The world of social media changes every day and so keeping up with all the updates can be tricky, as new features come and go as trends appear and develop. Businesses often utilise multiple platforms to look after their brand on social media, and with each one releasing updates and new features regularly, unless you are closely monitoring them, you might miss opportunities to enhance your digital presence. To maximise your social media marketing efforts and drive new leads for your business, it is crucial to be on the front foot with the latest updates from the social media giants.
Taking the top three biggest and most well-known social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, we have summarised their newest features and upcoming updates for 2021. If you are keen to learn more about how best to enhance your social media or if you are interested in support with social ads or creating organic posts, our social media experts are here to help.
Facebook have made quite a few changes to their platform in 2021, including ones that can help monitor your social media campaigns and analytics.
This year, Facebook released Reels, a new video-sharing feature that allows users to upload short-form videos on the app. Like Instagram Reels released in 2020, Facebook Reels enables creators to reach new audiences and provide them with new ways of expressing themselves.
Reels currently include music, audio effects and more:
With these editing tools, you can share reels across platforms and change the audience to public, friends or 'friends except'. Facebook Reels are currently available for US users and will expand globally over the next few months on both iOS and Android devices. Additionally, users will be able to find reels on Newsfeeds or Groups and follow a creator directly and easily through a button on the side of the reel.
Facebook has also begun to release a substantial update for their business suite, including the announcement for a new feature called File Manager. This tool allows businesses to create and manage content in the Business Suite in a more streamlined way.
Along with a unified inbox for more managed emails, a split testing feature allows businesses to compare multiple versions of posts to analyse the response from target audiences.
Facebook has also been working on new messenger features recently, including:
To keep teenagers safe, advertisers cannot target young people under 18 based on their interests through Facebook, only advertising to those 18 and older. These restrictions for brands will help prevent advertising to teens with interests in alcohol, weight loss, gambling, and online dating.
Social media can significantly influence young people, and this protection aims to help avoid potential security concerns of any kind.
Facebook is currently working on testing something called “work accounts” within Facebook. Not much is known about the upcoming feature yet. Still, it is expected that social media managers will access the Business Manager separately from personal accounts with a single sign in.
Facebook has also announced they are changing their corporate name, as part of an upcoming major rebrand. The name Meta, according to Facebook, is Greek for 'Beyond' and would better match what the company does as it broadens past social media and into other areas like virtual reality, or VR.
The platforms owned by Meta will keep their current names, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp as only the company that owns them is changing. Keep an eye out for this new rebrand and updates and many others in early 2022!
In September 2021, Instagram released new features to improve its service including verified badges to ensure brands are confirmed and secured as well as many other visual improvement features.
Instagram is known for short-form video content on stories and reels and is now scrapping the swipe-up link for stickers! Instagram has been making a few changes to its visual social media platform, and one of those is scrapping the swipe up feature. This feature allowed users to visit links on a story by swiping up. Instagram is replacing this feature with a customisable sticker that is similar to tagging and hashtag stickers.
Another new change recently is that Instagram has removed the limitations on the accounts that can add links. Links are now available for everyone to use, not just for verified and large accounts!
Instagram has recently given the news about new captions for Reels. This new update is allowing creators more options and freedom with their reels and their content.
It is now possible to post Instagram updates from a desktop in exactly the same way as a phone. No more inspecting of the website code! This new update has been a long time coming and will make publishing posts a lot easier in the future.
It is now possible to tag a profile and name them as a collaborator. Tagging someone in a collaborative post will allow the post to be published on both profiles simultaneously.
Another feature in the works is Montages, which enables users to turn their Insta stories into reels by creating a montage. This feature is still being tested but allows users to create reels using Insta stories’ frame elements.
Limits are a new feature on Instagram and are a security tool that helps users hide potentially abusive comments and DM’s. Instagram users can set a limit or hide comments and messages from users who are not on their followers list or recent followers in security settings. This feature is available for all users and across tablets, desktops, and mobile.
During COVID 19, small businesses and eCommerce companies were hit hard. Luckily Instagram is testing a new feature that allows companies to display ads in the shopping tab in a single image or a carousel, and they are shoppable!
When an ad is clicked on, users are redirected to the product page to find more details and information about it.
Twitter has grown hugely in the past year, and as it celebrates 15 years since the first tweet, the social media platform continues to excel. So let’s see what’s new on Twitter!
Twitter confirmed they are enforcing a new account verification policy, which launched in December 2020, beginning with removing verifications from inactive and incomplete accounts. Luckily, Twitter has also changed the way you apply for verification on accounts in 2021. This year will see the new implementation of memorial accounts to preserve an account in memory of someone who has passed and automated verifications for bot accounts to distinguish them from regular accounts.
This process is still underway, and Twitter has been enforcing this policy since January and is promising some more updates later this year.
In 2020, Twitter premiered the beta version of Spaces, a new feature that is an audio-only chat function created as an answer to Clubhouse. Twitter then acquired the podcast app Breaker back in early 2021 to incorporate the two together to improve the functionality of Spaces, which was reported to be buggy in its early days.
Clubhouse and Spaces promise to offer a more social way to listen to podcasts. This combination includes liking episodes and featuring an updated feed of your connections’ listening behaviours. The Breaker team are reportedly working on Spaces to improve the feature and make it a perfect podcast listening space and potential rival to Clubhouse, a stand-alone audio-only chat app.
An interesting update from Twitter brought about a way for Marketers to plan their content throughout the year, releasing a 2021 Twitter Planner in an editable PDF. It includes a calendar to prepare for upcoming holidays and other national and international events to create a content strategy for your business.
The downside to the Twitter Planner? It doesn’t integrate with any tools Twitter users currently utilise.
With the rise of social media stories and exciting features developed by social media platforms, the online landscape continues to adapt and change to follow the next trend, idea, or request from users.
During the 2020 pandemic, social media gained greater significance for consumers and marketers. More digital communication occurred, and social media boomed with the rise of social distancing and self-isolation. The pandemic certainly changed the game for most brands and businesses, and new rules around social media have emerged and quickly evolved.
To stay up to date with everything Social Media, follow us on our social media accounts and visit our blogs and latest news posts for more information about digital marketing and social media.
Digital Marketing Executive
Rebecca joined the Freebook Global Technologies Digital Marketing team as a Digital Marketing Executive in 2021. With her degree in Creative Writing, Rebecca has experience in many forms of content writing. She is passionate about all things creative, especially writing, graphics, and photography. Rebecca is very passionate about creating content and aspires to help businesses thrive online. She is eager to expand her skills in SEO, Photoshop, and InDesign to help her create engaging and visual content for her projects.
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