Social media updates and new features to know this week
Including Meta, Instagram, TikTok and more.
You may be gearing up for fall, and your social platforms are too. From TikTok’s new school verification feature to Meta’s holiday ad targeting, there are numerous updates to dig into. Read on to see how new tools can help you shape your strategy for the upcoming season.
Meta
Meta is adding more language and region filters, aided by its AI targeting tools for ads, to help brands find the right creator/influencer partnerships ahead of holiday campaigns.
This is supposed to help brands match with a creator in their business’s geographical location who speaks in the language of their target audience, Meta says.
They’re additionally integrating creator testimonials to ads as a way to “increase the performance of their partnership ads by providing product endorsements as a featured comment within the ad.”
Meta has also launched AI Translations, which will automatically translate the audio on a video through a new toggle option called “Translate your voice with Meta AI.” Once this toggle is turned on, the video’s audio can then be translated for different audiences.
Instagram has added a new feature to its Reels metrics called Retention. This shows creators the moment during a Reel when the audience loses interest.
As IG explains, “With Retention, you’ll always see a downward slope, but the flatter the line, the more engaged your audience is. Retention shows you the moments in your Reel that keep or lose your viewers’ interest, so you can learn from each Reel you share.”
This could be a helpful tool to track engagement, but more importantly, to find the right length for videos for your target audience.
Additionally, Instagram will now allow creators to link specific Reels together in a series, similar to what TikTok has already done.
This tool can help creators organize content.
YouTube
To mark its milestone 10-year anniversary, YouTube Music will now offer select badges for users who have supported the app and artists over time.
Listeners will now see a “Top Listener,” “First to Watch,” or other milestone badges under their username.
The badges are something that will “motivate true fans to help their favorite artists hit major milestones” while celebrating app’s longevity, YouTube says.
Creators using YouTube Shorts may have noticed a little extra polishing to their posted videos. This is an AI cleanup of Shorts that YouTube is testing on certain accounts right now, YouTube said.
As they explain, “We’re running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos during processing, similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video.”
LinkedIn has updated its rules on comments to help combat fake engagement and accounts.
They may now limit how many comments a user can post within a certain timeframe, saying, “To keep LinkedIn safe and professional…if we detect excessive comment creation or use of an automation tool, we may limit the visibility of those comments.”
TikTok
Remember the days when you had to have an official school email address to use Facebook? While it’s not a requirement for the app, TikTok is adding school verification (Campus Verification) to help students connect with their fellow classmates.
The app promises to “help you find your people IRL from day one” by verifying your enrollment at your college.
This could be a fun crossover from a content creation/selling app to more of a friend-finding, study buddy or even dating platform.
Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected].
