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.
On this week's episode of Social Chatter, your weekly social media marketing talk show, we explore new ways to shop on Instagram (shop collections, Instagram business profiles, video feeds), updates to LinkedIn company pages, the Snapchat bitmoji store, Linktree for Instagram and more with Christian Karasiewicz, Phil Gerbyshak and guest, Jenn Herman.
If you like, you can watch or listen to Social Chatter on our blog, YouTube or the Alexa Flash Briefing.
For those of you who missed last week's show, you can find it here.
Let's see what's new in social media this week with your hosts, Christian Karasiewicz and Phil Gerbyshak.
Watch This Week's Social Media Updates
Facebook Portal Now Shipping
In Instagram news, they are rolling out new ways to help you shop on Instagram.
These include the ability to save to your shopping collection, shop on Instagram business profiles and to to shop in feed videos.
Here is a look at each of these ways to shop on Instagram.
Instagram Shopping Collections
The first new way to shop on Instagram is to save items to your shopping collection.
When you come across an item you want buy on Instagram, you can now save them to a shopping collection.
From Instagram Stories or your feed, simply tap on a product tag and then tap the save icon (you can find this in the bottom right corner).
The item will be saved to your Instagram shopping collection.
Items you save using the shopping collection feature will appear in your Instagram profile.
This feature is a great way to create a wishlist on Instagram.
Shop On Instagram Business Profiles
A seconds way to shop on Instagram is from Instagram business profiles.
Instagram is currently testing a shopping tab on business profiles.
The benefit here is that you can quickly view all of the products a business profile has available.
The "shop tab" on business profiles will let you see the product, its name, price, and posts that feature the item.
Shop Instagram Feed Videos
A third way to shop on Instagram is from feed videos.
When you're in your Instagram feed, you can now tap on the shopping icon (it's in the bottom left corner).
You'll then be able to see featured products in Instagram feed videos.
Why New Ways To Shop On Instagram Matter For Your Business
Instagram is rolling out a host of new ways to help you shop on their platform.
As a user, it will be easier to buy products you like from Instagram.
As a business owner, you should be able to see more sales come from Instagram.
If you decide to use any of these new features, one thing you can do to help determine how effective Instagram is at driving sales for your business is to include a promo code with your product that is exclusive to Instagram. This way you can look through your sales data and see which products sold well on Instagram.
You may even want to set aside exclusive products just for Instagram to see if people are shopping on Instagram.
Overall., this is a big win for Instagram business profiles as well as Instagram users and should help drive further adoption of the platform (as well as growth and sales).
To read the announcement about new ways to shop on Instagram click here.
Facebook Portal Now Shipping
In Facebook news, Facebook Portal is now shipping.
In addition to Facebook Portal and Portal+ now shipping, they have added in a new feature called "Story Time," which "brings bedtime stories to life using augmented reality and sound effects to transform your face and voice into the story's characters before your loved one's very eyes."
Facebook Portal is also adding "Hey Portal," a feature you can use to call Portal.
Besides the ability to make calls from Facebook Messenger, Portal wants to make sure they address the privacy and ad concerns.
According to Facebook, they won't listen to, view or keep the contents of your Portal video calls. Calls are also encrypted so that they are secure.
While Facebook says they won't use the information to target you with ads, we expect they will open Facebook Ads to Facebook Portal once users begin to adopt the new piece of equipment.
Why Facebook Portal Matters For Your Business
There are plenty of reasons why you should consider adding Facebook Portal to your business.
If you conduct a lot of meetings, Portal could be useful with remote teams (it would mean each person needs their own Portal).
The good thing though is that Portal can automatically recognize who is speaking and focus in on them (it can also follow you).
This can help to improve meetings and eliminate questions such as "who is that speaking," a common question that often comes up during meetings.
Facebook Portal can also be useful for handling customer service inquiries. Your business can use Portal to communicate with customers and see who you are speaking with.
This way you can begin to learn more about your customers that use your products or services.
While this is version 1 of Facebook Portal, we anticipate they will continue to upgrade the software to add more features. We hope that one day, they will expand it to Facebook Live. For now, it's a great tool if you are a heavy Messenger user.
You can read more about Facebook Portal updates here.
LinkedIn Company Pages Get A Refresh
In LinkedIn news, they are launching updated company pages.
These new company pages are rolling out to the United States, with plans to expand globally over the next month.
Company pages are adding the following features: Page Admins can surface content using a new content suggestion tool.
You'll also be able to add call-to-action buttons such as "request demo," "contact us," "register" or "sign up" to your posts.
