Goodbye March, hello April! Before we all indulge too much in an onslaught of chocolate this coming Easter take a moment to read our March social media news update, packed full of insightful social media goodness, with a sprinkle of Instagram, a shake of Twitter, all topped off by the latest LinkedIn platform updates. Read on and enjoy!
Instagram Will Enable All Users to Tag Products in Feed Posts
Instagram it seems is continuing its focus on eCommerce, now enabling all users to tag products in their Instagram posts, starting it seems with the US. Previously this feature was only available to approved creators but now Instagram is ready to roll it out to the masses giving everyone the capacity to provide a direct link to products and brands in their uploads.
As explained by Instagram:
“Scored a new pair of earrings from a small business you love? Tag the product in your Feed post so your friends and followers can learn more about the earnings and shop them!! People come to Instagram to share and discover trends and inspiration. Product tagging will make it possible for anyone to support their favourite small businesses, share how they styled their looks along with the products they used, and more.”
This could be huge for smaller brands and start-ups, providing them essentially free marketing buzz and direct linking to their products. Allowing their customers to advertise for them. In turn, this is a boon for Instagram, bolstering its eCommerce focus to suit ever-changing consumer behaviours on the app.
Over time users will become more and more accustomed to product tags as friends and followers start to tag the products they love, leaning further into the product discovery mindset that Instagram is trying to push to facilitate more transactions. Interestingly tagging products in Stories and Reels will still be restricted to business or creator accounts at this time.
Business owners will receive a notification when someone tags one of their products, while they’ll also be able to view all tagged content on their profile. This will also allow businesses to remove tags too if a user decides to use them negatively.
1.6 million users tag at least one brand a week on average, according to Instagram, which would suggest that this added capacity for users to tag will become highly utilised. In the long term, this could change the focus of the main feed, for better or worse? It remains to be seen. Users heavily against advertising may feel alienated from the app, however, brands and influencers will no doubt embrace the feature.
Product tagging in feed posts is being rolled out to all Instagram users in the US from today.
Twitter Adds Three More Providers to its Official Partner Program
In other social media news, Twitter has announced an expansion to its Partner Program, adding a host more options for business users to make the most of the platform. Enabling them to access endorsed third-party partners who will now be able to tap into more in-depth Twitter data and support.
These new partners are:
- Cision: A leading global provider of earned media software and services to public relations and marketing communications professionals .
- Khoros: An award-winning digital-first customer engagement software and service that helps enterprises drive better customer experiences and connections across the expanding digital channel landscape.
- Synthesio, an Ipsos company: A social listening pioneer and AI-enabled consumer intelligence leader, Synthesio provides a complete, accurate, and predictive picture of consumers.
With these new additions, Twitter’s Partner Program now has a total of 16 third-party providers, each categorised into different, specialist elements.
The additions take Twitter’s Partner Program to 16 recognized, third-party providers after Twitter added seven more partners in September last year. Each official partner is categorized into different, specialist elements. Business users now have an excellent range of options to bolster and boost their tweet strategy.
Furthermore, each of Twitter’s official partners must meet a set of strict selection criteria, based on the following:
- Quality – Candidate must be recognized as a leading quality product
- Scale – Candidate must have a strong and growing business
- Relationship – Candidate must be in good standing with Twitter
- Health – Candidate meets business and technical health standards
- Compliance – Candidate must meet Twitter’s Compliance guidelines
So when working with any of Twitter’s official partners you can be confident that their standards are of the highest quality and align with key elements and standards set out by Twitter. On the flip side, it means that each partner gains broader trust and endorsements, a real win-win situation for everyone.
You can learn more about Twitter’s Partner Program here.
LinkedIn Adds Newsletters for Company Pages
In further social media news, LinkedIn has added a new way for brands to stay connected with their audience through the use of newsletters in-app that Company Pages can create, including new notification options for Page followers to alert them to newsletter updates.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“We debuted Articles for Pages last year to help you publish long-form professional content to spark conversations and drive greater engagement. We continue to look for meaningful ways to connect as we navigate our new world of work, and that’s why we’re introducing Newsletters, a new way to build communities around topics that matter most to your customers with recurring Articles from your Page that members can subscribe to.”
LinkedIn is looking to utilise the rising number of newsletters that they originally piloted back in November 2021, through creator mode, harnessing this increase and maximising in-app engagement. Now, company pages will expand this to even more users.
Key advantages for brands include the capacity to notify Page followers with newsletter updates, which offers a one-time alert for every new issue. Subscribers will also be able to opt-in to email alerts for future updates. This looks to be a real boon to brands trying to reach their audience with longer-form content.
LinkedIn has noted that initial testers have seen positive results:
“Early adopters, like global news publication Insider and video communications company Zoom, saw immediate value in their first Newsletter campaigns. Insider quickly gained nearly 820,000 subscribers within 24 hours, a testament to the power of the Newsletters to quickly grow and engage audiences. In addition, Zoom was one of the first software technology companies to publish a Newsletter, and quickly saw over 10% of its followers subscribe to it in the first 24 hours.”
Whilst this is great news, they run the risk of becoming overwhelming, LinkedIn has had issues in the past with unwanted notifications and irrelevant alerts across the app. If brands decide to use the feature as more of a growth hack, filled with adverts and promotions, it could cause a lot of frustration to LinkedIn users.
Users can of course unfollow, but for the experience to be a positive one the responsibility is on each Page to manage their updates accordingly and provide quality content. It also begs the question; do you need another newsletter from brands?
We’ll soon find out, with the option now being rolled out to company pages in the app.
Well, that’s all folks, don’t forget to check out some of Giraffe’s insightful blog posts to keep your social media game strong. Check out, Making Authentic Content For Social Media for starters. Dial-in your content for a bigger impact on your audience. We will see you next month, where not only will we bring you the latest social media news updates and insights, but also be complaining about an overconsumption of chocolate. Giraffe, out!
