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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?
Twitter Rolls Out Group Direct Messages and Mobile Video: “Starting today, everyone will soon be able to seamlessly capture, edit and share videos right from the Twitter app, too.”
Facebook Announces Conversion Lift: Facebook Conversion Lift helps “marketers better understand the impact of Facebook ads.”
Facebook Releases Facebook Lite App for Low-End Android Phones: “This version of Facebook uses less data and works in all network conditions.

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Twitter Launches Bing-Powered Tweet Translator: “You can read tweets in multiple languages.”
We're introducing tweet translation with @Bing Translator so you can read tweets in multiple languages: https://t.co/RuraBeYa5S
— Twitter (@twitter) January 22, 2015
Pinterest Search Gets Smarter: “If you do a lot of searching on Pinterest, you may already have noticed the results you're seeing are better than ever.”
Other News Worth Noting:
Snapchat Introduces New Content Platform: “Snapchat Discover is a new way to explore stories from different editorial teams.”
Cool Social Media Tools Worth Checking Out:
PicStats:Â AÂ free tool that allows you to analyze any Instagram account.
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Weekly Tip: How to Add the New Facebook Call-to-Action Button on your Timeline Cover Photo
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
2015 State of Marketing: According to the 2015 State of Marketing study from Salesforce Marketing Cloud, 38% of marketers plan to shift spend from traditional advertising to digital advertising in 2015. The top five digital areas where marketers plan to allocate more of their 2015 budget are social media advertising (70%), social media marketing (70%), social media engagement (67%), location-based mobile tracking (67%) and mobile apps (66%).
Instagram Offers Highest Average Engagement: TrackMaven's report, the Content Marketing Paradox, based on 24 months of marketing activity across seven digital channels for 8,800 brands, found the output of content per brand has increased 78%, while content engagement has decreased by 60%. Twitter has the lowest average engagement of the platforms examined, with 73% of tweets receiving 10 or fewer interactions. Instagram has the highest average engagement, with 49% of photos and 60% of videos receiving more than 250 interactions on the network.
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SMB Internet Marketing Survey 2014: A November 2014 study from BrightLocal found that three-quarters of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in North America consider digital marketing effective for attracting customers. Thirty-seven percent planned to spend more on digital this year, but a lack of skills, budget (17%) and time (10%) could prevent this from happening. The percentage of SMBs that feel they understand social media and can manage their own digital marketing efforts fell from 40% in 2013 to 29% in 2014. Yet 28% of those surveyed are taking steps to learn more about digital marketing.
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