For marketers to be at the top of their marketing game, it’s essential to keep sorting through the latest and greatest in digital news updates. And, for those who have missed out on the recent updates being caught up in the month of August, we have brought this list including most of them. Let’s take a look-
1) Facebook introduces New Tools to Manage Time on Facebook and Instagram
Facebook announced new tools to help people manage their time on Facebook and Instagram: an activity dashboard, a daily reminder and a new way to limit notifications. The social media giant brought these tools based on collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organizations, academics, our own extensive research and feedback from our community. To access the tools, go to the settings page on either app. On Instagram tap “Your Activity,” and on Facebook, tap “Your Time on Facebook.” At the top, you’ll see a dashboard showing your average time for that app on that device. Tap any bar to see your total time for that day. Below the dashboard, you can set a daily reminder to give yourself an alert when you’ve reached the amount of time you want to spend on that app for that day. You can change or cancel the reminder at any time. You can also tap on “Notification Settings” to quickly access the new “Mute Push Notifications” setting. This will limit your Facebook or Instagram notifications for a period of time when you need to focus.
2) Facebook updates Video Ad Metrics to Better Match the Ways People Watch
Facebook updates some of its video ad metrics to evolve its reporting of duration—the total amount of time a video was viewed—to focus more on consumption, the number of unrepeated seconds people watch. It also introduced new reporting for video plays and removed some metrics to simplify reporting.
3) Facebook Removes Personal Profile Scheduling
Starting August 1st, Facebook users cannot use any 3rd party app to schedule posts to their Facebook personal profile. This goes for Hootsuite, Buffer, or any app they have been using.
4) Facebook launches New Creative Tools in the Ads Manager App
Facebook announced introducing a new suite of creative tools for the Ads Manager app that make it easier to build compelling ad content right from your mobile device.
These new creative tools allow users to create and edit ad images directly from the Ads Manager app, saving time and effort. The creative tools include:
- Text Overlay & Text Policy Checker:
- Image Cropper
- Templates
- Templates
- Color Filters
5) Facebook Workplace Adds Profiles
Facebook Workplace users will now see personalized profiles for deeper connections between colleagues. They’ll be able to celebrate their colleagues and teammates and call out birthdays and work anniversaries. And they’ll have a powerful new directory search to find anyone in the organization fast.
Features updated-
- Support for multiple phone numbers & extensions so anyone is only a click and a call away
- Division & Organization fields on profiles so your organization can provide more details about roles, responsibilities, and skills
- A biography section on your Workplace profile to share a little more about yourself with your colleagues
6) Facebook testing AR ads in the News Feed
Facebook is offering a limited number of advertisers access to augmented reality (AR) ads that run in the News Feed and is testing a new tool that will help brands create mobile video ads using existing images and video footage.
Facebook wrote that, “With the introduction of AR ads in Facebook News Feed, people can experiment with your brand’s AR camera effects in just one click from your ad. And by incorporating calls-to-action within the camera experience, people can seamlessly go from engaging with your product—such as trying on a lipstick shade or exploring a new game—to making a purchase or installing an app.”
Additionally, it launched Video Creation Kit to make it easier for all advertisers to create mobile-first video ads. Video Creation Kit helps advertisers create eye-catching, effective mobile video ads using existing images. The tool will enable advertisers to upload images, add overlays and logos to quickly build mobile-first video ads.
7) Twitter Releases New ‘Playbook for Agencies
Twitter has introduced a new Playbook to answer agencies and its clients’ questions about how to run Twitter Ads well.
The guide will help you learn-
- Where Twitter fits into your client strategy
- How to set client accounts up for success
- What makes a good Tweet
- The nuances of campaign types
- The building blocks of a campaign
- Power stats to help you pitch Twitter
8) LinkedIn Updates Campaign Reporting
LinkedIn announced a redesigned reporting experience for LinkedIn Campaign Manager, making it easier to understand how your campaigns are performing and quickly optimize for better results. This new interface now delivers a clean and intuitive experience that lets you more easily manage your campaigns.
The reporting update includes several major enhancements-
- Save time on campaign reporting
- Understand campaign performance and optimize in a flash
- Personalize your reporting experience
9) LinkedIn introduces Voice Messaging
To give users more ways to have conversations, LinkedIn added the ability to record and send voice messages to their first-degree connections of up to one minute in LinkedIn Messaging.
Whether you’re responding while walking or multitasking, or need to give an in-depth explanation, voice messages let you more easily and quickly communicate in your own voice with your connections.
