Situation: City Sought to Improve Social Media ROI

Recently a municipality in North America asked us to conduct a comprehensive social media audit of their entire social footprint. They wanted a social media assessment that would help them modernize their approach and understand how to enhance results while increasing efficiencies. Always striving to improve, they also wanted to understand current best practices and to see how they compared to other local governments. With over 40 official and unofficial accounts for various departments across numerous social media platforms, the communication team worried that staff time could be used more effectively for the benefit of residents.

Challenge: No Consistency Across Departments

Although all departments worked tirelessly to serve residents, each was governed by its own strategic master plan and supported by its own communication and marketing team and budgets. Although general guidelines were in place for determining whether a new social media account should be opened, the final decision rested with each individual department. The result was a patchwork of accounts supported by staff with varying levels of expertise which led to inconsistencies in visual standards, tone of voice, frequency of posting, service levels and more. Several accounts had significant overlaps in unique followers with many targeting the exact same audience profile.

Solution: Social Media Audit

It’s hard to see the forest for the trees so the City sought out a third-party to conduct the social media assessment. They chose to work with Advantis because they valued the depth and breadth of experience of our audit team. Having the benefit of working with different types of organizations from local governments, associations and companies in various sectors provides the Advantis team a unique perspective and the ability to benchmark best practices across industries.

Advantis’ Social Media Success Framework guided each step of the audit. The Advantis team highlighted effective processes as well as shortcomings in processes related to strategy, target audience, content development, community building, measurement and governance. We also conducted a deep dive into a recent social media advertising campaign to provide staff with a relevant case study to highlight best practices and insights they could immediately apply to future campaigns. As well, the Advantis Social Media Health Check shared best practices gleaned from a landscape analysis of comparator cities’ social media approaches.

Result: A Path Forward

The social media audit provided the City with an overview of social media best practices, a comprehensive review of their social media footprint and over 25 actionable recommendations, including guidance on how to resource social media management and recommendations for streamlining the number of social media accounts. Now the communication team is confident that the City is equipped to glean the most value from social media for its residents.

COVID-19 may go down in history as the ultimate test for local government communication departments regardless if your team is a department of 1 or 10. While the need for communication has escalated, employees are working remotely, some are sick, IT systems are strained and the online misinformation battle is being tested. During this time, the significance of social media channels has been amplified. In fact, the New York Times states that we’re spending even more time on social media now — 27% more time on Facebook.com which surprisingly far exceeds the 16% increase on Netflix.

Developing compelling social media content takes time. But when time and resources are constrained, what can cities do to ensure critical coronavirus messaging cuts through the clutter and eliminates any confusion. Using the Content  component of the Advantis Social Media Success Framework, we dissect recent social media posts from municipalities and the lessons learned apply to cities’ corporate channels targeting residents channels as they do for economic develop offices creating social posts for businesses. So let’s just look at two key components of some recent COVID-19-related social media posts from municipalities and understand what makes them great, or not.

Writing for Social Media

Do you read or do you scan content when you’re online? There’s a reason why the Advantis team produces so many videos — many people find reading work…or at least more work than viewing a photo or watching a GIF or video. The text on almost every social media platform, LinkedIn posts excluded, should be short and concise. Although Twitter allows a maximum of 280 characters, Tweets with the most engagement typically have only 71-100 characters (Sprout Social). And even though you’re allowed to write a short novel for a Facebook post, the posts with the most engagement have just 40 characters (Jeff Bullas). Be brief.

This Facebook post from the City of Fort Wayne is short and to the point with an image that supports the message. Enough said.

Some of you may think it’s odd that we’re highlighting a YouTube video from the City of Halifax under the “text” section, but adding supporting text below the video helps to quickly provide viewers with key information without them having to go sift through the time-coded transcript that YouTube automatically generates. It also helps with search and accessibility. We applaud the team for uploading the video of this Halifax Regional Council virtual meeting in the name of transparency, but ideally a synopsis of the meeting and a link to the meeting agenda would be helpful.

This Facebook post from the City of Philadelphia does a great job of writing short text which includes icons to make the content easily digestible. We would have rated this post highly for content creation, but although the photo is pretty, it misses the mark because it doesn’t help tell the story.

Imagery for Social Media

With 70% of all our bodies’ sensory receptors in our eyes, humans are literally built to understand visual information faster than any other communication (Merieb, E. N. & Hoehn, K. (2007). Human Anatomy & Physiology 7th Edition, Pearson International Edition).  Without delving into the many lessons on how to create compelling visual content for social media, let’s simply take a look at what we can learn from some examples of imagery.

