Welcome to the Social Smarty Scoop for the week ending the 18th of August, 2024. I have put together all of the social media marketing updates you need to know from the past seven days, so let's dive on in.
First up, LinkedIn now allows brands to sponsor user-generated newsletters. What does that mean? Well, if you are a LinkedIn user, you'll know that you can create newsletters. So newsletters are exactly like my email newsletters. They are regular publications, but they are sent via LinkedIn. So rather than someone handing over their email address to you, you can create a newsletter that someone can opt into with their LinkedIn account, and they'll get a notification when you publish a new newsletter. Now, LinkedIn has rolled out this new feature where a brand or a business can sponsor that newsletter. So effectively, they can get their brand, their business out to the subscribers of someone else's newsletter. So when that newsletter is created by an individual like myself or like you. Often they're experts or influencers in their fields. They have a good, engaged audience. That brand or that business can pay to get their message in front of that audience. So it's really no different than you getting in touch with me and saying, Hey, I want to sponsor to your newsletter. I want to put an ad inside that newsletter. It's exactly the same thing but run through LinkedIn. Really interesting. I'll be interested to see how this rolls out.
Next up, forget about showing up authentically. Instagram has been spotted with a new media format called AI Character. When you go to create a post on Instagram, we pick between a story or a reel or a post, different types of media. Ai Character has been spotted as a new media type. Now, I don't have any more information at this stage, but I suspect it's a bit like your avatar. So creating content using an AI character rather than showing up authentically as yourself.
Now, another update for LinkedIn. Linkedin finally is allowing us to edit our scheduled posts. In the past, if you created a post and scheduled it right there on the LinkedIn platform, you didn't have the ability to go back and edit it after you had scheduled it. You basically just had delete it and start all over again. So this update is a very, very welcome one.
Now, Meta is reportedly removing detailed targeting exclusions from ad campaigns. When we create an ad, we often build out an audience based on demographics or interests, and we can also exclude people from that audience. Say, for example, you wanted to target everyone who was interested in home cooking, gourmet food, but you wanted to exclude anyone interested in veganism. Now we don't have that ability or we're losing that ability to add that exclusion, so to tell me to who we don't want to see our add. Now, Now, this change obviously impacts how precisely we can target our advertising on Meta's platforms, but I suspect this is just the start of what's to come. I have a theory that this is just the start for limiting what we can influence with Facebook or Meta ads. I suspect that eventually we won't be able to select any interest-based targeting, and we will have to rely on Meta's AI features or functionality. Let's see if this one plays out, but that is my theory.
Linkedin has been spotted displaying a videos for you feed. Now, think of a video feed with videos recommended for you, similar to TikTok's FYP or For You page, but over on LinkedIn.So obviously, LinkedIn is really starting to prioritise videos if they're rolling out a whole feed of just videos. So if you are a LinkedIn user, if LinkedIn is part of your social media marketing, then you may want to think about adding some more video Show Content to your content plan. Hashtags on threads are now looking like actual hashtags. So I've seen screenshots showing hashtags on threads with the hash symbol. So hashtags on threads have been a bit interesting. They have been showing up just as a blue link or a blue word within your post. I haven't actually seen the hashtag symbol on my feed yet, but the screenshots make it look much more what we're used to over on, say, Instagram, for example, with the hashtag symbol. Instagram is working on a throwback feed. Now, I don't have much information about this, but I assume it will be a feed of our old posts or our archive, not our archive posts, but posts that we have previously posted that are still public. Similar to Facebook's Memories, that's what I'm thinking, but it'll be cool to see how this one rolls out if it does roll out.
Threads now allow users to share posts as reels. This is awesome for repurposing, creating one piece of content, and getting it out in the best possible way over on Instagram as well. I think this is a really cool new feature. It appears that current premium LinkedIn users can now gift two months of premium for free to another user that doesn't have premium. Hey, guys, if you want to gift two months of premium to me, I would love to take it from you. I don't use premium myself. I don't see the need to pay for it. But yeah, if you're a premium user, I'd love to have a couple of months of free.
Meta Verified subscribers can now enhance their profiles by accessing exclusive features like personalised badges, unique profile themes, and advanced customisation options that aren't available to regular users. Now, I am a meta Meta Verified subscriber, and I haven't been able to access any of these features. So one feature that I have tried to use is adding a photo or an image to my links on my Facebook business page. Now, I've gone through the process. I've uploaded the image, and I can't see the image. Friends that I've asked can't see the image. I don't know why this functionality is being advertised to us or promoted to us as Meta Verified subscribers because it doesn't seem to be working.
And last up this week, Meta has signed a new licensing agreement with UMG or the Universal Music Group, allowing users to share licensed music across its platforms, including WhatsApp and threads. Now, I don't think that this is really big news. The only addition as those new platforms there. Previously, I assumed that the licensing agreement included Facebook, Instagram. I'm not sure what other platforms it might have included, but now that it has WhatsApp and threads, we may see some different changes there in terms of the music that we can use on those platforms.
There you have it. Those are your social media marketing updates for the week ending the 18th of August, 2024. As always, if you want to continue the conversation, come and find me. You'll find me all over social media @socialsmarty.co I would love to hear from you. Until next week, stay social.
