For most of us, July days are long, and the nights are warm. Social media users are eager to research, create, share and celebrate their summer activities (and decorative patio drink pics 🙋).
As many relax into the slower rhythms of the season, platforms continue to work towards offering better solutions. From new marketing objectives, new look and feels and top trends, here’s what you need to know about July’s platform updates.
3 New Marketing Objectives
In an effort to give marketers a full-funnel experience, advertisers on LinkedIn can now use brand awareness, website conversion and job applicants. Following LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager redesign, these new objectives are designed to make it easier to improve key results and better align with your campaign objectives.
These new objectives include:
- Brand awareness: increase share-of-voice
- Website conversion: optimized for specific actions on your website
- Job applicants: create ads while seeking new talent
With new objectives also comes improvements to pricing. LinkedIn is optimizing their click pricing to align with your objective. This means, if you select website visits as your objective, you will only be charged for clicks that go to your landing page.
A New Nest. A New Twitter.com
Twitter, like most of its social pals have announced that a new look and feel is coming. The refreshed and updated website is said to be faster, easier to navigate and more personalized. Bookmarks, account switching, dark mode, and so much more.
To learn more about how the twitter team redesigned and built twitter.com, check out their engineering blog series.
Encouraging Positive Interactions
In an effort to encourage positive interactions, Instagram is working to prevent bullying from happening on their platform. In the last few days, IG started rolling out a new feature powered AI that notifies users when their comment may be considered offensive before it’s posted.
The notification gives users a chance to reflect and undo their comment, preventing the recipient from receiving the potential harmful comment notification. Below is an example of what the intervention looks like.
More Transparency
Every wonder why you are seeing certain Facebook ads? Now you can check to see why you were targeted by those brands and where the companies got your data.
Last week, Facebook announced it is updating its Ad Preference, expanding on the ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ tool. You’ll now be able to see more detailed targeting, including the interests or categories that matched you with a specific ad. Facebook’s Sreethu Thulasi, Product Manager, shared that it will be clearer where that information came from. For example, the website you might have visited or a Facebook page you may have liked. They will also highlight controls you can use to easily adjust your experience.
To learn more about why you’re seeing certain ads and how you can adjust your ad experience click here.
Maximize your Mobile Video Ads
It’s no surprise that mobile video ads are highly receptive amongst the Facebook audience. With awareness and consideration as a common goal for video ad campaigns, Facebook has put together a guide to help brands choose the right campaign objective that best aligns with your business goals. The guide focuses on three objectives: reach, brand awareness and video views.
Quick Tips: Targeting Pinners
As a seasoned marketer you know that targeting can make or break your campaign. And as the complexities around audience targeting continue to grow, you want to be sure your targeting strategy is on point. Luckily Pinterest has released their quick tips to getting it right!
The Top Trends for July
It’s no surprise that frozen beverages are keeping Pinners cool this summer, but did you know that in the US alone, searches for jalapeno frozen margaritas are up 139%? Or that in Canada the summer is getting a dusting of frost with silver hair highlights? Searches are up by 647%.
Pinterest releases their top platform trends monthly and we kind of like it! Not only do they share the trends, but they also offer tips on how to put these insights to work.
A New App For Social Networking
An invitation only app, Google laces up for another foray into social networking. The app aims to bring people together in the real world (which is comparably similar to Nextdoor or Meetup). The app, called Shoelace, provides suggestions every day on nearby happenings, such as free comedy shows or pick-up soccer games, that give people a reason to meet up.
While the app is currently focused in New York City, the goal is to bring Shoelace to cities nationwide.
Quick Recap
- LinkedIn = New marketing objectives
- Twitter = A new look and feel in is the air
- Instagram = Fighting online bullying with positive interaction
- Facebook = Ad transparency and a guide to mobile video ads
- Pinterest = Quick tips and top trends
- Google = Releases Shoelace
If you are looking to improve your social media results or have questions regarding latest platform updates we’d love to chat!