YouTube, Instagram and Facebook focused on ways to augment the communities on social and improve user experience in November (although some social platforms have had better ideas than others…)
Creating communities on social with Instagram group profiles
Instagram’s testing a new feature (but only in Canada at the moment) that will let several users manage a profile as a group.
It sounds like it could be the most useful for fandoms and campaign groups – maybe a little more complicated for brands (depending on how your brand intends to use group profiles).
Some food for thought – brands could use the feature to collaborate with influencers on specific campaigns, or use it for more general UGC campaigns (sort of like the old “run the account for a day” idea).
Remember that your brand will need to modify influencer agreements and have clear guidelines and agreements with any fans/customers you work with.
Think about how your brand could use this feature if it eventually rolls out to a wider audience.
Instagram’s giving users new ways to engage and inspire
Another change coming to Instagram is that the app is letting users add music to photo posts:
It feels like this is another tactic to keep themselves competitive with TikTok (and also apps like Hive, which lets iPhone users add a music track to their profiles).
It could be a really useful feature for your brand, giving a tone of voice to your posts. It could boost engagement but nothing says this will happen for sure.
YouTube’s making changes for subscribers and creators
YouTube’s working on improving user experience by filtering different types of content into appropriate tabs on creator channels.
This is great news for people who visit individual creators’ profiles (it lets them see videos, shorts and live streams on their appropriate tabs). If you’re a viewer who uses the subscription tab to track content, you’ll still see the whole range of content on one page. So, it’s really a mixed bag for subscribers.
Things are looking up for creators, though, as YouTube will be giving anyone in their creator program a portion of the revenue generated from the ads played before Shorts. This is a better scheme than TikTok offers its creators, who get paid via a mix of the creator fund and tips.
YouTube has also been testing its new Go Live Together feature since March (where two YouTubers can co-host a live stream), and it’s now launched the feature to a wider audience.
Your brands could use this feature for interviewing guests and running Q&A sessions. Of course, there are ways to do this off YouTube and upload the video later, but this is the first time creators will be able to collaborate live.
Facebook’s offering a new way to manage groups…and it’s not good
Facebook is giving group admins the option to allow any group member to make themselves a moderator for the page. The main admin will have the option of removing moderators or turning the feature off entirely.
As Matt points out in his tweet, it does seem like a recipe for chaos. It would be a risky move (especially for brands) to have multiple (probably untrained) moderators controlling content.
As the social media landscape takes time to settle after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, we’ll probably see other networks looking for ways to tempt disenchanted Twitter users to spend more time on their apps.
The rise of Mastodon and Hive suggests that many social media users want to return to a simpler time when it was easier to form communities and find the content they wanted away from promoted content. It will be interesting to see if other social apps start focusing more on community, collaboration and simplifying the user experience.
