It may sometimes seem the content marketing game changes on you just as you get used to using a new tool or gaining a better understanding of an existing tool. However, fortunately for you, help is available. Every week we provide you with a new edition of Content Radar to help keep you up to date on everything that you need to know.
What’s new about “new” Twitter?
Though Twitter has always been a major player in the world of social media, for many small or medium-sized businesses, it has rarely been an especially meaningful part of a content marketing strategy. Despite a focus on decreasing abuse and increasing civility over recent months on the social channel, there is still a lot to be desired for Twitter to become a consistently useful tool for social media managers for most brands.
Thanks to a handful of updates made in recent days, Twitter is showing that it may still have a few tricks up its sleeve to be a relevant tool for marketers for small and medium-sized businesses. In recent days, some desktop Twitter users have been greeted by a pop-up asking them if they would like to try “new Twitter.” Those who answer “yes” are greeted by a few new updates, including:
What’s new: White space
In what seems to be purely an aesthetic decision, the Twitter experience for users on the “new” site takes advantage of white space — like, lots of advantage of white space. The empty space on the page gives the content a cleaner look.
How it will help you?
Honestly, this feature won’t make a huge difference for brands, but by removing clutter, it does give an opportunity for your content to stand out a little more.
What’s new: Bookmarks
Twitter introduced the capability to bookmark on its mobile app in February of this year, but the same feature was not available on the desktop site until now.
How it will help you: Twitter was built on the premise that people have limited time and short attention spans. Now, thanks to the bookmarking capability, people may be more likely to save your tweets that link to long-form content and come back and read it later when they have time.
What’s new: Audio broadcasting
Whereas the other features discussed above are new for the desktop version of Twitter, the audio broadcasting feature was also just introduced, but is currently available only for iOS. Twitter users can utilize the audio broadcasting option through the Periscope platform.
How it will help you: Simply put, this new feature essentially allows you to record and publish podcasts through Periscope and share onto Twitter. Though Periscope was created for publishing live videos (and can still be used that way), this feature may be helpful for you if you don’t want to be seen or are in a spot where you have a weak internet connection.
Of course, some would argue that any of these updates are irrelevant if Twitter is unable to continue to make strides to become a safe and responsible platform. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the progress Twitter has been making when he met with Congress last week.
“There are two main categories of usage on Twitter,” Dorsey said. “One is the people you follow—and those tweets end up in your timeline. Two are the more common shared spaces like search, trends, and also replies. That’s where anyone could interject themselves. That’s where we see the most gaming of our systems. That’s also where we’ve made the most progress in identifying these patterns and shutting them down before they spread too far.”
Time will tell if Twitter’s updates will help pick the channel back up or if usage will continue to decline.
Instagram is working on a video tagging feature. Users will soon be able to tag friends and other users in videos, just like they are able to do in photos. A small number of Instagram users are now already able to utilize this new tool, which will roll out to others in the near future.
Facebook has renamed its canvas ads to be “Instant Experience” ads. Along with the name change, Facebook is adding pixel capabilities to these ads so marketers can more fully track the user experience.
Google gave Chrome an update for its 10th birthday. Among other things, the look has been modified, the browser can more accurately autofill passwords and other information, and the browsing experience is faster.
LinkedIn has updated how advertisers can use dynamic ads on the platform. Marketers now are able to use the Campaign Manager platform to create, track, and manage campaigns.
