Social Trends & Tools, Apr 30
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
[Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash]
Thanks for reading! This is a weekly roundup of trending social content and key platform updates to help you catch up and make sense of what’s coming.
💻 Roadmap
The big news this week was Mark Zuckerberg going live with Instagram’s Adam Mosseri to announce new creator payment options to help emerging creators build businesses on Instagram. Facebook doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to enabling other people to make money on their platform but it’s a promising start, even if we’re short on details and an actual timeline for making it happen.
The focus is on three areas:
Instagram Shops. While there were no specific details, it’s estimated the experience would be improved for smaller creators.
Affiliate sales. Creators “should be able to get a cut of the sales of things that they're recommending and we should build up an affiliate recommendation marketplace to enable that to all happen.”
Marketplace. The plan is for Instagram to help match up-and-coming influencers with brand sponsors on the platform.
👆Click Thru
📲 T-Pain is literally all of us who have at some point realized there is a DM request folder on Instagram — minus the part where Viola Davis, Diplo or Fergie are leaving messages. "I've been accidentally straight up ignoring all these people for like 2 years." (Here’s how to find your message requests on Instagram.)
❤️ Cameras caught an adorable moment between Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff — and Twitter melted.
🍳 There’s a psychology and strategy behind marketing pretty products on Instagram and these cookware brands have found success with a millennial pink-infusion of familiarity, authenticity and aspiration.
🍽 Epicurious used Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to announce they’d cut out new beef recipes in an effort to encourage more sustainable food options. Predictably their comments were a hot meaty mess. But in a switcheroo worthy of a Folgers coffee commercial, the editors revealed they’d pulled the plug on beef over a year ago and audiences had embraced the plant-based alternatives instead.
🦄 I’d happily read another 2,000 words on the essence of ✨ vibes ✨ — artfully described as moments of audiovisual eloquence — and TikTok’s role in their revival in this New Yorker piece.
🍔 Amy Brown, the woman who developed Wendy’s sassy brand voice on Twitter, is burnt out. If you’re having a rough week/year, you might appreciate her perspective.
🔨 Resources
📩 How do you stay on top of updates? It’s a question I get a lot so I wanted to share a list of the newsletters on my subscription list for daily or weekly headlines about creators and platforms:
Buzzfeed's Please Like Me newsletter: A look at the influencers battling for your eyeballs
The Information’s Creator Economy newsletter: news, commentary and financial analysis on the creators and companies driving the industry
Insider’s Influencer newsletter: rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms
Influence Weekly: influencer marketing industry updates
Embedded: your essential guide to what’s good on the internet
Geekout Newsletter: the ultimate newsletter for busy social media managers
🤗 May is mental health awareness month, so in honor of serenity and setting boundaries here are some creator tips pulled from Phoebe Parke’s Live interview with Team Instagram.
Set boundaries and community guidelines for your account: “This is behavior I expect on my page. I get to decide what happens and what doesn’t.”
Create a FAQ post of frequently asked questions so you can avoid the same DM over and over again.
Take the weekend off. “There are days I don’t post and that’s OK.” When you finally get the opportunity to be IRL social again, be present in those moments and stay off your phone. Unfollows will happen but that’s a normal part of Instagram and not a punishment for taking time for yourself.