Perhaps the most fundamental lesson is to ensure images are properly sized for the specific social media channel. Yes, this is more work than simply using the same image for every social media account, but it will prevent the type of situation we see below where the actual message is cut off, significantly reducing the impact.

The City of Detroit is trying to do the right thing by helping share information over social channels, but closer attention needs to be paid to the imagery so it adds value for the resident. This specific example is especially important because it’s on Instagram where audiences expect the image to be the story.

Whether the image is a photo or a poster or other collateral, it can always be appropriately resized regardless of the social media channel. The following example taken from Metro Nashville’s Twitter account could have provided an opportunity for people to directly pick-up the phone and call the number, but instead residents must click another link and hunt for the right phone number. Taking just a minute more to property size an image will make communication more effective and potentially lower 311 calls and online inquiries.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, ideally the image should be able tell at least some, if not the complete story. The four images from this City of Markham Tweet give residents very specific and easy to understand information so they don’t even have to read the text within the post to understand what actions to take.

There has been a lot of confusion in Ontario as to what park amenities are open/off limits. This post from the City of Hamilton is a great example of clear, direct communication.

Remember…Content is Not King, Consumption Is

In this time when we should be moving quickly to disseminate the right message, content creators need to remind themselves of an important distinction. Although we often hear people repeating “Content is King” we don’t believe this is true. Communication and marketing professionals should only be creating content that enables their audiences to learn something new, trigger an emotion or motivate them into action such as encouraging them to #stayathome. Anyone can produce content, but the magic happens when your target audience consumes and then changes course because of it. It’s the outcome you should be looking for, not the output of pushing out content.

For years, the Advantis Communications team has been conducting social media audits and training all levels of government. We were actually anticipating a slow down due to COVID-19, but on the contrary, we’re experiencing an increase in requests for social media audits because communication professionals need to be as effective as possible in times of tight resources. And savvy communication professionals also understand the growing value that effective social media can offer both residents and businesses.

Are there more ways local government can improve social media communication? Absolutely! Why not share your best practice by leaving a comment. If you need to increase the digital marketing capacity of your employees, call 416-848-1885 or email us at hello@advantiscomm.com and together we can determine if there’s a fit.

If your organization has social media channels, I’ve got some good news, and unfortunately, I’ve got some bad news too.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Before opening up your first social media channel, I’m sure your team went to great lengths to ensure that the strategy was on point, the right audience was targeted and operations were efficient. And that’s how it should be.

Unfortunately, what we often find is that if one or more years have passed, what you planned to do, and what your team is actually doing, may be out of sync. Upfront planning is great, but organizational priorities evolve as leadership changes, staff turns over, priorities shift and acquisitions take place. Without evaluating how current social media tactics are supporting departmental and organizational objectives, you may find that what was once the correct course of action, may now be a misuse of time and resources.
In today’s world where staff are stretched and budgets are lean, it’s imperative to ensure your team is maximizing their efforts and minimizing corporate risk. So, if you haven’t already, set aside a block of time to roll-up your sleeves and conduct an in-depth social media audit, or engage an evidence-based organization with a proven process to do it for you.

The team at Advantis has been focused on providing social media audit services for almost a decade. From local and federal governments to regulatory colleges to member-based associations and private and public corporations, we’ve seen it all. The Social Media Success Framework that our seasoned team has developed is based on real-world situations we’ve encountered first hand. It’s the outcome of years of in-the-trenches experience and proven solutions that breed success versus hypothetical situations or a one-off success story.

And you’ll be pleased to know that even if you make just small improvements using the seven components of the Social Media Success Framework, you have the potential to significantly increase your social media ROI while dramatically mitigating risk. That’s the ideal scenario that savvy communication and marketing professionals strive to achieve. In fact, our team uses the Social Media Framework for Success to guide all our social media audits – it answers the question “how do you do a social media audit”.

If you want to dive into the Social Media Framework for Success keep reading.

Let’s start at the beginning – the audience.

During social media audits, we often find that target audiences are not well defined. You likely don’t have an infinite budget or an endless social media team, but clearly articulating your target audience is essential. When defining your target audience ask yourself these three questions:

• Are your target audience insights based on formal or informal research? (Hint: ideally use both)
• Do audience characteristics include demographics, psychographics, attitudes, preferences and motivations?
• Is your team guided by detailed and accurate audience personas?

It’s a lot of heavy lifting to do all of the above, but it’s certainly doable. Even just focusing on answering just one of the audience questions above will help define your audience and elevate your game.

