How to keep up with the latest Social Media Changes

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others have been updating themselves in 2018 to meet the changing needs of consumers and businesses. Here’s a look at some of the most notable social media changes so far.

In the first quarter of 2018 alone, Facebook has made more than a dozen changes that can have an impact on your Facebook marketing and costs.

The biggest changes so far are related to advertising on the platform. If you’ve ever used the A/B testing feature on Facebook to choose the best ad image, you will quickly realize that things can get a bit messy and you may end up with multiple ads if you have been testing copy variations alongside ad images.

Now with the new Dynamic Creative feature you can now include up to 30 creative assets when creating a Facebook ad. After the ad is published, Facebook will do some mixing and matching to determine which variation delivers the best results.

Previously, you had to create several different sets of ads, with translations in different languages. Now with the Dynamic Language Optimization, you only need to create a single ad and choose from up to six different language translations. Facebook will automatically optimize your marketing campaign budget and deliver your ads in the selected languages to the right audiences.

Facebook has also made changes to its News Feed to provide more trustworthy content for its users. As a result, you can expect to see less public posts from businesses and the media on your News Feed, with a more emphasis on personal posts from family members, friends, and groups. Facebook users will also see more content from local news sources. The purpose of this update is to thwart the distribution of fake news and improve the overall quality of news shared on the platform.

Going forward, businesses that are looking to make best use of Facebook for marketing purposes should make a point to create high-quality and personalized content where possible, and use smarter calls to action. These updates will help businesses and marketers keep up with changes in communication trends, make their ads more appealing, and ideally increase the efficiency of their marketing processes.

In keeping up with its growing popularity Instagram, the leading image-sharing platform has also rolled out a number of important updates over the past few months which will likely impact your social marketing approach.

First off, Instagram recently introduced the ability to follow hashtags. This eliminates the need for users to search for content they’re interested in, as any content with the followed hashtag will now automatically appear in their main feed.

With this a business marketer can take advantage of the new “follow hashtag” feature to monitor your brand’s hashtags more easily. Additionally, using hashtags to find targeted topics will give you a better insight into your competitors’ activities and the types of content that’s generating the most engagement.

Instagram is also investigating options, including the capacity to share other peoples’ Instagram posts within your Story. Sharing content on Instagram is not as easy as it is in on Facebook or Twitter, as it requires users to have a third-party app. In addition, users can easily make a screenshot of another person’s content and post it without proper attribution.

Further, as a business owner, you should also know that user-generated content is an important part of sharing updates. The regram option will make it much easier to share content, while also giving proper attribution to the person who first shared it.

Not wanting to be left behind, LinkedIn is stepping up its game with a number of major updates.

Among the new updates is a refresh for LinkedIn groups. In an effort to encourage more people to use groups, the business-centric platform has made the feature accessible from the homepage, with the latest content from groups available in the homepage feed and notifications. In addition, users can now post videos for group members to view.

LinkedIn has also updated its Sales Navigator app to make it easier and quicker for businesses to access information on their existing and prospective customers.

It’s also redesigned the account pages, improved the available search filters, and introduced email alerts. The revised features also allow users to transfer data to corporate accounts with a self-serve tool.

Businesses will benefit from better communication, data and account management, while the group updates also improves the overall LinkedIn experience, enabling greater capacity for connection and engagement.

One of the most notable updates for Snapchat is the separation of media content from “friends” content. Faced with a significant backlash from users to this change Snapchat initially said that a big update like this can take time to get used to, and that users will find it more enjoyable once they settle in. However, more recently, some users have reported seeing a switch back to the chronological feed and while there is no official word from Snapchat yet, but there may still be hope for those unhappy with the changes.

What this means for businesses is that with the publisher and branded content pushed out of the main feed, businesses may need to consider paying to advertise on the platform if they want to achieve the same levels of reach and engagement they had before the update.

The update also gives Snapchat’s algorithm more control over what users see in the Discover tab, putting additional pressure on businesses to buy ads if they want to get their posts in front of their fans.

Social media is constantly evolving, and the success of your social media marketing efforts is heavily dependent on how well you’re able to use the latest features these platforms provide.

The good news is if you can adapt to the changes and experiment with new, creative formats, you’ll be able to attract and engage customers more effectively. And by taking advantage of the latest social media updates, you can also gain a significant edge over your competitors.