The Digital Updates: August Issue

Hey squad,

Happy Friday to you! It's the first day of a new month so you know what that means; it's time to round up all the biggest updates of the past month! As usual, Instagram didn't take a night off with the updates and tests, not to mention TikTok joining the party with a feature people have been begging for, so there's plenty waiting for you below!

Here on LinkedIn Newsletters Got a Glow-up!

LinkedIn newsletter creation got a fresh update, making it even easier for you to share your insights and knowledge. Now, you can manage multiple newsletters all in one place! So if you’ve got different audiences or topics, this is really going to help you segment those out and get hyper-targeted with your audience. They’ve also given the article editor a glow-up, making it a smoother editing and publishing experience.

Some of the other updates include:

• Host multiple (up to 5) newsletters to expand and segment your audience
• Save your articles in progress as drafts to get final approval
• Schedule your articles to go live when your audience is most active
• Add an SEO title and description to boost your reach
• Auto-follows from newsletter subscriptions to grow your page

We used the new article editor to write this and so far so good!

Threads Hit Desktops Around the World

Meta announced that Threads has come to the web and is slowly rolling out now. It looks like we’ll be able to view, post and engage with Threads from your Desktop PC. But is it a little too late? We’ve got access to it and so far it’s looking a little basic, but if it saves us some time we’re here for it!

TikTok is Bringing the Christmas Cheer Early with Their 2023 Holiday Marketing Guide

TikTok released the guide full of goodies including how people are using the app, a calendar of key dates and a fantastic guide to help you plan out your marketing funnel over the busy period. You can download your copy here.

TikTok is Finally Letting Users Save Drafts

TikTok drafts can finally be downloaded which gives anyone creating on the platform more flexibility to download their own content without the watermark, share with others and publish across platforms without third-party platforms.

Adam Mosseri Shared Some Amazing Deets During His FAQ Session

We gotta applaud Mosseri for his transparency, he really shared some super valuable info that we didn't expect to hear like:

• Meta isn’t interested in bringing in hashtags to Threads anytime soon due to a bunch of different reasons (including spam filter difficulty)
• The importance of focusing on “public conversations” on Threads to see success
• He explained that they’re trying to find the right balance for Instagram given how people are using Instagram. He shared that people post more photos than videos and people are consistently more interested in watching videos than looking at photos
• He even went as far as to admit that they’ve pushed too hard at times, and gotten it right other times. But it’s a work in progress! Their goal is to make the platform more interactive.

All the Latest Instagram Updates

In a surprise to no one, Instagram is still going hard with the updates and has released a bunch this past month. There are HEAPS so we've collected a bunch below:

• We can now add music to photo carousels
• More people (up to three) can now collaborate on a post or Reel
• The Add Yours sticker has been added to Reels
• Instagram introduced the Template Browser to make content creation a breeze. Simply browse templates by category and organised by Recommended, Trending and templates or audio you’ve saved
• Similar to CapCut, Instagram will soon be rolling out the ability to automatically add text and transitions that were used in the original Reel template

Have you noticed Instagram's New DM Update?

Instagram has brought in a new messaging feature which means that DMs from users not connected within the app will now be limited to text-only invites. Meaning no more unwanted spammy images or videos without consent. The recipient will have to accept the message before any further contact can be made and users will only be able to send a single invite/message request to each user.

All the Latest Tests

There's always something being tested on our fave platforms, so we've grabbed some of the most exciting to share with you:

• Instagram is testing share and comment counts on posts
• Instagram is testing some new ad display options including a "You might like" section
• Instagram is testing a way to tag a group of accounts on Stories
• Instagram is testing a tool to let users add their images and videos to an existing post

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Thanks for coming to cheer practice. We hope you're all caught up. If you feel like an extra session between next month and now, you can sign up for our newsletter?here?and never miss another important update.

XOXO OMD SQUAD