Social media platforms are surprising day by day with very innovative features enhancing user experience and wider business growth possibilities. January saw a lot of updates across various social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat etc… Digital marketing has seen hope through innovative arrivals over different platforms boosting the capacities of entrepreneurial activities.
Let’s go through the social media updates for January.
A new social app from the house of Instagram founders
Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are launching a new social app focusing only on the content rather than the social elements at least at the beginning phase now.
The new app is named ‘Artifact’ because it is a combination of articles, facts, and artificial intelligence. It is designed to provide users with a curated news experience, based on their engagement and interests.
Artifact aims to use the similar machine learning-fueled approach that has propelled TikTok to heights, by using the in-app actions as indicators to curate users’ personal experience instead of relying on their social graph to define what they see.
Artifact is also developing a following feed, as well as messaging, but they are mainly focusing on using advanced machine learning to keep users engaged.
Artifact will be selective about the publishers and content that it lets into the app, and will censor posts that promote falsehoods.
More Transparency in paid partnerships from now with Twitter updates
Twitter’s now reinforces its stance that all paid partnerships must be disclosed with the #ad tag in the tweet. Twitter also says that #paidpartnership and #sponsored are acceptable disclosure tags.
On top of abiding by the Twitter Rules, users, including creators and brands, that participate in Paid Partnerships are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations in addition to all advertising laws and FTC regulations including the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. If failed to do so, Twitter says, could result in ’enforcement actions.
The update comes as various governments look to implement new measures to ensure transparency in influencer marketing partnerships.
Twitter’s update works to align with regulatory expectations, while still enabling brand deals in the app. Twitter doesn’t have paid partnership tags like Meta and hence its disclosures are even more reliant on user action.
Instagram adding impetus to business profiles through Lead Forms as a CTA button option
Good news for digital marketers – Instagram has added a new ‘Lead Form’ option within your IG business profile, which provides new ways to generate direct response from your business in the app.
As per the new feature, you can select ‘Add Lead Form’ as an action button on your profile. You can choose either a standard data collection CTA, or add custom questions, to further deal with queries.
The process enables you to choose multiple-choice or short-answer responses, providing another way to gather insights from your IG profile visitors.
It could be a good way to further drive interest coming from the app, and gather more information for follow-up and planning.
A new ad campaign in Snap to provide its AR offerings
AR is a key area focus for Snap, and although operating at a much lesser scale than Meta and Apple also invests in big AR projects, Snap has continued to rise above its weight in this area, by consistently coming out with AR content that grabs attention, and engages audiences.
While Meta is still struggling to maintain relevance with younger audiences, Apple has leaned on Snap to help showcase its advanced AR tools over time for the same.
Snapchat has its finger on the pulse and hence virtually every AR trend – from anime filters to baby faces, from crying faces to vomiting rainbows – all of these have originated from Snapchat and has persisted over time, even with other platforms like TikTok entering the same realm.
Tap into newsletter growth easily as LinkedIn adds new newsletter showcase tools
Newsletters have continued to grow, with LinkedIn recently reporting that newsletter creation in the app was up 10X year-over-year while it was becoming inert on other platforms.
LinkedIn’s rolling out one-click subscribe URLs and embeddable buttons, make it smoother to guide people to your Newsletter and subscription page.
The link can be shared on social media, email, or a website, and will direct users directly to LinkedIn to subscribe.
LinkedIn also displays newsletters in search results under the creators’ names.
That adds another showcase for your newsletter, which will help to raise awareness and subscriptions.
You can add your Newsletter in the ‘Featured’ placement on your LinkedIn profile, while LinkedIn’s also adding custom SEO titles and descriptions to control how articles show up in search engines.
“Authors can look at any article they’ve created, click on the “Publishing menu” in the top left corner, and click “Settings” to begin customising how they’d like their SEO title and description to appear in searches.”
Thus, it was a great start in 2023 for digital publishing of content, marketing and social activities with the implementation and introduction of several features and innovative social media updates across various social media platforms. Let’s make sure the advancements are utilised and updates are verified and used to enhance the business opportunities and social media experience.
