Stay Social: The Latest and Greatest in Social Media this March

It’s March, and that means that someone in your office has already panicked and shouted that “this year is going by so fast!”

But let’s leave existential crises behind – here are the latest news stories on social media marketing from the last month!

Facebook’s all about the chat.

Facebook has announced that it is rolling out a few updates to its Messenger service for businesses, in particular when it comes to customer service.

These include easier to understand bot capability, automatic generation of a user contact information form when you request it, new metrics in the API (such as messaging conversations opened and first-time Messenger conversations), and message tags to make it easier to answer questions and provide updates.

After that veritable mouthful of new features, one thing is for sure: customer service and community management on Facebook have never been easier.

But that’s not all. If a recent Axios report is to be believed, then Facebook is preparing to enter the news industry. By later this year, ten digital-first partners will be working with the platform to produce regular news videos for its Watch tab.

For brands, this hopefully means a bit less fake news on the platform, and a bit more brand-safe content on which to promote their services or products.

Facebook’s latest Messenger update will make it easier for brands to speak with and help their customers. Source: messenger.fb.com

Instagram’s on call.

Facebook’s sister in all things social seems to be taking a leaf out of her older sibling’s book. A Tech Crunch dive into some code on the App’s backend revealed that the platform seems to be gearing up to launch an audio and video calling feature.

While this has no direct benefits to advertisers as of yet, the feature could very well keep more users on site for longer, meaning more time spent on monetisable content, as well as on calls.

Snapchat focusses on community.

After its controversial mega-update at the start of the year, it seems like Snapchat was trying to keep mostly on the DL for March. Especially after their stock price took a tumble following a Kylie Jenner Tweet.

But, a couple new features have been added in, both to the delight of users and brands.

The App will start to feature community-built AR lenses later this month, which is great news for content creators on the platform. Brands can start thinking about how to use these filters to enhance their user-generated-content strategy and build engagement-focused competitions around the filters.

A sample of some of the most creative lenses created by the Snapchat community! Source: Mashable vs Snap Inc.

YouTube’s just living its Live.

2018 is the year of live video, and YouTube has just made live broadcasts all the easier.

The platform has introduced a few new features to its Live offering, most notable of which are auto-captioning for broadcasts spoken in English, as well as a Chat Replay feature, so you can see what was said in chat, even if you’re watching well after the event. You can now also tag your location when live-streaming.

While none of these updates are game-changing, they do make it easier for brands and creators to create more accessible and re-watchable live content.

YouTube is also doing what it can to fight the fake news epidemic, announcing a new partnership with Wikipedia. Very soon, when a user is watching a conspiracy video, information cues from the online encyclopedia will appear to counter the ideas being presented.

Hopefully, this will mean a safer space for brands, and way fewer people who believe the Earth is flat.

And that’s all for March! Come back next month for your regular dose of Stay Social.