Twitter rebrand
There are lots of reasons you might choose to rebrand your business.
- Maybe you changed focus and your current name, logo and colour scheme don’t work anymore.
- Maybe you feel your brand doesn’t stand out amongst your competitors
- Maybe your brand is dated
- Maybe you want to tell people something new is happening.
I’m guessing that last example is behind Musk’s mad rebrand of Twitter to X.
People don’t seem to love it but will the initial resistance melt away?
Does X tell us that actually, Twitter isn’t Twitter anymore? And if it does isn’t that quite accurate?
After all, tweets are longer, we can edit, verified doesn’t mean verified anymore, we see tweets from more people we don’t follow than we do, and all hope of curbing abuse is gone.
New Twitter is different and the new name tells us that.
It also suggests that Musk is serious about turning the one-trick pony network into a WeChat-style everything app.
That would be harder to do under the brand ‘Twitter’ because that brand means so much to so many of us.
That doesn’t stop me hating it.
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Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling
I’m not sure how I survived before I used an appointment scheduling tool. I use Book Like A Boss but there are lots to choose from. The most famous being Calendly.
But now there’s a Calendly competitor that could own the market for single appointment schedules. And that competitor is Google.
It just released an update that allows all Google free users to create an appointment booking page from their calendar. It’s simple to set up and, of course, it integrates perfectly with your existing Google calendar.
There are some limitations. You can only set up one booking page. That means you can only have one duration for your appointments. For example, if you have a 30 minute meeting, all your meetings are 30 minutes.
And, the only virtual meeting platform it supports is Google Meet. If you want to use Zoom you could add your general meeting link to the description but it’s not ideal.
This will be a great solution for small businesses that don’t need more flexibility. And for Google, it’s a good gateway drug to their paid workplace which gives you more appointment pages.
TikTok text posts
Everyone has a different learning style. Similarly, everyone has a different type of content they prefer to consume.
You know what. I love text. I love to read. When I do a Google search I see the videos at the top but know I’m going to get a quicker answer from a written blog.
Other people prefer videos, images, or audio.
Does TikTok recognise that it could reach a larger audience if it embraced different content types? Maybe.
This week it officially launched the long-rumoured ‘text post’. It thinks that we’ll use it to share poems, recipes and more. You’ll be able to change the background colour, add sound and stickers.
How will TikTok users react to this update? We’ll have to wait and see. (I might love it).
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/text-posts
TikTok ad library
If you’re going to spend money on social ads it makes sense to research the other ads on the platform. It can equally inspire you and show you what doesn’t work.
That’s one of the reasons I love the Meta ads library. You should see some of the shocking ads people run!
Now you’ll be able to view ads that others are running on TikTok in the TikTok ads library. You can filter by country, date and business name making it a great way to stalk your competitors.
Although both Meta and TikTok set up these libraries as transparency tools, they are hugely useful to businesses who want to run ads. Thanks TikTok.
https://library.tiktok.com/ads
New home for Twitter teams
If you want someone to manage your Twitter account for you, you either have to send them your password or add them to ‘teams’ in Tweetdeck.
And now the Tweetdeck teams option is going away.
But it’s not all bad news.
You can now add ‘Delegates’ to your Twitter account in the settings menu. This means you can assign admin rights to another account, similar to the way you do on Facebook.
You’ll find the option in your ‘settings’ menu. under ‘security and account access’.
Did I just hear a gasp of joy from all the social media managers out there?
Instagram Nearby Reels coming to a phone near you
How do you find the Reels that are most relevant to you?
If you’re a local business a new feature in Instagram Reels could help.
‘Nearby’ shows you Reels from people close to your geographic location. It’s not hyper-local. Most of the Reels I saw came from Dublin, but it is somewhat relevant to the mood of the country.
For business, it could help you identify local trends and creators and their audiences in your space.
Find ‘Nearby’ by clicking the word ‘Reels’ at the top left of the Reels screen.
New Polls for Reels
Polls on Instagram are a great way to judge if people are actually watching your story or Reel, or if they are just tapping through at the speed of light.
Now Instagram is adding a new Poll feature to Reels with a difference.
Instead of the Poll becoming part of your video you’ll be able to add it to the description. That means it will be less intrusive, but does it also mean you’ll get fewer votes?