Pinterest Expands Promoted Pins
Now that Pinterest is rolling out its promoted pins to all businesses, this social media platform may be seeing an uptick in marketing activity (and undoubtedly an increase in revenue) this year. While there’s a waitlist to sign your business up for these paid, visual ads, Pinterest has already changed its algorithms to include a “Picked for you” category in users’ feeds, which analyzes what you’ve already pinned and suggests other pins you may like. While it’s yet to be seen if promoted pins will be overly promotional, hindering content users actually want to see, it’s definitely worth getting on the waitlist if you have a visual brand that can take full advantage of its “Rich Pin” features that can be added to your promoted articles and products.
Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins to All Advertisers
A Big Year Ahead for Promoted Pins
Snapchat’s Refresh and New “Discover” Feature
Snapchat gives and Snapchat takes away. With the new update, Snapchat has rolled out its “Discover” feature, allowing users to view updates from a very select few media outlets, including CNN, Daily Mail and ESPN. In the same update, Snapchat removed the “best friends” feature on the app, angering possessive girlfriends all over the world.
Edit: Since I first drafted this, Snapchat is already preparing to bring the “best friends” feature back, although no specifics as to when that may be.
Despite all the changes, Snapchat is still very much a dark horse in the running whe
n it comes to social media marketing. With the right opportunity, Snapchat can be a fun and useful marketing tool for your organization. You don’t have to have a huge brand featured on the “Discover” section, either. It’s as easy as creating a regular Snapchat account and encouraging your social audience to add your account to their list of contacts. For an example of how to use Snapchat for marketing, take a look at the Pittsburgh Penguins Snapchat account (@penguins). “Behind-the-scenes” shots are very popular for most brands. It might be time to evaluate if creating a Snapchat for your business will be beneficial.
Will anyone use Twitter Group Chat?
In another seemingly Facebook-inspired update, Twitter now allows users to direct message (DM) multiple accounts at once. While I rejoiced when Twitter rolled out it’s “mute” feature to mimic Facebook’s “unsubscribe,” I have to admit I questioned how quickly this group DM feature would catch on. So far, it’s had a good reaction in online reviews, and I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of the feature in the mobile app. With this, however, comes the next wave of auto-DMs, where accounts will now be able to mass-spam followers with “Thanks for following! Check out my e-book…” messages. Only time will tell how this one plays out.
Social Media Gaffes: Last month’s biggest social slip-ups
–New York Post Twitter hacked, claims Pope Announces Benedict declares WW3
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Rachel Borowski is an account executive for WordWrite Communications. She can be reached at rachel.borowski@wordwritepr.com and found on Twitter @RachelBro_ski.
