What’s New In Social Media Marketing Right Now? August 2024
Hello, hello, and welcome
back to What's New in Social. We're gonna talk about all of the biggest
social media marketing stories that have been going on for the past month or so. Let's hop in starting with Instagram. Instagram is letting you add
up to 20 songs to your reels now, which is kind of exciting. So basically you can be your own
sort of Instagram reel dj, and instead of in the past where you
could only use one audio track from. Instagram's library, you can now
add up to 20 different songs to kind of make your own little mix. So you could do what's on my playlist
this summer or, you know, just make up like a funny kind of mashup. However you like really. And when you do that, it will go ahead
and attribute that specific mix to you. So if you do start a trending reel
that compiles up to 20 different songs, it goes viral, people start using it,
They can, you know, credit that audio track to you, which is kind of cool.
Something else that's
going on on Instagram. They are updating their notes feature. So notes appeared initially at the top
of the inbox or above a profile photo. They're basically a way for you to
communicate just with your friends or like a specific group of people. We've talked before about the close
friends feature, or it can be used for people who follow you back. So. People who are your friends, essentially,
and it's a way for you to add additional context and just kind of be like a little
secret, you know, inside joke, I suppose. Well, instead of just existing at
the top of the inbox or a profile photo, they're now rolling out
to reels or feed posts as well. So only your friends can see
notes, which you can share either with followers you follow back or
those in your close friends group.
Someone is more likely to see
a post or reel when a note has been added, according to Meta. So this is kind of huge and why
we're paying attention to it. And while the inbox and profile notes
are viewable for up to 24 hours, notes on feed posts and reels will be visible for
up to three days and seem to only show up in the app and not on a web browser.
So sounds like they're boosting
these posts in the algorithm. If you. Add a note to it. Just like another thing to do on
your social media manager to do list. You could definitely gamify it a
little bit and maybe share, you know, a giveaway or a secret, make
sure to comment the secret emoji. So I know you're a part of the,
you know, insiders or whatever. I mean, it seems a little
unnecessary, but we just. If they're rolling it out,
they're prioritizing it, why not just like give it a shot? I guess. Another thing that they're allegedly
working on this was seen by just somebody in the wild, a mobile developer. So it looks like there is a potential
super like feature coming to Instagram, which is pretty cool. Quite interesting. What do you think? So basically, you know how you can
like stories, you can click the heart on Instagram stories where
there is a super like option that is allegedly being tested according to
the screenshot where you hold the like button and it'll send a super light.
And you can only send one
of these every 24 hours. Now this might be familiar to some people. I think Tinder has a feature like this. I think Bumble has a super
swipe or something like that. Basically, it's just a way to indicate
like you really like that story. And it's funny because I see so
much chatter about this on threads. I think it's just like silly chatter,
but people saying that liking an Instagram story is flirting. What do you think? Do you think that liking an
Instagram story is flirting? And to double down, do you think a
super like, like, I think, I think saying that liking an Instagram story
is flirting is like a little much, but I think if somebody sent me a super
like, I would be like, okay, they really want me to pay attention to them.
So I would probably consider that
flirting, but I guess it depends on the context of the story, right? Now let's head over to threads. There's just one big thing that I
want to talk about for threads today. And we're going to circle back to some
of this stuff at the end of the episode. Really, there's this big talk coming
up again about Threads and politics. As you know, if you've been watching
or listening to these episodes for a while, Threads has really tried to
distance themselves from politics.
And even though they are really the
top X or Twitter competitor, they do not I don't really want to be
known for the same things that X is known for, namely politics, you know? According to this article from Social
Media Today, the events that happened on January 6th, that was a big trigger
point that sparked Meta's team to explore culling politics completely from its app,
which is what's led to its new stance. But if Threads in particular wants
to succeed and supersede X as the real time platform of choice, it may
well need to rethink this approach, as reflected by Biden's announcement.
In case you've been living under a
rock or you don't pay attention to politics, President Biden announced
last Sunday that he will not be running for re election anymore. About 20 minutes later than endorsed
vice president, Kamala Harris. And it seems like she is going
to be the democratic nominee. And we're going to actually talk
about that at the end of the episode. There's quite a bit going on with Kamala
and her social that I want to address, but I know not everybody's into politics. So we're going to save that to the end. But the point is, uh, Biden, he went to
Twitter first to make this announcement. Twitter or X still wins for this stuff. And there was also a huge discrepancy. In the, uh, response to this post,
obviously this is huge news for anybody on any side of the political
aisle and on threads, the announcement only saw 12, 000 likes in, you know,
the same time period as it did on X, whereas they saw almost a million.
