5 social media tips and trends for October 2022

1. Social media news: Catch up on the latest platform updates

Stay up to date with the biggest social media platform news and developments for October 2022 (which include a lot of copycat features this month!):

• TikTok released TikTok Now — a copy of BeReal — as a new feature in the US, and as a separate app everywhere else.
• TikTok is increasing its video description limit to 2,200 characters.
• TikTok rolled out a dislike button for comments (but the total number of dislikes will not be shown).
• Twitter is officially testing an edit feature, which it plans to roll out to Twitter Blue subscribers soon.
• Twitter now allows users to schedule up to 10 Spaces at a time.
• YouTube added the option to create a Short as a response to video comments (same as the Reels and TikTok feature).
• Instagram no longer breaks up Stories of under 60 seconds into multiple clips.
• Instagram is radically falling behind TikTok, with Reels engagement 10x lower than TikTok, and with creator satisfaction trailing behind both TikTok and YouTube.
• Instagram is scaling back its shopping features.
• LinkedIn added Documents as a new ad format.
• Messenger introduced Community Chats for Facebook Groups.
• Discord rolled out Reddit-style Forum channels to group together chats from the same topic.

2. Social media tip: Praise your competitors

2022 research found that praising competitors publicly (such as on social media) improves attitudes towards your brand, and makes people more likely to buy from you. This is because we favor brands that give us a feeling of warmth (show sincerity and kindness) — and the seemingly risky move of praising a competitor is the ultimate show of sincerity!

The research also found that praising a competitor will benefit you more than it will your competitor. And that positive comments about your competitors are more beneficial than negative ones. But don’t do it too often, or the effect will fade or even backfire.

Try it for yourself: praise a competitor or rival on their latest product launch, win or award, or admirable initiative.

3. Facebook tip: How to reach more people

Facebook recently released 3 tips on how to get your content in front of people who don’t yet follow you (“unconnected distribution”). These include:

1. Make original content. This means content filmed or created by you. Or, if it makes sense for you to share existing content with your audience, be sure to add value to the original content through meaningful modification, such as adding a commentary or compiling different clips together.
2. Optimize for shares. Make content that your followers want to share and that sparks meaningful engagement.
3. Get recommended (via “Pages you may like,” “Suggested for you” feed posts, etc.). This means avoiding the 5 topics which, although allowed on Facebook, aren’t eligible for recommendation. These include: harmful content (such as violence), exaggerated or low-quality content about health and finance, clickbait content or giveaway posts, low-quality publishing, and false or misleading content.

4. LinkedIn tip: Use Showcase Pages to segment your audience and provide them with tailored content

Hootsuite recently shared their tips on why and how your brand might benefit from a LinkedIn Showcase Page.

LinkedIn Showcase Pages are sub-pages or “extensions” of your company’s main LinkedIn Page. Use them to divide up your content based on your different audiences’ needs, while keeping a central page for your main brand. For example, you could create separate Showcase Pages for your different brands or products, countries, or initiatives, providing that the audience you are targeting and the communication strategy is different for each of these pages.

Your Showcase Pages will be shown on the right side of your main page under “Affiliated Pages,” and will also appear in relevant search results.

A good example is Meta which created separate Showcase Pages for Facebook Gaming, Messenger for Business, Meta AI and more — each of which are unlikely to draw in the same audience. This way, Meta can make sure followers are only receiving relevant content.

Of course, not every company needs one or more Showcase Page. If your main brand is already communicating to one cohesive audience, keeping this entire audience on your central company page might be the most efficient and effective strategy.

5. Instagram tips: Add cool effects to your Stories with these hacks

Business Insider rounded up the top effect hacks and lesser-known features to create Instagram Stories that stand out. Here were some of our favorites:

• Overlay yourself over any background with green screen: Start a Story and choose Camera. Swipe the Effects icons at the bottom of the screen until you get to the magnifying glass. Tap it and search for “green.” Select the Green Screen filter when it appears in your search results. Now you can tap Change media to choose a photo from your camera roll and overlay yourself on top of it.
• Make your emojis pop with text background effects: Choose the text option and add an emoji. Make sure the text background is on, then choose from the various fonts at the bottom of the screen (see image below for some results).
• Reveal a hidden photo behind a solid background with the eraser tool: Add a photo to your Story. Tap the three dots and choose the Draw tool. Select a color, then tap and hold to turn the entire screen this color. Now choose the Eraser icon and start erasing some of the foreground color to reveal the original photo.
• Add a background image to a shared post: Add the post you want to share to your Story. Tap the Stickers icon and choose the Camera Roll sticker. Select the image you want to use as a backdrop from your camera roll. Then move the post and the background images to opposite sides of the screen so you can see both, and tap and hold the background image with two fingers. Now tap and hold the post until it snaps in front of the background image. Adjust the background image until it covers the whole screen, then position the post back into the center.