Social Media Roundup: The Biggest Updates from April
As digital marketing & social media professionals, it’s essential to stay informed about the latest trends and updates in social media. With more than 4 billion people using social media worldwide, these platforms are a crucial channel for reaching and engaging with target audiences.
In April 2023, we saw several significant updates across different social media platforms, with a variety of new features and editing tools being introduced. In this article, we’ll highlight some of the most notable social media updates from April 2023 so you can know how they could impact your digital marketing strategies.
Whether you’re a social media manager, a content creator, or a digital marketer, this article will provide valuable insights and actionable tips to help you stay ahead of the curve. Let’s get into it!
Instagram Updates: New Ways To Share
April saw a variety of new updates to the photo and video-sharing app Instagram. Some of the core changes included updates such as:
- You can now add up to 5 links to your Instagram bios. This may spell the end of having to use 3rd party linking tools like LinkTree – making it easier to share your content channels with followers.
- As NFT sales have continued to drop in recent months, impacted by a lack of interest and broader disruption in crypto markets, Meta announced NFTs would no longer be available on the photo-sharing app. All NFTs active on Instagram were deactivated on April 11th, marking the end of one of the most notable technological trends of the last couple of years.
- A new “Save posts with friends” feature is set to be introduced. This feature will allow users to create collaborative collections with their chosen friends, for example, sharing collections of saved items from Instagram Shop or of curated posts they have saved.
- New editing options on Reels help creators tap into the latest trends and shifts to maximise viewer engagement and build a community around their content.
- New editing features have been added to Reels to make it easier for creators to hop onto video trends. Creators will be able to see trending audio, hashtag trends and usage insights from their professional dashboard.
Overall, April’s Instagram updates offer users new ways to share content. With competitors such as TikTok offering advanced video-editing capabilities, Instagram’s dedication to improving its Reel technology is helping to maintain their audience.
Twitter’s Pay-To-Play: Combatting AI Through Paid Content
Twitter has announced that only paid accounts will have posts recommended to other users and be allowed to vote in polls from now on.
Elon Musk cited that the reasoning behind this is to combat AI bots from taking over the recommended tweets space with spam content, ensuring that only those verified as being real users can have their content pushed. Musk announced the news by tweeting:
“ Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations. This is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.”
While this update does have the potential to decrease AI Spam, it has also created a large amount of controversy.
Snapchat: The Divisive ‘My AI’ GPT Update
April saw the introduction of AI to the popular photo-sharing app Snapchat. The new feature titled ‘My AI’ is powered by ChatGPT, and just like the main GPT, it can offer recommendations, answer questions and converse with users.
However, Snapchat’s My AI allows users to converse with the AI as you might with a friend. You are able to open a private chat with the AI, customise the chatbot’s name, design a custom avatar for it, and even invite it into conversations.
This new development has received a variety of feedback from users. As the younger generations primarily use Snapchat, parents have raised concerns about the discernibility of AI from real people and how it may be difficult to teach their children online safety in the digital age.
Other users have raised concerns about how the AI bot collects information from their photos and messages. The update cannot be removed without a Snapchat premium package; however, little information is given to users about how it uses their data.
Overall, this decisive update is an important marker in the development of AI in social spaces online. With other social platforms, such as those under the umbrella of Meta, looking to implement AI models for marketing and advertising purposes, digital marketers need to keep a handle on the quickly-developing industry.
Facebook: AI-generated Stories
Keeping with the theme of AI, Facebook has been testing the introduction of AI-generated stories based on previously shared images. During this beta-testing stage, some users have received the prompt:
“Allow Facebook to suggest high-quality, ready-made stories for you using advanced photo and video data, including image quality, location, the presence of people or animals.”
The new feature helps to caption your photos based on their subject matter. It uses thematic matching to provide templates that you can share with your audience.
At the moment, this feature is only available to select users. However, with AI becoming more commonplace within social media spaces, it’s not unlikely that this new feature will continue to develop over the next few months.
Up-Coming Social-Media Developments: Things To Keep An Eye On
A range of new social-media developments arose in April. Some things to keep an eye on include:
- Lemon8 is a new social media platform from TikToks parent company, Bytedance. Whilst the platform is relatively new to Western audiences, Lemon8 has quickly grown in countries such as Japan, building a large user base. As TikTok plans to push the app before its official launch in May, now is a great time to get ahead of the game and start using the app to promote your business.
- AI for post recommendations is set to become a bigger thing in 2023. You can expect more content on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to be recommended by AI to drive increased user engagement. Facebook is currently working on various ways to implement AI into its functions.
- Influencer endorsements have seen a shift in recent months. Whilst you may be tempted to get a major influencer to promote your brand, micro-influencers and nano-influencers tend to have higher rates of engagement that could result in better engagement and conversion rates.
Keeping on top of new trends will help you to optimise your marketing strategies to keep in line with new social developments. As social media is updated regularly to remain competitive and relevant, you need to update your strategies accordingly to do the same.
Need Help With Your Social Media?
Keeping up with the constantly evolving updates on social media can be a daunting task, particularly if your business has a presence across multiple platforms.
At Boyd Digital, we understand this challenge, and that’s why we provide a dedicated Social Media Marketing service to help you stay ahead of the competition and build a strong online following.
No matter the size of your company or the state of your social media presence, Boyd Digital can assist you in increasing your engagement and driving traffic to your pages.
Schedule a free consultation with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your marketing goals.