Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 17 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
ICYMI Tuesday: 3 Essential Search Traffic Checkups
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Contents
I. FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM REELS FEATURE ADDITIONS
II. GOOGLE UPDATES AUTHOR MARKUP GUIDANCE
III. TIKTOK UPDATES TRENDS DISCOVERY CENTER
IV. GOING CLEAR ON TIKTOK?
V. INSTAGRAM REALLY WANTS YOU TO WATCH REELS
VI. FINALLY, INSTAGRAM MIGHT LET US ENLARGE PROFILE PHOTOS
I. FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM REELS FEATURE ADDITIONS
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram says it’s rolling out new Reels tools on both platforms. “These updates will not only make it easier to make and edit Reels, but also to get discovered by new audiences.”
New Facebook Reels features:
“Create and schedule Facebook Reels on desktop” via Creator Studio
“Clip to Reels. … This feature will let you create clips from published, long-form videos and edit them seamlessly into a Facebook Reel via Creator Studio”
“Enhance your Facebook Reels with new audio tools.” i.e. Voiceovers, synching videos to songs and digital voices that read the text in your Reels (a very popular TikTok feature)
“…we’re rolling out suggested Reels in Feed globally to help you get discovered by people around the world”
New Instagram Reels features:
“Extend your video up to 90 seconds” (this has been in testing for weeks and some of you have probably seen it)
“Interact with your audience using … poll, quiz and emoji slider stickers”
“Import your own audio” (on videos of at least 5 seconds)
“Get inspired by Templates. Templates let you easily and quickly create your own reel using the same structure as a reel you've watched.”
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II. GOOGLE UPDATES AUTHOR MARKUP GUIDANCE
“To help Google best understand and represent the author of the content, we recommend following these best practices when specifying authors in markup.”
There’s a short list of best practices in the above link, followed by this example of what your code should look like:
🛠 Why does this matter? For search purposes, it’s always a good idea to follow Google’s guidelines. This will make it easier for them to determine who the author of an article is.
To check this on your own site:
Go to a page with an author/byline
Right click somewhere and click “View Page Source” (I’m using Chrome)
Type Command + F (Mac)/Ctrl + F (PC) and type “author” with the quotation marks.
Find what should be the author(s)’s name(s) and check your markup against what Google recommends.
If your markup isn’t up to snuff, talk to your developer or someone else who has access to change it.
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III. TIKTOK UPDATES TRENDS DISCOVERY CENTER
TikTok already had a trends discovery tool, but it appears to have been updated sometime yesterday.
🛠 Why does this matter? Now you can easily research – by country – which hashtags, songs, creators and videos are most popular in the last 7 and 30 days, respectively. The idea is that you use said songs/hashtags and are inspired by the creators/videos for your own posts
You have to sign up for an Ads account, which is easy to do.
My favorite part is the music section, where you can browse all the songs in the TikTok library by theme, genre and mood.
Is this analysis useful? Help spread the word.
IV. GOING CLEAR ON TIKTOK?
TikTok is testing something called “Clear Mode” with some users:
🛠 Why does this matter? On the surface, this basically means that all the interaction buttons and other potentially distracting things on your screen are taken away. On a deeper level, I think it shows a lot of confidence on TikTok’s part.
While most platforms want to make it as easy as possible for users to interact, thus boosting their connections and screen time, it’s as if TikTok is saying, You know what, if you just want to sit back and watch content without feeling pressured to interact in any way, here you go. We aren’t thirsty for your interactions. We just want you to have a good experience and stay as long as you want.
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V. INSTAGRAM REALLY WANTS YOU TO WATCH REELS
I came across this interstitial while scrolling through Stories the other day (click the tweet for the full photo):
🛠 Why does this matter? If you read this newsletter on a regular basis or simply have access to the internet, you’ll know that Instagram has gone all in on Reels in an effort to keep up with TikTok. This is just another way they’re shoving them d—er, encouraging us to watch, and therefore, create, as many of them as possible.
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VI. FINALLY, INSTAGRAM MIGHT LET US ENLARGE PROFILE PHOTOS
One minor frustration I have always had with Instagram is the inability to enlarge someone’s profile photo.
According to Alessandro Paluzzi, they’re testing the ability to do just that:
🛠 Why does this matter? It’s more aesthetic than anything, but it certainly boosts the importance of having a high-quality, well-cropped profile photo.
Did I miss anything important this week? Let me know below in the comments.
See you Tuesday for a practical tip and an in-depth analysis in the world of digital content strategy.