Welcome to the Social Smarty Scoop, your weekly wrap-up of all the social media marketing news you need to know for the week ending the 22nd of December. Let's dive on in.
First up this week, Instagram teases new AI tools, but do we really need them? The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has given us a sneak speak at some AI tools that are set to roll out next year. Honestly, I just feel like they're a little bit unnecessary. The feature is called Movigen. It's Meta's AI research model that lets you change nearly any aspect of your video with a simple text prompt. So Mosseri gave us lots of examples, and I suggest you go and watch the video. I'll pop a link in the show notes. But he talked about things like changing your outfit, altering the context of where you're sitting, or even adding a thick the old chain around your neck. Now, at one point, he even turned himself into a Muppet-looking character. Now, of course, these features look fun, but do we really need them? Personally, I'd rather Instagram focuses on fixing some of those blimming glitches that drive us all crazy, like the issues with captions. I don't know about you, but every time I try and add captions, there always seems to be some glitch. They don't load properly. I end up waiting and waiting, having to close down the app, reopen it. I would much rather those glitches are fixed rather than have the ability to add a gold chain around my neck. I don't know about you, but that's just my two sense.
Now, Instagram has been spotted testing an optimised mix of goals for boosted posts. Usually, if we want to boost a post on Instagram, we pick one of a set of goals. You might pick profile visits if you want to grow your following or website visits if you want to increase your sales. Now, this new goal promises an optimised mix of goals, including follows, shares, and more. Now, I don't have this feature yet, so I haven't been able to dive in and really have a play around with it. But I suspect once we click through that first screen, we may have some more options in there. But keep an eye out for this one. If you do regularly boost posts on Instagram, keep an eye out for this and have a little test and see if it does improve the performance of your ad.
Facebook is testing a new thought sticker for Facebook stories. Now, this apparently allows friends and followers to add their own thoughts to your stories. Now, I'm always down for more ways for people to engage with our content, but I just wonder how useful this one will be. At the moment, people are more than happy to tell me their thoughts about my stories. They'll flip me through a DM as a response to the story. This, I suspect, is a little bit more of a public sharing of thoughts, but it'll How do you fund to have a little play around with.
Linkedin is rewarding regular game players with their own playback, which is showcasing the year's highlights. What the heck does that mean? Well, if you're a LinkedIn user, you might have noticed that games rolled out earlier this year. I personally play two of LinkedIn's games, Tango and Queens, almost every day. For users like me, I suspect this will be a little bit like Spotify wrapped. It'll give me some stats from my game playing this year. The things that you can share and really highlight to other game players. But I haven't received this yet. I'm told it will come via email, so I'll keep an eye out for that one.
Instagram has rolled out 12 new philtres for stories and reels, including a low-res philtre. If you want to go for that low-resolution look in your reels or your stories, that philtre is apparently now available. Threads is testing the ability to schedule posts right in the app, so no more using third-party tools. Now, personally, the way that I use threads is a little bit more in the moment, if I think of things or if there's something newsworthy that I want to share, but I think having the ability to schedule posts so that you can batch your content, plan things in advance, I think is really important. Currently, I use Publer, so Publer does connect with threads, but you could give this native scheduler within the platform a go as well.
Instagram is trialling a new feature for your reels called cover art. Now, this appears to be a really simple way of adding text to your real cover. If you are a TikTok user, if you've created content for TikTok, you'll know how easy it is to add some text to the cover of your TikTok video, and this appears to be exactly the same. You can choose a frame from your video, you can add some text to it, and that will be the cover that people see either in your grid or your grid and your reels tab, depending on where you're sharing the reel.
Facebook is now making affiliate links more visible in reels, videos, photos, and posts. Now, this is an interesting one, and I had to play around with it this morning. Basically, we can create, for example, a reel that talks about a product that we're an affiliate for, and we can add that link to the reel and make it really prominent. It almost pops up like a wee ad at the bottom of the reel, making a big panel where people can click through. Now, I could only find this when I was creating a reel on my mobile phone in my company page. I went into my company page not using business suite. This was in the Facebook app. I went straight into my company page, created a reel, and then I had the option. There was a little option that said earn, and when I clicked on that, it led me add product links in there. I'm going to have a play around and actually go ahead and create a full video and just see how this works, but I think this could be a great way to really promote those affiliate relationships that you have with products and increase your revenue that way.
YouTube is experimenting with a new way to engage with fans by letting creators respond to comments using voice notes. I think this is really cool. From a creator perspective, it is much easier for me to record a quick audio and respond as a voice note. I think from the user's perspective or the commenter's perspective, getting a voice note back from the creator, it feels more personal. Now, you can imagine if that voice note was from a real celebrity or someone who had a big profile on YouTube, it would actually feel quite cool to get a voice note back from them. I really like this. It is only available in the US at the moment. I had a quick look at my YouTube account, and I certainly don't have the ability. It is just a test at the moment, but I think this could be really cool if it does roll out.
Lastly this week, the latest in the US TikTok ban. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok's appeal against the legislation that requires ByteDance, who owns TikTok, to sell its US operations by the 19th of January. Now, lawyers from both sides are going to present their case, and that will start on the 10th of January. It's getting it pretty fine given that the ban is meant to happen or that the sale has meant to have happened by the 19th of January. I will be keeping an eye on this one.
There we have it. That is This is your social media marketing news for the week ending the 22nd of December, 2024. And this is my final Social Smarty Scoop episode for 2024. Thank you so much. If you have listened to even just one episode this year, if this is the only episode you've listened to, I am really, really grateful. If you do have the chance to leave me a review on Spotify or Apple podcast, that would be amazing. It really helps me reach more listeners. And of course, if you want to share it with a friend, that would be amazing, too. Thank you so much. I can't wait to be back in 2025. Until then, stay social.
