Influencer Marketing in Asia: An Interview with Aaron Brooks
Aaron Brooks
April 21, 2017
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Staying on top of platform changes is essential to ensure your brand is working with (not against) social media algorithms.
Algorithms dictate what content is prominent across social media. Studies suggest that algorithms are increasingly influencing how young people make purchasing decisions, consume news, and understand the world around them.
Being ahead of this curve is vital for any brand wanting to stay relevant. Get up to speed on the latest social updates and marketing stories from last month, to put you in good stead for the month ahead.
YouTube is the largest search engine after Google, with 1 billion hours of content consumed on the platform every day.
@Handles
In November, the platform announced they’re bringing out handles, in a similar manner to Instagram and Twitter. These @ handles will make it easier for people to find creators and will simplify the URL process.
Channels will now go by youtube.com/@handle – making it simple for users to find content straight away without having to navigate through the platform.
YouTube is approaching channels at the moment to choose handles, and it’s thought that this process will roll out to every channel owner in due course.
Twitter has likely seen the most change from a business perspective in November. With Elon Musk finally taking the helm of the business, chaos has ensued.
In November, the company made a lot of people redundant, reinstated Donald Trump’s account and promised to make the blue tick buyable. As a result, it’s predicted that many creators have left the platform in an effort to boycott these changes. How the platform will adapt and evolve with all the recent change, only time will tell.
Edit Tweet feature
After years of users asking, the edit Tweet feature is coming to fruition. The platform officially started rolling out the Edit Tweet feature to Twitter Blue members, meaning that those with premium access can now edit their tweets after they’ve posted.
Twitter Blue
The aforementioned ‘Twitter Blue’ is also something that’s relaunching in November and is a premium service for paid users. Users are able to access deeper insights and personalise the app interface.
Rumour has it that Twitter Blue is likely to become the service through which people can ‘buy’ a blue tick, as Twitter Blue will automatically give these users a blue tick. This will change the meaning of the blue tick altogether by giving unverified users the same blue tick as celebrities and public figures.
TikTok is always changing, and in November they signalled closer alignment towards their social commerce platform ambitions.
TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop will allow users to buy products without leaving the platform. This should keep traffic within TikTok and potentially allow the platform to charge more for paid ads.
TikTok Shop is already available in the UK and a handful of Asian countries, but is now rolling out to the U.S. where it’s rumoured that they’re keen to break into the social commerce space.
The platform is also building fulfilment centres in the U.S., meaning they’re possibly going to stock and supply products as well as just selling them.
This could be a massive change for the platform, and it’s likely that online marketplaces like Shopify and Amazon are keeping a beady eye on TikTok’s move into e-commerce.
Carousel Images
If you use the app regularly, you may have noticed that TikTok has introduced carousel images. This feature allows users to set images to music which can be scrolled through.
It’s not clear why they’ve introduced this – but having the ability to share still images as well as video within the app will only boost their social commerce offering.
Instagram introduced lots of new changes in November, giving creators and brands more to work with.
Scheduling in-app for professional accounts
Up until now you couldn’t schedule posts from within Instagram, but in November the platform announced they’re testing a native scheduling feature.
This will mean that users don’t have to schedule content outside of the app, using external platforms like Hootsuite, Hubspot, Zoho Social, Later & others which cost.
The new scheduling platform will allow content to be scheduled up to 75 days in advance and will mean that every user has the opportunity to schedule.
Music
Instagram recently announced they’re providing the option to add 90 seconds of music to in-feed photos. An interesting update just as TikTok adds carousel images to their arsenal.
On their @creators Instagram feed they said: “We’re excited to provide the ability to add music to Feed photo posts like you can with Reels and Stories.”
New ad placements
In other news, Instagram is offering 2 new ad placements.
These will sit in the Explore Feed (which until now has been entirely algorithm led) and in Profile Feeds (when you scroll through someone’s profile).
For creators, this could be slightly annoying – as users could be led away from your profile with the Profile Feed ads. Likewise, Explore has always been about genuine exploration and finding creators who align with you, so to see ads in there is a little disappointing from a creative point of view.
However, for brands this is likely to be a gamechanger and will allow more natural placement or ad content.
The OG platform is still updating all the time, making itself more usable and robust as a messaging service.
Community Chats Feature
Community Chats are a new feature that will allow Messenger to bring bigger groups together. In a similar way to Slack, Community Chats will provide private group chats from within Facebook Messenger, allowing people from Facebook Groups to connect.
“A Community Chat is a chat created specifically for your Facebook group, so you can have real-time conversations with other group members. As an extension of your Facebook group, community chats are not subject to the same privacy guidelines as other chats on Messenger”.
LinkedIn seems to be promoting video on the platform, encouraging users to get more creative with their content.
Auto-captions for video
Auto-captions are being introduced for video content, which will allow brands to showcase interviews and behind the scenes content without hours of editing.
At present, they’re English-only but it’s likely that the platform will roll out more languages in the new year.
Pinterest bridges the gap between creativity and commerce, and their November changes offer marketers better tools to advertise on the platform.
Pinterest Trends
Pinterest Trends will allow marketers to track trends in their niche and keep up to date with what their audience are interested in.
The Trends tool will also offer deeper insights into how users move through content on the platform, supporting campaign decision-making.
Shuffles by Pinterest
Earlier this month, PInterest made Shuffles available to the general public. We wrote a whole article about this on our blog, which you can check out here.
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