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 Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Google, Meta, Web3.
🗞️ News 1: Instagram opens up options to allow Live Stream using Desktop Software
Source: Instagram
Instagram has officially started rolling out their live producer tool last week. This is a tool that lets you go live using your streaming software from your desktop, which means churches and other nonprofits that use live stream every week to reach their audience can now start going live on Instagram with your produced content, with your televised or stage managed produced content can go live on Instagram,including vertical format. But there are some details that Instagram has shared on their blog post. Till now, they were just testing it, but now they officially released a blog post with all the details like your video resolution, your Bit rate and all those technical information and how to use a streaming software, etc. So we will link to it in the show notes, pass this on to your live streaming team. It’s on on a testing phase,so it may not be available for you yet. But hold on, it’s coming.
🗞️ News 2: YouTube launches ‘Primetime Channels’ with movies, sports & TV shows
Source: YouTube
YouTube is making progress in becoming the television platform for the future. The recent announcement is about a new feature called Prime Time Channels that brings 30 plus top channels related to movies,sports and TV shows onto the platform so you will soon be able to watch shows like Star Trek from Paramount Plus and movies like Spiderman from Stars Network and all of that on YouTube platform directly. You can buy it and watch it. The announcement says, with prime time channels, you will be able to sign up, browse and watch your favorite TV shows, movies and sports from streaming services such as Showtime, Stars, Paramount Plus, AMC, Wix and more. All directly on YouTube.
🗞️ News 3: TikTok launches ‘TikTok Academy’ an online marketing education program
Source: TikTok
TikTok has released an online education program focused on marketing, media, creatives campaigns,etc. To help with your TikTok marketing plans. This is called TikTok Academy and this has courses that are specific to, say, small businesses, for example. But it also has detailed TikTok courses like TikTok 101 which actually runs to a few hours with various assignments, in depth tutorials, videos, examples and lots of details that could help you get knowledge about the platform so you as a leader. If you have teams that are working on TikTok then do share this information with them so that they can enroll and learn more about this platform which is probably right now the biggest and the most popular platform. You can learn how to use it, the various techniques and learn from other brands, etc. You can also pass this on to your staff or volunteers who are helping you with TikTok.
🗞️ News 4: Google adds new options inside ‘Ads Data Hub’ measurement platform
Source: Google
Google has announced that they are adding two options related to data analysis and measurement of performance. This is inside their measurement platform called Ads Data Hub. So this is exclusively for ads, for example, YouTube ads and other ads that you run on Google platform, you have two new option snow. One is called Ads Data Hub for marketers, and the other is Ads Data Hub for measurement partners. So the marketers element is more about making decisions based on insights on what media to buy. So it’s more like a media buying decision-making. The interesting thing is you can add your own data from other sources onto the platform and use that in combination with Google’s intelligence and come up with insights that can help you make decisions. And there is also an option for measurement partners that allows you to measure results along with your existing data. So I linked all the details.
🗞️ News 5: [Web3] Meta starts testing ‘Minting & Selling NFTs’ on Instagram
Source: Meta
In our Web3 news this week, we look at Meta’s big announcement at their Creator Week 2022 event about NFTs. Instagram said they are starting the testing process where creators will be able to mint and sell NFTs on Instagram. So they say everything from the creation process to the selling process and the show casing process, all of that can be accommodated inside Instagram. So they are starting with a polygon blockchain and they’re giving access to a few creators to start with. But it looks like they are starting to expand to various places. I’ll link to the screenshots, the details, the show notes. It’s very interesting. They also announced that they are adding more data from OpenSea for other digital collectibles to be showcased. And they are also bringing in additional NFT formats like video onto the platform so that more people can showcase that NFT’s. Definitely interesting progress from Meta.
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches, and Ministries.
