Social Chatter Episode 34: Instagram Launches Carousel Video Ads

Welcome to this week’s episode of Social Chatter where we cover the latest social media news from this past week.

Each episode of Social Chatter is available as a blog post or video.

Let’s see what’s cooking in social media this week with your hosts, Christian Karasiewicz and Vincent Orleck!

Watch This Week’s Social Media Updates

Instagram Carousel Video Ads

This week, Instagram announced video carousel ads.

Right now, Instagram is running video carousel ads with brands such as Showtime, Banana Republic, Old Navy, L'Oreal Paris, and Samsung.

You should start to see more of these in your Instagram feed.

While real estate on Instagram is at a premium, you’ll see that video carousel ads give businesses an additional dynamic to create a compelling story through their Instagram Ads.

Here is an example of Instagram Carousel Video Ads from Banana Republic.

Facebook Messenger and Instagram for Windows

Also this week, Instagram and Facebook Messenger released versions of their software for Windows.

You would think that after a number of years, both of these tools would have had their own application. They're finally getting their own apps.

You can read more about this announcement here.

Draw During Periscope Live Streams

⚡️??? Sketch while you Scope - now available on iOS! pic.twitter.com/k5JgViBnkO

— Periscope (@periscopeco) April 27, 2016

Also this week, Periscope announced the ability to draw on-screen during your live streams.

If you're a business looking to use Periscope, this could be a great way for you to highlight important things during your Periscope broadcast.

For example, maybe you're in real estate. You could be showing off features in a home during your scope. This could be a great opportunity to draw on your screen during your broadcast.

If you need help with coming up with ideas, be sure to contact us for help.

Twitter Launches Connect Tab

It can be difficult to identify the right accounts to follow on Twitter.

Typically, we ended up going to Google and searching for the name of a person or business using the following search query. For example, "Christian Karasiewicz + Twitter." This was much faster and less confusing if you're looking for an account that might have a number of accounts.

With the new Twitter Connect tab, "you’ll see a detailed list of people and accounts we think you’ll enjoy following." This way you won't have to go try to find accounts on your own. Instead, Twitter is working to making better recommendations for you based on your connections.

To use this new feature, be sure to update your Twitter app. When you go to tap on the add follower button, you'l see a list of recommendations.

You can read more about the Twitter Connect tab here.

Tools

In addition to sharing the latest in social media news from this past week, we also highlighted some great tools and apps to check out.

Curate

Are you looking for a tool to send emails to your email list on Aweber?

With their new app, Curate, you can quickly curate your favorite blog posts, videos, tutorials and more into an email newsletter directly on your mobile device.

We had the chance to try out Curate, and were able to have an entire email created and sent in under 15 minutes. Normally, it would take 2-3x the amount of time to put something together.

Your mileage may vary, but this could be a good strategy to incorporate into your daily marketing for your business.

Curate is a free app that is available for iOS and Android

Pushbullet

Are you looking for a tool to easily share photos, videos, links and more? Often, you have to email these items to yourself, which isn't very efficient.

With Pushbullet, you can quickly send items from your mobile device to your desktop and vice versa. Pushbullet is a free app that is available for iOS and Android.

If you need to share more items, Pushbullet also offers a pro upgrade that let's you share even more content.

Rex

The last tool we wanted to share this week is Rex.

Rex makes it easy to share your favorite articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, music and more with friends.

You can also use Rex to save items you come across that your friends have shared. This way you can view them later on when it's convenient for you.

Wrap-up

That’s it for this week’s episode of Social Chatter.

Be sure to tune-in to our next episode on Blab to find out what’s cooking in social media!

If you have any questions about anything mentioned this week, share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in the comments below.

About The Author

Christian Karasiewicz Founder, Social Chefs Founder and CEO of Social Chefs, a digital marketing agency. I host two shows, #SocialChatter, the industries longest running social media marketing talk show and Social Snacks, 5 minute or less social media marketing tutorials.