In a nutshell

Instagram is taking a stand against recycled content, encouraging users to create their videos using Reels rather than reposting TikTok videos, for example. In a recent best practice post on its @creators account, Instagram offers tips to help users create content that will be seen and shared, saying that blurry Reels content with logos or watermarks will be less ‘discoverable’.

What does this mean?

Instagram won’t actively promote videos that are recycled from other platforms within the Reels tab, however they will still be viewable to the user’s followers.

This move should see more creators using the Reels function to craft their videos – especially those who consider content views and engagement as a key performance metric.

In a nutshell

Backed by Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey and many other highly influential people, Clubhouse is an audio-only social network, which has seen an explosion of new users since its launch in March last year. The free app is currently only available to iPhone users, and allows people to join and participate in public or private audio chatrooms.

What does this mean?

The invite-only platform has created an exclusivity appeal, and it has since been valued at over $1 billion.

In a recent blog post Clubhouse creators announced that they plan to complete the app’s beta stage, so they can remove the invite-only element and open access to the world.

Our paid social experts predict that once Clubhouse opens to more and more people, it will allow businesses to create accounts. It may not be long until marketers will be able to start advertising on the platform, diving into the world of audio-based social media marketing.

In a nutshell

LinkedIn has released a 17 page guide with information on how to create disruptive, engaging and inspiring content, to help its users with their B2B marketing.

What does it mean?

The guide, which includes best practice examples from a variety of businesses such as Mailchimp and Capital One, offers easy-to-follow insights into what content works best on the professional social networking platform, such as using interactivity as a tool to capture and drive deeper engagement with your brand.

Does your business use LinkedIn for marketing? Download the guide and take notes; the recommendations are likely to boost your content performance.

In a nutshell

Twitter has confirmed it’s researching new ideas and experimenting with new models to generate income, such as tipping, paid account features like profile customisations and added social listening analytics for brands, and subscription-based access to TweetDeck (Twitter’s dashboard application for Twitter account management).

What does this mean?

The majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from targeted advertising, and most social networks remain free as a way to encourage user growth and engagement. Subscription and paid features will mean more consistent revenue for the platform, as well as new features for users…

In a statement to TechCrunch, Bruce Falck, Twitter’s Revenue Product Lead, said they’ll “continue to research and experiment with ways to further diversify our revenue beyond ads in 2021 and beyond…These may include subscriptions and other approaches that will give people and businesses of all sizes on Twitter access to unique features and enhanced opportunities for content creation, discovery, and engagement.”

In a nutshell

When Apple released widgets with the iOS 14 update, over 2 million people worldwide added the Pinterest widget to their phones. This allows them to see saved pins on their home screen. Pinterest has now taken the tool one step further, allowing users to select their top interests and have new content served to the widget daily.

What does this mean?

As this feature is all about discovering new content, the ‘sneak peek’ window into the app will prompt more app opens. If you use Pinterest to market products and/or services, make sure your posts are tagged with relevant keywords, giving them a better chance of appearing to users who have this feature activated on their home screens.

In a nutshell

As a result of Google’s ability to identify intent behind search queries, they are choosing to simplify keywords and soon phrase match will expand to cover additional broad match modifier (BMM) traffic. As a result, Google will be phasing out the BMM keyword match type.

The ‘merge’ of match types has come as Google moves increasingly towards smart bidding advancements. As smart bidding relies on having access to as much data as possible this is a move towards further empowering the automation and machine learning through consolidating campaigns and merging match types. The move away from the traditional PPC accounts having a high volume of campaigns each split by keyword theme and match type. The advantage of which was to directly control spend in specific keyword areas.

What does this mean?

The account as it currently stands will not be impacted, as existing BMM's can continue, however new BMMs moving forward will need to be uploaded as phrase match. As this is rolled out we will monitor very carefully how traffic, CPC's and SQR's are impacted.