Instagram Live Gets An Upgrade
Instagram live is a wonderful way to connect to your audience. It’s still Instant and in the moment, and because you can’t (officially) use third party tools to stream, it’s raw and less polished.
The problem is it’s fleeting, videos are gone within 24 hours.
Not anymore. Instagram have announced some updates to live streaming which includes saving live streams for up to 30 days. And you’ll now be able to go live longer, 4 hours will be the maximum. Although who’s watching for 4 hours?
Finally there will be a new ‘Live now’ tab on the IGTV app.
New WhatsApp Shopping Tools
WhatsApp is ad free and it looks like it may stay that way. When it tried to introduce advertising in the past there was a huge backlash from users, huge enough for them to stop their ads programme.
But there could be a new way for them to make money. WhatsApp are introducing some new shopping tools for business accounts. These will include chatbots to help customers find what they want from your store and integration with your ecommerce solution.
Some of these tools will come at a cost to your business. It makes sense, if you’re not paying for advertising on the platform, your budget could go into making sales easier using these new tools.
TikTok Gets Shopping
Half of TikTok users said they discover new products through advertisements posted by a product or brand.
And TikTok are embracing this. This week it announced that you’ll be able to integrate your Shopify account with your TikTok business account to serve better ads.
This will give you one click pixel integration, making it easier to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Plus they’re adding creative tools to help you make more native looking TikTok ads.
If your audience is on TikTok and you sell stuff this could be massive.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/connecting-shopify-merchants-with-the-tiktok-community
YouTube Chapters Upgrade
When you post a blog or article you split it up with subheadings. This helps people who scan read the bits they are most interested in. It signposts what your blog is about and stops people scrolling through without reading.
Chapter stops on YouTube do the same thing. A viewer can skip to the bit they want to know.
Until now, viewers had to hover over the video timeline to find the bit they wanted, or go to the description and click a time stamp.
YouTube are making it easier. Now when you click the video timeline a list of thumbnails will appear for you to select from.
This will help viewers find the piece they want to watch, and you won’t lose people who want to skip forward.
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/tips-and-tricks-watching-your-favorite-videos/
Facebook Ad Frequency Report
How often is too often to show someone your ad on Facebook?
Facebook analysed 2,439 campaigns to try and find the answer. It’s not definitive and it depends on many factors but it looks like the top frequency could be 6.
They recommend keeping an eye on your campaign and looking for a dip in results, when that happens, refresh your creative.
This study featured campaigns using the ‘Brand Lift’ objective and involved surveying people who saw the ads. No matter which type of campaign you run it’s still a good idea to keep an eye on drop off of results.
https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/a-data-driven-exploration-of-optimal-ad-frequency
Scan food and drink with Snapchat
Snapchat is no longer just a fun and frivolous app for younger people. They keep adding tools that could attract oldies like me.
We’ve seen scan to identify; dog breeds, flowers, and now they’re adding food and drink.
You’ll be able to get nutritional information for some foods, and wine reviews, just by scanning the bar code on specific products.
Snapchat is becoming a new way to search and I love it. It can help us understand the world around us.
New Pinterest Shopping Features
Apparently, Pinterest searches for ‘Christmas Gift Ideas’ peaked in April.
Pinterest wants to be the place you go for your gift inspiration and it’s making it easier for retailers to sell.
They’ll be launching shop fronts for merchants. You’ll be able to feature product categories and there will also be dynamically created recommendations which will change depending on who is looking.
In search, Pinterest will recommend retailers and you’ll be able to tag your own products, much like Instagram.
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