August 2022 Social Media Updates
By Jess Begg
The latest social media updates and trends you need to know for your product or brand.
The social media marketing landscape is rapidly evolving. It feels like each day brings a new update, trend or trick to learn across all the social platforms. Juggling it, let alone mastering it, can feel overwhelming. But no need to stress, Papaya PR have put together a ‘Top 5’ list of what’s super-hot in social media right now to help you stay ahead of the game.
Important tip: it’s crucial that you are testing these changes before updating your marketing strategy to include these new trends. Not every update/trend/trick is going to work for your unique brand or core.
Boost Your Reels on Instagram:
As of this month, Instagram has made it possible to ‘boost’ your Reels. When they announced this update businesses owners globally could be heard cheering. For finally we are handed the ability to turn Instagram Reels into ads – much the same way you can boost an Instagram post.
This simple conversion of Reels into ads with this ‘boost’ function, gives you the opportunity to tap into new audiences and see increased engagement with your established followers. Love a win-win!
The other major benefit to ‘reel boosting’, is that it allows you to track the insights of your ad during or after its lifetime. This performance data is priceless for your future social media planning and strategy.
This new Instagram function does come with some requirements. These are the main ones that you’ll need to keep in mind:
- The Reel you are boosting must be less than 60 seconds long
- It also must be full screen and vertical
- Any accompanying music must meet licensing requirements
If boosting a reel is something you’d like to do be sure to read the full requirements list before you begin! If you’re looking for some examples of great booster friendly reels, check out this winning example from a July campaign we ran for one of our clients:
Instagram Says Goodbye to Video and Hello to Reels
Another upgrade that Instagram has rolled out this month is that all new video posts shared on a page (which are shorter in length than 15 minutes) are now being uploaded as Reels. This change caused some head spinning in the social media world! What’s good to know is any videos posted prior to this change will remain as videos. Phew.
The reason behind this change? Reels offer a more immersive and entertaining experience for video content. They also offer more creative tools and the full-screen experience which has proven to have higher engagement with users.
How will this be rolled out? Any new videos (now Reels) will be consolidated into one tab on your profile, so there will be one home for all your videos on your page. This is an important update to consider and be included into your social media marketing strategy, as short video content is the leading the race when it comes to social media marketing in 2022!
Extra tip: If you want to know how to generate great video content check out our blog here
LinkedIn Catching Up with Content Carousels
It is important to leverage LinkedIn as a social media marketing platform if it’s a good fit with your brand. The LinkedIn platform is now ready to launch multi-media carousels, a new way to share a series of swipeable photos and/or videos.
Why make this change in 2022 you ask? This new carousel feature has been introduced to share knowledge in a more visual way to inform, inspire and better connect with your audience. Three cheers for that.
While this may not seem like a new trend, as it’s been around for what seems like forever on both Facebook and Instagram, it’s a great addition to LinkedIn, which is often overlooked but truly is a seriously bright star in the social media galaxy!
Alt Text – A Simple Trick to Improve Your Rankings
‘Alt text’ (alternative text’) is descriptive text that you can include when uploading your images. This is a beneficial new feature allowing for a text description to be displayed when the image fails to load or when a person is visually impaired.
It is important to be aware of alt text, as it is actually used by search engines and platforms to understand and rank your images in relevant searches.
With this in mind, adding alt text to all your social media images is wise as it helps you improve your reach and means that nobody will be missing out on even if the photo isn’t uploading quickly. Note: Alt text is available on the following platforms – LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Is it Facebook or FaceTok? Facebook’s New Home Feed Format
Facebook has now updated its home feed format to look a lot more like TikTok. They are also launching a Feeds tab which allows you to view posts from friends, groups and pages in chronological order. And you know what they say… imitation is the best form of flattery 😉 Find out more about how you too can imitate TikToks marketing style!
So, to wrap it up, you can see how these five key social media changes/updates need to be considered for inclusion in your social media marketing strategy.
Regardless of whether you’ve gotten to the stage where you’d like to hand over the management of your social media completely – or you’d simply like some extra help to execute your social media seamlessly and professionally – please get in contact with the Papaya PR team today. We love and live for our social media success.