How To Create A LinkedIn Event

According to LinkedIn data, the chances of people accepting connection requests increase 2X if the users have met face-to-face. With that in mind, LinkedIn has formally launched Events so that users can create and join professional events, invite their connections, have conversations with other attendees, and stay in touch after the event ends.

To create an Event:

1. Visit the left-side panel of the LinkedIn newsfeed (or profile dropdown on mobile) and click the + symbol next to Events

2. Add event details including: Name, date, time, location, venue detail such as floor and room, an event description, and URL

3. Choose the event’s privacy settings. Events can be public to everyone or private so that only invitees with the direct link can view.

Once an event is created, personal connections can be invited using filters such as location, company, industry, and school. 

Leading up to the event, the creator can easily track attendees and share post updates – much like Facebook’s Events option.

Instagram Scheduling with Facebook's Creator Studio

Instagram scheduling has been a pain point for social media managers for years – leaving marketers dependent on clunky and expensive third-party apps. This week, there’s a collective jump for joy within the industry as Facebook rolled out native Instagram scheduling capabilities via Creator Studio.

The new scheduling feature is only available for Instagram business accounts that are linked to a Facebook brand page. It’s worth making the connection as doing so unlocks other benefits.

Instagram Content Library

Users can see all content that has been published on Instagram (including videos, photos, carousel posts, stories, and IGTV videos) through the content library. Here, posts can be drafted, scheduled, viewed, archived, and sorted by date or within a specific timeframe. Note: Instagram Stories cannot be scheduled yet.

Post Insights

All of Instagram post and story insights available via the mobile app are accessible through Creator Studio as well. This is the first time Instagram analytic data is available from desktop. Users can track the number of interactions, profile visits, accounts reached, follows, impressions, website clicks, likes, comments, shares, bookmarks, and (for stories) how users navigated while interacting with or replied to content.

Page & Audience Insights

Instagram insights from the last seven days are also available through Creator Studio. These include the number of posts made, totals for each interaction taken on the account, the number of accounts reached, and total impressions. Followers can be measured via age or gender breakdowns and the top five countries and cities where an account’s followers live is also displayed.

Unlike Facebook post, page and audience insights, Instagram analytics cannot be exported at this time.

Snapchat Launches Instant Create

Advertising on Snapchat comes with a lot of pressure. The platform’s users are not highly welcoming of ads and when they must view them, they expect to see high-quality content. In an attempt to lure advertisers and ease their worries, Snapchat has introduced Instant Create – a simplified ad creation process that enables brands to launch a campaign in three simple steps.

One of the primary features of Instant Create is that Snapchat will automatically pull photo content from a business’s website and position the images within their most popular ad template layout. For those lacking design resources, this could be a golden opportunity to reach Snap Inc.’s key 13-24 year-old demographic.

The new ad creation process is outlined below:

1. Select your advertising objective (website visits, app installs, or app visits)

2. Enter your business website and position imported images

3. Select your target audience and publish

To get started with Instant Create, sign up for a Snapchat ad account.

Want To Target Your Facebook Followers? You Can't.

Facebook has removed the ability to target page fans with ads. Now, only people who recently engaged with your page can be targeted through paid advertising. Paired with platform's algorithmic approach to organic reach distribution, this means that it is essentially no longer possible to reach your entire page following.

While that may sound disturbing, the change will positively affect how custom and lookalike audiences are generated. Instead of building an audience similar to your current connections, audiences will be made up of relevant, engaged users.

The move furthers Facebook's strategic message that marketers should focus on meaningful engagement as opposed to follower counts.

Facebook Implements a Problematic Content Plan: Remove, Reduce, Inform

Scammers, fake news creators, and suggestive content creators will have a range of new Facebook features to deal with in the coming weeks. With attempts to remove contentious content from the site, reduce the reach of those that aren’t taken down, and inform audiences when they’ve encountered such material all in the works, we’re breaking the action items below.

Holding Groups Accountable

As Facebook users and brands shift their conversations away from the news feed and into niche groups, the company is attempting to thwart the spread of offensive, divisive, and inaccurate content that may get shared – even privately. In a blog post, Facebook claims that an unnamed technology allows them to, “proactively detect many types of violating content posted in groups before anyone reports them and sometimes before few people, if any, even see them.”

What group administrators and moderators should know is that they will now be held accountable for posts that violate the platform’s Community Standards. When member posts contain violations, Facebook will look at who approved the content for Group visibility and could remove the entire group if they believe the admins have acted recklessly.

To help keep track of these violations, a new Group Quality feature for admins (similar to the Page Quality tab that was introduced earlier this year) will provide an overview of flagged content and false news found in the group. A group with multiple violations, or one that shares links to malicious or false news websites, will have their reach downgraded.

In addition to these new features, members will soon be able to remove all of their posts and comments from a group should they choose to leave it.

Penalizing Fringe Link Sharing

For years, fringe publishers have been using shocking, divisive, and partisan headlines to provoke engagement on Facebook. Now, articles from those sites will begin to see a decrease in reach as the platform stifles their influence on the news feed.

The new ranking signal, known as Click-Gap, “looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on news feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.” In short, the algorithm will now cross-check the performance of links both on and off Facebook in order to determine if its hosting website is reputable.

Moderating Risky Instagram Content

Even if your photo and video content doesn’t unequivocally violate Instagram’s Community Guidelines, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Posts that the platform finds inappropriate (including sexually or violently suggestive content) will now be excluded from Explore and hashtag search pages.  

Bringing Verification to Messenger

As Messenger use increases, Facebook will begin displaying Verified Badges on conversations with brand pages that have earned the checkmark. The move hopes to help users avoid scammers that use fake accounts to pretend to be someone they are not.

Once those fake accounts are identified, users will be able to easily block them through an updated block option and list of settings that will help them control whether people “such as friends of your friends, people with your phone number or people who follow you on Instagram” can reach users via Messenger at all.