Welcome to this week's episode of Social Chatter, your weekly social media marketing talk show where we cover the latest social media news from this past week to keep your business on the cutting-edge of social media.
Each episode of Social Chatter is available as a blog post or video.
Let's see what's new in social media this week with your hosts, Christian Karasiewicz and Nick Rishwain.
We're also joined by special guest, Moshe Isaacian.
Watch This Week's Social Media Updates
Amazon Social Media Influencer Program
In social media news, Amazon has launched their own social media influencer program.
Why An Amazon Social Media Influencer Program Matters
When it comes to social media, you think of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, but not Amazon.
Flying under-the-radar, Amazon has quietly launched their own influencer program.
According to a statement on the Amazon website, "The Amazon Influencer Program is exclusively designed for social media influencers with large followings and a high frequency of posts with shoppable content. An intuitive vanity URL makes it easy for customers to find, browse and buy the products introduced to them through social media influencers. The program allows influencers to earn fees for purchases they drive through their social media platforms."
This means if you have a large and engaged following on your social media channels, you can apply for the Amazon influencer program.
The added benefits are that the Amazon provides assets to people in this program that are geared towards sharing on social media channels.
For example, if you're accepted into the program, you'll get a unique vanity URL on Amazon that will be easy for customers to remember.
When someone clicks on an Amazon social media influencer link, they will be taken to a page featuring thumbnail images of suggested products, prices, Amazon Prime status and more.
You can read more about the Amazon social media influencer program or apply to the program here.
Updates to Twitter Replies
In Twitter news, they are changing what counts towards your 140 characters in Twitter replies.
Why Changes to Twitter Replies Matter
Previously, whenever you would reply to a tweet with other usernames, they would count towards your 140 character limit in a tweet.
Now, Twitter is making more changes.
This time, "when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won't count toward your Tweet's 140 characters."
They are doing this to simplify conversations.
Here is how.
- Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself.
- You can tap on "Replying to…" to easily see and control who's part of your conversation.
- When reading a conversation, you'll see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet.
By making this change, you'll have more room to respond in your tweets without worrying about removing some usernames.
You'll see this update rolling out to Twitter.com as well as the Twitter mobile apps for iOS and Android.
You can read the announcement from Twitter about updates to replies here.
Twitter Introduces A New Default Profile Photo
This week, Twitter also announced they are changing the Twitter default profile photo.
Here is the evolution of Twitter's default profile photo through the years.
And this is what the new Twitter default profile photo looks like now.
Why Changing the Twitter Default Profile Photo Matters
For a number of years, the default profile photo on Twitter has been the egg.
Some people liked it - because it was different.
Most Social Media Managers though, always recommend to new Twitter users that they change their default photo to something else immediately.
With Twitter rethinking the default profile photo, we're glad to see it turn into a normal profile photo.
We would have preferred one that included some text suggesting to the user to replace the photo.
With a majority of the population using smartphones, everyone has a camera that can take a square photo - just switch to the square mode on your device.
Therefore, there should be no excuse for someone not to have a profile photo on their account.
Whenever your set up a new account - whether for personal or business use, how soon do you replace the default photo with your logo or a new photo?
For those of you who want to read more about the change to Twitter default profile photos, take a look at this article.
Share and Request Locations In Twitter Direct Messages
Also in Twitter news this week, they have rolled out the ability for businesses to share their location in Twitter direct messages.
Why Sharing Your Location In Twitter Direct Messages Matters
According to Twitter, "for many businesses, delivering a great customer experience depends on understanding location for context — whether to engage with a location-aware bot or to get better customer service."
By adding the ability for businesses to share their location with customers in direct messages, this can encourage your customers to contact you via Twitter when they need help.
Here is what this feature looks like for businesses.
This example uses T.G.I. Friday's.
The reason this is a better implementation instead of having a public conversation over Twitter is because some people might not like looking foolish if they don't know how to map directions to a business.
Now, you can converse with a business "in private."
In addition, with some businesses, customers can find a store location, place an order, or make reservations using Twitter Direct Messages.
To read more about sharing and requesting a location in direct messages, take a look at this announcement from Twitter.
Search Snapchat Stories
In Snapchat news, you can now search through over a million curated Snapchat Stories.
Why Searching Snapchat Stories Matters
By introducing search for Snapchat Stories, this will make it easier for you to chat with friends, find curated stories, see highlights from nearby activities and more.
Here is a video showing you how to search Snapchat Stories.
This is great news because not only will it make Snapchat easier to use, but we expect that Facebook and Instagram will add it to their respective Stories feature as well.
As a business, if you're sharing a lot of snaps, be sure you have location sharing on and add it to the "Our Story" feature on Snapchat.
This way if someone is in the area, they have a chance to see your snaps or Snapchat might choose to include it in relevant Stories.
Right now, Snapchat is still rolling out search for Stories, but it should become available for everyone very soon.
To read more about searching Snapchat Stories, read this article.
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.
DrumUp
The first tool we have for you this week is called DrumUp (web | iOS | Android).
Do you find you spend a lot of time reviewing, creating and publishing content to your social media channels?
While publishing content is important to help your business grow your channels, this also means you don't have a lot of time to devote to other projects.
With DrumUp though, you can cut the time you spend managing Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by 90%.
In addition, DrumUp also has a powerful recommendations engine to bring you relevant stories to share.
One other very useful feature of DrumUp is that you can get recommended hashtags to include with your content as well.
This way you know you're using the right ones.
If you would like to get more done in your business, try DrumUp from the link below.
Try DrumUpSprinkles
The next tool we wanted to share with you is called Sprinkles (iOS).
Sprinkles is a new camera app from Microsoft that can suggest new ideas for witty captions. The captions and included smart stickers that they provide in the app are based on what is in the picture.
It is similar to the recently announced app called Clips (iOS) from Apple.
Here is a list of featured available in the Sprinkles app.
- Choose from witty captions based on what's in the photo
- Explore different time- and location-based captions and stickers
- Search for free stickers on the web
- Add stickers, emoji*, and your own captions in different styles
- Auto detect your age, celeb look-a-like, and more
- Place hats, mustaches, and other accessories on your selfies by face detection
- Unlock more captions and stickers when you add your birth date
- Enable even more content in Settings
Sprinkles is a free app. You can download it from the link below.
Wrap-up
That's it for this week's episode of Social Chatter.
To watch next week's episode of Social Chatter, your weekly social media marketing talk show, tune-in to our Facebook Page to find out what's new in social media news!
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.
