Social Media Weekly 30 June 2021
YouTube Released Guidelines to Build Audience
Product Manager for Recommendations at YouTube Rachel Alves posted a video outlining some tips on building an audience with YouTube. These aren’t new tips by any means, but it’s a good refresher in case we’ve forgotten our ways or if you’re new to this.
1.Build Your Channel Around an Audience
Before we start, we should sit down and figure out who will be watching our channel, what they’re interested in, and how those interests are likely to change over the course of 6 months, a year, and more if you’re in this for the long term.
Alves said that short-term trends can get people through the door, but won’t keep them in your channel over time. Aligning with key interests and offering value that your audience is interested in will attract new audiences and keep old ones coming back.
2. Find Your Niche
This, to be honest, can be harder than we think. Finding the right niche that’s narrow enough to avoid big competitors but wide enough to still have an audience is tricky.
Alves provides an example of a cooking channel. One can either go wide and cook anything under the sun, or focus on certain cuisines. One can also focus on certain key ingredients or go towards the niche of cooking budget-conscious food under $10.
The key here is not to go too deep into your niche that nobody would be interested in, or that you can’t find enough long-term content for your channel.
3. Watch Lots of Videos
Alves says, and we totally agree, that knowing your market and competitors is the best way to stay aware of what’s going on around you. What better way than to watch a lot of content that is as similar to yours as possible.
Find out how they structure their videos, what leads to greater engagement, and more.
4. Create and Establish Your Brand
Having strong and consistent branding will really help your channel stand out among others especially on the Discovery screen. Think about fonts, colors, and icons that best represent your channel and what you do. Even look at the description and channel trailers to help draw curiosity and attention.
5. Be Consistent
The last tip by Alves, and probably also the most important, is to always show up with new content. The best way to get repeated viewership and not be forgotten is to keep creating new content regularly.
This part connects with points 1 and 2 where you would need to plan out topics and discussions that can last a long time.
Channels also need to evolve over time according to market and audience requirements. Maturing and growing up as a channel is part and parcel of what makes a journey great for both the creator and their audience.
Facebook Expands Stories Real Estate
The Instagram Stories real estate is an incredibly valuable one, but the same can’t be said about Facebook’s Stories which are still not quite there yet. In order to boost the value of this section, Facebook has been seen testing the ability to include display options that include Instagram Reels and in-progress video and audio Rooms.
This also works as a good way to increase the visibility of Instagram Reels and Rooms content in order to better compete with TikTok and Clubhouse.
For businesses that are contemplating Reels and Rooms as possible branding avenues, you will be treated to bonus discoverability, reach, and engagement by riding on Facebook’s goals.
Having just brought ads to Reels last week, Instagram is pushing for monetization for their creators in order to attract new and keep existing ones.
Instagram Considering Allowing Posts from Desktop
After Alessandro Paluzzi spotted Instagram testing the ability to post from desktop, Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch.
An Instagram spokesperson said that “We know many people access Instagram from their computer, and we are now testing the ability to create a Feed post on Instagram with their desktop browser.”
It appears that the company saw an increase in people using their desktops to browse Instagram rather than their mobile devices, which prompted the need to build such a function. A data scientist from Instagram also said that users who use both interfaces spend more time on each interface compared to those who use each interface exclusively. This means Instagram isn’t worried about attention cannibalization from the desktop version.
This ability will greatly help creators who create and post content outside of Facebook’s Creator Studio. Typing on a full keyboard will significantly reduce typo errors, for starters.
Twitter Can Now Share to IG Stories
The day of sharing Twitter screenshots is over because you can now directly share them to IG Stories with a link back. This is part of Twitter’s redistribution and quoting author efforts outside of its platform. It also helps people go into Twitter to get the full version of a short caption, which in cases before is one of the ways to spread misinformation.
This sharing control works both ways, as both Twitter and Instagram are working on letting us share Instagram posts via tweet. After many years of Social Media companies locking themselves out from cross-platform sharing, they are finally beginning to work together again.
Social Media Weekly podcast is available on Anchor.fm, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and more. Our full videos are available on YouTube. And we post bits and clips on Instagram and Facebook.
