In the past few months or so, we have seen many changes in the Social Media world. Therefore, we have decided to write some of the most important ones down below.
One trend that is worth mentioning is that Social Media platforms have been starting to focus on their users more rather than businesses. Let’s start, shall we?
Instagram.
1. Music in Instagram stories.
The music sticker is yet to be available worldwide. But, it is for sure being put to good use. Adding music to your stories has been a feature that people wanted for a while now.
As a result, there are many apps that can do that. Instagram’s move to bring out music sticker, has been proven to be very smart. Since the app has taken more and more into consideration what the users need and want, it grew up to a total of 1 billion active users.
Another thing worth mentioning is that you can share a song that you are playing in Spotify on you Instagram stories. Unfortunately, you can’t do the same with podcasts.
2. Insta Stories Q&As.
Since many bloggers/celebrities/youtubers/content creators have their communities coming together on Instagram, the app now lets you ask them questions in order for them to answer.
The questions sticker can be easily used by brands as well. For example, you can find out more about your customers or why do they follow you on social media.
3. Regram in Instagram Stories.
The day of reposting directly on Instagram is not here, yet! But we are making progress. Instead of making a screenshot of your phone and then posting it, you can now share the post directly into your Insta Stories. Just push the share button and press Add to your Story.
4. iGTV.
Sharing longer videos is something a lot of people have been wanting. Taking a shot at YouTube, Instagram has created a new feature Instagram TV, an app that connects with your Instagram profile and lets you post vertical longer videos.
Even though the idea of it seems interesting, a lot of people seem to be annoyed by it. We have personally tried it out, but the experience of it it’s not very pleasant. The lack of a feed (something we are used to) and just randomly swiping through videos doesn’t seem very appealing to us.
5. Engagement, engagement, and more engagement.
Posting constantly it’s a very important metric in the app. And even more, engaging your audience through Insta Stories, replying to people’s Stories, new interactions are awarded as well.
We tested out the next thing: for 3 days we have posted constantly on Stories and the number of viewers grew. We then stopped for 3 days. Then only posted 1 story. Surprisingly, the post after the break got a lot fewer views than the first one posted before the break.
6. Meaningful time in the app.
Something that many people have already gotten a notification about is your time in the app. Instagram (and other platforms such as Facebook) is trying to get into the living a meaningful life wagon.
Adding a feature where you can set a specific amount of time in the app or get an alert when you have passed a number of minutes. The feature is not here yet, but we will review it and get back to it once it’s here.
7. Rumored: swipe to read for blog posts.
As stated above, bloggers use the platform a lot and it is rumored that Instagram might add a swipe (left/right) for reading articles within the app.
This is not only great for bloggers, but for brands too. Creating an article and having your audience there to read it ASAP is the best thing you can offer to a writer.
Facebook.
1. Dynamic creative.
This one is more for the publishers reading this article. Recently, Facebook has changed their take on ads.
They have created a new option when running ads: the dynamic creative, that pulls different aspects of one’s environment on Facebook and serves those people specific content based on those pieces of information. We are talking here about real-time personalized content.
2. Reviews and recommendations.
Say goodbye to stars reviews. And welcome 1-10 Scale Reviews. Instead of ratings going down from a 1 stars review, Facebook’s algorithm is the one in charge of your page score.
Due to the fact that many businesses depend on reviews. Facebook has decided to make the process more transparent and easy for page owners. The score of a page is more likely to be influenced by what the review says and how many recommendations you have got, especially new ones.
3. Info & Ads.
As stated above, the platform wishes to be more transparent with its users. And in order to do that, they have added a tab on each page in order for everyone to see if the page is running ads on the platform or not.
4. Cross-posting on Instagram.
We would just like to say: FINALLY! The feature is available for posts that contain a single image.
5. Messenger stories and polls.
As well as Instagram did, Messenger stories now have a new feature: creating polls where people can vote. Why is this useful? Vlad has explained in a full article how to use them wisely.
YouTube.
1. YouTube Premium.
Want your music to play in the background while using other apps? Better get your money ready then.
2. Messages.
You can now send messages in-app. Which seems like a great idea, unless you forget to check them and find messages from 2 months ago.
3. Monetization Rules.
Due to the scandals that the platform went through in the past year or so, the owners have decided to change their monetization rules. Which means that if you are considering starting a new channel and explore the video content creation world, think twice.
We are not saying it’s impossible but set your expectations right. It will take smaller channels a long time until it will reach a certain peak in order to get monetized.
Pinterest.
1. Focus on engagement.
The platform has changed its dynamics in order to generate more engagement, rather than just time spent in the app. Therefore, pin, pin, pin and pin some more. We use the platform ourselves. It’s a good way to do research, get inspiration and create mood boards.
2. Cover photo generator.
A new smaller feature that Pinterest has added to profiles, is the changing cover art. The cover elements change depending on what you pin.
3. New tabs and buttons.
As seen in the picture above, you get some new addition to your profile page. The most important two, are Followers and the Tried tabs.
We are guessing Pinterest is trying to adapt to the user interaction on their platform. What do I mean by that?
Well, up to a few months ago, Pinterest was a place where you got inspiration from. But now, you can interact with other users. For example, if you search for tips and tricks on how to cook pasta, you can add your results and let everyone see what is the end result.
This is all we have got so far. If you feel like we haven’t mentioned a major change on a social media platform, let me know at jojo@subsign.co.
