Stay Social: September Social Media Updates

Do you feel like you’re a little behind the eight ball with the latest social media updates? Tune into our monthly roundup of the biggest and best changes in social media.

Facebook Updates Business Manager

Facebook’s latest update for Ad’s Manager combines Power Editor with Ads Manager in a bid to make advertising on Facebook easier for businesses.

Facebook said in a statement:  “In the updated Ads Manager, people will automatically be opted in to the workflow they used in the past. And everyone will have the option to change their preferred workflow at anytime using a button in the top right of the ad creation window.”

Other features include single source reporting which combines “the comprehensive charts and activity history of Power Editor with the breakdowns, summary rows, date benchmarks, exported insights reports and the ability to customize columns from Ads Manager.” Finally, Power Power Editor’s automatic draft saver will be incorporated into the update- something we’re all glad for!

Instagram Expands the Grid

It was a month of testing for Instagram with lucky some users getting the chance to test some of the new features.

Users on Android devices will now be able to determine if someone is following them by looking at the person’s profile. This means you’ll no longer have to scroll through your follower list to see if your friends have followed you back, but rather just head to their profiles and look there.

Convenient? Yes.

Potential for awkward conversations? Also yes.

In a more controversial move, Instagram also seems to be testing a change in their three-grid system. Currently, photos displayed on a profile scroll down the page in rows of three, but some users are now seeing rows of four.

Anyone else’s instagram keep changing to a 4 pic grid then back to 3? ?? pic.twitter.com/n1ebT20656

— Nicky ? (@nxckyhale) September 14, 2017

While this means you can fit more on your profile before having to scroll down, it also means that influencers and brands who curate their feeds according to three images in a row will have to edit their feeds or rethink their posting strategy.

What do you think of the new grid? Let us know in the comments below.

Snapchat Ads Get Fancy

Snapchat has announced new partnerships with creative and tech companies. These partners will focus on building ads to enhance the post-swipe-up experience and bring additional value to advertisers.

Whether it’s campaign-specific apps, mobile games, fillable lead-generation forms or 360 videos, each partner has a unique specialisation that can be leveraged by advertisers. This tactic might go a long way to helping users actually enjoy branded content on the platform.

Do you think Snapchat’s new approach to ads will help users enjoy and engage with branded content on the platform? Source: Curlate

YouTube takes big steps for its creators

This month YouTube announced changes to their Studio App, as well as the introduction of a user-sponsorship feature to make their platform more user-friendly.

Change no. 1: Studio App (previously called the Creator Studio) now allows creators to schedule the date and time they’d like their videos to go live on the site. They can also choose whether the video goes live as public, private or unlisted. This is huge from a strategic point of view- you can now target your audience in relevant micro-moments when they’re looking for information about a specific topic.

Change no. 2: YouTube has now opened a new feature to its users: the ability to pay a small subscription fee to a creator they like. This is currently only available to creators on the YouTube Gaming platform, but is in beta for the rest of the site.

The change is designed to encourage community-building and regular content from creators.

Do you think it will work? Tell us in the comments below.

Read next: New Metrics of Success: Video Completion Rate & Watch Time