So, you know, it just marks a
huge difference here in the. Visibility of political posts. And I think it's just got a lot
of people thinking, what do we really want out of these platforms? And if X's success in past election
years says anything, it's that, you know, people want real time politics. So. Uh, they might have to
change their stance. Who knows? Speaking of X, let's go over there. So Grok is the AI bot that
Elon Musk has been developing. And there's some new features coming out. I kind of like, I feel like a
lot of the news coming out about Grok has always been so vague. So it's been cool to see some
actual screenshots of what you can really do with it.
So there's new, uh, Grok features
on the web for premium subscribers. You can hover over an account and Grok
can give you a quick summary about it. And then you can also choose to
highlight any text and ask Grok about it. So these screenshots show a little
dialogue box saying more about this account and then highlighting the text. Um, the example they show is tell me
about Elon Musk in one or two sentences and it gives you like a little bio. So, um, pretty cool. I can definitely see huge X users finding,
um, you know, seeing stuff that they like here, and it's cool to see it. Moving forward, I guess, and see like
actual examples of what's going on. Another update, an app
developer spotted this one. It looks like X has worked on the
ability to let you disable links in the replies of your posts. Now, I think this is fantastic,
if this is true, and if this is really gonna roll out. We have seen X becoming just
like spam alicious, you know, like just so many spammers. And I think again, when we are
heading into election season, you start to see a lot of like.
Misinformation, clickbait,
political, just scandalous stuff. So if you post something that you want
to make sure spammers are not getting to, you'll be able to hopefully disable
links in your replies coming soon. That's cool. Similarly, another moderation feature,
which I'm excited about on X, you can now request a community note. So community notes are different from
Instagram notes, where they are, um, published by moderators essentially
from Twitter or X's community. And they're, they're often
fact checking, right? If you say the sky is green, there might
be a community note that says, actually, according to like most scientists, they
say it actually appears to be blue. If you see something
on X now that is blue. misinformation or harmful in some way, you
can now request a community note on a post that you believe would benefit from one.
If there are enough requests, community
notes contributors will see an alert and can choose to propose a note. This gives people on X who are
not contributors a way to help and lets contributors know
where notes might benefit. Being found helpful. So love to see that. Let's take a moment for a word
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for you down below. Let's head over to Tik TOK. Okay. This is a very, very exciting,
another screenshot, another insider screenshot here, Matt
Navarro posted on threads that he. Um, is seeing the ability to upload
a custom cover slash thumbnail for your videos on TikTok, which is huge. You know, in the past you could only
scrub through your video and find like a still that you find to be semi okay.
And then you just have to add
your own text using the TikTok. You know, platform, you can't
like upload your own photo. So this is really nice, especially
considering TikTok is really trying to compete with YouTube at this point. They're trying to push
for longer form content. They're just trying to take
things to the next level. And I think this makes. it a lot easier to create branded
content, to create episodic content, you know, to create content that is
really, um, long form authoritative. That does not just feel like you just
posted it from your phone, you know, which I think in many ways is TikToks
strength, but I think they're trying to get people to think next level. And so this is, this is pretty cool. It looks like this option is
available in app and on desktop. So huge news there. And then another thing TikTok's done
recently, which I think is pretty awesome, is they have partnered with
Eventbrite to simplify event promotion and creation for the global TikTok community.
So Eventbrite is a platform that
you can use to sell tickets or give away tickets to a community
event and meet up with people, you know, in real life, essentially. Now they've got an integration
with TikTok, so they've got like a. I saxophone. I believe maybe he's having a concert. He can link to his Eventbrite concert
ticket sales directly in that TikTok so that people don't even need
to leave the app to attend or to, you know, get tickets to attend.
TikTok says now any Eventbrite creator
or LinkedIn user can add Eventbrite links directly to their TikTok
videos, helping the TikTok community discover event details and purchase
tickets without ever leaving the app. I don't know. I see a lot. of potential for this for everything
from like small nonprofits to musicians and artists and, uh,
you know, just community meetups. I think it could be cool for sure. Let me know what you think of this or
any of the stories that we've talked about so far down in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube. Okay. Now, apparently this is kind of old news,
but I just got the email in my inbox. Maybe a couple of weeks ago, LinkedIn
is rolling out or has rolled out company page messaging to all brands. Again, this was news for me, even
though this article is posted on social media today, back in March.
