Just when you think you’ve cracked the code to promoting your business on social media, your favorite platform switches it up again! As a business owner, entrepreneur, or marketer, you may have found it frustrating to finally get into a groove with your social posts and ads when a new update throws you off your game.
We’re here to tell you that we get you, understand your struggles, and are ready to help. It’s vital for your business to spend less time scouring the internet for the latest updates and more time turning followers into clients and customers.
So grab a seat, because we’re sharing what’s changed this week, what it means for you, and how your business can use these changes for growth.
1. Links via Stories via Instagram
Yes, you read that right, you can now directly link on your Instagram Stories without having to direct followers to “Link in Bio.” This feature was previously only available to verified users on the app (that blue check mark is very difficult to obtain), but has now been rolled out to users with 10,000 followers or more!
Takeaway for your business: The ability to give your customers effortless access to their favorite products is one of the many reasons social media marketing works so well. As a brand, you want your potential customers to be able to find your product with as little friction as possible. Now, you can direct them to simply swipe up on the story and lead them to exactly what they are looking for. Even if you don’t have 10,000 followers, your brand can still reap the benefits of this change. Now when partnering with influencers and collaborating with brands that might have a larger following than you, a direct link can be placed to the product you’re having them feature.
2. Rewind via Instagram
In between the ‘Boomerang’ and ‘Hands-Free’ features is a truly magical update. While recording a story, you can set your video to play in rewind. You won’t realize how fun it is to record something coming undone until you try it!
Takeaway for your business: Prior to this update only someone with a deep understanding of video editing could produce video like this. Now your brand has the ability to edit video to look professional, without a background in production. This opens up a whole new realm of creativity for your content.
3. Collections via Instagram
Instagram added a feature that allows users to save other people’s Instagram posts to their page. These posts can be organized into folders called “Collections” giving users the ability to categorize content.
Takeaway for your business: This new feature is great for brands that utilize user generated content! By being able to save and organize posts, reposting content from your customers has been made that much easier. Collections’ “save for reference later” premise is also very similar to Pinterest. While these remain only visible to the user right now, it makes Instagram more e-commerce friendly. Now your followers can save your brand’s photos with a certain product they like to shop later.
4. Transferring “Likes” to “Community” via Facebook
On Facebook pages with larger audiences, a new feature is being tested. The ‘Likes’ section on pages has been replaced by ‘Community’. Now, instead of seeing who’s liked the page, ‘People Talking About This’, and who’s checked in, you can see your friends who like the Page, total Likes and Follows, Visitor Photos, and Public Posts. Below, Mari Smith’s page shows how the interface is laid out.
Takeaway for your business: When an update is in beta, Facebook oftentimes only releases it to a few influential brands, before all users have access. If all goes well, you can expect to have this feature soon. Before it was difficult for your followers to see mentions of your brand. Now, fans of your page can see all the mentions and shares you’ve gotten. This will encourage those people to interact with your other fans building a ‘community’. Also, once they see other followers mentioning your page, they may be more inclined to mention your page themselves.
5. Facebook Ads-Creating a Value-Based Lookalike Audience
The ability to create Value Based Lookalike Audiences is a ‘coming soon’ update to the Facebook ads platform (it’s currently inthe beta phase). This new feature, that we expect to roll out soon, allows you to assign a Lifetime Value to customers of a certain Custom Audience. The real power in this comes from the ability to then create a Lookalike Audience of customers with high lifetime value. Jon Loomer’s website does a fantastic job of explaining and displaying this in practice:
Takeaway for your business: Not all customers are equal. Some may make only one purchase, while others come back again and again. By first providing Facebook with a lifetime value of all customers within your custom audience, you’ll then be able to create a Lookalike Audience based on your most valuable customers. This means you can use this audience for lower funnel targeting! The cost per result may be higher at first, but the overall cost per conversions will most likely be significantly lower. Here is another example from Jon Loomer’s website:
6. Unit Feature for E-Learning via Facebook
If your group is set as a “School” or “Class” type, you now have the ability to add “Units”. Within each Unit, multiple units, new content, and previous wall posts can be added. Students can also see their progress as they complete work within Units. Mari Smith has displayed what this feature would look like if she utilized it in one of her online groups to keep track of work:
Takeaway from your business: This feature could simply be used to better organize school or e-learning groups. For those who need to keep up with deadlines and work progress of employees or students, this is a game changer. We know that online learning and training is growing in popularity because of the increased use of technology (hence the importance of this blog post). To be able to create groups on your Facebook pages and track learning, training, and deadlines without creating outside platforms will be a great utilization for your company.
Social Media Tool of the Week
The wonderful tool that we think you need to know about for the week comes from our friends at Sprout Social. This is a scheduling tool we use consistently here and they just dropped a new version of their app, 5.0. This app is Android and Apple friendly to make your social media scheduling easy, timely and ON THE GO! With the creation of this version of the app, you can do everything you can do on the website on your tablet or cell phone making your job that much easier.
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