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 host, Christian Karasiewicz and special guest, Nick Rishwain!
Watch This Week’s Social Media Updates
Facebook Instant Videos
In Facebook news, they announced a new feature called Instant Video.
Not to be confused with Facebook Live Video or Facebook Instant Articles, Instant Video is a new feature that works with Facebook Messenger.
Rather than send someone a text message or audio message, you can now talk to them over video.
I spent a good amount of time with it yesterday and it works extremely well. It is similar to Apple’s FaceTime or Skype.
Here is what the interface looks like from a mobile device when you are using Facebook Instant Video.
A few other important details about Facebook Instant Video, you can also switch between your desktop or mobile device during a call.
You can be talking with someone using Facebook Instant Video and message someone on Messenger at the same time.
There are a lot of Facebook Messenger tips and tricks, This is yet one more to add!
To begin using Instant Video, simply update your Facebook Messenger app (iOS | Android).
Facebook Offers Gets Updated
Facebook made another update this week. This time it was to Facebook Offers.
With the new and improved Facebook Offers, businesses and customers will both benefit.
Here are some of the new updates made to Facebook Offers.
- Advertisers can share discounts and promotions with people on mobile
- Optimize offers based based on people likely to purchase on your site
- Businesses can post offers directly to their page
- Customers can claim offers on mobile or on desktop
- Claimed offers get saved to a Facebook Offers bookmark
- If an offer is saved on mobile, you get a reminder when you login on the desktop
- Customers get a reminder when an offer is about to expire
- Businesses can create unique offer codes to allow advertisers to offer codes to each individual
If your business has not looked into using Facebook Offers in a while, it’s a great time to start.
We’re particularly interested in being able to create unique offer codes (coming soon) to be able to reward our best customers with a reward.
Facebook Ditches Trending Topic Descriptions
In more new from Facebook, they announced changes to trending topics.
Previously, Facebook trending topics would show a description.
Now, trending topics no longer have one. Instead, you see the following:
- The amount of people posting or sharing posts about popular topics
- Topics are personalized to you based on pages you like, your location and what is trending across Facebook
New Twitter Controls
This week, Twitter announced new controls to filter notifications.
The new controls “will give you more control over what you see and who you interact with on Twitter.”
One of the Twitter control settings will let you reduce your notifications so you only see them from people you follow.
The second control is a quality filter.
When you turn on the quality filter, it “filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience.”
Here is how you access the new Twitter controls.
Two simple settings to give you better control over your Twitter experience. https://t.co/pEJuMUhCYs pic.twitter.com/jmFd0rDoV6
— Twitter Support (@Support) August 18, 2016
I recommend spending some time testing out the controls to see how it affects your feed.
If you are using services such as Hootsuite or Buffer to automate your social media marketing, you may want to try posting natively to Twitter to see if you get more impressions and engagement on your tweets compared to using a tool to automate the process.
Twitter Adds Ways to Monetize Live Video Via Periscope
Are you looking to monetize your live videos? Twitter is bringing monetization to Periscope._
One way they plan to do this is by including pre-recorded video and graphics during a live broadcast.
Here is an example of what it looks like.
LIVE on #Periscope: Rocket Explodes in Florida, plus more of Today's Tech News #Tech https://t.co/BScXQyDcxB
— Alex Pettitt (@Alexpettitt) September 1, 2016
In addition to monetizing live video, Twitter is also looking to share revenue with individual content creators.
“Creators who publish videos on Twitter will get about 70 percent of the ad revenue” according to CNBC.
Snapchat On-demand Geofilters Are Now Easier to Create
When Snapchat launched on-demand geofilters, you had to have someone with a graphic design background create them if you wanted them to look good.
This week, Snapchat is rolling out templates that let users create their own customized geofilters without needing to know Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or any other graphics software.
Snapchat on-demand geofilters start at just $5 and can help make your next event a success with Snapchat users!
Snapchat Adding Behavioral Targeting
Would you like to improve your targeting on Snapchat?
Snapchat is working on behavioral targeting.
According to Business Insider, “it looks as though any behavioral targeting will be limited to broad categories, rather than serving ads based on very specific interactions you have made inside the app.”
While Snapchat behavioral targeting might be limited at first, we anticipate over time it will match Facebook’s ad targeting behaviors.
Instagram Brings Pinch-to-Zoom to Photos and Videos
One last piece of social media news this week is that Instagram has added pinch-to-zoom to photos and videos.
Pinch-to-zoom has been a much-requested feature for Instagram users.
Here is a short video showing you how to use Instagram pinch-to-zoom.
In #SocialMediaNews: #Instagram adds pinch-to-zoom for photos and videos. https://t.co/X2dTGhFcts #socialmedia #smm
— Social Chefs (@socialchefs) September 1, 2016
In order to get pinch-to-zoom, you’ll need to update your Instagram app.
Right now, pinch-to-zoom is only available for iOS, but the Android version isn’t far behind.
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.
Alively
The first tool we wanted to share this week is a free app called Alively.
Alively was made by a [former Facebook Live manager].
Unlike Facebook Live videos that are public, Alively is for private live-streaming.
For example, you can use the Alively app to capture and share private moments with just your friends and family.
Another neat feature of Alively is if you share a live video and someone is not able to join, they will be able to watch it on their on time.
Smiletime
The next tool we wanted to share with you is Smiletime.
The goal of Smiletime is to “harness audience participation to make live video better.”
For example, if you are broadcasting a live video, your audience can upvote or down vote comments to influence what happens next on your video.
You can also run polls during your live video to help you gather information from your viewers that you can use to make changes to your show or business.
Download SmiletimeThingThing
The last tool we wanted to share this week is a free app called ThingThing.
ThingThing (iOS) is a keyboard that let’s you quickly share content from Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Google Drive and more from any app.
For example, say you want to share an Instagram photo with someone via a text message. You can access it right from your keyboard if you have ThingThing installed.
By doing this, it prevents you from having to go to Instagram, get a link and then come back to your text message to share it.
In addition, you can access files from Dropbox or Google Drive among others from your keyboard as well.
While it only seems like it takes a few seconds, over time, that adds up.
With ThingThing, you can boost your productivity and achieve more as your grow your business.
Download ThingThingWrap-up
That’s it for this week’s episode of Social Chatter.
Be sure to tune-in to our next episode on Social Chatter to find out what’s new 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.
