Another month, and many more social media updates to help businesses interact better with their followers. Let’s dive in!

Facebook Updates

Messaging on Pages:

Facebook introduced new ways for people and business Pages to connect including more ways for customers to send private messages to businesses and new tools for Page admins to manage and respond to messages:

  • Sending private messages to Pages from local awareness ads, ONLY if the call-to-action button “Send Message” is featured.
  • Private replies to comments via Message. In the past you could only respond to messages using the same forum the messenger used, i.e. via comment or message. Now admins can reply to public comments via private message, enabling better efficiency.

Responsive Pages: Have you seen this badge on your Page yet? As people consider reaching out to businesses on Facebook through messages, they can now identify Pages that are very responsive to private messages. Pages that respond to 90% of messages and have a median response time of less than five minutes will now have a “Very responsive to messages” badge on their profiles. Responsiveness ratings are dynamic and calculated based on data from the last seven days. All Page admins will now see their Page’s response rate and median response time in Page Insights, but, for now, only the Pages who meet the 90% response rate and less-than-five-minute response time will have the public badge.

Instagram

Hootsuite Introduces Instagram Scheduling: Ever wished you could schedule your Instagram posts? Well, now you can via Hootsuite and you can assign messages to your team members too. This is a breakthrough in managing your Instagram presence right alongside all your other social media activities, from the comfort of Hootsuite. Find out how to add Instagram to your Hootsuite dashboard here.

Instagram Support for Portrait & Landscape Images:  We’ve all been waiting for this. In addition to square posts, you can now share videos and images in both landscape and portrait orientation. YAY!

Add Locations Faster & Easier:  Whenever you add a location to a photo upload, it will be added to your photo map. Set your profile to private so that only approved followers will have access to your map. Here’s how to do it.

Twitter Updates

New Twitter Ads Editor: Twitter now allows you to edit your campaigns in Excel. Simply download an xls copy of your campaigns and modify it in Excel before you upload the updated spreadsheet. The changes will be applied in a single click.

Twitter Drops 140-Character Limit From DM:  Twitter now allows you to send direct messages  across Android, iOS, twitter.com, TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac without the pesky 140-word restriction. This update was one of the ways in which Twitter is working to improve the private side of the network.

Youtube

New-Look Desktop Web Player: Youtube’s web player now has a new sleep look and feel HTML5 video player with a transparent control bar, which disappears when not in use. Updated drop-down menus and buttons also help enhance the appearance of your favorite video player. These changes are on Desktop only for now.

August Social Media Tip

Animated GIFs can help enhance your social media posts and get them noticed, which will result in more engagement and sharing. I found an awesome tool to help you do just that: GIPHY CAM and GIPHY for Messenger.

GIPHY CAM is an all-new iOS app that allows you to create your own GIFs. Download it from the App Store right here.

GiPHY FOR MESSENGER enables you to chat using animated GIFs inside the Facebook Messenger. Fun, right? Download it from the App Store here.

Top Articles to Help You With Your Business:

 

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