Now let’s look at Strategy.

We often hear communication and marketing professionals say that social media is free. I like to say that in reality, it’s “free like a free puppy.” You still need to feed it, maintain it and more. Moving forwards strategically will save you time and resources while increasing the benefit to your organization. It’s a win-win-win scenario.

Key questions to ask yourself and your team include:

• Is the social strategy documented, approved, shared and understood by everyone involved?
• Are SMART Objectives in place for accounts and campaigns?
• Is social media integrated into broader communication and marketing initiatives?

If you just wanted to start off by choosing one of these to tackle, I’d recommend starting with S.M.A.R.T. objectives. Are your objectives Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound? It’s an important exercise to conduct a SMART Objectives workshop with your team. This one training session alone will pay huge dividends.

Once you have a strategic direction, you need rocket fuel ̶ the ability to create compelling content on a consistent basis.

Content

A key rule for creating compelling content is to ensure your content provides value for the target audience. The kind of value that nourishes them, that makes them want to share with their friends and that keeps them returning for more. Sadly, this one rule is often broken and a lack of time to develop better content is cited as the reason why.

If you’re not hitting your engagement results or your content doesn’t excite your audience, think about these three questions:

• Are audience personas the basis for content creation?
• Does content reflect best practices for driving engagement?
• What content performs best and why?

Once we’ve nailed the content creation we then need to focus on its distribution, but that’s really only half the equation – the push. We also need to think about two-way communication – the social conversation and building engagement with the community.

Community

Building community is really where the magic happens. Although two-way conversations take more effort than simply pushing out content, engagement and interaction are important pillars of social media success. And the first step to creating solid conversations is listening. We train teams on how to listen and transform the insights into actions so they can better understand their target audience and create content that will resonate.

But sadly, creating and organically sharing content is a strategy of past. Regardless of the industry or topic, social media success today must include an element of paid. Although strategic advertising is critical for success, it does need to be executed correctly. Social media advertising has become sophisticated so unfortunately there’s no easy button. Do yourself a favour and save your budget by not using the “promote” or “boost” button every time. One button can’t transform a complex process into a simple task. Take the time to learn or hire out to increase your ROI with social media advertising. Three questions for your consideration related to community are:

• Is listening in place and are insights informing content strategy?
• Organic: Is two-way communication and responsiveness the goal for posts?
• Paid: Are campaigns configured correctly and yielding positive outcomes?

Evaluation

And of course, there’s evaluation. This is where we tie back our results to our stated business and communication objectives. We often find that staff don’t measure the right indicators or are too busy to finish this important stage. That’s why the Advantis team also developed the Advantis Social Media Measurement Model. Regarding evaluation, here are three questions to ask your team:

• Is continuous improvement fuelled by measurement and evaluation?
• Are KPIs appropriate – outputs vs. outcomes?
• Is the measurement framework consistent across the organization?

And just when we thought we were finished, there are two areas to address to ensure consistency.

Operations & Governance

You need to review your operations and governance to ensure your team is effective while also minimizing organizational risk. Two questions to consider here are:

• Who does what, why and how?
• Do policies and guidelines govern social media activities?

So there you have it, with this Social Media Success Framework you’re ready to start adding value to your organization through strategic social media. To ensure it’s not overwhelming, just start with one area and go from there. One small win at a time.

If you don’t have large blocks of free time to do this, feel free to give us a call and find out what would be included in an Advantis social media audit for your organization. Call us to book a free 30-minute call to understand how Advantis’ deep social media audit expertise would benefit you: 416-848-1885.

In our line of work ‒ helping clients deliver value through their social media communication ‒ we’re often invited to work on strategic projects that enable us to roll up our sleeves and make a difference, like social media audits. One of the first questions we’re often asked is: “What’s included in a social media audit?” Regardless of the state of social media at the organization, the answer to this question lies in our five-step process below. For organizations with many accounts, key questions include: “Do we really need all these social media accounts?”, “What are we getting for all this effort – what’s the ROI of our social media activities?” and “What’s the best way to rationalize the number of accounts?”. Some organizations have a department of just one or two and they must manage it all – communication plans, email blasts, annual reports and reports to the Board. Their key question is typically “What’s the best way to manage the demands of social media while completing my ‘regular’ work?”. (Hint: social should not be treated as an afterthought!).

