In our latest edition of keeping you posted, we’ve looked at a significant tool for marketers on LinkedIn, another video update on Facebook and Instagram’s stories feature development.
LinkedIn adds insights
The social media network for professionals has introduced a highly useful tool if you want to track who is visiting your website.
The app’s new tool, named ‘Website Demographics’, lets you add a unique code to a page on your website, and subsequently tracks the type of people who are visiting.
Furthermore, LinkedIn will tell you the types of role and professions your visitors work in and how large the company they work for is. It also allows you to narrow down the data from all time information to the past seven days.
Best of all, website demographics is free – but yes, there is a catch. The system will only start tracking when its selected page has reached at least 300 visitors from LinkedIn – so make sure you’re publishing and sharing content on the site – read our tips for keeping your profile fresh and engaging here.
Facebook goes loud for engagement
It’s been in the pipeline for a while, but as of September nearly all Facebook users will find out about the site’s new auto-volume feature. This means as you scroll down your news feed, videos will now automatically play with the sound on.
The idea behind it is based on tackling the problem of most users only engaging with video content for a matter of seconds – by introducing automatic sound, the social media app will hope more users stay connected with content for longer.
Although this feature might not sound popular, Facebook knows video is now one of its core forms of content – and with half a billion people watching video on the app every day, the auto volume feature could boost viewing figures even higher.
As Facebook owns Instagram, the photo sharing platform has also started auto-sound on all videos once you choose the ‘volume on’ option – but silent video is still the app’s default setting for now.
Tip: If you don’t want your videos with automatic volume, just go into your account settings, click videos and photos and simply deselect ‘videos in news feed start with sound’.
Instagram extends stories feature
Although very similar to Snapchat, Instagram stories, which allows users to post a photo or video available to followers for a limited amount of time, has been received well overall since its introduction more than a year ago.
The photo-sharing app is now looking to build on its success with the introduction of shared live broadcasts. This feature lets you go live to your followers and subsequently invite the users watching you to join the live broadcast.
In layman’s terms, the tool will encourage users to broadcast two, three or four-way conversations, which could soon be used by marketers and influencers alike to promote brands and products.
This feature is expected to roll out soon, so keep an eye on your Instagram feed.