It's been the shortest month of the year in my opinion. However, that's very likely to do with me being sick for 2 weeks with COVID from the 9th of June! It was pretty unpleasant and apart from losing my sense of smell for a couple of days, the worst part for me was the fact I couldn't put a sentence together for the entire time. I had awful "brain fog". Anyway, I'm feeling much better now, just a small lingering cough but my energy is returning and I hope to be back at the gym later this week.
The two kids are now both off school and already bored, this is gonna be a long and most likely expensive Summer...
Let's get started shall we?
There's an awful lot of updates on Facebook this time!!
A lot of people I know, no longer have a land line at home or indeed at work because it's cheaper to use Facebook messaging. To this end you can have a standalone app to converse with people. Well now this app can help you facilitate and mange your calls all in one place, very similar to how your standard phone would look as well. Learn more about this up in this blog.
Do you remember Notes? It was a failed attempt to blog in Facebook, quote some years ago now. Well - now you can add "Write column" as a post type in your own group. This recently discovered tool is available here in Ireland (I have it too) and its sole purpose is to write more content. Its currently not editable and cannot have any hyperlinks in and from what I hear, its actually quite buggy but lets see how long this lasts? Check it out in your groups today.
Now you can see what each of your members have answered to their entry questions in your group. This is fabulous news to those that have very large groups naturally. It certainly saves a lot steps of work! Mind you it only works on personal profiles and not when your member comes in as a page, so if you want to use this you'll have to change your settings to prevent Pages joining.
To access the feature, just click on the member's name in your group to see their GROUP Profile and scroll down on the left side - see screenshot. There's a section called "Membership questions" > click "View Answers."
You have had the ability to "pre test" how your ads would go for sometime now but now you can do the same with ordinary posting. It's initially sent to a subset of your audience and then it defines which one had the best reactions and then posts THAT one on to your page. This means that there will some time devoted to learning which one is the appropriate one. So best to avoid doing this on timely posts. Learn from Meta about this new and frankly very valuable update in this post.
We heard it from Mari Smith, early in June that you can now create Reels and Stories on your desktop (from past clips/video content you have created - by trimming it, etc) in Creator Studio, made from your own video and publish and schedule there too. Learn more about this update and about remixing in this article from Social Media Today.
Then towards the end of last month we heard that Meta then allowed fresh short form content to go up made especially for Reels as well. You will need to visit the https://business.facebook.com/creatorstudio/home to see this rather than the Meta Business Studio OR the apps on your phone but it's well worth the visit.
In fact Instagram have now opened up its Reels API for third-party tools, so I would imagine the like of Hootsuite, AgoraPulse, Buffer and more will be champing at the bit to add this in the coming months.
Over the last month I have had more than one client come to me with issues on their online security. One client has been locked out of their own social media for over a month now too. Devastating to a business! So when I came across this blog from Mari Smith I felt it important to share. So do check out her blog and maybe update your settings and plan ahead. It's time to tighten up your security!
This obviously has a lot to do with the above post! I approached Mari Smith herself with this more recent slew of issues and she shared this blog post on things you can do to help yourself out. I was stunned to realise that she herself had been hacked in the past! However, you can regain control by following the steps her and team have created. Best of luck!
I personally cannot wait to get this! Currently only available in the States but now with Professional Mode you can now schedule posts! This is a going to be gamechanger for a lot of business owners and personalities. Let's hope we don't have to wait too long. Read about this mode from Facebook here.
I talk from personal experience here. Getting hold of someone is really hard on Facebook but it's come to light that you can actually reach a real person by using the Messenger Chat.
If you try the help button at the bottom left of Meta Business Suite, you should hopefully see a Messenger chat on the right!
Yes, that's what I said! You can be a creator and only send your video out to your Close Friends, I'm sure you've seen that in your Stories tab. Now it's for Lives too. Want to learn more about this? Then check out this blog.
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces have really redefined how business can be done in an audio way over the last couple of years. Now LinkedIn want to hop into this hungry space and have now extended this capability to people who are using Creator Mode on LinkedIn the ability to host an Audio event. There is a criteria you must meet as well and if you don't quite meet that criteria you can still attend and take part in these but not host.
Have you attended one of these events as yet? I'd love to hear your feedback. Learn more about this by reading this blog.
