Twitter Adds Secondary 'Requests' Inbox for DMs

Taking cues from Facebook, Twitter has announced a new DM inbox system which will sort your incoming messages into those from people you follow and those from people you don't, which will go to a new ‘Requests’ folder.

5 Reasons Why a Social Media Content Calendar Is Important For Business

Now that you know that your social media marketing plan requires a stellar content strategy to support it, you may find yourself overwhelmed. Creating and publishing great content can be a lot of work, so you need to get organized and figure out a schedule that works for your business. When you’ve got a content calendar you can commit to, social media marketing becomes a lot less daunting.
Creating a plan, a template, or a calendar simply means that you make all the necessary information available to all the relevant stakeholders in one place. It takes in all your channels and resources and organizes them in a way that makes it easy to access information you need when you need it.

A Quick Guide to Using Twitter for eCommerce

Despite the ever-increasing popularity of new social media and communication apps like Snapchat, Instagram and others, Twitter remains one of the most effective tools that business owners can use to build brand awareness, engage with current and future customers and grow their businesses. 
An active brand presence on Twitter can have a significant impact on the purchasing behaviors of online shoppers. As explained in a 2015 report from research firm Millward Brown:

Instagram Announces New Option to Save Live Broadcasts

When Instagram introduced the addition of a live-streaming option to their app back in November, many (including myself) questioned whether live-streaming would fit into the Instagram process. But Instagram saw a unique use-case for live, catering to their younger audience.
As noted by Instagram Live product manager Shilp Sarkar, they’d had taken note of a new live-streaming trend being facilitated by group streaming app Houseparty, where younger users were turning to live not as a broadcasting option, necessarily, but as a virtual hangout.

6 Ways to Use Instagram Stories to Boost Audience Engagement

Social storytelling is the latest content trend. Starting with Snapchat's innovative 'Stories' format, the process of connecting various content pieces into a more comprehensive post has caught on, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all implementing their own variations on the Stories format.
Instagram Stories is the most direct duplicate of Snapchat's function, and it provides brands with a whole new consideration in their Instagram marketing process.
​Sо how саn your business use Instagram Stories to better engage your audience?
Here are some ideas and tips based on our experience.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Instagram

Instagram offers incredible opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reach their target audiences.
But as more and more brands join Instagram and the feed becomes more competitive, it can be harder to stand out.
Imagine being able to reach the specific groups of Instagram users you want to connect with, engage them, and convert them into customers.
Well, that’s totally possible!
In late 2015, Instagram opened up Instagram ads. Using the Facebook advertising system, marketers can now reach any specific segment of Instagram’s 600+ million users. And with 400 million people using Instagram every day, Instagram ads have become an enticing avenue for brands looking to increase engagement (and profits, too).
We’d love to help you get started and running with Instagram ads. In this post, we’ll go through all you need to know to create your first Instagram ad, measure your ad performance, and improve your results.

How to Get Verified on Twitter

The blue verified checkmark is a symbol of trust on Twitter. Continue reading to discover why getting verified on Twitter is important—and how you can accomplish this.

See Why You Shouldn't Buy Instagram Followers

You could grow your Instagram following the honest way—crafting a thoughtful strategy, setting smart goals, sharing great content, and engaging your audience. Or you could take the quick and easy path and join the dark side of Instagram marketing.
You could buy Instagram followers.
We created a dummy account to test that tactic to find out whether or not it’s worth it (spoiler alert: it totally is it if you want an audience of spambots peddling softcore porn). Jump ahead to the results of our experiment or continue reading to learn about the “why” and “how” of buying Instagram followers.

How To Build Your Brand On Instagram: 8 Steps To Double Your Following

With more than 600 million users a month, the once little and lowly Instagram platform has become a powerful networking engine. Particularly as visual media of every variety gains steam, Instagram gives entrepreneurs the power to grow and promote their brands more effectively than ever before. But how?

3 Surefire Ways to Grow Your Snapchat Follower Base

The very best way to grow your Snapchat following and keep them engaged is by posting quality content every single day. Quality content can be almost anything as long as it’s entertaining or educational.

For example you could post tips like "5 Ways to Be More Productive in the Morning", or you could post a tutorial like "3 Steps to Setting Up Your New Widget". You could also post product reviews like "An Unboxing of the Newest Best Phone" or a giveaway for your fans.

You could even simply post behind the scenes snaps of your office if your colleagues often do funny or educational things.

Here are some snaps from the Foundr office where I spend my days

Facebook is adding the Stories feature that Instagram took from Snapchat

The new feature will allow users to share ephemeral photos and videos in a slideshow that disappears 24 hours later. Essentially, the same way Stories function on Instagram and Snapchat.

In August, Instagram launched “Instagram Stories” to encourage people to share more moments throughout their day. The feature pretty much took a page directly out of Snapchat’s playbook, and now, Facebook is adding Stories to its main app, directly above the feed making it nearly impossible to ignore.

According to TechCrunch, the new feature will allow users to share ephemeral photos and videos in a slideshow that disappears 24 hours later. Essentially, the same way Stories function on Instagram and Snapchat.