In either case, whether the organization has many accounts or only a handful, here is a brief overview of our social media audit process:

1. Discovery Meeting

Advantis begins a social media audit with a discovery meeting to understand the organization’s business goals and objectives and social media objectives. We explore what is and what is not working from different stakeholders’ perspectives. We probe with dozens of questions that touch the organization from the macro to the micro.

2. Audience Research

The next step is to understand target audiences. Some organizations have this fundamental aspect of communication down pat with personas backed-up by research, but typically our experience shows that most organizations could invest more time developing details about their target audiences.

3. Stakeholder Interviews

To get the golden nuggets – the real deal on process bottlenecks or success factors – the Advantis team interviews key stakeholders in the organization. Interviewees participate in a hands-on meeting featuring a series of questions and a survey designed to build a story of how ‘social gets done’. These interviews help to uncover blind spots, gaps, best practices, and potential areas for improvements.

4. Analysis of Accounts

Qualitative data is just part of the story. Social media accounts are then subjected to quantitative, objective analysis (Are accounts optimized? Verified? Relative engagement metrics? Posting frequency? and more). We help the organization understand whether content best practices are being used. Advantis also includes examples from reference organizations (competitor or complementary organizations in and outside of the organization’s ecosystem). We address topics such as content development, community building, evaluation and governance.

5. Final Report

The last step in the social media assessment is the Final Report. All the learnings, recommendations and the roadmap for implementation are packaged in one report, providing the organization with a comprehensive guide for the next step in their social media journey.

What Else is Included in a Social Media Audit?

As you can imagine, every situation is different. Depending on business needs, we can address and provide recommendations on the following: current trends and best practices, competitor social media analysis, industry landscape review, effective resourcing, governance and risk, and more.

Over the years we’ve had the pleasure of rolling out social media assessments via the Advantis Social Media Health Check program in a variety of sectors. Case studies include:

• Associations that need to demonstrate and deliver value to members
• Municipalities and government agencies that need to increase transparency and internal capacity
• Corporations that need assurance that their social media investments are moving the needle.

If you are curious as to how a social media audit could help your organization, call us at 416-848-1885.

 

Situation: No Overarching Strategy

The Advantis Social Media Health Check team recently conducted a social media audit for a national professional services association with more than a dozen chapters across the country. Although social media was part of their outreach for nearly a decade, there was no overarching strategy between the national office and across chapters. Like most organizations, their social media evolved organically over the years, with different business units spearheading different accounts. Although they were keen to align social media with their business objectives, the patchwork of social media accounts with uneven resourcing across Canada made it a challenge. On the surface it looked like their social media was firing on all cylinders but being busy is different from being strategic. Were their efforts paying off in terms of member engagement? What could they improve to better serve members? How could they use social media to demonstrate the value of membership? It was just the kind of project we could sink our teeth into.

Solution: The Advantis Social Media Audit

Our social media audit process has several phases, however for brevity’s sake, I highlight three steps below:

Step 1
We reviewed the client’s social media objectives to determine whether they supported the organization’s business objectives.

Step 2
We conducted comprehensive research to better understand their target audience.

We augmented our client’s internal and commissioned research with an additional investigation that provided the first-person perspective of their ideal target audience, beyond the key age and career levels. We looked at the relevant audience characteristics that mattered such as psychographics, preferences, motivations, and aspirations to intimately understand the target audience.
An online survey followed by live interviews filled in the gaps painting a picture of how the client was managing social media and the internal challenges they needed to overcome.
We uncovered about 50 official and unofficial social media accounts. This was approximately 20 percent more than they had reported. Based on our years of experience with social media audits, we find that organizations typically underestimate the number of accounts associated with their brand.

Step 3
We looked beyond our client’s borders into their industry landscape. We helped the organization understand where they stood relative to other players in their ecosystem. As the premier association in Canada, did the size of their audience reflect their national scope? Were other players in the industry employing tactics that were outperforming theirs? Were there standout players in the ecosystem related to the content type and quality, use of best practices and engagement with influencers? To answer these questions and more, Advantis conducted an environmental scan of over 60 organizations that vied for the same target audience’s mindshare on social channels.

Social Media Audit Findings

• By reviewing engagement metrics for content on their priority social channels in relationship to other organizations and comparing to best practices, we were able to make detailed recommendations for topics and types of content that the client should consider producing in the future.

• To dig deeper and better understand who the client was actually engaging with on social (ideal target audience vs. a general audience), we reviewed engagement activity on Twitter over a defined time period. We identified and cross-referenced engaged followers (those that liked, commented, or replied to the content) against their profiles on other social media platforms. After analyzing this data, our team prepared a detailed audience profile that assured the client that they had a highly relevant following.

