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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
Instagram Now Supports Portrait and Landscape Images: Instagram announces that “—in addition to square posts—you can now share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on Instagram.”
LinkedIn Introduces Clipping on SlideShare: “You can now clip and save the best slides from presentations across LinkedIn SlideShare to view or share later.”
LinkedIn Shares New ebook, 10 Ways to Drive Killer ROI with your Sponsored Updates: “Using practical, real-world examples from brands that are at the very top of their game,” LinkedIn shares the best tools, tactics and tips to drive ROI with LinkedIn sponsored updates.
Facebook Offers a Guide on Using Page Messaging Most Effectively: “Page messaging helps businesses conveniently connect with people about everything from customer services requests to questions about their product, service and business.”
Facebook Updates Video Rights Management Tools: Facebook has been exploring “ways to enhance [its]Â rights management tools to better empower creators to control how their videos are shared on Facebook.”
More social media news worth noting:
Facebook Adds Donate Now Button for Brand Pages: “Now, it's easier than ever for nonprofits to connect with people who care about their causes and encourage them to contribute through the website of their choice.”
Instagram Shares How Brands and Agencies Use Carousel Ads for Campaigns: Instagram “followed three big brands and their agencies – Toyota with Saatchi & Saatchi, Capital One with T3 and HP with Collectively – as they took this new canvas and turned it into inspiring, concept-driven creative.”
Yahoo Announces Tumblr In-App Sharing Tools, Real-Time Metrics and Native Video Ads: Yahoo shared its latest “updates to the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite developers use to analyze, advertise, monetize and enhance their apps and build their businesses as the industry evolves.”
Facebook Expands Moments App to Include Video and More Languages: Facebook Moments, updated for iOS and Android, can “automatically create a video of your shared photos which you can customize, personalize and share back to Facebook.” It is also “now available in most countries… and has been translated into 34 different languages.”
Other upcoming social media news worth following:
Facebook Begins Testing a Personal Digital Assistant for Messenger: The new service within Facebook Messenger, simply called M, completes tasks and finds information on your behalf. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.”
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GIPHY CAM: This new iOS app from Giphy allows you to create your own GIFs to share on social media.
Weekly Video Tip:
How to Check Your Facebook Security
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
Is Instagram Becoming Saturated?: According to the latest report from Locowise, Instagram growth and engagement significantly declined in July 2015. The average Instagram follower growth was just 0.34%, down 77% since May 2015. The average engagement rate measured at just 2.12% of all followers. This is a 19% drop compared to a 2.61% engagement rate in May 2015, when a similar study was last conducted. Locowise believes this downward trend is related to the platform becoming overly saturated with more brands joining and sharing content.
STRATA Agency Survey: According to a recent Q2 2015 agency survey conducted by STRATA, social media advertising spends are on the rise.  Of the agencies surveyed, 20% report that they will likely allocate between 11-25% of their ad budgets to paid social media. This is a 24% increase from the previous quarter. Another 24% of respondents are allocating 6-10% to paid social. Facebook continues to lead in agency advertising with 93% planning to use it in their campaigns, followed by YouTube (57%), Twitter (52%) and LinkedIn (29%).
From Creativity to Content: According to a new report from the CMO Council and Libris, over two-thirds (65%) of North American-based senior marketers from both B2B and B2C companies say that visual assets such as photos, video, illustrations and infographics are essential to how their brand story is communicated. Over half (57%) of the survey respondents currently view infographics as being “extremely important” or “critical” to marketing and storytelling strategies, followed by photography (46%) and video (36%). However, 79% of respondents think the role of video in marketing will increase in the near future.
Local Consumer Review Survey: According to BrightLocal’s latest survey of North American consumers, online customer reviews continue to be influential in determining whether a local business is a good business, but perhaps not at the same frequency as in previous years. Ninety-two percent of those surveyed “occasionally” use online customer reviews to judge a business, an increase from 88% last year and 71% in 2010. Fewer respondents this year reported “regularly” reading online business reviews, 33% in 2015 compared to 39% in 2014. The influence of reviews on buying decisions has also declined.  Slightly fewer respondents from this year's survey said that positive customer reviews make them trust a business more, 68% in 2015, compared to 72% in 2014.
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What do you think? Have you tried Instagram's new portrait and landscape orientations in your marketing? Please share your comments below.
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