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
Twitter Customer Service Tools for Businesses
#Twitter announces new customer support features for businesses. https://t.co/uOB8m9G5Cn #socialmedia #smm pic.twitter.com/HvIvTvUAb7
— Social Chefs (@socialchefs) September 16, 2016
This week, Twitter announced a new customer service tool for businesses.
With this new tool, a business can do the following:
- Display hours of availability
- Show customers which Twitter accounts offer customer support
- Display a more prominent button to start a Direct Message
This is fantastic news if you are a business who uses multiple Twitter accounts - some of sharing news, others specifically for answering customer questions.
To setup your Twitter account for the new customer support feature, go to the customer support page and turn on the feature.
You Can Now Tweet Longer Than 140 Characters
This week, Twitter announced you can now tweet longer than 140 characters.
Here are some of the ways that this is changing according to Buffer.
- Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.
- Media attachments: A URL at the end of Tweets generated from attaching photos, a video, GIF, poll, Quote Tweet, or DM deep link will not count towards the character limit (URLs typed or pasted inside the Tweet will be counted towards the character limit as they do today).
- Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.
- Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.
This is fantastic news because you can now have longer tweets - because images and other forms or media are not included in the 140 characters.
Remember, just because you have more space to tweet doesn’t mean your tweets need to change.
We recommend experimenting with tweets that are shorter and longer to see which ones resonate the best with your audience.
To read more about this update from Twitter, go here.
Instagram Ad Call-to-Action Button Changes
In Instagram news, they have made changes to Instagram Ad call-to-action buttons.
Here is what the button looks like on Instagram.
When someone opens an ad and goes to comment, Instagram extends the comments section.
“When we detect additional information from an ad like price, destination URL or app store rating, we’ll automatically add it to the call-to-action button.”
For Instagram video ads, when someone unmutes a video, Instagram will take them to the destination URL.
These new Instagram Ad call-to-action buttons will be rolling out over the next month so keep an eye out for them.
Instagram Business Profiles
In more Instagram news, you can now switch your Instagram profile to an Instagram business profile.
With a business profile, you get a number of useful features for your business on Instagram.
For example, you can run Instagram Ads, view insights on your account, see which posts are generating engagement and even add an Instagram contact button.
Switching your Instagram profile takes just a couple of minutes.
Watch this short video to learn how.
Instagram Drafts Now Available
In more Instagram news this week, they have rolled out Instagram Drafts.
While this was previously available for some users back in August, not everyone had it.
With Instagram Drafts, you can now start a draft and save it for later.
As a business owner, this is a very useful tool because you can now begin creating a post from anywhere, save it for later, and access it when you have more time available.
To use Instagram Drafts, watch this short video tutorial.
Facebook Page Crossposting
One last piece of social media news this week comes from Facebook.
They have rolled out crossposting for Facebook Pages.
What crossposting can do is let you “share videos across multiple Pages.”
“Crossposting can only happen between Pages that have added each other.”
To access Facebook Page crossposting, go to Settings > Crossposting.
There you need to add other pages that you want to be able to crosspost with.
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.
Elementor
Elementor is a free landing page builder.
You can use Elementor to build single landing pages or to map out and design your entire website.
If you have looked at other alternatives for building landing pages such as LeadPages (another of our favorites), we personally use both because they have different uses.
For example, with LeadPages, they offer one-click publishing whereas Elementor takes a little extra work once you have your page designed to publish it.
Overall, both are terrific solutions for a business looking to build landing pages quickly!
Download ElementorTimezoner for Slack
The next tool we wanted to share with you is called Timezoner for Slack.
While you will need the Slack app (iOS | Android) and Timezoner for Slack, this can be a very useful add-on.
With Timezoner for Slack, instead of trying to coordinate meeting times or the right time to send a proposal, Timezoner for Slack let’s you quickly determine what timezone a customer or employee is using.
This way you can better coordinate when you are sending an email or project to them to help maximize the chance that it gets opened.
Download Timezoner for SlackGoogle Allo
The last tool we wanted to share this week is a free app called Google Allo.
Google Allo (iOS | Android) is a smart messaging app that helps you say more and do more app for creating bite-sized talkshows on your favorite topics.
With Google Allo, you can hold conversations using stickers, smart replies, huge emoji and text. Google Allo also includes the Google Assistant, a chatbot that can fetch information for you or your business in less time.
If you run your own business, Google Allo can help save you time by booking appointments, helping keep your calendar up-to-date, send messages, locate restaurants to take clients to and more.
Download Google AlloWrap-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.
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