adjusts the 140 Character Limit – Don’t get too excited – it isn’t gone, but the 140 character limit has been revised so that @replies, links and more won’t count towards your character limit.
Twitter Insiders Allows you to use Twitter for Research– Twitter Insiders allows businesses to use Twitter to recruit, design and collect live research. They have a broad panel of users who participate in the program allowing for both short-term and long term studies.
Twitter Allows Longer Videos – Twitter has increased the length of videos allowed in their platform. This could mean longer and more relevant videos for users.
SnapChat
SnapChat Launchest Advertising API – This move shows that SnapChat is getting serious about advertising. They also announced a goal to generate $1 billion in ad revenue suggesting that there will be more opportunities for marketers to create relevant and targeted ads on the platform.
SnapChat adds Stickers – Making Snapchat even more creative, fun and addictive. If you haven’t experimented with SnapChat yet check it out.
SnapChat redesigns Stories to make them More Discoverable – SnapChat has changed the view for stories allow previews of content in an aim to make them more discoverable. As more “public” and open content comes to SnapChat we expect that it will present more opportunities for marketers.
Microsoft Bought LinkedIn – It is difficult to know what this will mean, but certainly it will be worth paying attention to how this changes LinkedIn over time.
Pinterest
Pinterest ads 3 new Features to Advertising Targeting – Pinterest now allows for users to target ads 3 new ways – by email list, through retargeting and look-alike audiences. These features are already available in Facebook ads but could make Pinterest ads more effective and more relevant.
Google Search
Google Introduces Rich Cards for Search – Currently only available for movies and recipes, Rich Cards allow you to structure information to display in search results. Look for more of these to come and pay attention to the categories that impact you.
Visual Tools
Adobe launches SPARK to create visuals on-the-go – The free tool by Adobe makes it easier to create visual content on Mobile (IOS or desktop). If you are a visual marketer it may be worth giving this a try.
YouTube launches Director – This new tool is designed to make it easy for businesses to create compelling video ads from their phones.
YouTube brings Live Streaming to Mobile – This puts it in direct competition with Periscope and Facebook Live – making it easy for their vast user-base to create live videos.
Industry News
Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report – This is one of the best “State of Online Marketing” reports that is released annually. While it is 200+ slides it is well worth the time to read and absorb the key trends impacting our industry.
State of Social Media Marketing Report – Social Media Examiner launched their state of social media report – this resources gives you insights about how marketers are using social media and can be helpful for bench-marking and identifying future trends.