So you may have already. Um, I'm not sure if you guys have
experienced this, but just letting you know, cause I just got the email. Historically on LinkedIn, you could
only send messages to people from your personal profile and now they're
rolling out messaging to company pages. You do have to turn it on. So you've got to go into your
LinkedIn company page settings and enable that option. I just went in and enabled it
on my LinkedIn company page. It was Super easy to do. It just took a couple of seconds. So definitely if you post a lot
on your LinkedIn company page, you should definitely turn this on. It doesn't hurt to have one more
way for your potential customers to access you in an easier, easier way. And then LinkedIn's also
launched sponsored newsletters, which is pretty cool. They've got a lot of different
ways that you can place ads on their platform, everything from
just regular updates to inbox ads. And now newsletters are a
new form of advertising.
It looks like only newsletter articles
authored by company and part of an organic company page post can be sponsored. So you can't sponsor your own, you
know, Latasha James's newsletter on behalf of James and Park. I would have had to post that to my
company page in order to sponsor it. Looks like member authored
newsletter articles can't be sponsored, but this capability will
be available in a future release. So, um, they've really invested
in their long form Transcribed writing, you know, their newsletter
features, their article features.
And so, yeah, it'd be cool to see how a
sponsored newsletter fared in the, you know, world of sponsored posts, I suppose. YouTube. Let's talk about YouTube quickly. So similar to TikTok. I don't know if they, I
don't know who came first. To be honest, I guess I got to
check the dates on these things, but they're both listening that we want
some customization to our shorts. And while YouTube is not allowing
us to upload custom thumbnails to YouTube shorts quite yet.
In the coming months, they will
be testing and launching features, including the ability to edit
shorts, thumb frames, posts, upload, as well as add text and filters. So they're basically going to let us
do what TikTok used to let us do by scrubbing through our video and choosing. Um, a thumbnail or thumb frame as they're
calling it and adding some text and filters, which is better than nothing. Because right now, if you
look at my shorts feed, some of them are so embarrassing. I'm like, it like catches you in just like
the most awkward, uh, positions and it's so annoying to me, but it's interesting
because in this quick video, they explain that, you know, their data has showed
that it really doesn't matter considering most people are viewing shorts in the, uh,
Feed type, you know, format, I suppose. Most people are not going to a user's
profile, clicking shorts and clicking on the thumbnails in the same way that
people do for long form YouTube videos.
So they're just not
investing in that feature. I mean, I guess they
don't care about their. You know creators humiliation,
but okay, that's fine. Uh, another test has been spotted out in
the wild It looks like they're testing youtube that is testing community
spaces to drive fan engagement, which is pretty fun I think they're seeing that
a lot of youtubers are going to sites like patreon or discord or you know a
membership site or something like that and Uh, even just like Twitter or threads. So YouTube is looking to integrate a
more social platform type of element into YouTube, which enables channel fans
to engage and interact via text posts. So the quick like screenshot of
this, honestly, it looks a lot like Twitter to me, which is interesting. We do have the community tab on YouTube
where I can post updates to you. You might see them time to time. I should probably use it more often. I'll be honest, but this will
enable you all to kind of create your own community too.
So you could create a post. I'm assuming saying, Hey, last episode
of the podcast, what'd you guys think? Or I don't know. I created a video that's similar
to this and you could like create your own community. Within my channel, which I really
like, you know, it is kind of irritating having to migrate over. Hey, follow me on X, follow me on
threads, follow me on Instagram, join my membership group. So we'll see how this develops.
Um, and if it, if it really rolls
out to everybody, okay, now, like I said, I wanted to dedicate
some time just to the huge book. Political news that came
out over the past week. I know not everybody's into politics. Some people might get offended. So I'm saving this to the end. If you don't care, that's fine. Hope you enjoyed the episode and
I hope to see you next time, but we've definitely seen some really.
Interesting energy on social media ever
since the president announced that he is no longer running for re election
and has essentially been replaced in the race by Vice President Kamala Harris. One of the marked differences that I'm
noticing, just energy wise, vibes wise, let's say, is Among young people, young
people overall seem to be quite excited about the change, at least young people
on the left, obviously, who would be voting for one of these two candidates. They seem to be a lot more excited
than when president Biden was running. And it's interesting because. Even in the social strategy that Kamala's
campaign is using, it very much is targeting and, uh, courting young voters. One of the things that she's done is
joined TikTok, which, according to the New York Times, is another sign of the
app's value in reaching young voters. So she launched her
account just on Thursday. Her video has already been viewed 5. 8 million times, probably more now that
it's been a couple of days and she's gained, uh, over a million followers.
