This Month in Social Media - July Update

Social media moves fast, and so do the algorithms, features, and trends that shape your brand’s visibility.  Here's the social media updates for July. Bookmark it. Check back often. We’ll keep it fresh. 

LINKEDIN

• LinkedIn is testing out video covers for newsletters and articles. As of now, this new feature has only been rolled out to a select group of users and creators. When your newsletter appears on someone's feed, this video cover will be displayed as a playable preview. Your subscribers will also see a video thumbnail in their email, and clicking it takes them directly to the article/newsletter. 

• There's a new feature that shows you the post analytics with the number of profile views and followers you got from a particular post, and the clicks to your website or newsletter from that post, if you are a subscriber. You can view this new feature under any of your recent posts > view analytics > profile activity/link engagement.

• Your LinkedIn posts need to have engagement in the first hour of posting for them to be picked up by the LinkedIn algorithm. If a post receives no engagement (i.e., 0 likes, comments, or shares), it will likely not be displayed to your followers on their feed.
• Early this year, LinkedIn released a new update - a news banner with the current and trending news that'll show up on top of your feed. It was initially rolled out to India and the US only, but has now been expanded to users across the UK, Canada and Australia as well. This feature is only available on the LinkedIn mobile app and may be a new way to engage with the latest and trending topics.

FACEBOOK

• If you have a link in your post, Facebook may limit the reach of your posts. META is urging users to post the link in the comments, rather than to the posts. It's also issuing an alert notification asking you to check the link in your posts and to add to the comments.

• All Facebook videos will now be reels, no matter the length of the video.

INSTAGRAM

• Starting July 10th, Instagram is making all public content automatically show up in the Google search results. To allow your public photos and videos to appear in search engine results, your Instagram account should have search engine indexing enabled. It is also advised that you add relevant alt text and name the image files according to the keywords.

  Here's how you do it: go to the burger menu on your Instagram profile's top right corner > settings and activity > account privacy > Allow public photos and videos to appear in search engine results

• This could also mean that hashtags remain relevant and should not be dismissed yet. Hashtags that are relevant to your brand and business could be searchable and available on the SERP. It's more to do with categorisation and less about discovery. Instagram also suggests you use a maximum of 5 relevant keywords. This new update is also intended to make local search discoverability, which means good news for small business owners.
• Instagram is testing and experimenting with an explore page for stories. It'll just be like the current explore page, but with public stories available for you to scroll through. This could mean that stories are going to be a strong lead magnet for Instagram.

YOUTUBE

• One of the major announcements YouTube made just a couple of days ago is that it is changing its monetisation policies, which will take effect from July 15th. Videos with AI voiceovers, movie clips, stock videos, and stock voices, as well as reaction videos with no human voiceover, and templated videos and reels (the bulk-created videos with the same template) will no longer be approved for monetisation. It is yet to be seen how the engagement for these videos will be affected post this change. But YouTube has reiterated that it wants to push authentic, human-led content over AI and bulk-created videos.

That's all for this month. Want to stay ahead of the social media updates? Keep an eye on our socials for the next update - or better still, click here or below to subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a beat.