Welcome to Connected Church News!
Top 5 latest Digital & Social Media News in 5 minutes, to help your ministry stay on top of industry trends.
This week, we have news about TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Clubhouse, Reddit.
🗞️ News 1: TikTok increases video length to 10-mins, helping educational content
Source: TechCrunch
🗞️ News 2: Clubhouse launches ‘In-Room Chat’ feature to increase engagement
Source: Clubhouse
🗞️ News 3: Instagram releases Auto-Generated Captions feature for feed videos
Source: Instagram
🗞️ News 4: YouTube recaps analytics features released in 2021, shares 2022 roadmap
Source: YouTube
🗞️ News 5: Reddit adds a new Discover Tab to help connect with new communities
Source: Reddit
[News 1] TikTok increases video length to 10-mins, helping educational content
TikTok is increasing the video duration on its platform to ten minutes. They started with 15 seconds, then they went to 60 and then 3 minutes, and now 10 minutes! And as you know, 10 minutes is a very good amount of time for you to create educational videos, promotional videos, or any other type of videos that could help your Ministry on the platform. So it is a big news.
It is also interesting how TikTok is tightening its competition with YouTube. Because the longer the videos are, the more competition for YouTube. Already, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are facing the heat from TikTok’s growth and its capability to do innovative things like Stitches and Duets. And now this news comes. This space is really getting interesting. Short video form is not-so-short any more!
[News 2] Clubhouse launches ‘In-Room Chat’ feature to increase engagement
Clubhouse announced last week that they are bringing In-Room Chat capability to the platform. So next time you start a Clubhouse Room and go live, you can enable this in-room chat. I see this as great tool for engagement because if you remember, since Facebook and YouTube Live rolled out this feature years ago, it has become one of the top ways to engage with livestream.
When you watch a live stream, maybe you want to ask a question to the moderator or you want to share your thoughts or you express your opinion. Or maybe as a moderator, you as a Ministry or a Church, you want to ask a poll question or ask people to respond. This is a great way to get that engagement. Clubhouse is a platform where people are already very engaged, and this is going to only increase engagement.
[News 3] Instagram releases Auto-Generated Captions feature for feed videos
Instagram has released Auto-Generated Captions as a feature for Instagram feed videos. If you now upload a video on Instagram there is a possibility for you to turn ON auto-generated captions. You can also turn it off. If you want to burn the captions within the video by yourself, then you can turn it off. But if you don’t, then you can have this feature which can help people who are having disabilities and challenges and they’re not able to hear your videos. They can do that. This is a new feature and it is available right now in 17 different languages, says Instagram.
[News 4] YouTube recaps analytics features released in 2021, shares 2022 roadmap
Youtube released an important and interesting information about all the analytics features that they had released in 2021 and the improvements they are making in 2022. I wanted to bring this to your notice because I am a big believer of analytics and measurement. And knowing what works and what does not. As a Church leader, as a nonprofit leader, you need to be on top of it too.
For example, did you know that there is a feature in YouTube analytics that lets you find out what your YouTube audience are watching, apart from your video? Like, what other videos are they watching now? That will give you a good idea of their behavior, their mindset, and you can create content accordingly, right? So there are lots of information like that. If you missed something 2021, then this is a good quick 5-minute way to catch up with all the recap of the features.
[News 5] Reddit adds a new Discover Tab to help connect with new communities
Reddit announced that they are adding a new tab called Discover Tab, which as the name says, helps you discover new content and communities. You know that Discover Tab is already available in other platforms like Instagram, almost all the social media platforms. And this is a feature that’s very helpful for the user to discover new content, new communities that may be related to their interests and the people they want to connect as a social media platform. So Reddit also gives you the ability to organize all these connections so they are coming up with new drawers that they have added where you can organize the communities, organize profiles, and so on.
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches and Ministries. You can subscribe to Natchi’s email newsletter by clicking here.
