Welcome to this week's episode of Social Chatter, the longest running social media marketing talk show where we cover the latest social media news from this past week.
As a reminder, each episode of Social Chatter is available as a blog post or video.
For those of you who missed last week's show, you can find it here.
We're also joined by this week's special guest, Keri Jaehnig.
Keri runs Idea Girl Media.
Let's see what's new in social media this week with your hosts, Christian Karasiewicz and Nick Rishwain.
Watch This Week's Social Media Updates
Snapchat Lens Studio
In Snapchat news, they are launching Lens Studio for creating Lenses for the Snapchat community.
Why Snapchat Lens Studio Matters For Your Business
Snapchat is rolling out a desktop application called Lens Studio for PC and Mac.
With Snapchat Lens Studio, you'll now be able to create your own Snap Lenses that you can share with the Snapchat community.
As a business, you'll now have the tools to create your own Lenses for your business.
These can then get turned into snapcodes that you can share throughout your business - on your storefront, merchandise, etc.
We're currently testing this new tool and will have a tutorial for you shortly.
In the meantime, here's a video from Snapchat about Lens Studio.
You can read the announcement about Snapchat Lens Studio on the Snapchat blog.
LinkedIn Notifications On Trending Skills
In LinkedIn news, they are adding a way for you to stay on top of emerging skills with LinkedIn notifications on trending skills.
The purpose of this new feature is to send you a monthly notification about skills people who share similar job titles like you have.
Why Monthly LinkedIn Notifications About Trending Skills Matters For Your Business
As a business owner, you want to be sure you keep your skills up-to-date.
Not only does this keep you on-par with others in your field, but it also helps you continue to grow.
By adding monthly notifications, LinkedIn can encourage you to come to their platform and continue to update your Profile (thus increasing engagement from your connections) and to also hopefully get you to check out your LinkedIn news feed to see what your connections are up to.
In addition to sending you a notification, they're also looking to help you get the proper education by recommending LinkedIn Learning courses (these are LinkedIn's training platform) as well.
In the future, LinkedIn is planning on adding hiring trends to the mix as well.
You can read the announcement about monthly notifications on trending skills here.
Facebook Payment Requests For Pages
In Facebook news, Pages can now send payment requests from Facebook Messenger.
Why Facebook Payment Requests Matter For Your Business
As a business owner, you juggle a lot of different customers. Some reach out to you over email, others via your website, and some through your Facebook Page.
This can make it difficult to keep up with which customers have paid you.
Fortunately, Facebook is listening and rolling out a new feature for Facebook Pages called Facebook Payment Requests.
This feature, found in Messenger, makes it easy for you to have conversations in Facebook Messenger and keep track of which customers have paid you.
Simply click on the dollar sign as seen below, and you'll be able to easily track your sales right from your Messenger Inbox.
The other good thing is that your sales summary will appear in your Page Insights (Facebook Page > Insights).
As a business owner, this should help streamline your workflow and save you time tracking payments made through your Facebook Page.
Facebook Sound Collection
Also this week, Facebook announced Sound Collection, a collection of free sound effects for Facebook and Instagram video creators.
Why Facebook Sound Collection Matters For Your Business
More and more people are producing video content for their business.
Unfortunately, it can be very expensive to get sound effects for your video content.
By rolling out a free tool for video creators, Facebook is making it easier for you to produce your own videos and improve them by adding sound to them to make them more engaging and hopefully encourage people to tune-in.
This collection of free sounds can be used to improve your Facebook videos, as well as ones you create for Instagram.
In order to use the Facebook Sound Collection, you'll have to sign-up for Facebook Creator (it's also free to join).
You can learn more about Facebook Sound Collection here.
Follow Hashtags On Instagram
In Instagram news, they are adding the ability to follow hashtags.
Why Following Hashtags On Instagram Matters For Your Business
Instagram is now letting you follow hashtags.
This will make it easier for you to stay on-top of
interests, communities and more.
When you follow hashtags on Instagram, you'll start to see relevant hashtags in search results and also in your Instagram feed.
Here's how to follow hashtags on Instagram.
How to Follow Instagram Hashtags
- Search for a topics you're interested in on Instagram
- Tap on the hashtag to see more results
- Tap on the follow button
You'll then begin to see posts in your Instagram feed with that hashtag along with Stories.
You can always unfollow a hashtag by following the same instructions and tapping on "unfollow."
As a business, this can be s great way to keep up with who is talking about your business - if you have your own hashtag.
For example, we use #SocialChatter for our weekly social media marketing talk show, so we would follow that hashtag.
You can also follow industry-specific hashtags to help you stay up-to-date on what is going on in your industry.
Following hashtags should be very useful, as it helps keep you aware of what is being talked about overall, without having to search across lots of different Instagram accounts.
You can read the announcement about following hashtags on Instagram here.
Twitter Threads
In Twitter news, they are rolling out the ability to create threaded tweets.
Why Threaded Tweets Matter For Your Business
Twitter wants to make it easier for you to create a tweetstorn.
This is essentially multiple tweets stitched together.
That's why they are introducing Twitter threads.
What this means is you will be able to start a tweet and add additional "threads" to it. This way your thoughts stay together in one tweet.
As a business, this will be especially useful because you can now quickly compose a longer tweet without having to worry if it's too long or use a complicated numbering system to remember what tweet you're on.
Overall, this will save you time when composing tweets such as at a conference or when you're listening to a keynote.
To create Twitter threads, follow these steps.
How to Create Twitter Threads
- Launch the Twitter mobile app
- Compose a new tweet
- Tap the + sign to add another tweet
- To send your tweet storm, tap "tweet all"
Twitter is also adding a "show this thread" label when someone sends a tweetstorm using Twitter threads. This way you can easily identify these types of tweets in your feed.
To get started with Twitter threads, be sure you've updated your Twitter mobile app to the latest version.
You can read more about Twitter threads here.
Tools
In addition to sharing the latest news from this past week, we also highlighted some great social media tools and apps for you to check out.
Direct From Instagram
The first tool that we have discovered this week is called Direct From Instagram (iOS).
Instagram has taken the direct message feature and broken it out into its own separate app.
The benefits of having a separate mobile app for Instagram are so that you can easily manage any direct messages that you receive.
Previously, they were contained within the Instagram app and could easily get lost - especially if you got sidetracked by other Instagram notifications.
Now, you an manage your Instagram Direct messages directly from a separate app.
This way you can focus on the conversations without distractions.
We suspect that the Instagram Direct app will function just like Facebook Messenger does within the normal Facebook app. Tapping an icon will encourage you to launch the separate app.
Direct from Instagram is available as a free app. You can download it from the link below.
Download Direct from InstagramTailwind
The second tool that we have for you this week is called Tailwind (web).
Tailwind is a social media tool for managing your Instagram and Pinterest channels.
With Tailwind, you get a complete social media marketing toolkit for managing your channels.
This includes the ability to schedule your Instagram posts, smart scheduling, which helps you determine the right times to post your content, along with metrics about your profiles.
You can also use Tailwind to schedule reminds directly on your Pinterest channel, manage your editorial calendar using a simple drag-and-drop interface, tracks traffic and revenue from these channels and much more.
You can try Tailwind for free using the link below. After your trail, prices start at $9.99 per month.
Try TailwindWrap-up
That's it for this week's show!
To watch next week's episode of Social Chatter, your weekly social media marketing talk show, tune-in here to find out what's new in social media news!
If you have any questions about of the social media news or tools that were mentioned this week, please share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in the comments below.
