If that title doesn’t make you flashback to high school, I don’t know what will. Don’t worry, we aren’t referring to the jocks and the dead beats. We are talking about some of the changes in 2012 to social media sites. Several new social platforms have popped up into existence, and the ones that have been around have made some big changes. Here are some things to take note when creating your social media plan for 2013.
Facebook’s newsfeed is now more image dominant. You are able to post more than one picture at a time and they display larger than before. Graph Search will start to roll out this year, so people can search things through their friends list easier based on information from their profile. Pages is now on mobile devices, so pay attention to how things display differently on web and mobile.
Google+
You probably want to create or update your Google+ account because company pages are now appearing in knowledge graph search. If you use “things to do in Cleveland” as an example, you will see the knowledge graph appear. This is all information pulled from their Google+ page. The more active and the more information you have on your Google+ page, the more likely you will be to appear in the knowledge graph based on what is being searched.
Ooyala and Twitter have been persistently working on being able to embedding videos into tweets. They are still testing this new feature, and only letting a select few companies use it, but soon you will be able to insert a thumbnail of the video directly into the stream so people can play it without leaving Twitter. You can’t forget about being able to change three pictures on your Twitter profile now either. You can change your header image, your profile picture and your background image. Make sure that they all display properly based on the size at which people will be viewing them, and get creative!
LinkedIn has changed personal profile pages as well as company pages to be more visual. The news feed now shows recent activity at the top, pictures can now be embedded in posts, and you have more of an in-depth look at page insights. These were all things set into play to make it easier to interact with your connections and followers.
Pinterest finally jumped on the same ship as all of the other social media platforms. They are no longer invitation only, and have set up company pages. They also introduced secret boards if you wish to save things without others being able to see. Pinterest is the leader in social sites in being able to interact and share pictures. Several other sites have mimicked their graphic layout because of this.
After Facebook bought Instagram, they introduced web profiles. Why? Well, no one is quite sure. It is set up a lot like Facebook, and a lot of the experience of Instagram is still limited to your phone. You can log in, view people you follow’s photos as well as explore others. Uploading images is still restricted to just from a mobile device. Maybe before next year Instagram will make some drastic changes.