Can you believe we’re nearly at the end of September already?
This year has flown by especially with all the changes social media companies have made so far! Twitter introduced Fleets (their “Stories” knock off) and took it away just as fast, Instagram have decided they’re no longer an image sharing platform and TikTok continues to grow as fast as ever.
Instagram has given us a cheat sheet into how Reels work… Except there’s no real tips in there!
Mainly just keep creating content and engaging with other Creators and Reels. The most interesting titbit from it was if you watch a Reel and then go to the audio page to create a Reel based on that audio, they’ll reward you by pushing it out to a larger audience. However, in that instance you’d need to be ready to go straight away and not create pre-prepared content so it really depends on how comfortable you are with your social media strategy!
In more Reel(s) news (you can really tell they’re desperate to get people using it instead of TikTok!), they are currently testing a “Stories Montage” where users will be able to convert their Instagram Stories into a Reel… An interesting move considering they don’t want users sharing content from their feed to Stories and now they’re encouraging sharing from Stories to Reels? Bit of an odd one!
Twitter is starting to put a bit of effort into business/professional accounts with new “Professional Profiles”. It’s still at the invite stage so not available to everyone yet but once it is, it will enable businesses/brands to showcase more business information in a dedicated, additional profile space in the app. As you can see from the image below, it adds new display elements to your Twitter account, including a business location listing (which people can tap on to open in Google Maps), hours of operation and contact info, all in a new space beneath your main profile. Is this their attempt to move a step closer to a Facebook business page?
LinkedIn continues to see record-high levels of engagement, and are now trying to capitalise on that as best they can. They now have finally introduced Articles for company pages, making it much easier for businesses to now share blog content within the platform and to boost their engagement through users reading the “blog” and staying on LinkedIn. I’m looking forward to see how company pages make use of this new option!
And last but not least… Facebook are at it again!
Following Google and Snapchat, they’ve now introduced their own Facebook glasses. However, taking an interesting twist on it, they’re working on these with Ray Ban so the official name for these smart glasses is actually Ray Ban Stories.
Maybe because from a branding perspective, having Facebook as the leading name on it would lead to people getting worried about privacy as well as not being very cool! They have come out to say that the content will not be automatically uploaded to Facebook, the user will have the option to edit and choose what they want to post to either Facebook or Instagram. But with Facebook, who knows how any of the information recorded will actually be used to advertise and target users. I will say, as someone who genuinely loved her Snapchat glasses… I really want a pair of these, they look so much trendier!
Alma
Alma Brosnan is part of the Digital Marketing and Social Media Consultancy team at Fuzion operating from offices in Dublin and Cork in Ireland.
