Here Are the Major Social Media Updates Released In 2019 Every Marketer Should Be Aware Of
2019 is a year that we have seen a lot of changes and updates in social media marketing—and more continue to roll out each day. We always need to know Social Media Updates. Social media is like a living thing, as things keep on changing every time. Mostly they change in response to user requests, developer’s ideas, politics, scandals, as well as an increase of social awareness.
Social media platform developers don’t sleep. Social media marketing of part of digital marketing. They test new algorithms, features, designs, and ads each day. Their main objective is to keep you glued to your phone—although, for most users, it will be somehow impossible to spend more time on social media platforms that they are at the moment.
Therefore it is essential for social media marketers to stay up-to-date with any new social media developments. Every new update and feature is critical to the success of their marketing campaigns—and again, it might not. Most of what we hear about social medial is futilely overvalued and has no actual significance.
That’s the reason why social media marketer should filter out what’s not important and remain with the things that are prone to affect their marketing campaigns, organic and paid reach, as well as the choice of social media platform.
In this post, we shall highlight 16 of the major social media updates that have been released in 2019 so far. However, you need to note that these are not all the updates, and you should expect others to be rolled out by the end of the year. Knowing these strategies will be an important step towards making your social media marketing strategies effective.
Google +
Every social media marker should not that they can no longer access Google+, since all the pages and profiles were deleted in April 2019. Even though almost everyone knows this, we couldn’t leave it out our social media updates list.
According to Google, they had to close this platform because of low usage, as well as the challenges that came with maintaining a platform that couldn’t meet consumer expectations. Well, most people don’t care since they never used this platform—even for a day.
TikTok
Well, you might not have heard about this platform—but you shouldn’t worry about that. This is a video-sharing app, which changed from Musical.ly back in 2017. TikTok is branded as Duoyin in China. The application allows you to create and share videos (not more than 15 seconds)—just like how Vine used to operate.
At the moment, TikTok has over 500 million users, and most of these users are kids and teenagers. They use this app to create short skits, cooking Instructables, lip-sync, as well as create cringe-inducing videos. TikTok has jumped into advertising this year. Just like other big platforms, they now have an interest-based targeting, pixel tracking, and custom audience, as well as gender, age, network, operating system, and location targeting.
You should note that TikTok’s marketing campaigns were becoming extremely popular, even before they released their ads. Moreover, it’s understandable why their marketing usage can blow up any time from now.
Facebook has changed a lot of things in 2019 after the scandals it has experienced in the previous years—and more changes are on the way. So, what are the most major updates Facebook has rolled out in 2019?
Custom Ads Have Become More Transparent
To create more transparency, Facebook has decided to let you have a deeper understanding as to why you are targeted by certain Facebook Ads. In the “Why am I seeing this?” section, you can see the name of the business that uploaded that information to Facebook, Facebook Marketing Partners, possible marketing agencies involvement, as well as any other possible sharing of custom audience that might have happened.
Furthermore, it is now possible for Facebook users to see the active ads being run by a page in the Ad Library, and this allows you to see what your competitors are doing when it comes to Facebook Advertising. Also, you need to understand that Facebook has expanded its testing with ads in Marketplace and News Feed search results.
However, some marketers say that it’s unlikely for Facebook to give users more control when it comes to sharing their data—nevertheless, that’s how Facebook is making money.
Restricting Targeting For Particular Ads
In an attempt to deal with discrimination, Facebook has restricted the targeting options for certain companies. In 2019, you can 
no longer target employment, credit, and housing ads by race, gender, or age. Facebook says that these updates were made after the company came into an agreement with civil rights groups, and this will assist in fighting discrimination when it comes to advertising.
Updates in the News Feed Algorithm
Well, there is one thing we might not have mentioned—even though mark wants to make Facebook transparent, he doesn’t want the platform to be too transparent. However, it’s his goal to make Facebook become a “living room.” That’s the reason why they released the 2019 algorithm update, which prioritizes your close friends.
By now, you need to know that Facebook knows how you relate with your friends, and how close you are with them—as a matter of fact, the platform knows more than that. Facebook analyses the things you have in common with your friends and how you interact with them. This assists the platform to determine whose posts you have an interest in.
Also, you need to understand that there is another update to the news feed algorithm, which prioritizes certain Groups and Pages. It’s now evident that although Facebook developers want you to feel close to your relatives and friends—but they don’t mind you seeing some Business Groups and Pages. So, as long as you have an interest in what they are offering, you will click their links.
Updates on the Video Algorithm
Well, Facebook didn’t leave videos unnoticed. Here are three things that will determine video rankings as of May 2019:
- Intent and loyalty – this is the prioritization of the videos that Facebook users search for and return to.
- Originality – Facebook now limits re-purposed and unoriginal content, and also content from the Pages that participate in these sharing schemes.
- The duration of viewing videos – Facebook now prioritizes videos that capture your attention for at least one minute.
- Length – videos that are at least three minutes are not prioritized.
Introduction of new marketing tools for small businesses
Facebook has recently announced new marketing tools, which will make the promotion and management of small businesses on the platform simpler.
