Instagram improving their Stories feature, Snapchat allowing a longer capacity for videos, and virtual reality becoming even more of a reality on your favorite social channels, check out this month’s social media news for everything that happened this July, and how it’s impacting marketers.

Facebook

• Facebook Live now lets you broadcast in VR
  • With the Oculus Rift (a virtual reality headset), users can now set up a virtual camera through its app, Spaces, that can be positioned anywhere in the VR environment and broadcast to other Facebook users
  • Facebook friends can comment and ask questions during live sessions, and the VR user who’s doing the broadcasting will have the option of picking comments and highlighting them to their audience
• Facebook Live is also massively increasing engagement with followers

Takeaways…

• Virtual Reality is introducing itself into the social media world and will completely change how users interact with each other – especially with teachers, as Facebook showed off a promotional video explaining “VR Office Hours,” the concept of teachers meeting with students via the Oculus app in order to teach them in more stimulated environments
• Currently, Facebook Live should be considered in a marketing strategy in order to increase audience engagement

Instagram

• Instagram will now let users reply to Stories with photos and videos of their own
  • This could be part of Instagram’s larger strategy to increase engagement with Stories
• As a whole, Instagram continues to prove to be a powerhouse in the social media world – especially for brands
  • 75% of users will take action if a post inspires them, and 70% of users follow at least one brand or business

Takeaways…

• Like other social media apps, Instagram is moving toward having its engagement be completely visual
• Initiating conversation, creating interesting content, and sponsoring your posts are all key ways to make the most out of your marketing strategy on Instagram

Twitter

• If you have a Twitter account, using video through the app might be the most effective way to reach users
  • Tweets with video generate 9x more engagement than basic text updates, and according to their own research, people who view videos on Twitter are 50% more likely to be aware of an advertiser’s brand

Takeaways…

• Video continues to prove that it cannot be ignored in the social media world when it comes down to receiving the highest engagement from audiences
• If brands can capture the essence of storytelling through Twitter, it can improve their marketing strategy for the better

Snapchat

• Snapchat now allows users to edit backgrounds, alter voices, and send paperclip links with its new update
  • This means that users can now attach links, cut the background out of photos, and add augmented voice effects in their videos
• Snapchat is also adding the capacity to record up to six snaps at once in one continuous flow, meaning sixty second snaps as opposed to the standard ten seconds it has been since it’s origin

Takeaways…

• Snapchat is trying to maintain its loyalty with users by adding more fun augmented reality camera effects, and maintain neck and neck in the competition with Instagram Stories
• The longer timespan for snaps will allow marketers more capacity to provide more content including interview-esque posts and “how-to’s” – however, this also totally alters the original concept of Snapchat’s limited time frame, meaning when users had to get more creative/original with their photos and videos in less time