Instagram Opens Ads to Masses: This Week in Social Media
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 Ads API Partner Program Launches: “Instagram Ads API Partners will be able to perform tasks including scheduling and publishing content to the Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network, monitoring audiences and sharing access to Instagram accounts across teams.”
Facebook Enables New Ways for People and Businesses to Connect: Facebook introduced several “new communication features for Pages, including more ways for customers to send private messages to businesses and new tools for Page admins to manage and respond to messages.”
“The new Send Message call-to-action button for local awareness ads allows people to initiate private conversations with business Pages from News Feed ads.”
Facebook Introduces a Limited Release of Live Video Streaming: Facebook rolled out a new way for public figures to “share live video from Facebook Mentions, the app that makes it easy for athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers to talk with their fans and each other.”
Live for Facebook Mentions is “a new way for you to connect and interact with your favorite public figures on Facebook: through live video.”
Hootsuite Integrates Instagram Scheduling: “The Instagram functionality you need, plus a few extra bells and whistles, is available right inside Hootsuite. Now anyone can manage their Instagram presence alongside the rest of their social media activities.”
Facebook Officially Launches Messenger for Business: Messenger for Business, “now available with select U.S. businesses,” makes it easy to “reach customers wherever they are with timely, relevant push notifications.”
“When people check out on your website, they can sign up to connect with you in Messenger. Then you’ll be able to send them personalized updates.”
Twitter Launches Ads Editor: Twitter’s new ads editor is “a new tool that enables advertisers to seamlessly create and edit numerous campaigns at once.”
We’re launching a new feature that allows advertisers to create and manage their campaigns in bulk. https://t.co/zzZ3eRjw63
— Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) August 5, 2015
More social media news worth noting:
YouTube Rolls Out a New Web Player: YouTube “launched a new HTML5 video player for desktop users, which now features a transparent control bar that disappears when you’re not using it, as well as updated buttons and drop-down menus.”
Ooh la la! Our new player design is slicker than a squirrel on waterskis! pic.twitter.com/9tS1pm3NiG — YouTube (@YouTube) August 3, 2015
Reddit Updates Comment Policy: Reddit will now quarantine communities “whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.” In addition, Reddit is “banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors.”
Google AdWords Introduces New Way to Create Display Campaigns: The new setup flow for creating Display campaigns on Google “helps you pick the right settings based on your marketing objectives.”
After you select your marketing objective, Google AdWords guides you to the most relevant targeting and bid settings to meet it.
Other upcoming social media news worth following:
Google AdWords Will Roll Out Report Editor: Over the coming months, Google AdWords will roll out Report Editor, “an easy-to-use interface that lets you build custom tables and charts that can be segmented, sorted and filtered to help you find the insights that matter to your business.”
Report Editor allows you to “instantly create a line, pie or bar chart to surface your key insights.”
LinkedIn Publishing Will Soon Host Localized Languages: LinkedIn shares that “members in other languages around the world will soon be able to publish on LinkedIn.” The platform is beginning with Portuguese and plans to add German and French in the coming months.
Twitter Experiments With a Featured News Tab: The News Tab on the Twitter app “inhabits the middle tab of the app’s navigation bar and brings up a list of headlines that are trending on the platform.” The experimental feature is currently only available to some U.S. users and features a select number of publications.
Here’s a cool social media tool worth checking out:
iStock With Dropbox Integration: “iStock by Getty Images has partnered with Dropbox to bring you a new way to access, share and collaborate with your iStock content across all your devices.”
“The integration offers a swift, seamless workflow so you can spend less time managing your content and more time creating outstanding work.”
Weekly Video Tip:
How to Save Time When You Reply to Messages on Facebook
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
2015 Social Media Benchmark Reports: HubSpot collected data from more than 7,000 businesses across several industries and compiled a benchmark report to help inbound marketers gauge their 2015 social media efforts. The report examines average social media followers by company size, frequency of posts and engagement.
Twitter Research on Building Customer Service Relationships: Twitter surveyed 14,040 users who have followed or interacted with brands’ customer service accounts on Twitter in the past six months. The study offers four key recommendations and best practices for brands looking to improve their customer service relationships and experiences.
Social Media and the CIO: Social insights research and marketing firm Leadtail collaborated with Robert Half Technology to examine the Twitter activity of 524 CIOs and IT leaders. This latest report offers insights on the topics that are most important and interesting to technology executives. It also shares who influences them on social media, what type of content they consume and share, and which apps and platforms they rely upon most.
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What do you think? Have you tried scheduling your Instagram posts on Hootsuite? Please share your comments below.
