The holiday season (a.k.a. The busiest time of year!) is fast approaching. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you want to do everything you can to maximize the festive sales season to skyrocket your revenue.
Luckily, your favorite social media platforms are pulling through with a stack of updates and new features to help you grow your audience, boost your reach and drive sales like a pro.
This month, Instagram is rolling out a stack of interactive stickers to help you cut through the noise, Threads is bringing multimedia placements onto the platform and YouTube is offering new monetization opportunities, and so much more.
Don’t miss a beat by diving into our latest social media updates wrap-up below!
Threads announce the launch of trending topics, GIFs, voice notes and more!
Already forgotten about Threads? You’re not alone. In fact, engagement is down by 79% compared to the initial high of 2.3 million active users back in July 2023.
But the Meta team aren’t going to let the headlines stop them from rolling out a stack of new features, all designed to reignite usage and engagement on the Threads platform.
A new Trending topics element is about to launch in the platform, allowing users to easily find and follow conversations about specific topics. Not only will you be able to search for specific topics, but you’ll be able to keep tabs on the top conversations on Threads with ease
We’re excited to see this new feature rolled out as it will enable easy trend research within Threads, giving business owners the opportunity to stay up to date with topical conversations.
Plus, Threads is rolling out a number of new content placements as the app looks beyond text-only communication. Expect to see voice posts, GIFs and polls in-stream in the weeks and months to come. There are even whispers that editing published Threads could soon be a reality, perhaps with a time-limit of when you can edit your existing posts.
These new content formats could offer huge scope for businesses to repurpose visual content easily across Instagram and Threads. If you’re not already familiar with cross posting, now is the time to get up to speed to ensure you’re ready to repurpose your content like a pro!
Sleigh your socials this holiday season with new interactive stickers on Instagram
Speaking of Instagram, we’ve just had word that a number of new features are being tested on the app to boost engagement ahead of the holiday season.
Inside sources have revealed that a new interactive App sticker is being tested on Instagram Stories. At this stage, it looks like this clickable sticker will allow you to promote your app through Stories, making it easier to drive app sign-ups and downloads directly from Instagram.
But that’s not the only new sticker you can expect on Instagram Stories. We’ve just heard that a new ‘Secret’ sticker is being tested, prompting users to respond to your Story with a message to unlock a piece of secret content.
This new feature could offer a huge scope for you to boost engagement with your audience. We know that Instagram (and many social platforms) are heavily investing in direct messaging, and it seems this latest update is in line with where the platforms are seeing the highest engagement from users.
Lastly, a new ‘Music Pick’ sticker is said to be in the testing phase on Instagram Stories. Offering a new way to share music, this sticker would allow users to respond and share their top tracks of the moment on Stories.
What do these predicted updates tell us? Instagram Stories is going to be a place to inspire one-to-one conversations with your audience. Rather than acting as a broadcast channel, these new stickers will allow brands (like you) to inspire direct conversations with your customers to foster trust and build stronger relationships.
This holiday season, make sure to captialize on these new stories stickers to boost engagement and hit your business goals.
YouTube expands its monetization program to more creators
Over at YouTube, we’re seeing a stack of new developments and announcements. The first is this: YouTube is expanding its Partner Program to allow more creators to monetize their content on the platform.
In exciting news, YouTube has changed the eligibility requirements for creators wanting to earn an income from their videos. Previously, creators needed to have at least 1,000 subscribers (along with at least 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months or at least 10 million Shorts views in the past 90 days).
Now, you can sign up for the program with just 500 subscribers. You’ll also need to have uploaded at least three public videos over the past 90 days and hit one of these requirements:
• 3,000 valid public watch hours over the past 12 months, OR
• 3 million valid public Shorts views over the past 90 days
Plus, YouTube is allowing creators in 23+ countries to tap into the program, making it easier than ever to turn your content into a viable revenue stream.
YouTube launches new in-depth subscriber analytics
Last but not least is another big development on YouTube. In a recent announcement, YouTube has shared they are revamping their analytics to allow creators and businesses (like you) to gain a deeper insight into your subscribers and audience.
Within your Studio analytics, you’ll soon be able to get granular insights into both new and returning visitors to truly understand who is watching your content. This means you can now compare what portion of your views are coming from new visitors or returning viewers, providing a good indication of how ‘sticky’ or engaging your content is with audiences.
In fact, you’ll soon have access to an entire tab for “New and Returning Viewers” to assess the performance of your videos based on this metric alone.
We’re also expecting to see new analytics cards into both your total member count as well as which videos are driving new subscriptions. Interestingly, you’ll also be able to see why your audience chooses to cancel their membership, too.
With these new analytics up your sleeve, you’ll be able to make data-driven decisions about what content you prioritize, how often you share content and how to pivot your posting strategy to reach your goals (whether that’s retaining existing subscribers or growing your subscriber base).
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