Every month, I put together a quick recap of all things social media and digital marketing. Here is December's social skim, enjoy!

1. JANUARY 2018
Social skim questions & discussion

2. Full disclosure,This presentation was pulled together quickly.
December social skim
2

3. 3
December social skim
How this works.
Less presentation more conversation.
Ask questions.
How does this information apply?

4. 4
December social skim
Facebook for creators.
Facebook creator app
This new all-in-one application allows Facebook creators and
page admins to develop branded assets, chat with their
community and manager their page in one place.
Sound collection.
Facebook Sound Collection offers free background tracks,
sound and radio tracks for use by Facebook creators.
Creator community.
The Facebook creator community application is a gated
content collection where creators can access free video
tools, how-to guides and inspirational content.
AR studio
This creative tool enables brands to develop augmented
reality camera effects for the Facebook stories platform.
360 Community
New tools and resources dedicated to helping brands utilize
360 video.
Facebook has recently launched new tools to support the creative community in developing advertisements, videos and
Facebook stories.

5. 5
Hashtags you can follow.
Instagram recently launched the ability to follow hashtags to
users world wide. Users can now opt to include all posts that
include a certain hashtag in their news feed by following it.
This means that utilizing hashtags that are relevant to your
industry is more important than ever.
December social skim

6. 6
Engaging live sessions.
Instagram also allows users to request to join Instagram live
broadcasts now. When a brand starts a live video, it notifies
all of their followers that they are broadcasting. This new
update opens up two-way communication and the opportunity
for brands to create engaging live sessions by interacting
directly with their followers.
December social skim

7. 7
Facebook is trying to monetize
WhatsApp.
Facebook has launched a new ad unit that will let businesses
create a link between the Facebook platform and WhatsApp.
The hugely popular messaging service has around 1 billion
daily users and is owned by Facebook.Advertisers can now
include a button on their ads so that people can call or
message via WhatsApp with the click of a button.
December social skim

8. 8
Facebook’s measurement
update.
Facebook is finally updating their organic measurement
methodology to only count organic reach when a Page’s post
appeared on a person’s screen. This update should take
place in early 2018 and will likely cause organic reach/
impressions metrics to decrease drastically. However, this
update will increase the accuracy of organic reporting.
December social skim

9. 9
Can’t forget #FakeNews.
In December, Facebook launched a new feature to give
people additional context on the articles they see in News
Feed. For links to articles shared in News Feed, people can
easily tap an icon to access more information, including a
description of the publisher, trending articles or related articles
about the topic, and information about how the article is being
shared by people on Facebook. They are calling this
additional publisher information “trust indicators”.
December social skim

10. 10
Invoicing on Facebook.
Facebook has launched of an extension for Messenger that
allows PayPal sellers to invoice buyers directly through
private messaging. The feature is ideal for use with
Facebook’s numerous Buy and Sell groups as well as
Facebook Marketplace, in addition to being an easy way to
send PayPal invoices in general.
December social skim

11. 11
Trending skills on LinkedIn.
To give users more insight into in-demand skills, LinkedIn
launched a new monthly notification that shares relevant
trending skills among people with the same job title. Users
can then click on the skill to get more insights on it, such as
which companies are hiring people with that skill and
recommended LinkedIn Learning courses that they can take
if they’re not yet an expert in that area.
December social skim

12. 12
The stories format is taking over
the world.
Even YouTube is adding Stories. The popular format
introduced by Snapchat, then adopted by Instagram, Skype,
Facebook, Messenger and even some dating apps, is now
making its way to YouTube as a new feature the company is
calling “Reels.”
Reels is YouTube’s spin on Stories, not an exact copy.And
Reels won’t live at the top of the app, as Stories do on
Instagram – instead, they’ll appear in a brand-new tab on a
creator’s channel.
December social skim

13. 13
Twitter threads.
Making it possible to post Facebook-worthy rants on Twitter.
The social platform has made it easy to create a thread by
adding a plus button in the composer, so users can connect
thoughts and publish threaded Tweets all at the same time.
They can continue adding more Tweets to your published
thread at any time with the new “Add another Tweet” button
December social skim

14. 14
Update meta descriptions.
In December, Google confirmed that they have extended the
search result snippets from 160 characters to a maximum of
360. This update does not require website administrators to
completely re-write all of their meta descriptions but it is
important to review your current page descriptions to make
sure that they are adequately describing the page content.
Meta description
December social skim

15. 15
It didn’t happen in December but…
We need to talk about Zuckerburg’s mic drop.
What happened?
The Facebook algorithm is being tweaked to “prioritize posts that
spark conversations and meaningful interactions between
people” and to “prioritize posts from friends and family over
public content.”
My predictions are…
1. This update is bad for businesses (pay to play is more
necessary than ever)
2. The update is an opportunity for Influencers.
3. Paid reach is also going to take a hit.
4. Instagram will follow.
5. Facebook will soon need to regulate influencers.
December social skim
What can brands do?
• Dig into page data and revise their content strategy around “who”
their followers are and what they want to see from the brand.
• Encourage fans and followers to add their pages to Facebook’s
see first feature.
• Use Facebook Live more often: Facebook said Live videos are
totaling six times the interactions of non-Live videos.
• Use groups more often.
• Local small businesses should take steps to be included in the
Facebook Local application.

16. Ask me anything.