Twitter launches communities
Building a community around your business will help you build trust, loyalty and ambassadors.
Until now Facebook has had community sewn up, but Twitter is about to take them on.
Communities on Twitter are in the testing phase. They are interest groups you can join. When you share a tweet you’ll be able to choose a community to share to.
Your Tweet will still sit in the feed and be visible to all but it will also appear on a dedicated Twitter page. Only members of a community will be able to add to it.
Just like Facebook communities will be created by and moderated by Twitter members.
Will this new push towards valuable engagement make Twitter a more attractive network to businesses?
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/communities
Facebook tests ‘Ad Strategies’
Facebook ads seem endlessly complex, particularly if you want to work through a funnel that converts cold prospects into customers.
But now Facebook is making this easier with a product they are calling ‘Ad Strategies’.
With this tool, you’ll be able to create a multi-tiered campaign designed to move customers through a funnel, or pipeline as they call it.
You’ll be able to set it all up in one place, optimise for sales or leads, automate processes for moving people from one audience to another, and set up all your ads for the whole campaign in one place.
This will make it much easier for businesses and ads managers to create structured campaigns.
New product listings and discoverability on Google
Christmas is heading towards us faster than you think. If you are an e-commerce retailer you need to get your store in order.
According to Google, “58% of U.S. holiday shoppers said they will shop online more this season than in previous years and 59% said they will shop earlier to avoid an item being out of stock.”
Google has added a new feature to shopping listings.
You’ll be able to add shipping and return annotations to your products in search so you can let people know when stuff will arrive and what your policies are. Apparently, shoppers love free shipping…
They are also making it easier to add your products to Google Shopping by making it a seamless process from Shopify, WooCommerce or GoDaddy.
Google is a great place to showcase your products because you are reaching people further down the buying funnel, people who search for products have an intention to buy.
https://www.blog.google/products/ads-commerce/2021-retail-holiday-checklist/
New Twitter controls
Twitter is working hard to make it easier to protect your reputation on the platform.
New features they are considering include:
Archiving old tweets. None of us wants to be held to account for something we got wrong many years ago. Archiving our tweets will put a stop to people searching our timelines for something controversial.
Hiding tweets you’ve liked – Once again, you don’t want to be held accountable for a tweet you’ve inadvertently liked.
Remove followers – Stop spammy people from following you without blocking.
Remove yourself from a conversation – Previously known as untag yourself.
These controls will allow you to have more control over your reputation and will make Twitter seem like a less risky place to market your business.
Instagram Reply To A Comment In A Reel
If you want to make your customers feel valued, a new feature that Instagram is considering could be huge.
It will let you reply to a comment with a Reel. That means you’ll be able to create a sticker from a comment on a previous Reel, add it to your video and respond.
This could be a fun way to create a customised piece of content for an audience member.
Facebook smart glasses
Remember Snapchat Spectacles? Launched in 2016 they were a fun way to create and share content from your own view.
Now in 2021 Facebook is launching their own version in association with Ray Ban.
Even though it’s 5 years since Spectacles, it seems the Facebook glasses do exactly the same thing. There doesn’t appear to be any additional features.
Could this just be the first step towards something more interesting like AR glasses? You have to hope so.
TikTok gets more watch time than YouTube
If you create online video should you ditch YouTube and move to TikTok?
New stats for UK and US Android users show that the average time spent on site per user is higher on TikTok than YouTube. YouTube still win on overall watch time.
So should you switch?
TikTok is very different to YouTube, it has an addictive algorithm but it’s harder to build brand loyalty. To make a big impact you need to be a great creator and get featured in the ‘For You’ tab.
YouTube is a place where people go to watch long-form videos and they will see more videos from you when they watch.
So no, don’t ditch and switch, but if you have the time, look at the opportunities that TikTok offers including influencer marketing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58464745
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