Social media offers more potential to a small business than possibly even a giant pot of traditional marketing cash, but how do you make the most of it? Staying up with the latest developments is key, to get a steer ahead of the competition, but it’s an ever changing world as you can see from April’s Social Share.
This month Twitter unveiled a new look for web profiles and they have an air of familiarity about them. The announcement for the new profile said: “The new web profile lets you use a larger profile photo, customise your header, show off your best tweets and more.” The imposing ‘header photo’, along with the ability to pin a favourite post to the top of the page has seen lots of comparisons to Facebook’s cover photo and is a clear indication of Twitter’s push to become known as more than just a platform for 140 characters of text, pushing its visual values and appeal. Being rolled-out slowly across the platform – new users get it automatically, the other 240 million plus of us can test it and choose to upgrade now too – it will be interesting to see how Twitter will now look to tweak its user interface for mobile users who make up by far the biggest percentage of its user base.
Twitter tells you… now
Hot on the heels of the new web profile, Twitter introduced Real-Time Notifications, keeping Twitter at the head of the now stream. “When you’re logged in on twitter.com, you will receive notifications if someone has replied, favourited or retweeted one of your tweets.” A few tweaks in settings and you will soon be getting all the notifications you may want as well as quite possibly draining the battery life of your chosen gadget too.
SlideShare gets mobile
Still overlooked by many, SlideShare has potential great SEO value, probably made better with a new Android app and two new features that focus on mobility and the bulk of that sharing traffic. A new desktop mobile preview means you can now preview what your SlideShares are going to look like on a mobile device before you publish them, just in case there are any quirky issues. Mobile viewing also just easier too, with SlideShare adding swipe functionality on phone and tablet, making it easier to enjoy presentations, either in landscape or portrait mode.
It may come from Twitter, but Vine is very much touted as a separate social media platform and in many ways that has limited its appeal to the mass audience – we aren’t all complete exhibitionists. With the latest additions, Vine is appealing to those perhaps a little more on the shy scale who would like to privately send Vine videos and text messages, between each other. Limited to friends, to avoid trolling, the Vine message functionality takes the platform to a slightly different audience once again.
That’s just a few of the changes this month in the world of social. Don’t forget the best way to stay on top of them is to keep using the platforms. Social media gets results over time. Keep sharing.
