While TikTok continues to take the world by storm, Meta makes moves to catch up, with Instagram Reels and Facebook Feeds.
This month Meta goes mad for TikTok and it’s a lot over at Instagram, as they test new features and lean into the Reels format. Meanwhile both Google and Pinterest find ways to better the retailer experience! Let’s dive in.
1. Instagram turns focus to Reels
This month, Meta announced that all video uploads under 15 minutes long (so most video uploads) on Instagram will be fed into the Reels format. Noted as a bit of a desperate move for the Meta team, as Social Media Today states, it means the app makes a bigger switch to video content, in a bid to chase after the popularity of TikTok while perhaps abandoning what Instagram is known for: stills. Social Media Today recommends monitoring your stats, and considering how you can best lean into the latest Reels trends to maximise engagement. Instagram may help with this, also announcing a new range of creative tools for Reels, which, if you’re familiar with TikTok, will be easy to adapt to and use and may boost the creative side, and therefore the engagement, of your brand!
2. Your Facebook feed is also getting a TikTok-themed update
Like the ‘For you’ and ‘Following’ feeds of TikTok, Facebook’s main user interface will now be split into a ‘Home’ feed, which will focus on entertaining, recommended content, while your new ‘Feeds’ tab will highlight latest posts from ‘Favourites’, ‘Friends’, ‘Groups’, etc. Theoretically this change could make it easier to see content from friends and family, while also enabling Meta to show more recommended content, with a focus on video. With this move it appears Facebook is stepping away from being a ‘social network’ rather being more in line with other ‘entertainment apps’. As the team at Social Media Today say, only time will tell if this is what users want. It may also pose problems for brand engagement as audiences will have to switch between tabs in order to find a brand’s content. So for the next few months we recommend keeping an eye on your stats across all apps to maximise your brand’s potential.
3. Pinterest expands the retailer experience
Earlier this month Pinterest announced they are ‘making it easier for merchants to create engaging shopping experiences for the millions of users’ on the platform. This includes Pinterest API for Shopping, which aims to inspire commerce, allowing brands to effectively promote curated design collections via shopping campaigns. The new shopping feature ‘Product tagging on Pins’ allows merchants to make their lifestyle Pins shoppable, and helps users move easily from inspiration to action. Pinterest is also enabling video assets within the product catalogue to help users make purchasing decisions. And businesses can now add a ‘Shop Tab’ on their business page to create a more inspiring, seamless shopfront and to enable easier sales management. All in all, it looks like a good time to be a business on Pinterest.
4. Instagram Reels become boost-able
As Instagram continues to adapt their platform for short form video, they are now allowing users to promote Reels with a new inbuilt ‘Boost’ option, making it simple to turn a Reel into an ad. As Reels is their fastest growing format they want businesses to make the most of it with the opportunity to reach new audiences and drive engagement. Pressing the ‘Boost’ button takes you through a quick promotion process and may indeed boost engagement in your Reels, however, boost-able Reels are only those that do not use third party IP such as copyrighted music, GIFs, interactive stickers or filters, and Reels that are shared to Facebook cannot be boosted. Additionally, as the team at Social Media Today pointed out, the ultimate success of your Reels will always still be determined by the actual content you create and how well you know your audience, but now there’s no better time to start creating Reels for your brand!
5. Google makes ‘Ads Creative Studio’ available to all businesses
In big news for business, this month Google announced that their Ads Creative Studio Tool would be available to all businesses. This announcement paves way for all businesses, great and small, to create new streamlined ad content from their existing assets. Advertisers can now easily create multiple versions of a single display or video ad. As Google explained, these can also be customised ‘for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts.’ You simply create the parameters for your ads and Google does the rest. It looks to be a functional, handy tool for any sort of promotional campaign, making life a lot easier when marketing your business.
6. Instagram experiments with ads
Also this month according to app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram appears to be considering allowing users to show ads on their profiles. Currently it is in the experimental phase, with no official plans for release but the functionality appears to be an optional button for users to turn ads on or off on their profiles. With Instagram’s other pushes to diversify users’ feeds and turn more to Reels, it seems like this tool would be another way for the platform to morph into a pseudo-TikTok. We can only see how this will go, as the app records its own data about whether or not this is a valuable tool for users.
7. Reels, Reels and more Reels
We end this month’s recap with some good news, and stats, from Later Blog and the takeaway is: Instagram isn’t ‘over’, it’s just changing! The team at Later surmised that though in 2019, feed posts were ‘the cool kids on the block,’ now it’s all about Reels. This is mostly due to the app promoting and prioritising their new format, but it’s also because consumer culture is shifting – to video. Those who pivoted to incorporate Reels into their campaigns have seen engagement rates stay consistent or even grow compared to the average engagement decline of 44% since 2019. And now it’s up to you. If you want to see a spike in Instagram engagement, it’s time to get onboard with Reels. Regular feed posts still have their place, but Reels are the number one tactic for reaching new audiences, and with the right strategies and ideas, they can be relatively simple while showcasing your brand’s creativity.