UPDATES AND TRENDS - week of March 25, 2024

This week, we talked about:

➡️ Meta removing API for scheduling to Facebook groups from third party apps ➡️ (Minor) updates to Hashtags and Reels on Instagram

➡️ Google Business Listings (and linking to social media)

➡️ (The lack of) updates and news re: TikTok ban Questions?

Ask anytime! Check back weekly for more updates and insights ✨

There's a couple of topics I have today because there's a bunch of updates and things I wanted to tell you today.

So the first one we can jump in with is the Meta API, which is the Application Programs Interface. Basically, it's how one software communicates with another. If you use third-party scheduling apps like Meta or CoSchedule, Hootsuite, Buffer, they have APIs that help them communicate with these platforms. Meta is making changes, specifically for Facebook groups. It's not effective yet, but it is coming soon (April 22, 2024), you will not be able to schedule from a third party app to a Facebook group.

If you run a Facebook group, you can still schedule within the groups themselves. So if you go into the admin settings, there's a way to schedule natively through the platform, which apparently is what Facebook would prefer that we do.

Hashtags. You may see some chatter online about changes to how hashtags work. As of now, the the limit is still the same. You can still post up to 30 hashtags on each post. What changed is how you search or what the search results look like.

So over the next few days, if you're curious, just go in and click on a hashtag and see the way that it shows you. The new format is supposed to help encourage people to see new types of content, engage with other things besides just posts (like reels, audio, etc.)

Speaking of reels, they're in the process right now of updating IG to allow reels that run up to three minutes. It used to be 30 seconds, and then it got extended to 90 seconds. You can still post videos longer than that under certain circumstances, but different features are not available or it cuts things off. My live videos have been about seven or eight minutes long, and those still get posted as "Reels" technically. So if you go live, you can share it as a reel later. But traditional reels with all the editing features, the transitions, the trending audio, etc that is potentially being shifted to be up to three minutes long so you can do longer from content.

I do also want to talk about one of my favorite things to talk about that I don't get asked about often enough: Google Business Listings. These are really valuable... when you do a Google search and you see something on the sidebar and it has a business listing, people use those to find hours, menus, website links, shopping, and then also reviews from existing or past customers.

I do offer management of these profiles. We have a couple of secret tricks and hacks that we use on my team to help optimize those and keep them really active to help you get matched with people's searches. So for example if someone does a Google search for "restaurants near me, downtown Hudson," you'd want your business to come up and get matched with those searches.

A new thing that they added is the ability to include multiple social media links on your business listing.

TikTok update: I don't really have an update for you this week, actually. We've been talking the last few weeks about the ban. As it stands now, it was passed in the US House of Representatives.

Again, for now, keep doing what you're doing: if you already have a TikTok presence, keep going until you hear otherwise. If you don't already have a TikTok presence and you haven't gotten into it yet, now may not be the best time to invest a lot of time or resources into creating one.

So whatever your TikTok plan has been up to today, keep doing it until you hear otherwise from me or the government or whoever else is talking about it.

There's some chatter on the internet right now about particular code that havs been found that basically means there are talks of potentially a TikTok OO for photos or something from ByteDance or the TikTok people for sharing photos, just like Instagram.

To recap, we talked about METAno longer allowing third-party schedule apps to Facebook groups, specifically. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, all those things. If that doesn't change anything about other scheduling apps, because we do schedule a lot of content there.

We talked about the change to hashtags on Instagram. It's just changing how you hashtag show up in search results. You can go click on some right now. They do slow rollouts, so you can be logged in to multiple accounts and you'll , they Won't all have the same features or updates at the same time. They beta test and then they slowly roll them out. Over the next few days or weeks, if you want to check out what those hashtags look like, you can. But the limit as of today, Monday, March 25th, remains 30. You can keep doing up to 30 with all those special keywords, branded hashtags, and those things that I recommend.

Potentially reels will be extended to be three minutes long. So for longer-form content, that's just an interesting update.

Google business listings, super valuable. Always happy to talk about these. I love when people ask about this stuff. So you can add your social media links down directly into your Google business listing, and then people can go right from the sidebar listing that you have into your social media.

And then TikTok. No real updates there.

That's it for this week! As always, if you have questions or a request for something that we're going to talk about in any of these videos, please reach out. You can comment on the video below. You can send me a message. You can send me an email if that's your preferred method. That's my favorite way to connect with people: through email. And other than that, we'll connect soon. Thanks very much for tuning in, and I'll talk to you later!