Welcome to Major Tom’s monthly update on social media.
We know that it can be challenging to keep up with the constant changes that take place, so we scour the web for the most noteworthy news from the social media sector so that you can keep track of the developments that might impact your organization.
So, from LinkedIn catching up with live streaming to a new Instagram Story Sticker, these are the social media stories that caught our eye this past month.
Goodbye Facebook Ad Set budget
When Campaign Budget Optimization launched back in November 2017, it was an instant asset to marketers looking to maximize their campaign results. Fast forward 15 months later and Facebook now plans to centralize its budget allocation at the campaign level in September 2019.
This will allow Facebook to better allocate a marketing budget to the best performing ad set. While this update will remove any ability to set budgets at the ad set level, marketers will maintain the power to set a minimum and maximum spend at the ad set level.
What should you do?
While Campaign Budget Optimization makes a marketer’s life easier, it’s by no means a “set it and forget it” tactic. Facebook will ensure the best ad set gets the most budget, but ad set optimization is still required for any campaign. For instance, if you notice your best-performing ad set still has a high cost per conversion, then your audience needs to be tweaked.
LinkedIn launches “LinkedIn Live”
With video now being the medium of choice for marketers distributing content, LinkedIn has finally joined the rest of the social networks by introducing its own live streaming product, “LinkedIn Live”. Now, LinkedIn users will have the additional capability to share from conferences, product launches and conduct Q&A’s.
At this time, however, LinkedIn Live will launch in the United States and by invite-only. An application process is being set up for anyone else who may be interested in testing the new product.
![example of LinkedIn Live screen](jpg/sm-update-blog-1118c.jpg)
What should you do?
If you are a B2B company looking for new ways to engage your potential clientele, then LinkedIn Live is for you. Opposite of standard videos, an audience is more forgiving of live content when it comes to post-production expectations. This allows you more leniency for experimentation and requires less resourcing. Start identifying opportunities or events you may have coming up to utilize the live streaming when it becomes available to you.
Instagram Story Quiz Stickers
With Instagram Stories still killing it in terms of growth and fun new features in 2018, only meant there had to be more innovation coming in 2019. Instagram has not disappointed – introducing Quiz Stickers.
Quiz Sticker will be a new way to boost engagement by allowing the audience to choose from multiple answer options. This is a nice addition to the Stickers for Stories selection which has become extremely popular with it being a fun and easy way to boost engagement on Instagram Stories. With it not yet available, it’s hard to know the limitations of the Sticker (ie. question limits). However, it’s easy to anticipate how useful a product like this can be for awareness campaigns.
![example of Instagram stories questions](jpg/sm-update-blog-23d9c.jpg)
What should you do?
To prepare yourselves for the eventual launch, start brainstorming ways you could make use of this new, fun feature. For instance, quizzes lend themselves well to educating people and crowdsourcing feedback.
Missed out on the last social media update? Discover the changes along with some helpful tips here.