Social Media News: February 2020

Social media is CONSTANTLY changing. So what’s an overworked small business owner or entrepreneur to do?!

Relax! I’ve got you.

Each month I recap the biggest changes in social media so you can stay informed and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Here are the highlights of what you should know from February 2020:

Facebook Page Admins Can Now Access Their Page Management History: Page admins, rejoice! Now you can easily see all actions taken by other page admins. Check out your page management history to see page role allocations, contact information, Business Manager relationships, changes to page settings, and more. Learn more here.

Instagram Begins Testing Facebook Brand Collabs Manager: Facebook’s Brands Collabs Manager is coming to Instagram. A select group of U.S. creators will be able to increase their reach, by sharing “their content, details about their audiences, and first-party insights” with brands, as well as discover new potential partners who “will resonate with their audience.” Hopefully this will roll out to all business accounts soon! Learn more about it here.

Twitter Launches Promoted Trend Spotlight Ad Units in the Explore Tab: Combine video with Twitter’s Explore tab! Promoted Trend Spotlight will make it easy for you to get your product viewed. The new ad unit allows brands to take up “premium real estate” in the top section of Twitter’s Explore tab on both mobile and desktop. It will support 6-second videos and gifs, as well as static images, and will appear at the top of the Explore tab for the first two visits per person, per day. Learn more on Twitter’s blog here.

Instagram Starts Testing New Stories Format Called “Reels”: Instagram is jumping onto the short-form video craze that started with Vine and is continuing with TikTok! Variety reports that a new Stories format inspired by Vine and TikTok, called Reels, is currently being tested on both iOS and Android devices in Brazil. So get your lip-syncing and music videos ready for Instagram Reels!

Instagram Tests “Shoutout” Feature for Posts and Stories: Want to shoutout to a fan of your product? Instagram has your back. Social media industry commentator and consultant Matt Navarra showed screenshots of Instagram’s new Shoutout feature. Users can send birthday wishes, thanks, or anniversary greetings, customize background colors, and @mention other users in their shoutouts. Then they can share the images as a feed post or story. What a way to combine a throwback with good wishes!

Facebook Launches Traffic Source Insights for Videos: Managing, monetizing, and tracking the performance of video content on Facebook just got easier! With Traffic Source Insights, it’ll be easy to see how your videos are doing. According to the company, these new insights will roll out to 100% of Facebook’s user base over the next few months. Learn more about it here.

What do you think of these changes? Which one are you most excited to try out? Let me know in the comments below!