What’s New in Social Media - November
Keeping up with the new features announced in Social Media is difficult. Keep reading to learn all about the most recent changes, important updates, new features or announcements from your favourite Social Media platforms.
Instagram has added scheduling and practice mode to live
Going ‘live’ on Instagram is about to get a lot less daunting! They’ve announced two new features, Practice mode and Scheduling mode. Practice mode lets you and any guest host join the Live before you broadcast it to your followers. You’ll be able to check audio and video quality and the lighting in advance of actually going Live. Scheduling mode will allow you to notify your audience of a live event in advance.
An Instagram Live can be scheduled up to 90 days before the day of and viewers will be able to set reminders and share schedule times to both stories and the feed. Scheduling mode is already being rolled out to all users, so you might already have it! However, Practice mode is coming soon, with no news yet of when it’ll be available.
Not only that but the option to post to the feed from your desktop is finally here. Images and videos lasting under a minute can be posted via the web version of Instagram. Making social media managers jobs that little bit easier!
Twitter is testing Ads in tweet replies
Twitter’s revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, tweeted from his personal account to announce that the platform is testing a new placement for ads in Twitter replies. The test is available on both IOS and Android at the minute. If you’re part of the test, you’ll start to see ads after the first, third or eighth reply to a tweet. Replies are where the conversation happens!
Furthermore, also in Twitter ads this week, the platform has added a new multi-destination option for its carousel adverts, each card within your carousel can have a separate link, objective or call to action.
Instagram is testing customisable text in link stickers
Instagram announced back in August that link stickers were replacing swipe ups in Instagram Stories. At the moment, if you add a link sticker to your story, there is a shortened URL in the text box area, but Instagram is now testing the ability to customise the text. The feature hasn’t been rolled out yet and is under beta testing in selected regions.
The platform is also testing 60-second long stories! Currently, story clips can only be 15 seconds long and any longer videos uploaded are broken up into 15-second sections.
Whatsapp has added a new way for users to shop
In 2019, WhatsApp added ‘Catalogues’ for WhatsApp for Business’ offering, this allowed businesses to showcase their products for people to browse through and compare prices. The ‘Cart’ feature was then added, allowing users to purchase the products.
WhatsApp has now added ‘Collections’, which lets users shop products in specific categories, businesses can sort their products into the same categories they would shop on the website, such as homeware, clothing and accessories. Collections will allow customers to easily find products they are interested in without scrolling through a businesses entire product catalogue.
This update is available to all businesses, so restaurants can categorise menus by Starter, Main and Desserts or beauty brands can add categories for Makeup and Skincare. WhatsApp Collections will bring categories even closer to a mobile storefront, meaning businesses can operate without the need for a website at all!
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