Here we are again it’s that time of the month where we bring you all the latest social media news. We managed to scour the internet between sunbathing sessions for what’s hot in the world of social media. So grab your favourite summer drink and check out what’s new in July!
TikTok Reminds Brands, “Don’t make ads, make TikToks”
TikTok has been reinforcing its stance on advertising, which it first pushed a year ago. Challenging brands with the bold statement: “Don’t make ads, make TikToks.’, since then TikTok has continued this trend whilst pushing for brands to join the platform. TikTok has now published a new post reiterating this mantra whilst deep diving into what it means to make TikTok’s.
Tiktoks aim is to encourage marketers to embrace the creativity of the platform, they have also shared statements from brands who have followed the advised advertising trend with great success. TikTok Global Business Marketing head Katie Puris broke it down:
“What happens on TikTok is completely unique. Every-day, people participate in campaigns built alongside them, and create their own TikToks for brands and products they love. We frequently hear people say, ‘I didn’t even realise that was an ad!’ and that’s the goal on TikTok. The work is so good, it fits right in and it’s celebrated…just like TikTok.”
TikTok goes on to highlight how internet platforms have evolved, yet ad formats have kept a very similar formula. How often do you interact with an ad just to skip it to get back to your content? Or distract yourself until it ends? This is an almost expected behaviour these days and something TikToks format overcomes. Other social media platforms have also started to adopt the same strategy such as Reels, Shorts, and Spotlight.
This strategy is being successful and brands are producing engaging content that audiences are responding positively to. In turn, brands are getting more exposure and finding new audiences. How does your brand use TikTok? Perhaps it’s time to delve deeper and up your TikTok game, start here with Giraffe’s post about incredible TikTok statistics!
Instagram Stories Drafts are Now Available for All
In other social media news Instagram has now rolled out its Stories drafts feature to all users, Instagram first announced the feature back in March, allowing users the ability to compose and save Stories as drafts for later publication.
This was first discovered by Twitter user @WFBrother and then shared by social media guru Matt Navarra, from the images shared by @WFBrother you can see that the option for drafts is activated when you attempt to exit from the Stories composer during a composition. If you choose to save a Story as a draft, a new alert pops up to remind you that Story drafts are deleted a week after you save them. This should be ample time and allows for more considered and well-crafted story compositions which can be posted at the most appropriate times for your audience.
This feature may come in handy for social media managers looking to post at optimal times moving forward, although the option for saving Stories has existed for a while and apps exist to help with Story posting, none are native to the Instagram app. This native feature will be less intrusive to content creation flow, existing wholly within the app and allowing you to view exactly how your draft will appear to users and utilise Instagram’s full feature set during the creation process. Whilst, not a massive change this really will help maximise Instagram Story engagement for brands and influencers.
Twitter launching First Stage Testing for New and Upgraded TweetDeck
Back in January Twitter flagged it had an update coming for TweetDeck, there were also murmurs of a possible paid feature as well as add-ons for the platform. Twitter has now launched a life test of its fresh new TweetDeck. This includes a full Tweet Composer, updated search features, now column types, and new ways to group your columns into ‘Decks’ to expand usage.
It seems the main presentation changes relate to column layouts, giving the capacity to re-size and shift your columns to give more or less focus on-screen depending on user preference.
Matt Navarra shared examples on his Twitter feed, these show new TweetDeck options such as expanding and shrinking columns on demand and a feature called ‘Decks’. ‘Decks’ allow the creation of a whole series of columns that are then presented on a secondary dashboard, which can be accessed via your sidebar options. This provides new ways to use TweetDeck, allowing for decks focussed on different topics or purposes, thus giving each screen a more definitive intent.
The new TweetDeck also provided a simpler layout for search options, although still limited by Twitter’s advanced search parameters it at least makes them easier to access. The composer also sees an update that makes it easier to see how your Tweets will look within the app, so you can better plan your content posts.
This update has been long overdue after Twitter acquired TweetDeck back in 2011 and will hopefully make the lives of a lot of social media managers easier going forward. If you want more in-depth information on the new TweetDeck features you can check them out here.
Well, that’s it for another month, we’ll see you next time for more social media news and updates. Ensure to come back regularly to keep your finger on the pulse and keep your social media marketing game strong!
