Social Media News – Week of 10/20

Facebook has introduced a “safety check” feature. This new feature sends a push notification to those located in areas of disaster, such as those who are in the midst of an earthquake. The alert allows users to update people about their safety in the course of a natural disaster. While this may not affect your digital marketing strategy (unless, of course, you work for a disaster relief non-profit, in which case this will give you a great overview of the disaster), this is a brilliant new feature that will allow you to stay in touch with your loved ones during dangerous times.

Facebook has recently surpassed YouTube in desktop video views for the first time ever. Some argue that this is because Facebook’s videos are loaded to auto play as you scroll past them (which is a feature that you can turn off), but this is effective in that it usually entices the user and makes them more likely to watch the video. What does this mean for your digital marketing strategy? It doesn’t mean that you should ditch YouTube all together, but it does mean that you should absolutely be cross-posting your YouTube videos to Facebook.

Most everyone in digital marketing has taken note of Facebook’s recent algorithm change – you know, the one that has made it so that your posts are reaching fewer people? However, don’t despair just yet, because recent studies have shown that while less people are seeing your posts, more of the people who are seeing them are clicking through to view your content. Is this because Facebook has identified the target audiences for these posts and is attempting to narrow your audience views to your business’ benefit? Maybe. Check your page insights to see how your posts are performing and how much engagement each post is getting to see if this applies to your business.

Twitter analytics have been out for a few months now. They’re a great way to see how your posts are performing and how many people are not only seeing them but engaging with them as well. Until recently, these analytics were only displayed for a 28-day period; however Twitter just rolled out the ability to see weekly and monthly views for these posts as well. This new feature of their analytics suite allows you to view specific periods of your campaign strategy, giving you an even better insight into how well your Twitter usage is performing.

Twitter’s new Audio Cards allow you to listen while you browse

Twitter has just introduced Audio Cards, allowing users to discover and listen to audio while scrolling through their timelines on both iOS and Android devices. This allows for users to listen to music, podcasts, and other types of audio through multiple SoundCloud partners. This is great news for marketers who want to share a jingle or informative podcast right on their audience’s Twitter feed. We’re very excited about this feature and think it has a lot of potential!

Seeing tweets from people you don’t know? No, you didn’t follow a bunch of strangers: this is a new feature of the social networking app. While Twitter had begun doing this earlier this year with a few of its users as an experiment, it has made this a permanent feature of your Twitter feed as of last week. This could be good for businesses on social media – if someone favorites your tweet, there is now a good possibility that this will show up in the feeds of people who follow them (if those users share similar interests). This is a great way to expand your audience, so make sure you’re posting great content!

Google+ has just added a new feature into their platform’s mix: Google+ polls. Now you have the ability to share a poll on any Google+ page that you manage. Want to know if your followers prefer Apple or Android? If they like image or text posts? This new feature is a great way to get a wealth of information from your current user base. We’re looking forward to trying this one out.

Ok, so the first Snapchat ad was kind of terrifying. The ad was a short 20-second video clip for Universal’s new horror film, Ouija, and according to view counts, it performed very well. Doug Neil, Universal’s VP of digital marketing said that the views were “in the millions,” but didn’t give any numerical specifics. This was a great first look at the potential that Snapchat ads have – but it may be a while until this feature is available to a wider advertising audience. Until then, we’ll just have to keep an eye on the rest of the ads that Snapchat rolls out (while hoping that the other ones are a little less scary).

Well, they’ve finally done it. Tumblr just released a desktop app for Macs using the latest Yosemite update. Now you never have to worry about getting distracted by other websites again – just load up the app and it’s like one giant Tumblr party on your desktop. What does this mean for marketers? We aren’t quite sure yet – except that if you use Tumblr as a social media platform for your business, expect some users to see your posts on the desktop app similarly to the way those posts are seen on mobile now – as in, users will see your posts while fully immersed in their Tumblr feed world. Is this much of a benefit? Only time will tell.

Social media makes its mark as a consistently shape-shifting medium. Keep up with all of the most recent social media news by revisiting our blog to read the latest in social media in our weekly social media news posts!