Did you know you can now have a laugh on LinkedIn? Last month LinkedIn added to the other 6 emojis a funny reaction. It makes this more serious platform less so but I don't think it takes away from it too much. Check out the blog from Social Media Today and visit your LinkedIn profile today!.
My good friend Louise Brogan created a short video last month on this new tool from LinkedIn called the Identity Switcher. It simply means you can now post as yourself or your business page in a comment. Watch below and get cracking!
Early last month I become a Super Follower to a chap called Chris Mattman. He works in the sphere of Space and was actually someone I interviewed for Irish Tech News Podcast last year. It is a paid-for option but I thought I would see what it actually offers in the way of value and here is my feedback.
It gives the Super Follower more closer interaction with the person they are following and you only see tweets created for you as the follower. However, you have to get good value and if that person isn't posting a lot or anything very different or special, it's not something you would pay for a long time. I am however thus far happy with the tweets I have been given exposure too. It's a personal choice. See what you think if you try it.
Have you come across unpleasant tweets that you feel need to be removed? It's an unfortunate circumstance of social media and at times we all need to report a post or a tweet for some reason. If this is something you have to do then simply go into the three dots above the tweet (on your phone or laptop) and a drop down menu will appear. You need only click the report button and complete the information sought. To learn more about this process, please read this blog post.
What's good enough for Facebook is good enough for Twitter. After doubling the text length a few years back from 140 to 280, now Twitter have added the capability (not available at the time of writing in Ireland) of even great long notes or blogs. How will this help I hear you say? Well actually, I believe only people who are already engaged in your content will partake of it. In some ways that's better. This means that you will formalising your "browsers" into engaged content readers and that can only be a good thing. Read the rather long blog from Techcrunch for the full content....
I have an admission here. I have never, ever heard of a Twitter Shop before until this month. When doing some research I then found a blog from 2015 about it. How an earth have I missed this? I did put out a tweet myself just yesterday asking people to show me their Twitter Shop or perhaps tag me about someone else's
This discovery was only made because I found an article detailing how Shopify has now been added as an integration for the shop. Which is always a good thing to be fair. Read more about it here.
I was intrigued when I saw this showing up in my feed. The only time I have heard this happen is when you employ certain agencies who can work on your brand reputation. This blog post however outline how you can do it yourself, which as I'm sure you know if you follow me, is exactly what I want to share! Heads up though, there are a LOT of pop ups on this compared to the other posts on this page. Do persist though, its a fine read and very, very useful.
Have you been seeing a lot of Ads about get rich schemes over the last few months? Then only recently they have stopped appearing as much? Drives you mad doesn't it! Anyway, TikTok have really clamped down on these in the last month and are going to be really knocking them on the head over the Summer, so don't lose faith in them. Its being sorted! Check the update here.
I'm sure it doesn't surprise you that this comes up as the TOP question on TikTok and the presentation and video shared with us was fab if a bit fast from Hootsuite so they very helpfully created a step by step blog on how to create a TikTok video. Have a look here and bookmark!
One of the most common questions I get about TikTok is people wanting to understand what's trending. Hootsuite shared this rather useful tool with with me.
Another valuable blog from TikTok this time on the strategies that you can utilise to grow your brand.
I am still relatively new to TikTok in comparison to other platforms so I'm still getting mildly excited about it much to the embarrassment of my teenage children. So I spent some dedicated time on this over the last month really digging in and learning more about it and I thought I'd share some excellent posts from Hootsuite that you might find interesting.
Each platform has their own way of doing and displaying their data and its not always obvious what to do with it. I'm afraid to say TikTok are one of those. So check out this blog post to help you analyse the success and failure of what's happening on your account. I have to say the video is pretty useful too.
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Podcast 127 - Marketing Film Festivals with Alexandra Pedro
Podcast 128 - Hacking and Scamming on Social Media
Podcast 129 - Social Media Policies in the Workplace with Alexis Bushnell
Podcast 130 - SEO Part 2 (Off Page)
What an ENORMOUS blog this month! I can promise you this months won't be half as mad! Though I did intend for this one to be smaller as well. There was just so much to update you on!
The spectrum of support within the marketing sphere has changed so much. Also we as "users" have become more converse and demanding too. I will admit the overall knowledge of the average inquiry is also much higher as well so I am certainly having to remain more informed as well in order to keep up with my customer expectations. This in turn means, so do you!
If you have any questions on any of this or would like to bring your own questions to me, then contact me today!.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
