This month in social media (May)

May 31st, 2018

May has been a busy month for users of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, with many trying out new technologies and advancements to help with day to day use and allow audiences to be more creative with their posts. May has also brought some exciting updates from Facebook on making their ‘groups’ feature safer for admins. Take a look at my round-up below…


A busy month for Instagram updates

The team at Instagram HQ have been busy updating the app with a variety of new updates than helps the running process for both users and businesses. Firstly, your existing organic Instagram posts can now be turned into Ads, with a variety of objectives, such as engagement, reach, view views and brand awareness. The catch though? It’s only going to be available for posts that are single video and single photo, and is only available to business profiles.

There have been tons of updates in Instagram’s stories feature too, including the ability to add an emoji slider poll instead of the usual ‘yes no’ question. This is a great interactive way to get users engaging with your updates, asking the questions “how much”. This isn’t all for stories though, you can also share feed posts into Instagram stories. So if there’s a post that has inspired you on the timeline, or a post you are featured in and want to share to your followers, you can now add it to your story as a sticker, and are able to rotate, scale and position as you want. A great way to promote your business to those that are tagging you in their posts.

New safety features for Facebook group admins

Following on from the news that Facebook has taken down 1.3 billion fake accounts in the last six months, they have now improved their groups feature, to make the platform safer for admins. These updates include the ability to locate admin support, which is a dedicated place for admins of Facebook groups to report issues and get a personal response from Facebook within one working day. It is currently available to a limited number of group admins on iOS and Android, so keep an eye out if you run a group community.

There’s also the newly introduced online admin education resources, to help with the community management, in particular keeping them engaged and safe whilst being a part of the Facebook group. This includes product demos, tutorials and case studies, which all came from feedback from group admins. Another update for group admins is the ability to pick and choose which members of the group do not have to have content approved and can post automatically, which is great if you have trusted members who post a lot, but do not wish for them to be an admin.

Snapchat lenses with sound reactions

Here’s a fun one for users of the ever changing Snapchat app. Following on from last year’s updates allowing it’s users to add filters to their face (the famous dog filter for example), which move as the face does on camera, they have now added a filter that reacts to sound. At the time of writing this, it’s in the early stages and the first introduction is a filter, which the areas start moving as soon as you talk, but as we have learnt with the visual filters, we have to expect these to advance further as more users are in demand for updates.


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