[Ep 42] News this week! Another IG milestone, feature updates for LinkedIn and Pinterest, and holiday marketing tips from Twitter. Make your mark in the digital world around you in just 2 minutes with these bytes. Every Tuesday at 2:22.

Instagram Reached 15M Business Profiles

July 26, 2017 –Instagram announced hitting the 15 million mark of Business profiles. So if you have toiled with the idea being active on this platform then this is the perfect time to do that, as according to Instagram “especially as 80% of Instagrammers follow a business today on Instagram.”

In fact, check out these simple how-to steps for updating your current profile on Instagram.

And if you need some motivation or benchmark to look up to then Instagram suggests seeing @vitalydesign and @lechocolatdesfrancais

LinkedIn’s New Feature Updates

July 27, 2017 – LinkedIn brought a lot of new and interesting features to the table in July and here’s a roundup of the best ones.

• Get your quick fix on the latest happenings in your network by going to the new customized notifications tab. You even have full control over these notifications — simply mute or turn off
• Now select up to nine photos to share in a single post
• Use “Connections of” filter to search your connections’ connections. If you don’t want others to see your list of connections, simply change your settings so that only you can see them.
• Premium members now have access to a new central hub on the desktop where they can see all of the Premium features and manage their account.

Do try them out and let us know which ones you like the best.

Twitter Tips to Make Most of This Year’s Christmas

July 28, 2017 – We know it’s only August (and we really hate to be those guys bringing up holidays ALREADY *shudders*), but as per Twitter “93% of Canadian users celebrate the holiday.” Which means it’s better that you start planning your Christmas strategy right away. Since Christmas holidays and shopping kicks in at least 6 weeks prior to the big day so as of today you’ve got just over 10 weeks to get ready!

To help you get started, Twitter has shared some interesting insights based on its eye tracking and facial coding research. Which are:

• Campaigns centered around the theme of gift-giving showed better results than gift-receiving or family themed ads.
• Emotion isn’t enough. Ads also need to be informative and easy to understand.
• Campaigns featuring brand logos showed 2X brand recall (vs. ads with no logo).
• Deals and promotions are great, but they shouldn’t overshadow the holiday spirit. Too much emphasis on the promotion can decrease emotional engagement and attention.

Hope you took notes! 😀

Pinterest’s New Search Bar

July 31, 2017 – Pinterest had made searching more fun and easy with its New search bar and leans camera option. For now, the update is only available on iOS, but will soon be introduced to Android as well.

But why bother with these features?

Well Pinterest answered that with some mind blowing statistics:

• Monthly mobile text searches are up 40 percent over last year, and nearly 85 percent of all searches on Pinterest now happen on people’s phones.
• While monthly visual searches have increased nearly 60 percent over last year.
• And the search returns 20 percent more Pins, with nearly four billion ideas getting served up each and every day.

Impressed? Well, I sure am. Time to give Pinterest a try.

Until Next Tuesday…

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