10) LinkedIn brings Video Captions, Share Articles Quotes, and See Translations
LinkedIn introduces a couple of new features to make posting better including video captioning, sharing quotes from articles, translations, drafts, and an easy way to view your content.
11) New Updates in LinkedIn Messaging
To help make it easier for users to communicate the way you want, when you want, LinkedIn has made some updates to messaging to make their exchanges more useful and enjoyable.
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Stretch your compose box to write longer messages
You can now move out of the chat-like interface and expand the message compose box across platforms for those times when you just need a little more space to compose longer, thoughtful and more formal messages.
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Share attachments on-the-go
Users now get the ability to send attachments from their phone in the LinkedIn app. Contacted by a recruiter and want to send the resume right away? Just tap the attachment icon and select from the approved file types including PDF, DOC, XLS, and PPT to upload.
Additionally, users can send emojis from desktop with new emoji picker, start and manage group messages, mention people in messages or quickly copy + paste images on web.
12) New Tools for Businesses
What’s app, expanding its support for businesses that need more powerful tools to communicate with their customers, added these features-
- Request helpful information: When you need a shipping confirmation or boarding pass, you can give your mobile number to a business on their website, on their app, or in their store to send you information on WhatsApp.
- Start a conversation: You may see a click-to-chat button on a website or Facebook ad to quickly message a business.
- Get support: Some businesses may provide real-time support on WhatsApp to answer questions about their products or help you resolve an issue.
Snapchat
13) Snapchat ‘Storytellers’ finally pairs influencers with advertisers
Snapchat launches its “Snapchat Storytellers” pilot program introducing brands to five of the app’s most popular content makers, including Mplatco, Cyrene Q and Shonduras. They’ll star in ads for Stories and Discover or provide creative direction to brands with their expertise, gleaned from gathering audiences of millions over the past few years, in exchange for cash. Top creators can often earn tens of thousands of dollars or more for deals with brands.
14) See when your friends are online to DM
Instagram made it easier to connect with friends on Instagram by showing you when they’re available to chat.
When your friends are active on Instagram, you’ll see a green dot next to their profile picture in various spaces within the app, including the Direct inbox and your friend list when you share a post from feed. You will only see status for friends who follow you or people who you have talked to in Direct. You can easily hide your own status and turn off the ability to see when your friends are active in your settings.
15) Instagram to allow public accounts to remove followers
As per the reports are believed, Instagram is widely testing a new feature that will allow public profiles to remove followers. Users with private accounts are offered this feature, though it would be really interesting to see public accounts getting this benefit in nearby future.
To verify, whether you have the access to this exclusive feature, you can go to your Instagram profile, tap followers, then click the three dot icon next to whichever follower you want to remove. The three dots won’t appear if you don’t have the ability to remove followers. If you do, you can tap the icon to bring up the option to remove the follower.
16) Instagram Releases New Guide to Creating and Uploading IGTV Content
Instagram has published a new guide on how to create content for its new IGTV long-form video platform including a range of tips, apps and accessories you can consider to help improve your IGTV videos.
YouTube
17) YouTube shows Searchable Hashtags above Video Titles
YouTube now displays hashtags on videos that can help users search for and discover other videos about the same topics.
Currently, hashtags appear on videos viewed in a web browser and the Android mobile app. Hashtags are not shown in the iOS app. Hashtags appear in blue text above the video’s title. Users can click or tap on a hashtag to conduct a YouTube search for other videos that contain the same hashtag.
Users can also type a hashtag into the YouTube search bar to manually search for other videos with that hashtag. YouTube creators can utilize hashtags simply by including them in the video description.
18) YouTube now adapts to Multiple Aspect Ratios
YouTube rolled out an update on to its platform which enables the video player on site to dynamically adapt to different aspect ratios on the desktop.
YouTube didn’t make any formal announcement about the feature. And the only reference has been found within a reply by a Community Manager on Google’s Product Forum.
“We launched an update to the YouTube video player on desktop – the player now automatically adapts to provide the best viewing experience based on the video’s size (aspect ratio) and your computer’s screen/browser size,” the Community Manager wrote giving details of the update.
19) YouTube Rolling Out Non-Skippable Ads to All Creators
YouTube announced rolling out non-skippable ads on its platform to all creators to monetize their content and earn more revenue.
YouTube plans to add a tool to allow creators bulk add or remove non-skippable ads and to track audience engagement and revenue flow from videos that consist of those types of ads.
Earlier, non-skippable ads were only available to a few numbers of creators. At present, it will be available to everyone in the “YouTube Partner Program.”
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