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Hello! Welcome to this week’s edition of the Digital and Social Media News for Leaders of Nonprofits, Churches, Ministries and Faith-driven Entrepreneurs.
We know you are busy. And we know that most of you don’t have the time to search the big world wide web for the news.
That is why, each week, we bring you the Top 5 Digital and Social Media News that you need to know for this week and present it to you in a short video format.
This week we look at news items related to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Google, and Twitter.
Top 5 Digital & Social Media News 📰
🗞️ News #1 – Google releases Android 10 with many new features.
This week, Google announced the release of Android 10.
Android 10, Google says, will focus on making our lives easier by features that are powered by On-device Machine Learning and also new technologies like 5G and Foldables.
Google also says that they’ve made almost 50 changes related to privacy and security. ‘Privacy’ seems to be the keyword these days in social media and the digital world.
There are many interesting features that Google has released in the article. Two of the features caught my attention.
- Live Captioning: Google says with a single tap, ‘live caption’ feature will automatically caption videos, podcasts and audio messages across any app. That’s interesting. Including the stuff that you record yourself. We are going to have captioning automatically happen on Google. And with Google Translate, if you go by the standard of Google Translate, I’m sure this is going to be awesome.
- Focus Mode: Focus mode is built into the Digital Wellbeing section of Android, where you can select certain apps and switch them off when you are going into the focus mode, like when you’re working on something deep, then you can switch off certain apps. Those are some of the things that I found interesting.
🗞️ News #2 – Facebook Messenger releases new business tools & updates
Last week Facebook Messenger team made announcements about some updates to the Messenger platform and also release of tools which can help businesses and organizations have conversations with people on Facebook Messenger.
So if you use ChatBots or you plan to use ChatBots on Facebook messenger for your organization in the future, then you might want to pay attention to this.
Because the tools that they are talking about include lead generation tools and appointment fixing tools, etc.
The discover tab in Facebook Messenger has been phased out, that’s been removed.
They are also making changes from the developer side to messenger – message ‘tagging’ and ‘standard messaging window’. Do check it out if you use Facebook messenger.
🗞️ News #3 – Twitter says, tweets with video has 10X more engagement
Last week, Twitter released an article about creating videos with your phone. And the article had a few interesting statistics.
One of them is, ‘Tweets with video attract 10 times more engagement than tweets without video’.
Imagine that, 10 times!
We knew videos were important, but this coming from Twitter officially has got to get our attention.
The article also goes on to say that even if you don’t have a professional production house, don’t worry, shoot your videos with your phone. And they go on to give you tips about how to actually create good videos for Twitter.
🗞️ News #4 – Instagram will be testing back-to-back Stories ads format
AdWeek reported that Instagram will be testing back-to-back Stories ads from different brands.
This is a unique thing when it comes to online advertising, ‘back-to-back ads’ from different brands.
Instagram says that they’re testing these type of things because they want to know what is the user preference.
The reason I wanted to bring this to your attention is to show you how Instagram Stories advertising is something that is untapped.
It is an effective advertising type and looks like Facebook has a big inventory in the Stories section for ads. And Instagram is doing a lot of innovation in the Stories space.
If you’re not using Stories advertising as one of your channels, then you might want to check it out because it could be very effective and also give you ads at a much lower cost than you expect. Do check out Instagram Stories ad format.
🗞️ News #5 – Facebook is adding more user badges to Pages
Facebook seems to have found a new tool that could help in engagement – The Badges.
Facebook is bringing badges to its Pages as well.
Earlier, Facebook Groups is the one that had badges. If you go to a Facebook Group, you will see badges like Admin, Moderator, and New Member, next to the name of the person.
Now, these badges are coming to Facebook Pages. Facebook Pages already has Top Fan as one of the badges, but now they’re adding more to it like Anniversary Follower, Follower, etc. Facebook believes this will help in page engagements.
That’s all we have for you this week. Thank you for spending your time with us.
Have a wonderful week!
Do leave your comments, questions, feedback, and reviews.
We will bring you a fresh set of the latest Social Media news for you next week.
Until then, Stay Connected, Stay Blessed.
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.
