Hi, and welcome back to our Social Media News Of The Week section. This time we’ll be talking about:
Google Tests An Option For Searching Video Segments In YouTube Clips
Snapchat’s Shares Insights On What Motivates Gen Z Consumers
and
Twitter Gives A Sneak-Peek Into Longer Tweets
Google Tests An Option For Searching Video Segments In YouTube Clips
Google is piloting a new test in India which will use video captions (uploaded or auto-generated) to help users find relevant video sections in YouTube clips.
In fact, YouTube itself has been playing around with the idea for some time now, with its first implementation on video chapter search made available back in 2021. The feature incorporates text detection to identify chapters in each clip. Later on, YouTube also added searchable video transcripts, which furthered this package’s expansion with new additions.
And with this newest possible addition to text-searchable videos, we should all consider captions as an effective part of an SEO strategy. The text-based search tools put more impetus on creators to ensure their captions are on-point, which will probably lead to overall better quality captions while also serving as a guide tool.
These Google-searchable video indexes could absolutely become a bigger part of video strategy, with plenty of ways to be used. It will also be interesting to see how it will influence search and discovery behavior once it is actually implemented.
Snapchat’s Shares Insights On What Motivates Gen Z Consumers
Recently, Snapchat, together with Omnicom Media Group, did a study on what Gen Z consumers are looking for in brand messages and how social media promotions influence their purchase decisions. The outcome is a pure revelation of Gen Z’ers’ motivations, showing how brands can align their messaging with the evolving expectations of this consumer group.
Here’s how Snapchat explains it:
“Context matters for this generation and how brands show up – through messaging and media selection. If brands nail these two concepts, they’re already winning. Don’t worry; it’s not a complete redrawing of the plan, but rather a meaningful adjustment in your planning process that will help you move the needle among Gen Z.”
Since we already saw a surge in people demanding authenticity and transparency, it’s no surprise that the key finding of the study was that Gen Z consumers are becoming increasingly loyal to brands that speak about social issues, post information on related topics, and promote social change.
“Gen Z expects brands to be drivers of social change and look for fair labor practices, inclusivity, and sustainability. There are several ways in which brands can create socially impactful content that focuses on how the people, environment, and products are treated. Diversity also came out as a big driver of societal impact for this generation – whether in terms of values or ownership.”
It’s not the first time we see this trend emerging, and it just proves again that younger consumers are much more attuned to social causes, which also translates to picking out the brands they support. And so showcasing your, as a brand’s, support to said causes might be a big step forward to winning the attention of younger generation consumers.
This is also reflected in ‘brand purpose messaging’ – that’s Snap’s lingo on your business’ deeper ‘why’ besides just turning a profit. And this is a very important factor that Gen Z’ers are getting increasingly immersed in.
Gen Z consumers also want to be up-to-date with relevant happenings, but not via gloomy and serious content, instead looking for something that lifts their spirits and engagement.
So, essentially, the data in this study suggest that Snapchat might be the place to connect to Gen Z audiences via targeted, socially conscious, and uplifting messaging. That said, the insights are also applicable to any other platform when it comes to Gen Z, so if that’s your target audience, you might not want to skip taking a deeper look into what this research has to say.
Twitter Gives A Sneak-Peek Into Longer Tweets
You know, Twitter might just be the hottest topic these days considering social media platforms, and all because of Elon’s sometimes dubious actions. But, before he steps down as the head of Twitter the changes in Twitter keep coming up daily, and the latest that we have is these mock-ups on the long-awaited longer tweets. And not just a bit longer, but potentially up to 4,000 characters-long tweets.
And how would that work? Since Twitter’s short-format content was always the key element to the platform, it is hard to imagine it suddenly switching to sheets that take up all of your feed. And now we have an idea of how that might look with these mock-ups shared by Twitter’s designer Andrea Conway that shows us how the implementation might look and work.
A simple solution, really – the longer Tweets will be shown in regular tweet length with a ‘Show More’ button at the end of the first 280 characters. Users could then expand the tweet to read more, with the full-length post potentially displayed in a longer tweet panel.
So, although the problem might be solvable design-wise, it is still unclear if Twitter users will truly invest their time in reading these article-length tweets when the key focus here was always short-form messaging and updates. Also, such a long read gives a nice place for spamming – a catchphrase in the beginning and then lots of scrolling until you finally reach its point.
Prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter has been searching for ways to incorporate long-format tweets into the platform, with ‘Notes’ being the most notable effort. It enabled users to create 2,500 characters-long posts that could then be natively embedded into the Twitter app for easy sharing.
It seems, though, that this idea has been shelved for now in favor of the longer tweets. The idea behind them is longer dwell time and a boost in engagement, although we’re yet to see if it will actually work. Or how it will work. Or when it will work.
