October Social Media Digest
Smarty Social Media
We are a boutique, full-service social media agency specializing in health and technology marketing.
This month, social media continues to see significant innovation, particularly around AI integration and enhanced engagement tools. Platforms are rolling out features that empower brands to streamline interactions, personalize content, and tap into creative potential with minimal technical expertise. In this edition, we explore updates from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and ByteDance’s Lemon8, highlighting how these developments can be leveraged to build stronger connections with audiences and navigate the rapidly shifting digital landscape.
Here’s a look at the top stories and trends shaping social media this month.
Meta Enhances AI Products with New Features for Users and Businesses (via What's Trending)
Meta has rolled out AI-powered tools designed to revolutionize customer engagement through Facebook Messenger. These tools enable businesses to automate responses to frequently asked questions, tailor promotions based on customer behavior, and create more personalized interactions. One of the most valuable aspects of this update is the ability to quickly and efficiently manage high volumes of customer queries, all while maintaining a personalized approach. This new functionality may be especially beneficial for brands that rely heavily on direct communication with their customers, such as retail, service industries, and healthcare providers.
This update is part of Facebook’s broader push toward integrating AI into its platform to enhance user experience and business performance. By using AI to automate the initial stages of customer communication, brands can reduce response times and free up human resources to focus on more complex, value-added tasks. Additionally, businesses can now use Messenger to deliver highly targeted offers and product recommendations, leveraging data collected from customer interactions to drive conversions. However, it’s critical for brands in regulated industries like healthcare to ensure that any customer interactions handled by AI comply with data protection regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, or CCPA.
Smarty’s Take?? For healthcare and regulated industries, start by automating simple tasks like FAQs or appointment scheduling to improve response times. Ensure that AI tools are set up to escalate sensitive conversations to human agents to maintain compliance with data privacy regulations. This approach allows you to balance efficiency with the need for confidentiality, ensuring smooth operations and maintaining trust. For our clients, we’ll strategically implement these AI tools to optimize customer interactions, while tailoring automations to meet industry-specific compliance requirements. This will drive both efficiency and improved customer experiences.
As More Instagram Users Engage with Stories, the App Adds a Comments Feature (via Tech Crunch)
Instagram is rolling out a new feature that allows users to leave public comments on Stories, significantly expanding interaction possibilities. Previously, engagement with Stories was limited to private replies or emoji reactions, making interactions less visible to broader audiences. With this new update, comments left on a Story will be visible to anyone who can view that Story, increasing the potential for public conversation and visibility on a post-by-post basis.
This update is part of Instagram’s continuous push to enhance engagement across all of its formats, turning Stories into a more interactive space similar to standard posts. For businesses, especially in industries that thrive on community engagement, like retail, lifestyle, and healthcare, this added layer of public interaction creates more opportunities for visibility and audience participation. Public comments can foster discussion, provide social proof, and give brands more organic feedback, ultimately driving higher engagement rates.
Smarty’s Take??For healthcare brands, this new feature can be used to encourage patient or customer testimonials, share feedback on medical innovations, or promote discussions around wellness topics. However, it’s important to moderate comments to ensure compliance with health regulations, maintain brand integrity, and avoid misinformation being shared in a public forum. For healthcare and regulated industries, this new feature can increase community engagement, but it’s essential to carefully monitor public comments. Encourage positive feedback and educational discussions, but ensure compliance with health regulations to maintain trust and credibility while leveraging the visibility of public interactions.
YouTube Unveils a Range of New Features at its ‘Made On’ Event (via Social Media Today)
At the Made On YouTube 2024 event, YouTube announced nine exciting new features aimed at helping creators produce better content, foster deeper connections with their communities, and expand their monetization opportunities.
New features include:?
Dream Screen (with Google DeepMind’s Veo): Enhances YouTube Shorts by using AI to create more realistic backgrounds and standalone video clips for content.
Inspiration Tab: Upgraded with AI-powered suggestions to help creators generate ideas, titles, and thumbnails based on audience engagement and their own content.
Communities: Enables creators to create dedicated spaces on their channels for fans to share and engage with content.
Community Hub: AI-enhanced tools to streamline comment replies and help creators manage large volumes of audience interactions.
Auto-Dubbing: Expanding to more creators, allowing them to easily dub videos in multiple languages, broadening global reach.
Hype: A feature allowing fans to promote smaller creators by hyping their videos, helping boost visibility.
Jewels-Powered Gifts: Allows viewers to purchase digital gifts during livestreams, providing creators with an additional revenue stream.
YouTube Shopping Expansion: Expands to Southeast Asia, enabling creators to promote products more widely.
