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Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What's New This Week
Facebook Announces Secret Videos for Publishers
“Secret videos give Page owners the ability to upload videos that are accessible only via a direct URL, but which are not searchable for people on Facebook. This is useful for publishers who want to host videos on Facebook, embed them on third-party sites or share them with anyone who has the URL, without posting them anywhere else on Facebook.”
Facebook Introduces Video Ads Creative Spotlight: Each month, Facebook's Video Ads Creative Spotlight will highlight and share the “best practices for creating video ads on Facebook that grab attention and drive business goals.”
Facebook Introduces Enhancements to the Video Upload Process and a New Video Library: Facebook announced two new updates “that give publishers more control over how their videos are organized and shared.”
YouTube Introduces 360-degree Video Ads:  With YouTube's new 360-degree video ads, “viewers can explore every angle of your videos by dragging their mouse or moving their phone to shift their POV 360 degrees – up, down, left or right.” They are available in Chrome and the YouTube app on Android and iOS.
LinkedIn Adds an Improved Lead Generation Tool to Slideshare: The new Lead Generation tool on SlideShare enables “marketers to identify key consumers of their content and connect with their audience.”
Instagram Opens Search on the Web: Instagram users can now “search people, places and hashtags on web.”
Starting today, you can search people, places and hashtags on web. pic.twitter.com/kadwSZd8xt
— Instagram (@instagram) July 20, 2015
More social media news worth noting:
Twitter Introduces a New Safety Center: “The Safety Center is a resource for anyone to learn about online safety, on Twitter and beyond.”
Twitter Removes Background Images from Timelines: Twitter removed the “background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users.”
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GET THE DETAILSTumblr Partners with Crimson Hexagon to Provide Better Marketing Insights: “As a Preferred Analytics Partner, Crimson Hexagon can tap into Tumblr data to identify instances of brand mentions and logos, measure conversation volumes and analyze sentiment drivers.”
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Silk: An online data publishing platform that transforms spreadsheets into beautiful visual images. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toUmpgOHvU4
Keyword Tool: A free, online Google keyword suggestion tool.
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
The Smart Social Report- Volume One: In its recent Smart Social Report, Spredfast analyzed the social activity of 50 major brands across ten different verticals on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr and Google+. The study examined each brand's social media audience size, response time, and engagement to determine the top performers across all social networks and why.
Top 100 Brands Report: Insight into Brand Content on YouTube: YouTube partnered with marketing firm Pixability to analyze branded video content from the Interbrand Top 100 brands. According to the findings, video views for these brands have nearly doubled during the last year, with monthly views of branded content up 55% since 2014. Branded content has generated more than 40 billion views total over all time, with more than 18 billion of those views happening during the last year, and brand channel subscriptions are up 47% year over year.
Socially Devoted Q2 2015: The latest social customer care data from Socialbakers named which brands are “socially devoted”, meaning they respond to at least 65% of audience questions on Facebook and/or Twitter. There was a 3.2% increase in customer demand on social channels and brands responded to 76% of all questions they were asked on Facebook in 2Q, a record high and an 8% increase from 1Q. The study also looks at the benefits of being “socially devoted.” For example, these brands get 3.5 times more social media interactions than their less-responsive counterparts.
Ogilvy PR Earn Media Survey: A new Ogilvy PR survey of over 115 reporters, editors and producers found that almost half (47%) view earned media as influential as ever on purchasing decisions and business outcomes. Traditional media (newspapers, wires, and magazines) remain the most trusted and credible sources for news, but journalists are increasing dependence on social media to get leads and follow news stories. A majority (65%) agree or strongly agree that the more the media covers a brand, the more credible the brand appears. 44% surveyed believe today's campaigns require traditional, social and paid media to be successful.
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What do you think? Have you explored Facebook's Video Ads Creative Spotlight? Please share your comments below.
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