Social media round-up for charities – #2

Welcome to our second social media roundup! Here’s the latest social media news and what it means for your charity.

1. YouTube introduces live stream for desktop

YouTube has announced that it’s making live streaming easier for all of us. From now on, we’ll be able to broadcast directly from our desktops meaning that you won’t need broadcast software to go live anymore from your laptop. This will be really useful if you are in your office or at an event and you want to ensure that you’re not relying on your smartphone for a live session.

You can access it with the use of Google Chrome and, according to YouTube, all you need to do is to visit youtube.com/webcam and click on ‘Go Live’.

2. Twitter is discouraging identical posts on multiple accounts

Twitter has recently updated their T&Cs to say that they are not allowing people to post the same message to multiple accounts anymore.

This means that if you’re using several different Twitter accounts in your organisation, you won’t be able to post the exact same message on all of them. Even if the one message is scheduled to be posted at a future date and time, you will still need to adjust the messaging to make it unique.

This is an attempt to combat spam while promoting authenticity and creativity.

If you are using Lightful’s platform, you will see a warning message that will serve as a reminder when you’re about to post the same message to multiple Twitter accounts.

Going forward, you will need to be more creative and adjust your messaging to adhere to Twitter’s new guidelines.

3. Instagram lets you add clickable hashtags and mentions to your bio

Instagram is finally allowing us to make our bios more appealing and searchable. Your bio (or biography) is the section that your potential or new followers will probably notice first. It lets you provide information about your organisation, so you want to be as descriptive and engaging as possible.

Now you can add clickable #hashtags and @mentions to your bio to provide further details about your account.

Are you following @Lightful on Instagram?

For example, if your organisation is increasing awareness about mental health, you can add the hashtag #mentalhealth as part of your bio to increase the reach of your account. If you’re working in partnership with another organisation, you can mention their profile on your bio to increase both of the accounts’ reach.

Here is an example of the updated bio section from our own head of design, Bruno La Versa. We received a notification when he @mentioned Lightful on his bio.

Tip: If you want to add your bio in more than one line, you can simply write the text in your notes app and then copy and paste it on to Instagram to create the necessary spaces that make the text look better.

4. More local news will show up on Facebook

It has been a busy week for Facebook, but not all news has been negative.

Facebook has announced that they will prioritise local news from now on so that people can see more of the stories that matter to them.

Local news and stories are highly relevant to people and their communities so this is a positive change, particularly for smaller and local charities.

If you’re not focusing on national (and international) stories, you may see your content reaching more of your fans with this change. However, Facebook still wants the content to be informative and relevant to local communities and, of course, it needs to be engaging after their latest algorithm change.

What’s interesting is the fact that the focus on local communities is not necessarily referring to a particular city, but rather a local area or neighbourhood.

5. Delete all Facebook apps that access your data

The Cambridge Analytica story got #DeleteFacebook trending recently. If you want to feel more secure whilst using Facebook, you can browse all the apps that you have authorised to access your profile. There are probably more than you can imagine!

Here is a quick way to delete all of them and here’s how you can change your settings to opt out of platform API sharing.

Interesting Reads

If you want to read more social media and digital updates, here are some useful posts we recommend:

Keeping up with the algorithms: what you need to know about each platform’s sorting system

How to develop buyer personas using Facebook Insights

The ultimate nonprofit social media scheduling guide (with a dose of humour)

How many followers NGOs have on social media

Are you going to #deleteFacebook?

What does it mean for communicators if people #deleteFacebook?

Live debate: what are the pros and cons of Facebook fundraising for nonprofits?

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