At the start of a new decade, you should realize one thing. And that is to learn more about social media.
As a business person, you should consider the ways that social networks update their advertising policies and features. You wouldn’t want to miss out on these upgrades or waste your money for nothing when you advertise online.
That’s why we come in to bring you the latest upgrades that happened in 2019 on different social platforms. We included the most frequented online places where you can accomplish your social marketing goals.
Are you ready? Here are the top 18 social media updates from 8 social networks:
1. Automated ads and improved dynamic ads
Think about joining the platform for the first time. It’s so hard to take the lead in creating your first advertisement, isn’t it?
Now, you can have a hassle-free journey in creating your ad. All you need to do is provide the information about the business you’re managing.Then, the feature will autonomously create a custom targeting, budgeting, and ad design recommendations.
Despite being under scrutiny, Facebook managed to produce a handful of updates for their marketers. These changes can make or break your decision in pouring money to attract social users.
2. New video editing tools
Facebook has made it easier for small and medium businesses to create professional-looking video ads.
The feature removes the pain of using software to make appealing videos or hiring a video editor to do it.
Let’s say you’re an online teacher and you wanted to advertise your new course in an online academy. Then, you wanted a sneak peek of what your entire course will feel like.
This is where the editing tool comes in. You can crop your hour-long lesson into 30 seconds with a guided tutorial.
The cropped video will now be your main medium for your ad format. You can also opt to place texts to make supporting details of what to expect.
3. Limit the number of ads a page can run and new ad format
This may seem like a step backward from what FB promised to do with businesses as their main focus. But experts say it’s for the good of everyone.
If you want to gain optimal reach and maximum performance, you need to tone down the number of ads running at the same time.
FB wants advertisers to get the results they want without wasting too much time in applying for ad space.
To avoid spending too much, they let you refrain from doing many ads. As an FB marketer, you can expect this change to occur in mid-2020.
4. Automatic placement will use Search
You can now expect your ads to appear on the search results. This new option helps your ad gain more reach to those who are doing general search and search using Marketplace.
The benefit of using this among other placements is its low-cost ad bid. Of course, this is due to lower competition compared to other standard ad placements.
Take note: You can’t use Search Result ads when you don’t select Automatic Placements in your ad placement setting.
5. Post into an ad
Before, IG was just a photo-sharing app. Now, it has ventured into videos and messaging to connect with other people online.
When you create an ad using user-generated content, it usually takes time to manage it. You need to find appealing content with all the details you want and the products featured on the user profile.
Then, you need to upload it to your business profile to make it an official ad. Mind you, this takes a long time!
Today, Instagram is putting an end to this. You don’t upload that image from an influencer to boost your marketing. Instead, the app now allows you to post someone else’s post into an ad.
Let’s say you’re partnering with influencers and you noticed a post that’s worth sharing to your loyal brand followers. You can turn that post into a native ad.
This saves you time for uploading content for your marketing strategy. Also, you will see the same likes, comments, and feedback on the influencer’s post when you run the ad.
6. IGTV “Series” is out
A feature where you get to make your videos with custom themes for branding your video series comes to Instagram.
Of course, they introduced a few tweaks to make this new content easy to differentiate from Snapchat’s.
The introduction of the Series lead to making playlists where users can find the content you’re producing. Users may also opt to join the notification squad when there’s a new episode.
When you’re the creator, you also get the choice of how you update your content. You get an option when you upload a video to do a series or not. You can also use your existing video by clicking the “edit” button.
As a marketer, you get to purpose other ideas in video form here. Photos are not enough to convince your viewers to use your products or services. It’s a new form factor to explore in your marketing.
If you need help in creating the ideal Series for your brand, Proweaver has the video production team to help. They’re professionals in creating visual graphics that are guaranteed to catch your customer’s attention. Contact us today to know more.
7. New Business Catalog
WhatsApp launched its new Business Catalog for its advertisers. This allows businesses to share their products or services in a soon-to-be in-app digital store.
This feature is now available to selected countries like the US, Germany, UK, Brazil, and Indonesia. Falcon.io reports that it’s unclear yet when will be the worldwide release of this feature.
8. WhatsApp Pay
Do you want your messaging app to pay for your bills and lifestyle needs? WhatsApp can assume that position.
In India, they introduced WhatsApp pay. It’s a digital bank that has a feature to pay your bills and lifestyle needs in selected WhatsApp partner stores. There’s still no news when will this be available to all countries, too.
9. Improved newsfeed algorithm
LinkedIn makes sure you get the most out of your journey on their site. This paved the way for their latest algorithm change.
Instead of just seeing the posts of people you follow, they will now show you interesting posts that foster communication and interaction with other professionals.
