After we spoke about What's New on Facebook and Instagram, it's time to turn our eyes to the updates on other important social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. Why not have a separate post on each you would say? Well, mainly because we are still quite early in the year and not every social media platform has brought out many new features. That's exactly the case of Pinterest, for example.
Pinterest's last major update was released in September 2018 and it changed a lot of things on the platform, indeed. The most obvious change was the introduction of the Pinterest Communities. These are like Facebook Groups to an extend, but still, very different. They do, however, incorporate the social factor, which was not so evident on Pinterest before. With that change, the significance of Group Boards was also altered. If before you would try to join as many group boards as possible and be active on them, after the update in September 2018, you should do quite the opposite. Keep your place only on the highly relevant to your niche and not overcrowded group boards.
The size of the optimal pin has also changed. Before, the advice was "the longer the pin, the better". Now we have a specific ratio that works best and that's 600x900.
I am still waiting for videos on Pinterest to reach their full potential, but by all means, do include them in your content mix for Pinterest. For better results, make vertical videos, which you can also repurpose on IGTV, Insta, Facebook and WhatsApp Stories.
Hungry to know more about Pinterest? Join me for the next Pinterest for Business Masterclass on 6th April in London. I guarantee you will learn the latest bits about working with Pinterest for the growth of your business, even if an update was released a couple of days before the event.
Twitter brought out an update just before the end of 2018. A new icon showed up at the top right corner. We call it "the sparkle icon" and what it does is filtering the tweets on your timeline. If you click on it, you can choose to see the top tweets first, instead of the latest tweets. If you want to switch back to chronological order, just tap on the icon again.
Users report that with that update, there have been some positive changes to the algorithm too. It's easier to filter content and reduce spam. From a business perspective, this means only one thing - you really need to be careful about your content and provide value to your audience. Everything too spammy or useless, will most likely get filtered.
Just last week, Twitter have also expanded their political ads and transparency to include all EU countries, as well as India and Australia. Some may say, they have done much better in that aspect than Facebook. Oops... didn't meant to, but I did. Twitter said they will continue to expand their political ads policy throughout various world markets during this year.
Here comes the exciting part. Of all three social media platforms we are discussing today, LinkedIn has the most juice. First of, LinkedIn Pages. Those were kind of pushed to the backside for most businesses on LinkedIn, because, let's be honest, they weren't really fit or functional for business marketing purposes. But that has now changed. LinkedIn pages have a fresh new look and quite a few new useful features.
Now page admins can interact with their audience through their phone - replying to comments on the go. You would think that's something that should have been available long time ago, but at least, thank LinkedIn, it is now. Another plus, admins can also reshare public posts of their fans.
The pages have improved the user data analytics and based on that, there's a feature that helps you with content creation. It suggests topics your audience may be interested in or is currently talking about. Here you go - trending and timely content.
The integration with Hootsuite has become smother than ever! Not only you can schedule posts to your LinkedIn page, but you can also get notifications straight to the Hootsuite app and manage the whole content on your LinkedIn page from there. Extremely helpful to social media managers!
There's also a bunch of other new or improved features for those who are looking for change jobs or seek career development. But I won't focus too much on that, because this is a blog for business owners and industry influencers. If you are interested in those changes, you can read more about them here.
And, I always save the best for dessert. LinkedIn Live Video is finally a reality. Well, not for all but, soon users across the world will be able to try the feature. Currently, the beta version has been released only in the US and access to it is "by invite only". In an announcement from last week, LinkedIn officials said by the end of the year the LinkedIn Live feature will be rolled out to more users in different countries around the globe.
Any questions about social media and how to use it for your business? Drop me a line! I'm always happy to give some clarity and direction. Don't be shy, let's chat!
