This month in social media (April)

April has been a busy month in social media, particularly for the photo & video focused channels such as Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest, each battling it out with innovative new ideas, making it easier and more exciting for the user and for businesses to be creative with their social media strategy. Let’s take a look at these updates…

Upload multiple posts on Instagram stories

Towards the end of April, Instagram updated their app with a really useful tool for those who work with Instagram stories for their business profiles (and personal ones too). Companies are becoming really creative with the stories tool, using multiple images and videos to tell a story promoting a product or ideas about the brand.

Well, Instagram have now noticed this and allows its users to upload multiple images and videos in one go, so you can position your posts in a timeline before pressing ‘upload’, allowing you to see what it looks like, but also allowing your audience to view the complete story straight away. You can have up to ten uploaded in one go, and are able to edit each one with filters, gifs, location tags etc. to make sure your Instagram story is as professional (and fun) as possible.

Brand new designs for Linkedin and Pinterest Business

If you’re an avid user of LinkedIn for your personal profile, you’ll have noticed recently that they’ve updated the design (again) with more emphasis on your employment, education and contact information, which features right under the header. This makes no difference to any business profiles you are currently running but you will have to update your header to match the new design.

Pinterest has joined in with the new design theme by updating their Business profiles, which is being rolled out across the next few months (so keep an eye out). So what to expect? Well, there’s going to be a new interactive header for your page, which is taken from recent pins uploaded, specific boards you want to highlight and most recent activity. To add to the design, business profiles will now show the total numbers of users who have viewed your pins.

Facebook updates it’s ‘Stories’ with new features

It’s been publicly known for a while now that Facebook wants to push it’s ‘Stories’ feature to try and create a challenge for Instagram and Snapchat in particular. In April, they’ve updated this tool with the ability for users to add AR drawings and boomerangs to posts, making it a lot more fun to both businesses and users.

If you’re creating stories through the Facebook app on Android and iOS, you can now add 3D drawings in AR when recording on the Facebook Camera. Facebook have also announced their is going to be new updates in the coming months from feedback they’ve received around stories, so keep an eye out.

Group video chat and mentions in Snapchat stories

This is quite a big one for Snapchat, and something that’s more relatable to users than businesses, but they’ve recently introduced the option to group video chat through the app with up to 16 people at one time. In true Snapchat style, the video chat is then never to be seen again, with their main reason behind the update being that it wants the app to be more like hanging out rather than texting.

To coincide with the group video chat, Snapchat have also been busy updating the app with the ability to add mentions to your Snapchat stories, in the same way as you can on Instagram, allowing you to tag any friends or businesses in your images and videos for others to check out. This follows up with their previous updates of making it easier to find new accounts to follow and making updates public.

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