Welcome to the September instalment of Social Butterfly – TCD’s state of social media wrap with Digital Content Manager Jamie Hatch and Managing Director Brittanie English.
We’re back in action, and guess what? We’ve got a special guest joining us this month! Tessa has taken the change of season quite literally and fluttered away on a European adventure, so Jamie has rallied the troops and called in the big guns (a.k.a Britt) to delve into the world of social media. Here’s everything you need to know…
Move out of the way brands, it’s time for close friends to shine on Instagram
There’s plenty to update in the world of Instagram, let’s kick it off with a fan favourite: Soon you’ll be able to share exclusive feed posts to your ‘Close Friends’ list only. Rejoice! This means you can finally stay up to date with your friends without brands getting in the way. But how will this affect the algorithm? It’s clear Instagram is now taking an “authentic content” approach to their content and is diverting users to post more on their feeds, as Mosseri noted that friends are posting more to their stories and are in each other’s DM’s. The new feature has us wondering how this might affect brands on Instagram in the future – is this a nudge from Instagram for brands to create more authentic, less-produced content?
PS. Not everyone has access to this feature yet, but keep an eye out for it!
The beloved audio-visual app is once again mirroring TikTok by allowing users to share comments made on their posts in their stories/reels. It’s a reminder for brands the opportunities that good community engagement presents – for your comments to be shared on the creator’s stories/reels plus for you to make content with your audience’s comments on your posts. What reactive content can you make today?
Instagram is also allowing users to collab on posts by submitting photos/videos as edits to posts. Look, we find this odd but we’re interested to see how it plays out. It’s all about encouraging collaboration apparently. We’d say it probably doesn’t affect brands in a huge way.
And while we’ve been told NOT to focus on vanity metrics such as likes (with the app now giving the option to have them turned off or on), the app is now trialling showing comment and share counts in stream. For the very same reason, it’s always shown engagement metrics – to get more engagement.
LinkedOut?
If our biggest fear of social media channels is that we’re siloed in our interests and audiences, then it’s about to come true on LinkedIn, according to LinkedIn expert Richard van der Blom. We already knew it to be true of Instagram, Facebook and TikTok – quick to alter the algorithm to only show you more of what you’ve quickly engaged with rather than who you follow. Well, LinkedIn is doing the same, prioritising content you’ve engaged with over its previously trusty follower-based algorithm. Do we hate it? Yes. Of course, it’s the ultimate way to keep people on the platform. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
According to a new overview from LinkedIn, it’s recently updated its algorithm to factor in more engagement signals. Van der Blom says that “you’re likely seeing posts from smaller groups of people and on more focused topics, because that’s what you’re likely to engage with most, and LinkedIn’s algorithm now has more measures to factor in, in order to predict likely engagement.”
BIG ICK.
TikTok, we see you!
TikTok has announced ‘Attribution Analytics’ within TikTok Ads Manager: to help advertisers measure the results of their TikTok advertising campaigns and gain deeper insight into users’ behaviour on TikTok. A feature in this new measurement solution is ‘performance comparison’, which will enable marketers to track a range of additional actions resulting from their ads, including “View Content”, “Add to Cart”, and “Initiate Checkout”, in addition to straight conversion data. Marketers, you’ll be happy to know that they’ll be adding more metrics in the future, so this is only the beginning!
Word on the street is that TikTok is following the current trend of users sharing content in DMs, with Axios reporting that TikTok has posted several jobs relating to social network development. This means we could see the app looking to replicate some of Meta’s in-app features, as TikTok strives to keep all sharing and messaging of content on their platform only.
“Wherever you get your podcasts” may soon extend to TikTok. According to Business Insider, the social media app filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “TikTok Music” saying that in addition to music and videos, it intends to support podcasts and digital radio content.
Sorry, Threads who?
And are we still checking Threads? According to the stats, that’s a no. In August, daily active users on the platform dropped a whopping 79%, landing at an average of 578,000 from the previously recorded 2.3m. Meta is still trying to capitalise on early interest, but from what we can tell that’s mostly just leaning on Instagram to do the heavy lifting. Other than launching a web app (finally!), the most recent update is its ‘send on Instagram’ feature which allows users to share a Thread via Instagram DM (direct message) – the company noted that Instagram users now share way more content via DM than they do in feed posts or Stories. The more you know!
Adios, Facebook news!
The sun may be setting on Facebook news as the platform takes another big obvious step away from providing this as a service. The company will “deprecate” the news tab – a Facebook feature to prominently display news material— initially for users in the UK, Germany and France.
X marks their focus on video streaming
Do you think we need another video streaming service? The future of X (previously Twitter.com – and actually still Twitter.com) may look a lot like TikTok.
According to Social Media Today, X is already trying to drive more video discovery by improving its video feed and updating its live-streaming options, while it’s also considering a new UI that would better highlight its own TikTok-style full-screen display.
“With former NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino now in charge at the app, it seems logical that streaming video will become a much bigger focus, as X looks to become a bigger source of entertainment, as another step in its everything app plan.”
Speaking of “everything app” X has also launched job listings for verified organisations.
And in an act of desperation, the app’s practically begging advertisers to come back, offering an ad credit of $250 for small businesses.
That’s all from us – until next month!
