With the new calendar year comes exciting possibilities for change in the social media world. In the past year alone, the mechanics of several popular platforms have changed—LinkedIn is rolling out merged university and company pages, Snapchat introduced groups, Instagram launched saved posts, stickers, stories, live streaming, and new ways to engage with comments, Facebook changed page layouts, and Twitter added built-in live streaming without Periscope, dropped counting characters for photo uploads and killed Vine (RIP). The movement towards live streaming and continued growth of paid social media advertisement will make for a fascinating year in social media marketing.
With all the new changes and added toys to play with, as a social media manager, I can’t help but imagine where 2017 will take us.
Here’s my wishlist for social media in 2017:
–Facebook: Allow company pages to customize content within tabs in the “Manage Tabs” area and more accurate metrics, especially around video. Also, supporting hi-resolution Facebook cover photo uploads without downsizing the image and lowering the quality of the upload would make highly designed elements (especially those with text) appear the way they were intended. The old .PNG work-around doesn’t fly anymore, so I’m hopeful that Facebook allows pages to display text in cover photos without making the design look fuzzy.
–Twitter: Allow video uploads longer than 2 minutes and 20 seconds. And for heaven’s sake, let posts shared from Instagram to Twitter pull the visual content over without having to set up a backdoor pathway like IFTTT.
–Instagram: This is probably a long-shot, but I wish we could get back to chronological feeds or have the option to toggle between chronological feeds and non-chronological feeds. Other dream items: More functionality on Instagram’s site when accessed from desktop like uploading photo/video content and being able to schedule content beyond Hootsuite reminders.
–Snapchat: Better metrics would make Snapchat so much more robust for marketers. Sure, we know how many users view our stories in a 24-hour period and how many times users applied a paid geofilter to their snaps—but beyond this, it’s hard to collect real metrics for a Snapchat channel. It would also be great if Snapchat would green-light more community geofilters and add customer support beyond a Twitter account. Having someone real to speak with on the phone or to email about an issue like getting a community Snapchat filter approved would make life as a HESM manager easier. Also, toggling between multiple Snapchat accounts and allowing multiple users to be signed into a single Snapchat account would be a dream come true.
–LinkedIn: The home feed feels clunky from a visual perspective. Hopefully 2017 brings a visual facelift for LinkedIn’s feeds and more use of full-stream image displays. Posts that pull images as small cards in the feed aren’t as engaging as those that pull the image full-frame from an article. The home page could use something akin to Facebook and Twitter’s “Trending” tabs—what if LinkedIn gave a user a pulse of what’s trending in their professional field and in the news? Modules like this might keep users logged onto LinkedIn longer, which would then lead to greater engagement metrics for everyone.
What changes and updates are you hoping to see in social media in 2017?
MATT NAZARIO-MILLER 