Facebook Announces 3Q Earnings, LinkedIn Offers New Integration Tools, and More Social Media News

Also in social media news, November 2018: Instagram tests options to promote stories on business pages, Pinterest unveils updates to self-serve ad tools, and Facebook tests advanced analytics for Instagram.

November was the month of social media updates and the development of new tools aimed at helping brands. Though Facebook has vowed to boost content for individuals – think posts from friends and family – they are also making significant strides in helping businesses gain reach and increase engagement after a slow start to the calendar year.

For example, Instagram tested options to help promote Stories on Business pages. What does this mean for your company? Soon brands will have the ability to get Stories in front of new audiences, increasing followers and engagement. Building lasting relationships with prospects on social media means presenting your brand in a visually engaging way while linking them to useful and relevant information.

Building lasting relationships with prospects on social media means presenting your brand in a visually engaging way while linking them to useful and relevant information. Click To Tweet

Here’s your social media news for November 2018.

Facebook announces third-quarter earnings report

Facebook just revealed it has 1.49 billion daily active users in its quarterly earnings report. When you combine Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp, monthly active users total 2.6 billion. Though these numbers are the highest of any social media platform, Facebook significantly dropped active users in Europe last quarter.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, noted a growing shift in social media engagement including an increased focus on private messaging and stories. Another shift? Video. “We’re seeing video grow dramatically across the ecosystem, and while Watch is now growing very quickly, we’re well behind YouTube and still working to make this a unique people-centric experience.” writes Zuckerberg. Facebook will also continue to improve safety and security measures to address increased threats.

YouTube premieres now available to all users

YouTube premieres is a feature that lets you and your viewers watch and experience a new video together, much like a movie or TV show premiere. Premiering your video allows you to schedule a video upload and to create buzz around the video with a shareable watch page. Premieres originally debuted to specific creators but is now available to all users. Businesses can invite fans to use Live Chat as it counts down to the premiere of a new video that users can watch together while answering questions and responding to comments.

LinkedIn offers new integration tool with Google Campaign Manager

LinkedIn announced a measurement integration tool with Google Campaign Manager, a part of Google Marketing Platform. This new tool allows businesses to see LinkedIn ad performance alongside other paid advertising, and get attribution for LinkedIn ads across all impressions and interactions. “Earlier this year, we launched this integration for a few ad formats, but today – we are launching it for Sponsored Content,” writes LinkedIn.

Instagram tests Promote: a new way to share Stories on business pages

Instagram is giving businesses a new way to share Stories without much effort. Promote, a new ad type, allows admins to “auto-target users similar to their followers, specific locations, or use all of Instagram’s targeting parameters to inject their stories into the queue of more users.” The ads will also link back to a business’s Instagram profile or webpage. Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch that Promote for Stories is similar to Facebook’s Boost option that lets businesses pay to show their posts to more users instantly.

Facebook tests advanced analytics for Instagram

Facebook introduced Instagram Analytics, a new part of Facebook Analytics. With Instagram Insights, businesses can already see how audiences interact with posts and Stories, but what happens next and what does that mean for your business? Now with Instagram Analytics, businesses can track “lifetime value and retention rates for people who do or don’t interact with their content and create audience segments to see if people who commented on a particular post generate more value for them.” They can also analyze how audiences overlap with website visitors and Facebook followers.

Pinterest updates self-serve ad tools

Pinterest is working to make it easier for brands to reach the right audiences with their ads. In October, Pinterest unveiled updates to its Self-Serve Ads Manager to streamline the campaign creation process and give companies tools to track their progress on the app. “Over the past year, we’ve used your feedback to redesign our ad tools so businesses on Pinterest can define and size audiences, create ads and pull reports with ease.” The new features are currently available in English-speaking markets with a Pinterest business profile.