Again, we'll have to see what it is today. I'll put it up on the screen now, Joe
Biden and his campaign did join tech talk as well, but they just did not
see the same momentum as Kamala did. And even more interesting than this, from
like a political standpoint to me, Is the TikTok ban like, I don't know if anyone's
really thought too deeply about that yet. It kind of hit me when I saw
that she's joined TikTok. I'm like, Hmm, she has young
stepchildren, you know, I think they're like college age. Maybe they're older by now.
I don't know. Time flies, but they're,
I think in their twenties. And in March, according to this article,
Kamala Harris said that the administration had quote, national security concerns
about TikTok, but that it had quote, no intention to ban it a month later. However, as we know, the president,
Joe Biden signed the bill banning the site, unless its parent
company ByteDance sells the site. So it's interesting because we're seeing
some slight divergence here on policy. Obviously the VP just kind of more or less
has to do whatever the president says. But it sounds like vice president Harris. Was not super interested in banning it. So we'll have to see, you know,
maybe if we got a president Harris, Tik TOK would be okay. It's hard to say. I don't think she's spoken about
it publicly yet, and she is still working as vice president. So it puts her in kind of a weird
position for some policy stuff. But my hunch is that we're going
to see the Tik TOK ban just kind of fade away if we do indeed get a
president Harris now going back to some social media strategy stuff.
This is a. It's like the meme that
just wouldn't go away. Kamala is brat. Now, I don't know what
this means, to be honest. I needed these articles breaking
it down, explaining what Kamala is brat and what Lime Green is. I'm officially an old. I get that. Uh, basically, the long story short is
it's a Charlie XCX who is a Musician, a pop artist, she says in her music, I
guess that the meaning of brat is to be quote that girl who's a little messy and
likes to party, who feels herself, but maybe also has a breakdown is very honest,
very blunt, and a little bit volatile.
And Charli XCX, upon the Kamala
Harris news, tweeted, Kamala is brat. So I guess she's saying Kamala is that
girl who's messy and likes to party. I think it's a compliment. And listen, whatever. Again, I'm not going to like be
talking personally about Kamala. My feelings about politicians or whatever. But what's interesting is the campaign's
response was to go all in on that. This campaign understands the
importance of the youth vote. And I don't think we've seen
anyone actively court the youth vote in such a way. Um, since 2008, do with that
information what you will. They went ahead and changed the
threads and Twitter background to the Brat color and font. And they've got just some really funny
things actually on their threads account. Like they posted the other day,
again, politics aside here, um, about the vice presidential candidate. On the other side. J. D. Vance, they posted something that says J. D. Vance is weird and creepy. Like, Joe Biden could never.
They really are getting
this, like, Gen Z humor. They're being funny, they're being snarky. Without being completely
inappropriate, I think, you know, there is definitely a line. Um, it's really interesting to see. Like I said, I just, I don't think
we've really seen this kind of Courting of the youth vote since 2008. The difference is I was live back then
and able to vote almost back then. And we didn't have social
media like we do today. So it's interesting to see it, see it
kind of play out this whole transition between Joe Biden being the democratic
front runner to, or democratic candidate to Kamala being the, uh, front runner
happened, like, This, I mean, he dropped out and he endorsed her 20 minutes later. So what else happened like
this was her branding. The new Kamala Harris
presidential campaign branding came together within Hours. I just want to say that's amazing. Like shout out to those workers,
uh, the, the digital team. I'm sure that was not an easy day
for them, let's say, but this was a really cool article from fast company,
just about how it all came together.
I thought I would share it. I enjoyed reading it. Some information on the
strategy behind the branding. Rather than reaching back to Harris's
2020 campaign logo and it's unconventional purple, red, and yellow color palette, the
logo was designed to match the preexisting Biden Harris campaign identity. And because of that, it communicates
continuity, a hallmark of visual design for vice presidential running
mates who later run for the top job. That continuity isn't just
for the branding either. Harris is inheriting the
Biden Harris campaign staff headquarters and bank account. All right. So that's what's going on in
the world Social this month. Let me know in the comments on
YouTube, which of these stories you're most excited about. Any of them have you
a little stressed out. Let me know. I always love to hear from you,
particularly in these episodes.
And if you're new here, be sure to
subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to the podcast
over on Spotify, Apple podcasts. It's called the freelance Friday podcast. I'm Latasha James, and
I'll talk to you next time. Bye..