With April now upon us, consider this your yearly reminder to not believe anything brands publish on April 1. Despite the impending influx of jokes, content development and content marketing are no laughing matter. That’s why each week we scour the web for the top news that you will want to keep on your radar.
Instagram hopes a series of small changes will yield big results
Despite the current woes facing Instagram’s big brother Facebook, the photo- and video-sharing app is not facing the same scrutiny — nor is it seeing anything similar to the backlash Facebook is seeing. In fact, Instagram continues to make adjustments and updates that are designed to both appease users and brands.
This week, Instagram introduced a handful of small updates that could result in a large impact in coming weeks, months and years. The updates include:
News feed concessions
Perhaps no change Instagram has made in its short history has been more unpopular among users than its abandoning of the chronological news feed. Though it doesn’t appear that Instagram is ready to move back to this sort of feed, it is prepared to meet users halfway with the following two changes:
Instagram is tweaking its algorithm to make it more likely that newer posts appear at the top of a user’s news feed.
A “New Posts” button is now being tested to allow users to take more control of when their news feeds refresh.
In a recently published Complex News video, host Frazier Tharpe offered the following insightful commentary about the news feed concessions from Instagram:
“It’s a small victory, but a W is a W,” Tharpe said. “The lesson here? Keep complaining and social media execs will eventually, probably, bend to your will.”
Shoppable posts
Brands with goods to sale will be thrilled to begin using the Instagram’s shoppable posts. With these posts, Instagram allows brand publishers to tag up to five items per post. When a user taps on an image, a brief description and price for each of the items in the post appears. A user then may tap on one of the descriptions to be taken to a deeper shopping and checkout experience. This is all done within the Instagram app.
The functionality has been available to some for a few months, but this week Instagram rolled it out to more businesses. Joslyn Davis shared her thoughts about the functionality on a recent Clevver News video.
“Instagram is planning to monetize the feature by allowing businesses to display ‘shoppable’ photos to people who don’t already follow them,” Davis said. “Everything from clothes to jewelry to flowers are available on the Shopping for Instagram feature. As if we needed more ways to be addicted to shopping, amiright?!”
Hashtags and profile links to bios
Users now can include clickable hashtags and profile links in their bios. This means that individuals may tag the companies they work for or companies they want to promote in their bios. Granted, this is a smaller update than adjustments to the news feed or shoppable posts, but for brands and creators, these adjustments allow them to be more effective at promoting accounts and hashtags related to campaigns.
Facebook is looking down the barrel at its worst week since 2012 thanks to the continued fallout from recent consumer privacy concerns. The social giant is seeing a decrease in ad spend as its market value has decreased by $100 billion in 10 days.
A new study has highlighted the annoyances consumers face with ads across digital channels. Digital consumers’ top three recommendations for improving the digital ad experience include seeing fewer pop-up ads, being exposed to fewer ads in general, and removing ads that block content.
LinkedIn has improved its tools for publishing native videos. The company now allows users to utilize filters and text to give videos more of an Instagram or Snapchat-like appearance.
Snapchat has rolled out location-based stats for all stores—whether they advertise or not. The app allows companies to know how often customers return to their stores, as well as understand the demographics of these repeat customers.
Missed previous weeks? Catch up.
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