In addition, another update is the ability to "share with employees," which will let Company Page Admins post content directly to employees - this could be a useful feature if you have a tough time getting employees to be active on social media.
LinkedIn is also finally making it so that Page Admins can post updates and respond to comments from the iOS and Android mobile apps.
Why Updates To LinkedIn Company Pages Matter For Your Business
If you run a business and encourage your employees to use LinkedIn and to be active on social media, these new Company Page updates should help you keep your employees aware of what is going on within the company (with the new share with employees feature).
You may also find the ability to reshape content that your employees are sharing that they have discovered. This can help forge a strong bond between your company and your employees.
Furthermore, LinkedIn Page analytics will give you aggregated data. This will make it easier for you to compare Page engagement metrics with the overall engagement levels for LinkedIn Pages to see where you fall.
We're excited for these new updates to LinkedIn Company Pages (they've been a long time coming).
You can read more about LinkedIn company page updates here.
LinkedIn Acquires Glint
Also in LinkedIn news, they have
Glint is a company that specializes in employee engagement.
According to LinkedIn, "we believe that LinkedIn with Glint offers a unique opportunity to transform the talent function in a way that will help our customers build great teams through visibility into the people they have, the people they need, and with the means to attract, develop and retain the best talent."
Why LinkedIn Acquiring Glint Matters For Your Business
By acquiring Glint, LinkedIn is positing their social media platform to help workforces find and acquire the right people.
While most companies rely on recruiters, we wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn and Glint begin to tap into artificial intelligence or AI to help with job recruitment.
This could conceivably help your business use AI to identify productive people to bring into your organization with minimal involvement from recruiters - they would help identify the right people for you. All you would have to do is interview them based on their qualifications.
You can read the announcement about LinkedIn acquiring Glint here.
The Snapchat Bitmoji Store
In Snapchat news, they are launching a Snapchat bitmoji store.
Why A Snapchat Bitmoji Store Matters For Your Business
The Snapchat bitmoji store is a place where you can buy personalized merchandise featuring your Snapchat bitmoji (as well as that of your friends').
If you're a business owner, you may want to own t-shirts, a mobile device case, or a coffee mug to showcase your own bitmoji).
If you're looking for gifts for your best customers, you may want to order a t-shirt with both of your bitmojis.
This can be a useful thank you gift.
The Snapchat bitmoji store is iOS only at the moment. Prices start at $2 for stickers. Sweatshirts are $27.
You can also personalize your bitmoji.
To read more about the Snapchat bitmoji store, click here.
Snapchat Friendship Profiles
Also in Snapchat news, they want to help you celebrate your friendships with new Snapchat friendship profiles.
Snap friendship profiles will make it easier for you to see the images. videos, messages, link and more that you've shared with your friends on Snapchat.
Why Snapchat Friendship Profiles Matter For Your Business
Using friendship profiles, you can quickly find content that you've shared with someone on Snapchat.
If you're a business and you use it to communicate with your customers, they may have shared a photo using your produce or create a video testimonial.
Instead of searching for this information, you can quickly find it by looking at your friendship profile on Snap.
How To Use Snapchat Friendship Profiles
- Launch the Snapchat app
- Tap on a friend's bitmoji
- Look for the content you saved in your chats
Friendship profiles will be rolling out over the next few weeks on Snapchat.
In the meantime, you can read the announcement about them 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.
ExitBar
The first tool that we have discovered this week is ExitBar (web).
ExitBar is a pop-up that will show on your blog when readers go to close your website.
You can use this as an opportunity to encourage readers to read other content, sign-up for your email newsletter, watch a video and more.
Here is a look at ExitBar.
To install ExitBar on your site, simply fill-out a short form with the text, image, description and call-to-action that you want to display to your readers.
When people visit your website and go to close it, your custom content will be displayed!
ExitBar is free. They will display their own suggested content on 1% of your sites views.
If you're looking for another feature-rich tool, we also recommend OptinMonster.
Try ExitBar
Linktree For Instagram
The second tool that we have for you this week is Linktree (web).
Would you like to add multiple links to your Instagram bio?
Instagram currently only allows you to have just one link in your Instagram bio.
Linktree is an Instagram tool to help you add more links to your Instagram bio.
Once you set up Linktree for your Instagram account, simply replace the link in your Instagram bio with the one generated by Linktree.
When someone clicks on your Instagram bio link, they will be taken to a landing page where they can pick from the links that you have set up for them.
You can use Linktree for free on your Instagram account. If you need additional features, it's just $6 per month.
Try Linktree for Instagram
Wrap-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.
No Comments