Facebook public comments on stories
One of the unique things about stories, whatever platform you are on, is that there’s no public engagement.
All the comments and reactions happen in direct messages. And for me that’s what makes them special.
But of course, we’ve been trained to give our love publicly on social media, so the fact that we have to direct message, personally, in stories can be a little off-putting. It can also mean you get a tonne of irrelevant messages.
This week Facebook is testing the ability to add comments publicly to stories. Alongside the message button is ‘comment’.
Will this make stories just like feed posts? Does this spell the end of feed posts completely? Will it mean more engagement?
We’ll have to wait and see.
New Search Console insights
Search Console is an amazing tool from Google that can help you analyse your website’s performance.
But it can be a little intimidating. It’s full of graphs and charts and menus and tech speak.
This week there’s a new section called Search Console Insights. Click the button and enter and you’re in a new world of data. Presented in a user-friendly, non-techie way, it can help you understand how you are appearing in Google search, where your traffic comes from, inbound links, and what pages people are visiting.
A lot of this data is available through Google Analytics but the way it’s presented here makes it much easier to consume and act on.
It should be available to all in Search Console right now.
https://blog.google/web-creators/improve-your-content-search-console-insights/
Apply for Twitter ticketed spaces and Super Follow
One way you can ensure you get the best customers, and in Twitter’s case users, is to ask people to apply. This gives you the chance to select the people who are going to be the best fit for your business or social media tool.
And that’s what Twitter is doing with Ticketed Spaces and Super Follow.
At the moment it’s harder to meet the criteria for Super Follow. You need to be in the US, and you need 10k followers.
Ticketed spaces is easier. You only require 1k followers and to have hosted 3 spaces in the last 30 days.
In really good news, Twitter is only taking 3% of your earnings from these tools (after in-app purchase fees are applied) up to $50k. Then they will take 20%.
Apply for either of these tools by clicking the new Monetisation tab on your mobile menu.
New listing options for Google business profiles
When someone searches for your business by name on Google, they will find your business listing. In the past, updating this has been cumbersome, meaning that many businesses display out of date info.
Google just made it much easier. You can now click a button directly from search results or Google Maps to update your info.
They’ve also added some new sections to your listing. You can post about events, and restaurants can set it up for takeaway and delivery orders.
The power of the Google listing is that, just like your website appearing in search, you reach people who are already looking for exactly what you do.
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/show-what-your-business-offers/
Facebook WhatsApp Shopping tools
Facebook shops are doing well, 300M visitors per month and there are 1.2 million active shops.
So it’s not surprising they want to add new features and expand.
Facebook announced that it’s bringing full shops to WhatsApp, making it much easier for businesses to sell via direct message.
They’re also adding shop listings to the Marketplace tab, usually reserved for people selling their pre-loved items.
Plus, they’re introducing a Pinterest style lens search, which will let you shop for products similar to what you see in the real world.
Finally, they’re introducing personalised shop ads that are based on a user’s previous behaviour.
This push to allow more personalisation in shops is one way that Facebook can combat the loss of data from iOS and other privacy controls. If they keep the data on Facebook businesses can use it effectively for retargeting.
Facebook Audio Rooms launched
Just a week after Mark Zuckerberg’s public test, Facebook audio rooms are being rolled out to users in the US. It seems that you’ll only be able to host from iOS for now.
The tool is only being given to select public figure pages and groups at the moment.
This suggests Facebook see this as a place where people speak, as if on a virtual stage and share wisdom with their audience. Making it more like Clubhouse than the chats we see on Twitter Spaces.
You will be able to invite speakers in advance. Listeners will be able to request to speak (with a maximum of 50 at one time) and there will be Space like reactions and closed captions.
When you get access, it could be a good place to host conference or event style content to build an audience.
New TikTok integrations with ‘Jump’
TikTok is about to become more than short video content and this could be good for some businesses.
TikTokers will soon be able to link to mini-apps from their videos. These apps include recipes, quizzes, learning tools, restaurant reservations.
At the moment these mini-apps all come from existing tools and apps like Wikipedia, but developers will be able to apply to create them.
This could be a great way to work with TikTok creators in the future.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-jump-enriching-the-tiktok-experience-with-new-integrations
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