by Kerry Ferguson | Feb 26, 2021 | Social Media, Social Media Round Up
February flew didn’t it? Everyone always says it’s because it’s a short month, but in reality it’s only 2 or 3 days shorter… But, as February goes, we know we’re moving to warmer, longer days which I am grateful for as we’re still in our lockdown here in Wales. Onto the social media updates from February then…
Note: I’ve not actually talked about Clubhouse yet, because as an Android user… I’ve not got access. By all accounts though, it looks great.
Facebook
- According to Matt Navarra, a new feature is being rolled out called Account Status, which basically puts your pages and groups all in one easily accessible place.
- Some changes coming into force with privacy and cookie rules, might result in Pixels not working as expected.
- Shopify can now integrate with Facebook and Instagram, which is big news!
Twitter
- Twitter annouced, on the back of Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces will soon be launched – they’ll be in the Reels bar, and I suspect, work in a similar way to Clubhouse. More on that probably in the March round-up if not before.
- Fleets sees a little upgrade, more on the visual side – keep an eye on these if you use them, I suspect they will only get better and better.
- Twitter also annouced a subscription model might be coming in soon, so you can posgt exclusive content to only a select few followers. From what I’ve seen on social media so far, it doesn’t seem very popular. Will it even launch?
Instagram
- The big Feburary news was that Instagram won’t promote any Reels with a TikTok watermark. It had been super easy to make your excellent Reels over on TikTok and then share them to Instagram. Looks like this will be no more! Sad, because TikTok does have superior features at the moment.
- Other big news that I was a tad saddened by is that Instagram is also tested removing the share posts to story feature. This would be a huge blow for many marketers I think! Will it happen though…
- The ability to have more than 1 person join you in a live is coming… and this will be exciting!
- Stories may soon be in a vertical feed (oh hi, TikTok), rather than horizontal. I think I do prefer this actually, it’s how YouTube and TikTok work.
- Will we soon see Tweets being shared into Stories? There are rumblings…
That’s it for February, but lots of ‘coming soon’ and ‘rolling out’ next month. Plus, tweaks and updates to functionality already – it’s busy out there in the social media world.
by Kerry Ferguson | Feb 17, 2021 | Digital Marketing, Networking
I recently did a Facebook Live talk for Latte & Live, a great networking community that I am part of. I’d previously done a talk about Instagram, and was asked by Jennifer who runs the network to come back – much to my delight! There’s nothing better than being asked to come back to talk, it means you did something right the first time…
For this talk, I concentrated on the Power of Blogging – and why we should be doing it. It was a fun hour, and I think everyone went away feeling inspired to either start their blogs, or pick their blogs back up.
Personally, I love a good blog. I also think we’re so used to seeing them online, reading and digesting them that we often forget some key content is a blog. I blog regularly for Gwe Cambrian Web and we get a lot of our traffic to the website, via the blog.
A Case Study
One thing I shared in my talk was a case study of our own, from two blogs I wrote at the tail end of May and start of June 2020. The blogs were discussing the fact that an old site builder called Mr Site was being shut down by its new owners, TSO Hosts. The first blog was more of a speculation post, but within days it was top of Google because… no one else had picked up on this. Cue, a second blog post where instead of merely discussing Mr Site and what its closure meant, I also posted about the different options and services we offered that could help. June was a very busy month when it came to enquiries off the back of these two blogs, and one still remains top of Google today when you search for “Mr Site”. From these blogs, we took on clients in England and France – which was very exciting considering our usual target audience is based in Wales.
My Top Tips
I don’t want to give everything away from the talk as it was for members of Latter & Live, but I will be writing more on this website and over on Gwe Cambrian Web on how to boost you blogging. My take away top tips though:
- Think of a great title – answer your customers questions and problems, this is a great way to help blogs rank in the search engines
- Stick to the original subject (that is, answering the title) – if you start to digress, then it’s another blog post!
- There is no right and wrong when it comes to the length of a blog, you have to go with your gut feeling and make sure you don’t waffle. Stick to the point, be useful and informative for your audience.
- Don’t use big blocks of text – always bear in mind that most of us will skim read a page, so we’re looking for easy to read, bite sized content.
- And with that in mind, use headers and paragraphs to help seperate your text, making it easier to read.
- Include a conclusion at the end if it fits, many will just scroll straight down for that!
Keep an eye on my blog and Gwe Cambrian Web for more top tips and advice, and if you’d like me to do a talk in your group or network, just get in touch!
