Welcome to the age of meaningful social. That’s right, you heard me! ICYMI, Facebook and Instagram recently rolled out a time management tool. Say what? The social channel announced on the Facebook Newsroom that they aren’t fans of mindless scrolling on the apps: “We want the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram to be intentional, positive, and inspiring. Our hope is that these tools give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.”

In the rapidly evolving luxury market, consumers and their changing tastes are driving brands to adapt their marketing approach. Every brand has internal marketing materials and guidelines (or they should) defining what “luxury” means to them and what it means to their customers. These definitions are based on heritage, but should also be measured against the modern luxury consumer landscape.

2017 is already a big year for social giants Facebook and Instagram. For users there are many new features that make both platforms engaging and fun to use. These changes will have a deeper impact for brands and marketers.

Facebook

In-Stream Video – With the Audience Network launch last May, Facebook now runs In-Stream Videos which allows Facebook’s 4 Million Advertisers to reach more people with pre-roll and mid-roll placements. This also includes Facebook Live. In-Stream Video has proven to increase overall CPM results and continuing to show potential as the popularity of video increases. If you have quality video to share, this may be an option for your next campaign.

Messenger Advertising – Facebook Messenger has changed extensively in the last few months. Some say it has officially emulated SnapChat with the use of filters (and stories). However, The good thing about Facebook Messenger in terms of business is the ability to interact with fans in real-time and has changed the ecommerce space entirely. For example: Jasper’s Market – The user has clicked on the call-to-action button which started a messenger chat including the 20% offer. From there a real-time conversation can begin.

Instagram
Carousel Photos and Videos – For a few weeks now, social marketers and users alike have been excited with the carousel photo and video feature that is now available on Instagram. The Carousel Ad has been in the Advertising space for a awhile but now the Carousel option lets you create a single Instagram post with a slideshow of up to 10 images and/or videos. Users can scroll them. You can tag users on individual slides within the post and marketers can upload their product catalog to the mix. This will allow for users to click on items within the photo, see how much it costs and purchase the item in just a few steps. Amazing!

Instagram Stories – With 300 million daily viewers and 500 million monthly viewers, Instagram is leagues ahead of Snapchat when it comes to the ability of advertising reach within stories. At first, Instagram only allowed 30 brands to participate in advertising within the new feature and now it is a placement option for all with access to Business Manager and Power Editor. Of course, this option should be used only if you have quality imagery and video to connect with appropriate target market.  Airbnb was one of the first brands to capitalize on this awesome feature. As the year continues, look for many new trends with video content, advertising and metrics. Remember, don’t be afraid to try new objectives to fully optimize your social campaigns.

I’ve noticed an interesting trend among social media marketers lately: they are trying to cram more and more content into each social post. I thought it was common knowledge (not to mention commons sense) that shorter captions tend to perform better on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. I’ve always tried to hold myself to conveying one idea and one idea only in each post. This trend came into focus for me last week in a meeting where the client was actually advocating for paragraph-long captions on their Instagram posts in order to “convey the full story.” I was dumbstruck. But I’m always willing to challenge my own assumptions so we dug into our initial research on optimal post length to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.

We here at Pandemic Labs are big fans of The Nerdist. Using the Watchtower Analytics platform, we took a hard look at their Facebook Page. View the infographic here, and read below to see what we found.

The Nerdist posts a lot of links. Many of those are Facebook posts announcing the release of a new episode of The Nerdist Podcast. That’s cool, guys. But consider posting a single photo (Of the guest? Of the scene while recording?) and linking to the new episode from the image’s caption. Your EdgeRank will improve, and your clickthroughs will follow suit.

Weekend posts from The Nerdist Facebook Page result in proportionally higher interaction numbers than posts on other days of the week. Don’t spam people with too much weekend content, but time your weekend posts so that you’re hitting folks at the right times. Finding those times depends on where in the world your Fans are. People the world over use Facebook at generally the same times. Those are: “before work”, “around lunch” and “after dinner / kids are put to bed”.