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, Moshe Isaacian.
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
Monetizing Facebook Watch
In Facebook news, they are working on ways to monetize Facebook Watch that are similar to YouTube's monetization options.
Why Monetizing Facebook Watch Matters For Your Business
One of the features that have been missing from Facebook Live is a way to monetize it.
With Facebook launching Watch, and reducing organic Page reach, if they're going to get users to create more live video, they're going to need a way to monetize it.
Fortunately, YouTube already created this when they allowed you to monetize your channel.
Now, all Facebook needs to do is encourage media buyers to expand Watch to individual creators and small businesses so that they can monetize their programming.
According to the article, Facebook wants people to create their own shows on Watch. There would then be a "system where creators can upload their shows for free, then earn a cut of the revenue from ads placed on that content — similar to how YouTube pays its online creators."
As a business, this should be especially helpful if you're wondering how you're going to monetize your video content - it takes time and energy to create it and do it consistently.
You can read more about monetizing Facebook Watch here.
Instagram Carousel Ads For Stories
In Instagram news, they are launching carousel ads for Stories.
Why Instagram Carousel Ads For Stories Matters For Your Business
Rather than share every moment on Instagram and clog up your feed, Instagram (and Facebook) want you to create Stories.
They're also setting up this feature to support Instagram carousel ads.
As a business, you should find Instagram carousel ads in Stories a valuable piece of real estate. With Stories on the rise, you can use Stories ads to create and tell (sell) stories to your followers and take advantage of many of Instagram's new tools such as drawing tools, stickers and more into your content.
You can read more about Instagram carousel ads for Stories here.
Instagram Type Mode For Stories
Instagram is also releasing what they are calling Instagram Type Mode for Stories.
Why Instagram Type Mode Matters For Your Business
Instagram Type Mode is "a new way to share anything that's on your mind with creative text styles and backgrounds — no photo or video required."
You can quickly turn thoughts into creative and colorful expressions.
How to Use Instagram Type Mode
- Launch Instagram
- Open the camera and choose "type"
- Tap "type" and write out your message
- Customize the background color, highlight words and phrases or add a background photo
As a business, if you struggle with finding enough time to create content, Instagram Type Mode might be for you. You can quickly customize the text, highlight important words and much more - all within seconds and then add them to your Instagram Stories so that you'll have fresh content to share with your audience.
You can read the announcement about Instagram's new type mode in Stories here.
Snapchat Launches Snap Store
In Snapchat news, they are launching a Snap Store within their mobile app.
Why A Snap Store Matters For Your Business
Snapchat is launching a Snap Store as a way for people to buy Snapchat merchandise.
These will include items such as hats, sweatshirts, a dancing hot-dog stuffed-animal and more.
While there aren't any new products yet in the Snap Store, this could be a way for Snapchat to generate some additional revenue.
As a business, you might find it useful if you're a big Snapchat user and want to have some merchandise around your office.
We could also see a Snap Store as an opportunity for Snapchat to further work with brands to sell their merchandise through Snapchat.
Our guess is Snapchat might use the data that it gathers from customers to help improve its Snapchat Ads using the location data that it gathers from users to further improve its ad targeting.
You can read more about the Snap Store here.
New Snapchat Features: Do Not Disturb and Fonts
Snapchat also rolled out new features in their latest redesign. These include a do not disturb feature along with new fonts
Why New Snapchat Features Such As Do Not Disturb and Fonts Matter For Your Business
The first new feature from Snapchat is "do not disturb."
This new feature will let you mute specific users without blocking them.
Here is what do not disturb looks like on Snapchat.
To use do not disturb, simply tap and hold on a person or group. From there, you can mute notifications. When you turn do not disturb on for a user or group, they won't know that you've muted them.
The second feature from Snapchat is enhanced fonts and colors.
When you go to type out text on a snap, you'll now see a bigger text option as well as the ability to change the font color on Snapchat. This is what that looks like.
As a business, you may have customers on Snapchat. With Instagram releasing their own type mode feature this week, this is Snapchat's way of keeping up with Instagram. You may find these features useful if this your particular customer base are heavy Snapchat users.
You might also use these new Snapchat tools to give your snaps some more style.
You can read more about these new Snapchat features 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.
Birdsong Analytics
The first tool that we have discovered this week is called Birdsong Analytics (web).
Do you find you don't spend enough time creating monthly reports and analyzing the data from those social media channels? Or maybe you spend too much time compiling reports to the point that you don't have time to review the data to see what you need to do next?
With Birdsong Analytics, you can quickly search for public social media accounts that you want to learn more about.
From there, choose the account, review the price for the report, along with the amount of time Birdsong Analytics needs to prepare your report.
When your social media metrics report is finished, it will be emailed to you.
Birdsong Analytics is used by many well-known companies from Disney, Ralph Lauren, Cisco among many others.
You can use Birdsong Analytics to quickly compile social media reports from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Reports from Birdsong Analytics start at $5.99 per month for micro-reports.
Run social media reportsStory Slicer
The second tool that we have for you this week is called Story Slicer (iOS).
Every platform from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp are moving to the Stories format.
Unfortunately, when you create Stories for your business's social media channels, it can take a lot of time to create and edit them.
With Story Slicer, you can quickly create one long video and Story Slicer will cut your video into smaller pieces, which are perfect for sharing on Facebook, Instagram WhatsApp and more.
The great thing is you won't have to touch a video editor to make these changes. You can do them right on your mobile device.
Story Slicer is $1.99. You can download it from the link below.
Download Story SlicerWrap-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!
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.
