This month, Instagram has knocked it out of the park with updates. They have released so many and there are some serious gems in there. Not to be outdone, TikTok has released a great tool for creatives but a not-so-great update to the FYP (you’ll see what we mean). Start scrolling to see them all…

Instagram released a heap of new font options

It has been an absolutely massive month for Instagram. They have been giving out updates left, right and centre and one of our favourites this month is the new font styles they released. Finally, an update we actually wanted! There are six new fonts to choose from and new text styles to go with it!

Instagram Released ‘Story Layers’

Instagram released a brand new story feature called ‘Story Layers’! This is honestly a game-changer for using your Stories creatively. You can layer multiple items in a story, for example having a background image, then you can add a Reel you’ve posted, and to top it all off a poll to get your audience’s insights! If you wanna hear more about this update you can also check out Hayley’s video here!

Want a team of marketing cheerleaders to test out new Instagram features with? Book a discovery call here to see how we can work together in 2024.

Share your favourite Instagram comments on Stories

Yes, you read that right! Another epic Instagram update from November is the option to now share any comments you get on your feed posts or Reels to your Story. The tool is not only super helpful for sharing social proof within the app, but it looks AMAZING.

PRO TIP: you can change the colour of the background to your branding colours by selecting draw and adding your colours.

Instagram dropped even more new tools

Yep, there’s even more! There are literally so many major Instagram updates this time that we are pooling them together here for you to make it easy.

• First things first, they made Reels camera roll updates including new tools such as gallery preview, gallery zoom, and gallery search.
• They released new Reel editing tools including the option to scale and rotate your videos, adding an undo and redo button (a literal lifesaver) and moving the voiceover button to an easier-to-find spot.
• Story lists hit our accounts letting you create lists of followers that you can share your Story exclusively. This one is amazing for sharing first looks with your most engaged followers.

Want some help getting your Instagram to work for you? Book a discovery call today about Social Media Management.

TikTok released a super handy tool for all creatives

Merry Christmas from TikTok! They have released ‘TikTok Creative Cards’ to help you create new ads and videos. There are five categories of cards- community, edutainment, creator tools, trends, and storytelling with 365 examples, tips and tricks across them. If you’ve been looking for inspiration for your TikTok videos this is an epic tool to check out.

TikTok added a way to update your FYP

Gotta be honest, we’re not so sure on this one. TikTok has released a new AI-powered conversational tool to let you customise your For You Page. You tell the AI what you want to see more of and then it is supposed to update your FYP. Some feedback we’ve had so far is that it can take it a bit too far and show too many videos on the prompts, but it is still early days!

LinkedIn has given an update on one of its biggest decisions

You might remember that a few months ago LinkedIn announced they would be removing carousels, profile videos, and the ability to embed links in images or videos. Well, as of December 14th, this will be happening! This DOESN’T include the PDF carousel option, just the OG image option. So, be prepared for December 14th if you are using any of these features.

Instagram is saying goodbye to one of its features

RIP Instagram guides, your time has come. As of December 15th, Instagram guides will be going away, and any guides you already have will be converted to collections. Guides were designed to be a way to highlight your content in themes, but ultimately it didn’t work out. It’s a great reminder that not every Instagram feature is here to stay, and unless you think those new updates will actually help your strategy, they aren’t worth stressing about.

Here’s what you need to do from Gmail and Yahoo’s changes

Both Google and Yahoo announced new sender requirements this month that you need to know about. Here’s what you need to do:

• If you’re a bulk sender: authenticate your sending domain, make sure your ‘from’ email is the same as your domain, and you must include a one-step method to unsubscribe within your email AND another link to unsubscribe in the body of the email.
• For all senders: Keep your spam complaints under 0.30% and don’t use a Gmail email as your ‘from’ email if you don’t have one.

You can find out more about this in a post we did recently here.

Well, that’s a wrap on this month! We can’t wait to see what comes next with these big updates, as always, we’ll keep you posted!

XOXO

OMD SQUAD