• The client was concerned that engagement was low in one of their key LinkedIn groups. Rather than simply say that low engagement rates in LinkedIn groups are not uncommon, we reviewed the group member activity on LinkedIn and noticed that very few of these senior-level individuals engaged on the platform in any capacity. Using a LinkedIn group was not the best channel to engage these executives. This insight provided the client with ammunition to look at a different engagement approach for their executives.

• We uncovered an interesting fact. For a given social media platform, many accounts across the organization shared a high percentage of the same followers. This clear-cut evidence led to specific recommendations about which accounts could be merged, deleted, or revisited to create content that’s more relevant to the audience and align more closely with the organization’s objectives.

Result: A Clear Path Forward

As you might expect, our social media audit findings trigger rich discourse. It’s a clear benefit to the client. In this case, it stoked the active participation of a dispersed, national team, yielding many ‘aha’ moments and helping them tackle the question “How do we translate these insights into a strong social media strategy and governance plan?”. With a comprehensive social media audit and more than 25 short and long-term recommendations, the client was armed with critical insights. Now they could develop a winning pan-Canadian social media strategy with confidence.

If you haven’t checked the health of your organization’s social media practices why not conduct one and raise the effectiveness of your entire team? Communication professionals often talk about proving business value and an Advantis Social Media Health Check can do just that.

In this digital age, it’s a challenge staying on top of constantly evolving marketing technology and assessing which new offering may be most beneficial to your organization. Video technology is one area that is advancing at breakneck speed.

Staying abreast of changes ensures your content continues to evolve and appeal to your target audiences. According to the 2018 State of Inbound report, interactive content creation was listed as a top-five priority for marketing teams in North America. Specifically, 38% of respondents said it’s a priority for the up-coming year, while it ranked higher than marketing automation, webinars and tutorial videos. The bottom line? Users want control — they want to choose what they want to see and when they want to see it. So, how do you ensure your organization delivers stand out content experiences? Be relevant to what people want and give them control —incorporate interactivity in your video content.

Video is interactive

Interactive video allows viewers to determine their own paths through content that most interests them. Because interactive video incorporates a variety of elements that enhance user engagement, it offers a real engagement rate of 78% over a standard linear video. For instance, by adding clickable video chapters, users can skip directly to content they need. According to the Video Marketing Statistics 2018 Survey, 20% of marketers have incorporated interactive video with nearly 80% of them finding it effective. But video interactivity does not stop there. Video interactivity can include forms, polls, quizzes, images, text or buttons right in the video – enhancing user ability to explore and interact with your content. Every interaction is captured, providing detailed analytics of where users are going, ultimately allowing you to better track your audience’ interests and helping to inform future marketing initiatives. What’s also great about making a video interactive is that it can be added to a pre-existing video—avoiding the hassle of re-shooting.

Example of an interactive corporate video

The client had to address a business need that many organizations face – the lack of qualified, high quality candidates for open positions. They needed a recruitment tool that would increase the number of relevant submissions for their open positions. Advantis worked with the client to capture video of employees talking authentically about their experience working there. But we took the video a step further and added interactive features to the video – viewers can choose to skip directly to topics that are most important to them or if they are interested, to search jobs at any time during the video. The call to action screen also links directly to the client’s career portal. Best of all, since every click is captured, the analytics provide insight into what matters most to prospective candidates.

Video is 360

Video interactivity can come in many shapes and forms. Not only does it come with the ability of adding clicks, images, links and polls, but video is turning 360 degrees – allowing viewers to have full control on what they see. 15% of marketers have used 360 videos and over a majority of them have found it an effective strategy. According to Uscreen, if your company produces sports and travel content, you might want to consider adding 360 video as 60% of all 360 viewers want to see travel and sports-related digital content. These videos allow viewers to choose their perspective, ultimately creating a more immersive and interactive experience.
Here are some examples of great 360 videos:

 

Video is personal

Video is increasingly becoming more personalized, allowing marketers to provide customers with a one-to-one video experience. Now what exactly does this mean? Imagine watching a video where the main character addresses you by name, or the text on screen presents information specific to your situation? For example, if your organization is a utility company, you can send a video that greets the recipient by name, present a chart of the recipient’s recent billing cycle and energy consumption – with data tailored specifically to them. Personalized video is not exactly a form of direct interactivity. However, it does provide customers with videos that are highly tailored more to their interests.

