Social Media Updates
Social media companies spend boatloads of cash trying to figure out what features their respective users want most. Research and development are executed with the sole purpose of making their platforms as usable as possible. With these changes being made regularly, we here at Optimize believe that we should inform our current, past, and future clients about the interesting changes that these platforms make.
Moving forward, there will be a monthly social media update, where I will provide you with a brief overview of what is happening in the world of social media.
The goal of this series is to discuss platforms and updates that are relevant to you and Optimize, so you do not have to worry about wasting valuable time.
Meta
We are no stranger to Meta, and that means that we are on top of all the latest trends. Videos, across all relevant platforms, have seen a massive increase in viewership over the last few years. TikTok doubled down on video content and are reaping the rewards.
This has caused Meta to alter its UI on both IOS and Android to be more video friendly. Meta created a list of four “ranking signals” that they use to determine whether your video should be shown to more people on Facebook.
The first signal is originality. Originality, as Meta describes it, is if the content that was created is authentic and disseminated by the creator of the content. In other words, Meta wants the content to come directly from the source.
The second ranking signal is audience retention. This one gets a little tricky because, for businesses who just start posting videos on their Facebook Business page, they will not have audience retention or audience loyalty (the third ranking signal) established, but it can be created through posting relevant content.
Audience loyalty refers to the willingness of viewers to continue to view your content on your business’ platforms. They also recommend that you create and publish smaller pieces of content in-between the larger content.
The fourth and final ranking signal is engagement. Virality is an important term to mention here because Facebook, along with other platforms, rate virality particularly high due to the buzz that can be created around the platforms. Engagement bait is highly discouraged and could negatively hurt the performance of the published content. Facebook can determine if your content engages in “click bait” behavior.
September 1st was important for Twitter. They have begun testing a feature that allows you to edit tweets. This has been a highly requested feature since 2016, and now it is finally making its way through the test phase. Twitter intends to allow Twitter Blue subscribers to test it next, with the rest of Twitter users having to wait to try the feature. When the feature is fully live, all users will be able to use
Tweets have a half hour shelf life before a user is no longer able to make edits to the tweet. The best part about this development is that the edited history can be publicly viewed. When checking out the edit history, you will be able to see the original tweet, and then the subsequent edits and times those edits occurred after that.
YouTube
Short videos have become quite popular in recent times. So popular in fact that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube all have a short video feature. YouTube’s viewership on YouTube Shorts has blossomed significantly. YouTube has recently boasted that their monthly audience has reached two billion, and that their Shorts videos has reached one and a half billion monthly viewers.
YouTube has published a guide for utilizing Shorts to assist casual posters and content creators alike in building Shorts using cool tips and tricks.
Here are some interesting tips that you can use to create shorts for your business:
The first thing to think about is the content that you want to post. Since we work with automotive repair shops, we would suggest posting content about your shop, the cars you work on, and your staff.
Not all content needs to be posted as soon as it is created. It is important to record video and save it, because you never know if you will want to pull that content and use it for future posts.
Adding sound to your Short is important. Although your video will already have environmental audio, Shorts audio can be saved and used for future content, or you can use the audio saved for trending videos. It can be used in conjunction with, or separate from, the environmental audio.
This published guide does not tell you how to increase performance in your Shorts, it is solely a guide to help you navigate YouTube, how to start using shorts, and cool features to help with it.
We hope that you have enjoyed reading the first edition of the social media update series. If you have any questions, reach out to our team, or if you are already a customer of ours, you can reach out to your Account Consultant for more information.