Big Screen Experience: Optimizes content for TV screens with new features like organizing videos into seasons and episodes.
Smarty’s Take??YouTube’s new features offer significant potential for healthcare and regulated industries by simplifying content creation and expanding global reach. Auto-dubbing allows for easy multilingual content, ensuring accessibility, while tools like Inspiration tab and AI insights help generate educational, compliant content with minimal resources. Visual tools like Dream Screen and Veo reduce production complexity, enabling the creation of high-quality, engaging Shorts. We’ll incorporate these features into client strategies to enhance content accessibility, engagement, and compliance, helping brands reach broader audiences efficiently.
领英推荐
Snap’s New AI Feature Lets You Create Snapchat Lenses by Simply Describing Them (via Tech Crunch)
Snapchat has unveiled an innovative AI-powered feature that allows users to create custom AR Lenses by simply typing a description of what they want. This tool transforms user inputs into fully functional augmented reality experiences, streamlining the creative process and making Lens creation more accessible to all users, not just developers. This feature opens up new opportunities for individuals and brands to generate personalized, interactive content quickly and without technical expertise, boosting engagement and creative possibilities on the platform.
As part of Snapchat’s ongoing investment in AI and AR technology, this feature enhances user creativity and helps businesses create unique branded experiences. For industries focused on audience engagement, such as retail, entertainment, and healthcare, these custom Lenses can be used to build more immersive and memorable campaigns. By simplifying AR creation, Snapchat is expanding the reach of interactive content, empowering brands to connect with audiences in more creative, personal ways.
Smarty’s Take?? Snap’s AI Lens creation tool democratizes AR content, enabling businesses to craft personalized, interactive experiences quickly. For brands, especially in customer-facing industries, this tool provides an opportunity to boost engagement with easy-to-create, branded Lenses. This aligns with Snapchat’s strategy to integrate AI into its platform, making AR experiences more accessible and a core part of interactive marketing strategies. Brands should experiment with this feature to create fun, unique experiences that drive user interaction and strengthen brand visibility.
As TikTok Ban Heads to Court, ByteDance’s Lemon8 Surges (via Tech Crunch)
As TikTok faces legal challenges in the U.S., ByteDance’s alternative platform, Lemon8, is experiencing a surge in popularity. Lemon8 is a blend of Instagram and Pinterest, focused on lifestyle content such as fashion, wellness, beauty, and travel. This app has become a refuge for creators concerned about TikTok’s uncertain future and a new opportunity for brands to reach niche audiences in more visual, community-focused ways.
Lemon8’s rise reflects ByteDance’s strategy to diversify its portfolio and minimize the risk of a TikTok ban impacting its overall business. With its focus on visual storytelling and curated content, Lemon8 offers a fresh avenue for brands to engage with users in a more targeted, aesthetic-driven environment.
Smarty’s Take?? Lemon8 presents a unique opportunity for brands, especially those in lifestyle and wellness sectors, to explore a visually-driven platform. As TikTok's future remains uncertain, we recommend clients continue to diversify their social strategies and hold on any major launch of TikTok as a new channel until it's fate is clear. This platform’s focus on community engagement and niche content allows brands to build deeper connections with highly targeted audiences, creating authentic and creative storytelling opportunities in a fresh, emerging space.
Top 5 Takeaways:?
BONUS CONTENT!
Hootsuite releases social media benchmarks for the healthcare industry (via Hootsuite)
Hootsuite has released its Q3 2024 social media benchmarks, offering critical insights for healthcare organizations looking to improve their social strategies. By analyzing key metrics such as posting frequency, engagement rates, and follower growth across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, healthcare marketers can fine-tune their efforts to better connect with their audiences.
Key areas benchmarked include:
? Posting frequency across platforms
? Engagement rates
? Best times to post
? Most engaging content types
? Follower growth rates
These benchmarks are invaluable for healthcare companies aiming to remain competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. They provide a performance yardstick to help brands assess whether their social media presence is aligned with industry standards.
Smarty’s Take ??For healthcare marketers, these benchmarks offer a data-driven approach to refining content strategies. By using these insights, we will align posting schedules, content types, and engagement tactics to match what is most effective in the healthcare industry. For future strategies, we’ll focus on adjusting content to platform-specific trends, ensuring high engagement and compliance with regulatory standards. Understanding the best times to post and the most effective content types will allow us to fine-tune client campaigns for maximum impact, while also optimizing growth across various platforms. These benchmarks will serve as a foundation for future social media planning, ensuring that our strategies are both competitive and tailored specifically to the healthcare space.
Thank you for reading this month’s Social Media Digest! We hope you found the updates insightful and actionable. If there’s a particular topic or platform you’d like us to explore more next month, let us know.