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 YouTube Stories, how to share Instagram Stories with close friends, Gmass, Screencastify and more with Christian Karasiewicz, Phil Gerbyshak and guest, Gael Gilliland.
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
YouTube Stories For Creators
In YouTube news, they are launching YouTube Stories for Creators.
Why YouTube Stories Matters For Your Business
Last week, we talked about LinkedIn Stories.
This week, YouTube is rolling out their own version called YouTube Stories.
This new feature is Instagram-like, but it's different in the following ways.
First, YouTube Stories last for seven days. They also appear for subscribers and non-subscribers to your channel.
In addition, Creators can respond to fans who interact with their Stories. For example, fans can leave comments or questions in Stories. Creators can then respond with their own Stories.
Right now, they're only available for channels in the YouTube Partner Program.
Overall, if you receive a lot of comments on your YouTube channel and want to engage with fans, nearly all social media channels are trending towards using Stories.
With YouTube Stories, you'll have a way to respond to your audience with a video and develop a deeper connection with them, instead of just through text comments.
You can read about YouTube Stories here.
Share Instagram Stories With Friends
In Instagram news, they are rolling out the ability to share Instagram Stories with friends.
Share with Your Close Friends on Instagram Stories
Starting today, you can make a close friends list and share stories with just the people you've added. Learn more about this update here: https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/11/30/share-with-your-close-friends-on-instagram-stories/
Posted by Instagram on Thursday, November 29, 2018
Why Sharing Instagram Stories With Close Friends Matters For Your Business
Instagram is adding a new feature called close friends list.
This new feature will make it easy for you to share Instagram Stories with just a few of your friends. This way they regularly see your updates.
How To Add Close Friends On Instagram
- Launch the Instagram app
- Tap on "close friends"
- Add friends to your list
- In Instagram Stories, look for the green badge
When you want to share Instagram Stories, just select the "close friends" green badge to share your stories with your close friends.
The great thing about sharing Instagram Stories with just your close friends is that people cannot request to be added. This way you know exactly who is on your Instagram close friends list and receives your updates.
When you have been added to someone's close friends list on Instagram, you will see a green badge when you view their Instagram Stories.
Their Stories tray will also show a green ring on their profile photo.
As a business, we could see close friends being especially useful.
For example, if you publish to Instagram Stories a lot, you could add your best customers to your close friends list. This way they always know what you have going on and don't miss your updates.
To get the ability to share Instagram Stories with your close friends, update your iOS or Android app to the latest version.
To read more about how to share Instagram Stories with close friends, click here.
How To Share Collections On Facebook
In Facebook news, they are rolling out the ability to share gift ideas and collection with friends on Facebook.
Collection Sharing: Holiday Shopping
Posted by Facebook on Monday, December 3, 2018
What this new feature does is it allows you to share a collection of posts from a friend or Page you follow, an ad, a Facebook Watch video, or Marketplace listing.
You can use this new feature from Facebook to share gift ideas, plan a party or even share a collection of your best Facebook posts for your fans.
Why Sharing Collections On Facebook Matters For Your Business
Want to make it easy on your customers to find a collection of posts? For example, you have a collection of video tutorials that you want to share with them?
Better yet, maybe you have a collection of products that you recommend to customers or want to invite your employees to collaborate on creating Facebook collections?
With this new feature, you can create share your own collections or invite your friends to help curate a collection.
How To Create Facebook Collections
- Launch the Facebook mobile app
- Tap on the hamburger menu
- Tap on "create a collection"
- To add items to your Facebook collections, tap on "add items"
Alternatively, you can search Facebook to add saved items to your collections. You can also search Facebook to add posts, Pages, videos and more.
If you want to invite someone to help curate a collection, you can invite them to your Facebook collections as well.
As a business owner, we see Facebook collections as a useful feature - not just for creating and sharing gift ideas.
Rather, you can use it to collaborate with your team. For example, we can use Facebook collections to curate social media news topics for our weekly social media marketing talk show, Social Chatter.
Can you think of some ways you would use Facebook collections? Let us know in the comments below.
You can read the announcement about sharing gift ideas on Facebook here.
Upload LinkedIn Documents To Posts
In LinkedIn news, you can now upload PowerPoint files, PDF's, Word documents and more on the LinkedIn homepage, in your LinkedIn Group or on your Company Page.
Here is how to share LinkedIn documents in posts.
How To Share LinkedIn Documents
- Launch LinkedIn on your desktop
- Click on the document icon in the post update box
- Choose a PPT, PDF, Doc, etc from your hard drive
- Add a title (for search purposes)
- Add a message to your LinkedIn post
- Choose where you will share your LinkedIn document
- Click on the … option and choose whether to allow comments or not
Remember, sharing LinkedIn documents only works from your desktop for now.
Why Sharing LinkedIn Documents Matters For Your Business
We're glad to see that you can now share LinkedIn documents across your Profile, Groups and Company Pages.
What this means is that you'll now be able to share your content natively on LinkedIn and drive more discussions on the platform.
While you can only share files and documents from your desktop, we anticipate this will become available for mobile in a future update.
As a business, you should be taking advantage of sharing LinkedIn documents, especially on your Company Page or in LinkedIn Groups if discussion has gotten stale.
You may want to consider sharing PDF files, presentations you've given and more.
To learn more about uploading documents to LinkedIn, be sure to check out this guide.
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.
Gmass
The first tool that we have discovered this week is Gmass (Google Chrome extension).
Would you like to send mass email campaigns without the need for expensive email marketing services?
With Gmass, a powerful Google Chrome extension, you can use Gmail to send mail merge campaigns that include automatic follow-up emails.
You can also set automatic follow-up emails to be sent until someone replies to them.
Here is a look at how Gmass works.
Gmass is available for $6.95 or you can upgrade to the premium version for $12.95 for auto follow-ups and no Gmass branding.
Send mass email campaigns using Gmail
Screencastify
The second tool that we have for you this week is Screencastify (Google Chrome extension).
Would you like an easy way to record your screen?
Screencastify is a screen recording tool for Google Chrome extension.
With Screencastify, you can quickly record your browser tab, desktop or use your webcam to record a message for your customers.
Another thing we really like about Screencastify is that you can capture anything (it also doesn't need an Internet connection to work). This way you can record a video whenever it is convenient for you!
Here is an overview video about Screencastify.
You can use the lite version of Screencastify for free or upgrade to the premium version for $24 per user per year. This adds unlimited recording, unlimited video editing , exporting to .MP4 and removes the watermark.
Try Screencastify
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.