So now that we know how video technology is evolving, why should we care? The advancements in video technology make it possible for audiences to actively engage with video content. Interactivity draws the audience in and engages them for a longer period of time. In fact, 80% of marketers have said that video in general has increased dwell time on their website (Wyzowl). Interactive videos provide viewers the option to take control and discover their preferred content. It also incorporates elements that make it easier to navigate, ultimately improving user experience.

What’s new this week? Glad you asked! Facebook and Instagram are introducing new tools that can help users track their personal platform usage.

Facebook and Instagram’s new activity dashboard
Late last week, Facebook and Instagram introduced a new tool that helps users manage their time on these social media platforms through an activity dashboard, which will be launching any time now. This feature not only allows you to review how much time you’re spending on the platform, but it also allows you to set a daily limit for yourself. The platform will alert you once you’ve exceeded that daily limit – these reminders, however, can be changed or cancelled at any time.

So, how does it work?

In order to gain access to this tool, you must enable the setting on your app. Here’s how to do it:
Instagram
1. Go to your profile
2. At the top of your profile, select the ‘Settings’ icon
3. Scroll down and select ‘Your Activity’

Facebook
1. Go to your ‘Settings’
2. Select ‘Your Time on Facebook’

But what do these new tracking features mean for marketers and communicators? These new tools will provide users with visibility into the actual amount of time they’re spending on social media, which could be a huge wake up call for many. Because this tool also comes with a time-limiting feature, could brands could potentially see a decrease in user traffic? What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts or visit us on Twitter at @AdvantisComm and shoot us a tweet.

*Above images provided by Facebook

Instagram continues to come up with new features to better improve user experience. They’ve been releasing new features almost every week, making it a challenge to keep up with it all. But more importantly, these changes have been beneficial to users worldwide, with an area of focus towards marketers. And according to Wyzowl, 44% of marketers have used Instagram videos, and of that, 78% have reported it as effective, while 44% of marketers say they plan to use video throughout the up-coming year.

To put the pace of change in perspective, here are some of Instagram’s latest developments:

‘You’re All Caught Up’

This week, IG has released a new element that notifies users once they have viewed every new post within the last two days.This new feature could help users track their time spent on the app as it notifies them once there are no new posts – stopping them from mindlessly scrolling in the hopes of not missing new content.

Open-Ended Questions

This week, Android Police has reported that Instagram has also been testing out a new element that could improve user interactivity. Though the platform itself hasn’t yet confirmed this update, the new feature would allow users to add open-ended questions to their stories, making content more interactive between followers.

Currently, you are already able to add polls with multiple choice answers to your IG stories, and you are also able to directly message someone in reply to somebody’s story. If brought to market, these open-ended questions could benefit brands as they would be able to engage with their audience on a deeper level.

4-Way Group Video Call
Last week, Instagram made 4-way group video calls possible. And what’s unique about this feature is that unlike some other video group call platforms, IG’s lets you continue your group call while minimizing the screen, allowing you to continue to browse through Instagram as you normally would. This form of group calling allows users to browse the platform simultaneously with their friends, making the overall experience feel much more interactive.

Explore Page Topics

Additionally, Instagram also incorporated new topic channels within the platform’s Explore Page, allowing users to choose the specific topic they wish to browse. These topic sections can be found at the top of the Explore Page, and they contain relevant content related to each unique topic. This feature helps users focus their searches in order to find a specific type of content.

IGTV
Finally, one of Instagram’s recent, and biggest addition was the creation of the platform’s new internal app called IGTV, which can be used as a standalone app, or within the Instagram app itself. Essentially, IGTV allows users to watch long-form vertical video content ranging in topics from a variety of different creators. These videos can be up to an hour long each and are meant to be watched with your mobile device. Like traditional TV, IGTV video content begins playing the moment you open the app, and it also has channels. However, these channels are based on content creators – if you follow a creator, their channel will then pop-up on your IGTV app for you to watch. Through this app, you can browse through videos based on who you’re following, most popular and even continue watching. The nice part about IGTV is that anybody can be a creator and all you have to do to start is by uploading a video.

It’s evident that this social media platform is on the rise to becoming one of the most innovative apps out there. There are constant developments that enhance the platform’s user experience, which will only encourage people to use it more. And according to Ryerson University’s 2018’s report, 61% of online Canadians who have the app, visit it daily, making them loyal users.

So, what’s next for the app?

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Your business can’t afford to miss an exciting opportunity when it comes to social media. To find out how you can enhance returns from your social media efforts, check out the Advantis Social Media Health Check – our proven method for conducting a social media audit.