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Social media is constantly subject to change, with brands like Lush recently turning their back completely on the world of social media. That’s why we’ve pulled together a social update for April so you can see what’s going on from Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIn to Instagram.
- Facebook is placing a larger emphasis on the community elements of their platform. During their annual conference, Facebook announced a whole host of new features and improvements to the platform, one of these placing a particularly large emphasis on groups. Community has always been a massive part of Facebook, but by increasing the visibility of group features on the platform, they aim to increase group uptake even more. It also proves to be popular from a user perspective too, with 400 million users regularly engaging in at least one group.
- Events are becoming more prevalent, just in time for summer! The platform is introducing features to help users better discover events they would be interested in, along with features to encourage friends that may be interested in the event to come along.
- After initial speculation over the feature, Instagram has launched Quiz Stickers to the general public. It offers brands a new, incredibly engaging way to interact with followers of their brand. The feature works by giving the creator space to write one question and multiple answers, and after assigning which answer is the correct one, the user can then set this live to their followers and allow them to interact. Quizzes have proved popular on other external platforms and offers a unique opportunity to add a gamification element to stories, and one that will hopefully prove a mighty success.
- Creator driven shopping has landed. Direct shopping from influencer posts is something brands didn’t even know they needed, and it’s a huge opportunity to reignite industry passion for influencer marketing, with users being able to click on a product an influencer has tagged in their post, and buy it there and then. This new feature should hopefully do wonders to conversion and click through rates, by vastly shortening the consumer journey from spotting to shopping.
- Fundraising is about to become a whole lot simpler on Instagram, with integration much like Facebook’s inbuilt donation features. Instagram has built a Donation Sticker for use on stories, in the hopes of increasing charitable donations. This allows users to donate to a cause with all the money going directly to the nonprofit the user is supporting, but currently the feature is US only, with support for other territories arriving in the coming months.
- Instagram are once again building on the camera element of their app, bringing custom type, pie charts, and more. This is yet to be launched or fully announced, but we’re hoping more details will come soon.
- One of the biggest changes we have seen on LinkedIn recently is the introduction of Reactions. We have seen the success of reactions on Facebook for years and it is a big step for LinkedIn, allowing users to go beyond liking a post and communicate further with their network. Celebrate can be used to react to milestones in people’s careers, love for big changes, heartfelt moments and achieving goals. Insightful and curious are ideal for debates and thought provoking ideas. Essentially, this introduction will allow people to engage further with not only people in their network but also the influencers and businesses they engage with on LinkedIn.
- Another step LinkedIn has made is the introduction of Teammates to your network. LinkedIn have successfully recognised the importance of working relationships and are making changes to allow users to interact with ease when it comes to their coworkers. LinkedIn quoted that LinkedIn members are “60% more likely to like, comment, share, or message coworkers vs. other connections.” This feature, LinkedIn says, will ensure that updates from your Teammates (work colleagues etc.) will be prioritised in your feed, meaning you’ll hear about their work updates first, as well as seeing their comments, likes and shares before anything else. This feature is currently being rolled out in the US.
- Twitter has recognised the need for change on a platform where trolling is ever-increasing. In order to better the experience for users, Twitter are introducing a Hide Replies feature that lets users hide replies to their tweets so that others won’t see any offensive messages as they will be hidden from view on the original tweet. There is also an option to view the hidden tweets (for transparency’s sake). This feature will be tested publicly in the next few months.
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