Social Media in the News – August

The school year is upon us, and the kids aren’t the only ones learning something new. The social media landscape continues to evolve and we’ve got the details on everything you need to know.

Facebook’s ad platform gets a facelift: The company is providing enhanced tools and targeting options to connect with current and prospective customers including:

A new “Call Now” button enables consumers to call a company or organization directly from the ad on their newsfeed.

Facebook extended the “carousel” ads, a format with the ability to display multiple images with different links within one ad unit, to mobile devices.

The company has improved the user experience for marketers who are using the ads manager. Now, ads can be created and managed in one place to create a more seamless process. Editing can also be done on the Facebook mobile app.

Learn more in Twitter’s analytics dashboard: Now, marketers can understand top tweets, mentions, Twitter cards and followers on a month-by-month basis. If you are interested in learning about the view and engagements, you can click on the “Tweet Activity” button and download the metrics in a CSV file.

Google and Twitter partner up: You can now view Twitter feeds from various accounts and hashtags right from google.com on your desktop. For example, if you type something like “social media news from August,” Google will pull up a feed of the latest tweets. If you type in the hashtag “#socialmedia,” a list of trending tweets will return in the search.

Facebook adds GIFs in ads and page posts: After ten long years and users getting acclimated to video content on their feeds, GIFs are being introduced into the mix. Wendy’s has been one of the first brands to share them with a post about building a salad. It will be interesting to see how users respond to this type of media, and depending on the reactions, Facebook will decide if more brands can start using GIFs in their content mix.