It was recently announced that 150 million Instagrammers use Stories on a daily basis, which is about 25% of all Instagram users. With Facebook quickly approaching 2 billion users, Stories are likely going to be a big part of the Facebook experience in 2017.

44 Instagram Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About

Instagram users Like 4.2 billion posts every day. Let that sink in: 4.2 billion.

That’s a lot of double taps.

It’s no secret that Instagram is a power player in the world of social, but with a whopping 600 million active monthly users and 150 million daily users on Stories alone, it’s clear that businesses can’t afford to ignore the photo-and video-sharing app.

Get your business a bigger piece of the action—and make the most of your efforts—with these little-known features, tricks, and straight-up Instagram hacks.

The Facebook Algorithm: What You Need to Know to Boost Organic Reach

Facebook boasts a whopping 1.65 billion monthly active users. It remains the most-used social media site among all ages, accounting for one in every six minutes spent online and one in every five minutes spent on mobile.
Simply put: everyone uses Facebook and they use it a lot.
The Facebook algorithm determines what any one of those users sees in their News Feed at a given time. To say it has a huge impact on the Facebook experience would be a colossal understatement.
Fortunately, in the last few years Facebook has begun to tell us more and more about how the News Feed algorithm works, what it favors, what it doesn’t, and what it means for business Pages.
Become familiar with these levers and you’ll know which ones to pull to get your content seen by more people. Boosting organic reach is what it’s all about.

How to Write Great Instagram Captions That Drive Engagement

Compelling visuals may be what Instagram is all about, but an effective Instagram caption will push the engagement needle, getting you more Likes and comments. And engagement, dear readers, is key.
With the recent changes to Instagram’s algorithm, posts now appear in feeds “based on the likelihood [the audience] will be interested in the content.” That means that a photo or video with lots of comments and Likes has a better chance of appearing at, or near the top of your followers’ home stream.
In this guide we’ll show you what goes into a great caption and how to go about crafting your own. We’ll also serve up a collection of Instagram caption ideas and examples from the brands that do them best so you can learn from the pros.
If you need help adding, editing, or deleting the caption of an existing post, check out Instagram’s quick how-to guide.

12 Budget-Friendly Video Editing Apps You Can Use For Social Video

Social video has become a pivotal part of any content marketing plan. There is a multitude of platforms to host video content for your business: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vine and Snapchat are all busy competing for video content creators. However, what many marketers find intimidating is the process of video editing—an essential part of getting the high-quality video content to represent your brand.

The trouble is that video editing is a) hard, and b) expensive, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be. In this blog post, I’ll share some of the best cheap video editing apps for iOS and Android that anyone can use to make social video content. You don’t need a giant studio, a limitless budget, or a ten-person production team; sometimes, all it takes is a mobile device, some ideas, and one or two of these video editing apps to create a social video masterpiece.

How to Advertise on Snapchat

There's little debate that Snapchat is the trending app of the moment. The ephemeral content network has gone from 50 million daily active users in early 2014, to 150 million today, and those users are watching more than 10 billion video views on-platform every 24 hours. To put that in perspective, Facebook's serving 8 billion videos views per day, while YouTube, which doesn't release specific daily view counts, is estimated to be facilitating around 5 billion. In addition, the average session time on Snapchat is 25-30 minutes per day, per user,and 60% of users are also creating new content, as opposed to simply being passive consumers.

22 Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About Snapchat

We call them Snapchat hacks because many of the app’s best features are either hidden or just not intuitive. We’re looking at you, black paintbrush. But if you can learn these tricks you’ll have a powerful new arsenal of tools to help take your brand’s Snap game to the next level.
In this guide we’ll teach you how to access these lesser-known features, and uncover a few more that are available only after manipulating the settings on your device.
Let’s get started.

The Do’s and Don’ts of How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are such a prominent part of tech culture today that it’s rare to find anyone who doesn’t know what they are. In fact, the hashtag is so recognized that it was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2010, and the Scrabble Dictionary earlier this year (#standards). Yet even as most people have come to know what they are, many people still don’t understand how to use hashtags.
Hashtags, once your phone’s pound sign, now have a place on most popular social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Vine and Pinterest. The hashtag is likely the most popular means of categorizing content on social media. It makes your own content discoverable and allows you to find relevant content from other people and businesses. The hashtag also allows you to connect with and engage other social media users based on a common theme or interest.

7 Instagram Mistakes Social Media Managers Should Avoid

Instagram has quickly gone from new shoes and new friends to include new products and new businesses. With over 300 million users, it’s not surprising that companies are flocking in droves to the visual platform. Although mostly welcome on Instagram, nobody wants a feed clogged with corporate images and obnoxious advertisements. To maintain and grow Instagram’s value, brands have to make sure they’re not ruining it for the rest of us by making careless blunders or missing the mark with their images and practices. There’s nothing worse than coming off as clueless when your potential audience is heavily composed of 16–24 year olds.

Google launches YouTube Kids app in India

Indian parents with kids who love to spend time on YouTube can now take a sigh of relief.

Google today launched YouTube Kids in India, a special app of the video portal with family-friendly content. The company said it has partnered with several YouTube creators in India for exclusive content for YouTube Kids app. The app is available on both iOS and Android. There's no web version of YouTube Kids.