Social media updates come a mile a minute. It’s easy to miss some. But you know it’s imperative that content marketers, community managers and brands keep up with these updates to make the most of their social media marketing plans. This list of updates is by no means exhaustive, but it may help you continue on the path to awesomeness.

Twitter Showcases Places to Visit and Products to Buy

Twitter is testing product and place pages and collections to help surface relevant tweets about books or anything else relevant to the user. The product pages feature images and video, a description and the option to buy the item within the app.

Product and Place Pages and Collections

With product and place collections, brands can create and share Twitter collections of products and places. For example, a hotel brand could show a gallery of exotic locations customers can visit or a mobile technology brand can feature back to school gear.

Potential for Brands

Here are some possibilities for brands that want to leverage these collections:

1. Use influencers to create collections of their favorite links or products from your brand, akin to how actress and singer Demi Lovato created Demi’s Picks or The Ellen Show created Best of The Ellen Shop.
2. Create collections around trending news and conversations. Got a product lunch? Got a special Labor Day campaign? Use Collections to curate a stream around a topic.
3. Got a bunch of fans lauding the company? Compile positive tweets about the brand, product and services to boost the brand’s reputation.

Summary Cards and Dashboard

The enhanced summary card will display more descriptive content about the link in mobile Twitter feeds. So brands should make sure tweets feature the most engaging photos and copy to attract eyeballs and persuade users to click.

The updated Twitter dashboard on Twitter.com shows account activation details, the devices that have accessed the account and the recent login history.

Potential for Brands

This information could be helpful to brands wanting to review account activity, make sure the correct people are managing the account and everything looks secure.

Pinterest Unleashes “Buy” Pins, Makes it Easier to Target Users

Pinterest is one of the biggest players in social commerce. Nine out of 10 Pinterest users (93 percent) use the platform to plan purchases, according to a Shopify study. When users do buy items, they spend the most money on Pinterest than any other major social platform. The average order value of sales from Pinterest is $50, Shopify’s study indicates. Pinterest’s newest features help businesses get noticed and get users in the purchase funnel easier.

Buyable Pins

Red means pin. Blue means buy. Pinterest is rolling out blue “Buy” buttons on Pins so Pinners can purchase items that catch their interest right in the app with Apple Pay or a credit card. This feature is being released on iPhone and iPads first. Those using the Android and desktop versions of Pinterest must wait for now. Businesses that use Shopify can simply log in to their account, add the Pinterest channel and enable Buyable Pins in a few clicks.

Promoted Pins

Pinterest is allowing businesses to create an engagement campaign with Promoted Pins to reach people while they’re planning their next move. The platform already lets brands target audiences based on users’ interests and life stages, such as travelers and Millennials. Pinterest uses a cost-per-engagement (CPE) model that helps companies track a user’s future interest. When people engage with a Pin through closeups, repins or clicks, they’re showing intent to act.

Businesses pay for each engagement (a closeup, repin or click) on Promoted Pins, which are currently only available in the U.S. That means brands don’t pay for the impressions or just the number of eyeballs that see the pin, they pay for each action a user has taken, such as clicking through the pin to the website. The updated Pinterest Ads Manager allows them to track the performance of all of the campaigns, and get alerts to take action and optimize the Promoted Pins.

Cinematic Pins

The .gif-like Cinematic Pins are a subset of Promoted Pins. These motion-based videos are activated when users scroll. The user can tap the pin to enlarge it and watch the full clip. If you want your business or product to get noticed, then use captivating Cinematic Pins to make user’s thumbs stop in their tracks. The Pin Factory can create Pin images and descriptions for a nominal fee.

Potential for Brands

Buyable Pins could be great for businesses because Pinterest users aren’t just looking for inspiration, they’re ready to buy. These blue pins could make transactions seamless for users and cash in on the users’ impulse to have a cool item right then.

Promoted Pins help brands get exposed to people who may not follow that brand yet. Thanks to the Pinterest Smart Feed algorithm, Promoted Pins get higher priority than regular pins in a user’s feed, increasing the chances of it being seen by the target audience. So the branded content could reach a larger audience; therefore, increasing leads for the brand.

Brands could use Promoted Pins to highlight seasonal content, campaigns, contests or other time-sensitive material. Companies could promote a pin to resurface great, evergreen content posted a few months ago and bring more attention to it. For example, if a brand sees that something is trending, it could promote a pin with related content. To see what works best with Pinners, a brand could do an A/B or split test on two Promoted Pins featuring the same content. The images, call to action or copy could differentiate the promotions. Analytics could tell the company which style is most appealing so they can produce similar pins.

Lastly, Cinematic Pins give brands the opportunity to create quick tutorials, show a clip of an influencer with a product and tell their stories. For example, Wendy’s is using gif-like images to spread the message that their salad ingredients are fresh, not frozen. The food chain’s Cinematic Pins show strawberries ripening, going from the basket to the salad on the table. Within the three-second clip, Wendy’s has captured the users attention.

Facebook’s News Feed Lets Users Pick what Pages to See First, Discover New Pages

Facebook’s iOS app has revamped the News Feed preferences to allow users to:

• prioritize who to see first (friends and fan pages)
• unfollow people to hide their posts and discover new pages
• reconnect with people who they unfollowed
• discover new pages

Android app and desktop users will receive the updates later.

Potential for Brands

Brands could suggest their followers include them in one of their 30 high priority accounts so they can see at the top of their News Feed to stay up-to-date on the latest news, sales and giveaways.

The option to “discover new pages” could help smaller companies and organizations gain recognition with little to no spending on advertisements. Facebook makes suggestions based on the pages users already like or pages Friends with similar tastes like. Variety is the spice of life!

YouTube Releases 10 New Features for Creators

YouTube recently previewed some exciting new features to improve the creator’s experience and connection with its audience. Some features have already dropped; others will be released later this year. The features that could be most helpful to brands include a better ranking system that reduces the visibility of junk comments, an opt-in feature for subscribers to get alerts when their favorite creators or brands upload new video, and an easier way for fans to get to the subscription feed on the YouTube mobile app. This also aims to help them stay on top of a brand’s latest videos. The platform will also launch the YouTube Creator Community, an online forum for finding collaborations and sharing advice.

Potential for Brands

Sounds like a great place for brands to find up-and-coming influencers. The Creator Academy also boasts new lessons and recommendations for what to learn next, so anyone creating videos for brands and companies can get the latest tips and tricks.

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Tell us what new features excite you the most. How do you plan to implement them in your marketing strategy? What are some of the best ways to keep up with social media updates and trends?