Stay Social: The Latest and Greatest in Social Media in January

January is here, and we can only hope your New Year’s resolutions are lasting longer than ours. Thankfully, we’re still here and committed to providing you with your monthly roundup of all the top stories in social media marketing!

Facebook is about friends, family, and paid branded content.

If there’s one thing you can say about Facebook, it’s that the platform has never really stopped developing since its launch, and it looks like that trend is going to continue into 2018.

The megacorporation recently announced that some big changes are coming to our newsfeeds: we’re going to start seeing a lot more of our friends’ posts and far fewer of the organic posts released by brand pages.

What do you think of Facebook’s algorithmic changes?

That being said, no changes appear to be planned or announced when it comes to paid and sponsored content. However  organic reach has been on the steady decline, and it remains to be seen how paid content will stack up against the algorithm change – watch this space!

Instagram adds Recommendations, and you can go Live with a friend!

Since the start of the year, you may have noticed that your feed isn’t just showing up the people and hashtags you follow, it’s giving you a list of recommended posts and users.

This undoubtedly comes as a move to enable brands and influencers to find audiences relevant for them more quickly, and while that’s great for them, some users may find the inability to disable this feature a bit of a turnoff.

Hot on the heels of that news, there’s also the fact that people and brands going Live on Instagram can now add a guest to a livestream. There can only be one on-camera guest at a time, however the people in the network of both hosts will receive a notification of their friends’ Live status, leading to the potential for greater reach and engagement.

The more the merrier! Instagram has just enabled users to add guests to their Live stream. Souce:Lifehacker

We can’t wait to see how this will change the way influencers act with their audiences and how marketers capitalise on the immediacy of Live content.

Snapchat really likes ads.

Snapchat has kicked off 2018 with a controversial redesign in the way users access Stories. Now, rather than having a separate page for direct Snaps and another for Stories, they both share the same space.

The change was implemented as a way to incorporate the ad-inclusive Stories within the previously ad-free domain of Snaps. While this is great for brands and Snapchat’s bottom line, users aren’t too happy and have been airing how they felt across social media.

how i feel trying to use the new snapchat update pic.twitter.com/fvwI5a8h4A

— Stef Tascione (@StefTascione) January 10, 2018

Only time will tell if the change sticks, but Snapchat are continuing to roll out updates to increase the ad-revenue they receive from their platform, including rumours of non-skip three second ads and better integration of external links.

There have also been murmurs of a Stories everywhere rollout. This would allow external third parties to share Snapchat content, much in the same way that Tweets can be embedded in article pages. The idea being that the broader the reach, the better the result for Snapchat.

Whatever the case, the social media marketing wheel just keeps on rolling, and we’ll always be here to keep you on track.

Read next: How to find an authentic influencer for your brand.