Automated Ads
These Ads have now made it possible for marketers to create marketing plans for their business without using much of their effort and time. What you need to do is to answer a few queries about the business you manage as well as its goals. This tool will then proceed to create different versions of the ad (up to 6) you wanted, give you suggestions for a tailored audience, as well as recommend a marketing budget. Lastly, the tool will give you notifications about the ad.
Appointments Management
Facebook has yet introduced another amazing feature, which allows you to book business’s services via Instagram and Facebook. This feature also allows you to send out appointment reminders, customize your services menu, display your availability, as well as manage appointments directly from your page. You can sync up all your appointments with your calendar or any other appointment management platform you are using.
Video Editing Tools
If you love to upload videos to Facebook, here are some interesting additions that Facebook has added:
- Video trimming
- Automatic cropping
- Text and image overlays
- New fonts
- Single image templates
- New templates and stickers for seasonal ads
- Creating several videos with different aspect ratios for the stories and news feed from one video
Introduction of a new method to manage your notifications
Although it doesn’t appear to be a big deal, Facebook notifications have played a big role when it comes to user experience and also in marketing practices. Mostly, marketers opted to use Facebook Groups rather than Facebook Pages, Live videos instead of recorded videos, and also used other tricks to capture the attention of Facebook users.
However, you need to understand that things have changed as from 2019. Facebook users can now mute and clear all push notifications, as well as choose if they want to see the Notification Dots for certain categories.
Announcement of Facebook cryptocurrency
Facebook officially introduced Calibra in June 2019, which a new subsidiary for it is financial services, as well as its maiden Libra cryptocurrency, together with a digital wallet. According to Facebook, the main goal of this service is to allow money transfer for all smartphone users, with the ease and speed of text messages, and at no or low cost.
Also, you don’t need to be worried about the security of your financial data since Calibra is an entirely separate entity from Facebook. This means that Facebook cannot access your financial data and information if you choose to use Libra. However, you should note that Facebook has had numerous challenges in its attempt to join the financial sector, and it’s a bit early to speculate if it will overcome all these challenges.
Your brand can now promote posts sponsored by influencers
Instagram now allows users to convert sponsored posts from influencers into ads, with a note indicating, “Paid partnership with
A & B.” As a result, brands can now target ads from posts posted by their influencers. However, this feature will need both the influencer and the brand to do some setup.
Instagram also did roll out other updates, but they are not featured in this list. However, you should consider looking at them if you use this platform for your marketing activities.
Twitter has now introduced a new desktop design, which comes with more customization preferences and is also a bit different from how it used to look like. One of the biggest changes is that they have moved the top navigation bar to the left sidebar.
This sidebar contains lists, bookmarks, new explore tab, and your profile.
Direct Messages (DM) have changed too—you can now see sent messages and conversations in the same window.
Moreover, you will now be able to get extra options for color schemes and themes. Lastly, Twitter ArtHouse has also launched, and it gives brands additional access to influencers and creators.
Limiting the accounts, you can follow each day
This step is meant to curb spammers, and Twitter has reduced the number of accounts that you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. According to twitter, users will be just OK with this update, and unless you use spamming as your marketing method, you don’t need to worry at all.
LinkedIn was not left behind in 2019, and the platform has also improved its ad targeting, as well as giving their ads a new look. Here are some of the updates that you should watch out for in 2019.
Lookalike Audiences
LinkedIn can now combine the image of your customer persona with its data when searching for your target audience. This feature searches for people with the same similarities with the ones who have already shown interest to your brands—for instance, those who have already opened your site.
Interest Targeting
LinkedIn introduced interest targeting back in January 2019, and they have updated this feature to accommodate Bing integration. Now, this platform can target users depending on the combination of the audience’s professional interests on the social media platform, and the content and professional topics the audience searches through Bing. However, LinkedIn does all this in a manner that respects the privacy of the users.
Audience Templates
These templates will provide you with choices of more than 20 predefined B2B audiences. This includes audience characteristics, like job titles, member skills, groups, and others. The feature will be helpful for beginner marketers.
New Post Reactions
These didn’t come out of thin air—according to LinkedIn, it’s the kind of reaction users express mostly on this platform. LinkedIn has developed these reactions as a way of increasing the general engagement on the platform, and this will allow users to have a better understanding of the feedback they get from their posts.
The Algorithm Update
In 2019, LinkedIn put more emphasis on posts that generate constructive dialogs, instead of unreasonable sharing that mostly means the particular post is trending. The most interesting thing about this algorithm is that it prioritizes the users that you know, as well as the topics that you have a keen interest.
Most users consider Pinterest to be the friendliest social media platform at this age. Here, you will never get to hear about political scandals, data leaks, or the crazy Trump Pinterest tweets, since they don’t exist. However, this is the platform where most businesses are getting their clients. Because of this, Pinterest has opted to boost its customer experience.
New features that will improve customer experience
Pinterest has come up with these features in an attempt to assist sellers to reach and convert more client. And they include:
- Personalized shopping recommendations.
- Shopping Ads – brands can now promote their products through shopping Ads.
- Shop-a-brand feature – below each product pin, you can now visit a new division with more products from the specific seller or brand.
- Catalog – you can now upload your full catalog to this platform, and then turn your products to shoppable pins.
Bottom Line
These are the major social media updates released in 2019. Therefore, you need to update your social media marketing strategies to align with these updates if you want to benefit from them.