Instagram Expands Ad Platform: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published June 6, 2015

Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news.

To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

Instagram Expands its Advertising Platform to All Companies:  As Instagram continues to build its ad platform, it is "focused on three key areas: Expanding ad offerings to include action-oriented formats, enabling more targeting capabilities, and making it easier for businesses large and small to buy ads on Instagram."

In the coming weeks, "people will be able to learn about a product or service and then take action directly from an ad to sign up on a website, buy a product, or download an app."

Twitter Announces the Twitter Official Partner Program: "The launch of the Twitter Official Partner Program brings together our strategic partners from the Twitter Certified Program and the Twitter Marketing Platform Partner Program"

"Twitter Official Partners have been recognized by Twitter because of their high-quality products or expert-level services and proven success on Twitter."

Other upcoming social media news worth following:

Pinterest Will Roll Out Buyable Pins: In a few weeks, Pinterest will be "introducing buyable Pins—just another way to bring the creative ideas you find on Pinterest to life."

"When you spot a Pin with a blue price, you'll know you can buy it right from the app."

Facebook Now Supports Animated GIFs in the News Feed: Facebook is "rolling out support for animated GIFs in News Feed. This is so you can share more fun, expressive things with your friends on Facebook."

Facebook Test "Saved Replies": This new feature, "available now to a select group of business owners via the messaging interface on Facebook Pages, offers a simple tool that lets a Page admin create a new reply, save it for later use, and even search through their list of replies to find the one they need."

YouTube Launches Music Insights: This new data tool "gives the music community more insight into YouTube views to grow their success on and off of YouTube."

Music Insights give you "a full picture of how fans are engaging with music on YouTube."

Here's a couple of cool social media tools worth checking out:

Splice: An iOS that app helps you "easily create videos and slideshows, with no length limits, watermarks, or ads. Includes free filters, songs, sound effects, text overlays, transitions, and precise editing tools."

"Simple and powerful, Splice is the best video editor for your iPhone!"

Sigstr: A cloud-based central management tool that appends marketing content and campaigns to your company email signatures.

"Simply update campaigns at Sigstr.com, and the new campaigns are appended to the email signatures of each user."

How to Use Facebook Offers

The State of Customer Service Experience 2015: According to a new survey from management consulting firm, The Northridge Group, 33% of consumers who use social media to contact brands with a customer service issues never get a response. 76% say they have to engage with a brand two or more times on social media before a customer service inquiry or issue is resolved. Overall, the respondents rated social media lowest of all channels in their experience resolving customer service issues.

2015 Wayin Real-Time Marketing Report: This survey of 200 real-time marketers at companies with more than $100 million in revenue confirms that the marketing landscape is changing as brands rely more on real-time moments rather than planned marketing campaigns. While a quarter of marketers define a "real-time" response as happening within seconds, only 4% can react to breaking news on social media in less than a minute. Almost half can't respond to breaking news on social media within 30 minutes and almost a quarter (24%) say it takes their teams an hour or more to respond.  The report also explores what blend of tactics, tools and investment real-time marketing really takes.

2015 Social Media Marketing Trends: A recent survey of 600 marketers commissioned by Simply Measured and TrustRadius found that 60% of respondents named "measuring ROI" as one of their top three challenges. In addition, 50% said "tying social activities to business outcomes" was one of their top three challenges. The survey covered a variety of trends and challenges focused on social media marketing.

"Hype or Ripe" Study: Greenlight Digital commissioned a survey of a 100 senior marketers to discover what technologies are considered over-hyped versus ripe for investment. The study reveals that 28% plan to experiment with mobile messaging and 19% plan to integrate live-streaming apps, Periscope and Meerkat, into 2015 marketing campaigns. However, they fear investing in the wrong one, with one in ten (12%) having made this costly mistake in the past.

How Fortune 500 Companies Engage Talent on Twitter: According to a recent report from Software Advice, 35% of Fortune 500 companies have an active Twitter account dedicated to recruiting. Of those, 64% tweet from it 1-3 times per day. The findings also show that 58% of job seekers use Twitter in their job search. Yet, nearly half of respondents say the companies are "ineffective" at using Twitter to post frequent job openings (47%) and communicate with job seekers (43%).

Programmatic Branding: Findings in a new study from Econsultancy and Quantcast reveals  62% of marketers are using programmatic advertising for brand campaigns as opposed to direct response, with its key benefits cited as: efficiency, reduced ad costs and improved targeting. On average, 40% of programmatic spending goes towards branding campaigns, with marketers expecting a 37% increase in their spend by 2017.

Twitter Analysis of Fashion Bloggers and Brands: In a new comparative analysis of Twitter followers, SocialBro discovered that top fashion bloggers like Chiara Ferragni and Leandra Medine can have more influence on potential buyers than celebrities and even rival established fashion media titles such as Vogue. The report suggests that brands which fail to connect with such high-powered fashion influencers on social media are missing out.

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What do you think? Have you tried Instagram Ads? Please share your comments below.

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Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

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Original source: Instagram Expands Ad Platform: This Week in Social Media.
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