What’s New in Social Media and How it Impacts Your Brand

In a recent study done by Nielsen, 64% of people said they would prefer to message a business for support or a question, rather than call them on the phone. As consumers and companies alike look for more convenient forms of communication, social media is transforming from an avenue to share updates to one of bidirectional communication. Social media has already proven valuable in reaching target consumers – but in order to keep up with the ever-changing social world, brands need to understand new social media features.  

The latest updates impact everything from using the correct form of content (such as videos), allowing your viewers to access your content with ease, and strategizing your posting to create viewer retention. Below, we recap some of the latest features on social media and how they may impact your brand’s online strategy.  

The New Visual Age – The Growth of Visual Content  

Visual content has become the new norm of broadcasting a message. From short videos to infographics, a study done by Cisco found that around 82% of all online content was in video form. This creates a new opportunity for companies and brands to market their products in a video-friendly method.  

To keep up with this new video age, LinkedIn Pages have added new features to allow you to interact more closely with your followers. Building off the popularity of Facebook or Instagram lives, LinkedIn has created a spin off where businesses can talk directly with their clients through this informal way of communication. Lives are opportunities to exhibit personalized and in-person content from around the world.  

With LinkedIn Pages, and more specifically LinkedIn Lives, you can turn your audience into users who are engaging with your page by providing easy-to-digest video content and brand information almost instantly. LinkedIn has also made it easier to interact on the platform as your page, versus an individual’s account. This allows you to like or comment on updates with these interactions coming from your brand page, creating an opportunity for proactive engagement instead of simply being able to respond on your own page. This will allow companies to expand more rapidly to viewers that you know are interested in your content and proactively put your page in front of them.  

Showcase Your Content

Gaining coverage of your product or client news can be difficult, but with new features of Instagram it has become easier to obtain the traction your client deserves – and amplify that to the right audience. While brands have been able to pin a post to their company page on LinkedIn and Facebook for some time, Instagram recently rolled out the feature. By allowing pages to pin comments and more recently pin posts on your feed, the most important information will be displayed at the top of the page allowing potential clients or new followers to access critical information quickly.  

This feature is important because it allows brands to have better control of audience experience while still posting consistently to keep up with the algorithm. While before it was nearly impossible to search for a piece of information on someone’s feed when they are continuously posting, pinning an important post allows your clients and viewers to pick up the most accurate and valuable information keeping them in the know.  

The Strategy of Posting  

Planning out your social media posts can be tiring and difficult to remember when, where, and what to post. With Adobe’s new Express Content Scheduler, they claim to deliver a hassle-free way to plan and post your updates.  

Adobe’s new platform allows you to create your posts on the app and then decide when and where to post all from one place. With easy drop and drag features, the platform makes it easy to tailor content and keep up to date with every social media platform. This app allows you to write captions, add tags and locations beforehand and then program when you want to post and on which social channel. Furthermore, because Adobe already has editing and creating apps, this scheduler makes it easy to access all your content from the same platform.  

Many other scheduling apps still require the use of more than one application, but Adobe’s new app may be appealing by allowing content creation and posting in one platform. This streamlined user experience may make the workflow of social media managers more seamless – ultimately making it easier and faster to post updates.  

With the importance of quick digital information rising, social media companies have created many new features that allow you to stay up to date and competitive with other companies as the channels continue to evolve. Come back soon for another feature of what’s new on social media so your brand channels can stay competitive.