Welcome to the Social Smarty Scoop for the week ending the 22nd of September 2024. I have scoured the internet for all the updates you need to know in the world of social media marketing. Let's dive on in.
Okay, first up this week, Meta is introducing new tools for advertisers to drive those holiday sales. Now, the holidays are just around the corner, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, it's all coming up, which means it's a really busy time for businesses looking to maximise their sales. Often that's through running Facebook and Instagram ads. It's a really good time for Meta to introduce some new advertising tools and formats to help businesses connect with their shoppers, to really optimise their campaigns using all of that AI, Advantage Plus tools that Meta really loves, and just really making the most of that holiday rush.
Some of the key updates include new formats for promo codes and ads. For a while now, we've had the ability to highlight promo codes or discounts in our ads, but we can now do that with Instagram reels ads, which I think is really cool. We're You can also create reminder ads. You might want to keep your customers updated with upcoming sales or maybe new product drops or events and really drive them through to make purchases. Reminder ads can remind Find them of those key dates and times that are coming up. Site links. You can now add multiple landing pages to a single ad. This is really useful if you want to help people navigate to specific categories. If you have your products in specific categories on your store and you want to link through to multiple categories. Also omnichannel targeting. This is where we focus not just on online shoppers, but also in-store shoppers. Helping showcase your store, your location that may be close to that person. Then lastly, location-based ads. This is about targeting tourists and holiday shoppers based on their engagement with content or their travel plans. I haven't actually looked into those ones any further, but There's a lot of information there to take in, so I definitely recommend go and check out the official announcement from Meta. I'll link to it in the show notes.
Next up, Instagram is working on the ability to share comments as a post also on threads. Now, I I think this is a really cool way to create content for threads, because if we have a look at the type of content that creators are sharing on threads, it's a lot of thought-based content, almost stream of consciousness, people coming up with ideas and sharing their ideas and their thoughts around particular things. So what we're going to do is post something over on Instagram, and then when we have someone who comments, we can use that comment to spark an idea and create a post, but over on threads. I think this is quite cool. I can't see it really taking off, but we'll just see. We'll wait and see how this one goes.
Next up, Instagram now allows creators who offer subscriptions a way to limit the number of their subscribers and then create a waiting list. So this really taps into the idea that FOMO, that scarcity and urgency that we use a lot in marketing. So basically, over on Instagram, you can create exclusive content that is for subscribers only, so people have to pay to access that content. And now, up until now, it has been basically anyone can sign up. So there wasn't a way of limiting the number of subscribers you could have. So now what you can do is make it really exclusive and limit the number of subscribers. And then everyone else who wants to join that doesn't make it before you cut off that limit, they then join a waiting list. And then when someone cancels their subscription, then that position or that spot is opened up to that waitlist. I think this could be really popular.
Next up, Threads has a new profile QR code for every account. You can head into your settings. Look under Profile and then use that Share Profile button. What you'll see there is a QR code that anyone can scan and they'll be taken to your Threads profile. Just like on Instagram, we've got our own QR code there. This is just rolling out for Threads.
Now, LinkedIn is now using everything that you share, so from posts to comments, anything that you share on its platform, to train its AI modals. Now, the policy that they have shared with us doesn't specifically exclude direct messages. It's not quite known whether or not the content that you share publicly is training the AI modal or whether it's also including your direct messages. But there is a way to opt out. If you prefer not to have your data I used to train the AI model, then you can opt out. I'll pop the link into the show notes, but it is quite easy to find. You could always do a Google search there. It's just in your preferences.
Next up, TikTok now has a delete and reedit option, meaning if you post a video on TikTok and you realise it has a mistake in it or you want to fix something, you can shift your video back into the edit mode. Previously, you would have to delete that video and then recreate it, or you would just have to put up with the mistake. This lets you edit it without then starting from scratch. Now, this is already rolled out over on Instagram reels, and I have already used that feature myself when I posted something with a mistake in it, and it was so good to be able to just move it back into edit mode, update it, and repost it. It's awesome that TikTok has also offered this feature to its creators.
Lastly, this week, YouTube has announced some really exciting new features which are coming to the platform soon. They're rolling out AI video generation for Shorts, which sounds awesome. The option to host your own community directly on the platform. And this really fun feature called Hype. Basically, it's like a super like. Normally, when you would see a video and you would like it, this is a little bit different and you can actually hype that video. It's aimed at supporting small creators. From memory, I think it's creators with between 500 and 500,000 subscribers. I may be wrong, but it's definitely aimed towards helping those smaller creators. Plus, they're also adding in a built-in autodubbing and paid gifts for live streams. Again, really cool features to help creators on the platform. So some fun updates to look out for.
There we have it. That is your social media marketing updates for the week ending the 22nd of September, 2024. As always, if you want to come and continue the conversation, you'll find me all over social media @socialsmarty.co Until next week, stay social.
