Welcome to the Social Smarty Scoop. All the social media marketing news and updates you need to know for the week ending the 15th of December, 2024. Let's dive on in.
First up this week, Instagram is introducing Trial Reels for testing content. Now, Instagram has launched this new feature. Yes, it's called Trial Reels, and it's designed to help you test your reels ideas with non-followers before sharing them with your main audience. How it works. Trial Reels lets you create new content in a low-stakes way. You'll get insights like views, likes, and shares within 24 hours of posting, giving you a chance to either tweak or refine that reel before you share it out with your existing audience. If it performs well, you can easily share it then with your followers followers, or you could set it to automatically share with your followers based on engagement.
Now, why the heck would Instagram introduce something like this? Well, this feature is a fantastic way to test new formats, maybe try out some hooks, or get really creative with your ideas without worrying about how they will land with your regular audience. It's all about experimenting, learning, making your content work harder for you. If you have been holding back on trying something new, maybe you feel like, Oh, no, my audience might judge me or think I'm a bit silly for trialling this. Well, trial reels could be just the nudge that you need it. Now, keep an eye on your account to see when it becomes available. I don't yet have it in my account, but the place that you're looking is when you've created your reel, that very last screen where you pop in your caption and there's quite a few little settings there, you'll see near the top of that screen, there will be trial reels, and there's a little toggle, so you'll be able to turn on or off. So keep an eye out for that one.
Now, another Instagram update this week. Instagram is rolling out the ability to schedule DMs or direct messages. So you can plan a DM to be sent on a particular date and time in the future, which I think is really great. If you are the person like me who does a lot of work over the weekends or snatches up-time in the evenings and then maybe takes more time off during the day so that you a bit more flexible, this allows you to schedule those DMs to go out at a better time. Rather than late at night when you're working or over the weekend, you could make sure that that DM is actually sent during business hours.
Facebook has added a new feature to pages. Now, when I first heard this, I thought, That's not that exciting. But actually, now that I've thought about it, it actually is cool. This is the ability to add a birthday or a founding date to your business page. Now, what I'm not sure will happen, but what I think will happen, is that your followers will get a little nudge to wish you a happy birthday or a business anniversary on that date. So you know how on Facebook, if you have your birthday in your profile. Come your birthday, you get all of those messages coming through that just say, Happy birthday. Well, I suspect this will work in the same way. So on your business founding anniversary or if you're a personal brand on your birthday, then your followers will get to wish you a happy birthday or happy anniversary, which will obviously increase engagement on your page. I think this is quite a cool feature. I haven't dived in and had a look yet, but I'm going to go into my page shortly, into my About section and see if I can find this.
Instagram has shared a wee reminder on how to boost posts while avoiding that 30% Apple tax. Now, if you're an Apple user, you have an iPhone, an iPad, which you've previously used to boost posts in the Instagram app, you will know that you are charged an extra 30 %. We call that the Apple tax. It's the 30 % that Apple takes and keeps. So now what Instagram has suggested is obviously we all know to boost our posts in the Instagram. Com browser version, or maybe even on your phone, but you would jump into a browser, you'd open up Safari or Google Chrome or something like that, and go to Instagram. Com, log into your account that way. But Instagram has reminded It's with us that we can also store our credit cards and then add funds. We're basically prepaying, adding funds via our credit card, and then we can still boost an app. I haven't tried this method, but I'm going to go and do some more research.
Linkedin has started showing a view count for videos. In the mobile version of LinkedIn, when you're scrolling through and you see video posts, you can now see a view count in the bottom left-hand corner, which is awesome if you get lots of views on your video. It's like social proof showing that this video is good content. Not so great if you're not getting very good views.
Facebook is currently testing a feature that lets you add a note to your story in indicating that the image you have shared has not been edited within the app. If you are used to scrolling through Instagram stories, we can always see when someone has added a philtre to their video, for example. This This is going the other way. This is basically indicating that you haven't edited the content, which in a world of AI generation and philtres and all the rest, I feel like this is actually quite refreshing. I think this would be an interesting one to see popping up.
Now, Threads has started showing popular topics. Now, this has always been my wee bug bear with Threads and why I don't think that it is really taking on X or formerly Twitter to the best of its ability. About all of that trending popular topic stuff. So this is a really great step in the right direction, I think, to be able to go into threads and see what topics are trending. You can join in the conversation or just get an indication of what people are talking about at that point in time.
Pinterest has published its annual Pinterest predicts, spotlighting 20 bold trends anticipated for 2025. Now, coordinated fits are on the rise in fashion. Think about matching matching with your bestie or matching with your partner for date night. Also the fishermen aesthetic, so chunky knits and waterproofs, and moto boho, leather meets free spirited fringe. In home decor, contrast like Earth industrial and electric elegance are trending. From what I can gather, Earth industrial is the industrial look, but with lots of earthy tones and different textures. And electric elegance is like a classic, elegant style, but with pops of neon colour. And in wellness, there's a push for sleep sanctuaries, so dedicated spaces to relax and recharge. Now, we know that Pinterest is all over trends, so if you are wanting to jump on these trends, go and check out the full rundown. I'll pop a link in the show notes. And last up this week, an update on the TikTok ban in the US.
Now, ByteDance has appealed the legislation that requires it to sell TikTok's US operations by the 19th of January. So 19th of January is that date that seems to be looming and coming up pretty quickly. But the US Court of Appeals has rejected that appeal. So then TikTok saw an emergency injunction to delay the enforcement of that law while it prepares to appeal to the Supreme Court, but that was also denied. So despite this, TikTok is still planning to take its case to the Supreme in court. And while all of this is happening, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed intentions to save the app, whatever that means.
Okay, there you have it, your social media marketing news for the week ending the 15th of December, 2024. As always, I would love to continue the conversation. Come and find me all over social media @socialsmarty.co Until next week, stay social.
