In February, we saw the emergence of audio rooms, hangouts, and a wider focus on working from home. It’s safe to say that the social environment continues to grow at an amazing rate, with the development of technology allowing communication and connections to form and businesses to blossom. Here’s our March forecast for social media:
Virtual Reality Takes Centre Stage
As Facebook has moved to Meta, the Horizon project is the prime focus for the social giant; it hopes to offer immersive digital spaces for businesses to meet, people to play, and for friends to socialise. However, the Metaverse is set to allow users to design and build their own 3D environments, which could truly be a game-changer for VR interactivity.
Whilst this is a tricky task for eta to undertake, it could mean that online Zooms and business meetings move to custom-built virtual spaces for brands, taking working from home to a whole new level.
Reels For All Users
In the battle for short-content superiority, Facebook has now launched its Reels on a massive scale for all users. Whilst Reels have been available for most users, some regions have only just gained access to this style of content. Users from 150 regions will now have Reels displayed at the top of their feeds, with features such as remixing, and drafts set to hit the platform soon.
Do You Like My Story?
Instead of users having to DM each other to show that they appreciate stories, Instagram has added a feature that allows accounts to directly like stories. This small update provides greater insight into viewer engagement, allowing you to see what your viewers are directly interacting with and what they love to see.
Search, Search, Search
Over the years we have seen social media platforms provide more transparency on data usage and privacy settings for users. Twitter isn’t slowing down on making it easier for tweeters to update their security settings and app preferences. Recently, Twitter has added a new search bar within its ‘Setting and Privacy’ section that allow users to find what they’re looking to update within the app.
Whether it’s accessibility, changing mentions or managing your audience, users can now make quick changes to their settings via the search bar. Whilst this is a simple update, it’s one of many that Twitter has implemented to promote a friendly atmosphere for users.
More Insights
Shining a spotlight on content creation, LinkedIn is hoping to encourage users to share more content by introducing its new post analytics tools. These provide insights into the members who are reading your updates, what industry they are in, and how many reactions your posts have received.
LinkedIn’s Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen said:
“We know it’s important to understand what content is resonating with your audience and our team has been hard at work building new analytics for our creators. Soon, creators will be able to get analytics on their individual posts and overall performance, across content & audience.”
YouTube
Additional Analytics
Set to go live in the coming months, YouTube has announced some new analytics options that are in development to help creators maximise their performance on the platform. As TikTok has gained traction in the last couple of years, YouTube is working to get ahead of the game, drawing its focus on providing more monetisation options for users.
TikTok currently doesn’t provide many options for creators to cash in on their success, which is why YouTube has decided to provide a greater reward for users when they post and monetise content on the platform. For example, users will soon potentially be able to view in-depth analytics on live streaming and shorts, which would be accessible on the YouTube Creator Studio website or in the app.
A Push for Shorts
Short-from content is becomingly incredibly popular, as social media platforms have all introduced TikTok-style video options to their sites. YouTube’s Shorts are now set to provide more opportunities for music creators to gain a following and be picked up by the algorithm. The latest update to Shorts allows musicians to view how popular their songs are when posted as a Short, which will only apply to official artist channels.
Overall, video content is set to become the future for all social media, as short-form content is proving to be popular amongst users. We expect to see TikTok-style videos and features flourish across the board as platforms such as Facebook and Instagram seek to beat China’s flagship platform in engaging users.
What social media updates are you expecting this month?
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