According to Business 2 Community, posts that generate conversation have more chances of showing instead of those one-sided announcements.
In a real-world application, this can be a hard sell for business marketers as newsfeed algorithm change favor the professionals who want to connect with fellow professionals.
10. Enhanced targeting tools
When you think LinkedIn is over with updates, that’s when they surprise you. In 2019, they introduced enhanced targeting tools for your marketing campaigns.
They improved the way you use the audience forecasting tool. This lets you view close to the right values of ad insights and industry breakdown.
LinkedIn wants you to get more details about the years of experience of the company sizes of your target audience.
Like their demographic reporting, you can view which audiences engage with the types of content you post.
Another thing to note is the addition of Boolean targeting in the coming months. It will work based on the logic of “and/or” queries. It’s a tool where you can target combined characteristics of your audience.
11. Campaign Manager’s new ad campaign objectives
The LinkedIn team ensures optimized ad campaigns based on your objectives. They introduced 3 new ad campaign objectives.
The new ad campaign objectives are:
1. Brand Awareness
It is best to use this when you’re accomplishing the topmost part of your marketing plans. You can also expect charges only after you get the impressions.
2. Website Conversions
Redirect your target client on your website. This is the safest bet to all established small to medium business owners who want to get leads in their website.
3. Job Applicants
Deliver the most out of your job listing campaign on LinkedIn. You can directly create job posts using the Campaign Manager.
With these three objectives, making an ad from scratch will not be stressful again.
12. Six-second viewable video ad bids
To boost Twitter’s video ads revenue, the six-second viewable ad bid was born.
Advertisers need to upload a 15-second video for their ad. Once a person views the first 6 seconds in at least 50% pixel view, this is when advertisers get charged.
It is ideal for businesses who always post short-form video clips in their feed.
13. Stricter spam regulations
Spams don’t have a space to exist in any social networking sites. This is why Twitter wants to curb them for good.
Twitter spammers follow then immediately unfollow accounts before. At last, this will never be an issue in the recent update.
The update cuts back on the allowed number of people to follow for a day. From 1,000 allowable follows, it went down to 400 follows for a day.
According to Business 2 Community, Twitter suspended many company profiles for having violated the regulation.
Scared of getting your Twitter account suspended? Social media managers from Proweaver can assist you. They’re equipped with the skills to increase your followers without spamming other users.
Tiktok
14. New monetization features
Everybody keeps talking about the rise of TikTok in 2019. It’s no wonder they hit the1.5 billion download mark. Largely, Indian netizens are thought to drive this download hits.
To make new monetization features, they unveiled experimental ones. Features like adding links into user bios and eCommerce URLs into videos are now accessible to US citizens.
Tiktok reports they made this update to improve their user experience. And it’s a bit unclear whether they plan to roll it out worldwide or not.
15. New content-sharing option
The content-sharing option gives you the privilege to share videos straight from third-party video editing apps. These apps include Adobe Premiere Rush and Momento GIF Maker.
Content creators who like high-quality videos can do what their hearts want with this new software development kit (SDK) update.
16. Pinterest Academy
You know it’s hard to learn the tools and features of the ad campaign manager of a new social platform. In Pinterest, it drives out that worry with their e-learning courses.
Get a chance to choose from their nine topics that include the Creative Strategy and Pinterest Narrative. The lessons will help you learn tricks to optimize your ad.
You can opt-in to send notifications to your boss about the progress of your classes. It is both available in mobile and desktop versions.
Users from Canada, the US, Germany, UK, France, and Australia will get to experience this update first. Then, all other countries shall follow in the next updates.
Snapchat
17. More advertising offering with dynamic ads
Do you want to skip the designing part of your ads? Snapchat answers this with its new Dynamic Ads.
You can put most of your creativity juice into action. Do this by uploading your entire product catalog on their app. Then, you get to choose what template you’re going to use for the final video.
The best thing you can get from this is creating your ads and delivering them in real-time. That’s a big plus for busy advertisers like you.
18. Snapchat’s Chatter
Snapchat regulars will surely find Snap Chatter to be a great way to stay updated on what’s trending.
You get a complete list of trending topics among your Snapchat users according to Falcon.io. As a marketer, you can use this as a way to create snaps that are relatable to your followers.
So What’s The Bottom Line?
Many changes are happening among social networking apps lately. It’s good that you get an update on every release of these updates. You may never know that the next feature you dreamed of may be included in the next one.
Social media marketing might be hard if you can’t adapt to new updates. Always remember that you can get help when this happens.
Proweaver’s social media managers can assist you. Making your ads will never be a problem with their years of expertise. Set an appointment today!