February Social Media Digest 2021
February 2021 introduced several important social media updates for businesses and marketers. Facebook enhanced Messenger safety features, expanded advertising controls, and improved Oculus account management. Instagram focused on social commerce, content recovery, and TikTok-inspired features. YouTube introduced parental controls, Twitter expanded conversation safety tools, and LinkedIn launched new company page features to strengthen employee advocacy and lead generation.
The winter is almost over, but the new features following all the latest trends on Social Media Platforms are rolling out.
Facebook improves safety on Messenger
To add extra privacy to the messaging process, Facebook adds three more options to the existing control tools. The first option concerns messaging requests. At this point, you will get more insight into the person whose requests, pictures, and videos will still be blurred. Facebook also seeks to simplify the abuse or harassment reporting process. In addition to this, the platform is trying to track behavioral signals, like sending numerous friend requests to youngsters, in order to protect children.
More Details: Facebook Adds New Safety Features to Messenger for Safer Internet Day
Facebook tests Topic Exclusion Controls
It might sound like a set of words to you. But in fact, now Facebook allows selected advertisers to choose the context in the feed in which their ads will be shown. This new option will definitely take some time, but in the end, the opportunity to avoid potentially inappropriate placement will turn out to be invaluable.
More Details: Facebook Tests New Topic Exclusions for Advertisers Within News Feeds
Facebook Oculus VR Platform
Facebook tries to improve functionality on its Oculus devices and launches Multi-User Account Support. The Oculus Device has allowed only a single user account so far. As of February 2021, you can log in to multiple accounts on one headset, which makes using it much easier for all the family members.
More Details: Twitter Re Launches Test of Warnings on Potentially Harmful Tweet Replies
Instagram Is Following The Latest Trends of 2021
Since there are still some restrictions imposed due to the global pandemic, we keep spending more a more time online. Thus, media platforms tend to make shopping online easier and faster. Now, new stoppable posts are emerging in our feeds. There is a tappable shopping bag in the lower-left corner of your screen. It allows tapping and find out all the details about the products you’re particularly interested in.
Instagram: a Recently Deleted Folder is back
Yes, your posts are safe for 30 days. From now on, all Instagram users will get access to the folder, which contains mistakenly or deliberately removed photos, videos, and IGTV videos. This could be of great help to those users whose accounts have been hacked because they haven’t had a chance to restore all their masterpieces so far.
More details: Instagram Adds Recently Deleted Folder to Safeguard Against Mistaken Post
Instagram vs TikTok
TikTok profoundly influences other SM Platforms. And now Instagram is trying to copy TikTok-like stories feed, which means you’ll have to swipe up or down to see them all. As of now, this feature is just being tested, so let’s just wait for the updates on that.
More details: Instagram Developing a TikTok Style Vertical Feed for Stories
YouTube implements Parental Controls
For sure, YouTube has become the children’s favorite platform. Children consume YouTube content in large quantities, so no secret that children’s viewing activity has to be monitored somehow. So the new option for parents will be ready for beta testing in a couple of months. Kids will be given an opportunity to access the platform via a special and supervised Google account with three levels of supervision.
More Details: YouTube Launches New Option Which Enables Parents to Monitor Their Child’s
Twitter relaunches the alerts
This tool is not completely new. It was actually tested in August 2021 but then shelved. The new format of alerts is aimed at detecting potentially offensive comments, even unintentional ones. The platform asks users to revise their replies before sending, so your options are “tweet”, “edit,” or “delete”. For now, this feature is available only for iOS users.
More details: Twitter Re Launches Test of Warnings on Potentially Harmful Tweet Replies
LinkedIn adds new Controls
The new product updates are:
– My Company Tab
– Product Pages
– Stories
My Company Tab in turn is subdivided into other useful tools like “Recommend” and “Content Suggestions”. These two tools allow Page Admins to curate content for the employees to share and optimize engagement. This perfectly fits into the marketing strategy of Employee Advocacy.
Product Page gets Lead Generation Forms. It makes the process of getting in touch with your company much easier for the customers. In other words they don’t have to type their information, because it’s already there once they click on one of your company’s products.
Though adding Stories is not a brand new option, it is available on every page. What’s more, even swipe-up links can be added to the Stories.
More Details: LinkedIn Adds New Tools for Company Pages Including Content Recommendation
Well, that’s all for now, but there are plenty of mesmerizing changes ahead of us. Stay tuned and feel free to ask your questions. VAfromEurope
