Merry Christmas, and welcome back to our Social Media News Of The Week section. This time we’ll be digging deeper into the following stories:
TikTok Is Testing New Horizontal, Full-Screen Videos
YouTube’s New Insights Into Shorts And Post Presentation Options
Instagram’s 2022 Recap Templates For Reels
and
An Infographic To Successful Content Marketing For 2023
TikTok Is Testing New Horizontal, Full-Screen Videos
While the rest is trying to take a loan on TikTok’s success by copying everything the platform does, it sure doesn’t make it easy to keep up with its own copycat tools and options designed to maximize engagement in the app.
Take a look at TikTok’s recent experiment, for instance, which is a YouTube-style horizontal full-screen display option, providing a new way to view TikTok videos. As you can see in the photo below, some TikTok videos now have a ‘Full Screen’ button, which prompts users to turn their device to the side to see a full-width display.
And here’s what it looks like if you tilt the screen:
This new option, combined with longer uploads (up to 10 minutes long), gives tons of opportunities for creators to boost engagement and interest in their creations. And, of course, it’s another way for TikTok to fight back against the constant copying of the platform’s main features.
As you might remember, this isn’t the only test TikTok has done over 2022. It has ventured out to try still image carousel posts similar to those on Instagram, brought the opportunity to post longer uploads in the vein of YouTube, and tried the ‘TikTok Now’ option, which is something you’d see on the BeReal app.
It is pretty clear that TikTok is trying to diversify its offerings to maximize its opportunities. And if it includes some forms of replication of other platforms to keep the users from drifting to other apps, so be it – after all, it is TikTok that is the most copied of them.
One thing, though – the constant copying of TikTok evidently pays off for the other platforms. Take, for instance, Instagram’s Reels, which kept plenty of users from downloading TikTok because of Reels’ similar short-type content. And judging from the number of views that TikTok video compilations get on YouTube, it seems that tons of people choose to watch TikTok’s content there instead.
With both Meta and Google reporting a steady rise in popularity for both Reels and Shorts, it seems that copying is still a viable, albeit boring, tactic for product development. And now TikTok is doing the same, continuing the race to be the number one social media platform worldwide.
YouTube’s New Insights Into Shorts And Post Presentation Options
With this year’s last Creator Insider video, YouTube has announced several tweaks and updates for the platform, including a new Shorts metrics display, an expansion on creative posting tools and a new live-streaming info site.
Let’s begin with Shorts metrics – YouTube is making a Shorts remix report that will provide another way to see how your Shorts are performing.
The Shorts remix report is something that highlights all of your Shorts clips that have been used to make other Shorts and displays the times your content has been remixed along with the views those remixes got.
It’s a nice way to track the expanded performance of your Shorts and how they are performing in YouTube’s ecosystem. Bear in mind that the Shorts are viewed by around 1.5 billion users each month, so tracking their performance and expanding your approach to them might be worth considering.
Besides the Shorts remix report, YouTube has also added new metrics in its Key Metrics display in the YouTube Studio, providing even more insight.
This is what YouTube tells about it:
“Currently, impressions are the only metric shown on the key metrics card for posts in the studio. This week, we’ll be adding additional metrics to the card, including likes and subscribers on both mobile and web.”
In short – you’ll be getting more types of data displayed in the app, which might offer a helping hand in tweaking or preparing your strategy.
Another place where YouTube is lending a helping hand is live streaming. For that, it has dedicated a section in the YouTube for Creators website, and in it, you’ll find a range of guides, a heap of insightful tips and pointers for your streaming strategy. So, if you’re leaning towards trying live-streaming, looking at the dedicated section on the YouTube for Creators page might be a good idea.
So while those aren’t some major news from YouTube for 2023, the tweaks and updates are sure handy in tweaking your approach to content and measuring its performance.
Instagram’s 2022 Recap Templates For Reels
A year recap is always a fun thing to do, and when you’re supplied with an exciting template to make a dedicated Reel for it on Instagram, it sure gets even more fun.
So, get ready to check out this year’s Instagram Reels 2022 Recap template, narrated by various celebrities.
The concept here is pretty straightforward as the ‘Create Your 2022 Recap Reel’ option takes you through the process of adding posts and videos you’ve uploaded throughout the year into a dedicated Reels template.
Here’s an official explanation from Instagram:
“After choosing your template and narration, you’ll manually select your own content – videos, photos, and memories – from the past year to feature in your Reel and share with your followers.”
Now, having your memories narrated by someone else might be a bit creepy at times, but hey, it’s Bad Bunny, DJ Khaled, Priah Ferguson, and plenty more celebrities to choose from!
While creating such a Recap Reel is a fun way to celebrate the ending year for anyone, it’s also a good opportunity to show off your achievements if you’re operating a business profile. Think about celebrating your customers, highlighting achievements, or showcasing the wins of 2022.
The recap templates will be available on Instagram for several weeks into 2023. Once the recap is uploaded, it will be displayed in the Reels tab on your profile.
An Infographic To Successful Content Marketing For 2023
Making predictions for an upcoming year is always a fun way to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve – at least you have something to do while pretending to be working.
Sometimes making or searching for such predictions is, in fact, a fortuitous endeavor that not only provides you with something to do while you’re waiting for an office day to come to an end but also gives you some actually useful info.
Take, for instance, this infographic created by the team of Design by Soap sharing some interesting deets on planning your content marketing strategy for 2023.
The plan is pretty straightforward, encompassing such key elements of a strategy as Research, Ideas, Planning, and so on – but you’ll have to take a look at it for yourself to learn more!
