Social Media News Update

Hi Gang: Happy Monday, and I thought we’d kick this week off with a quick look at some social media stuff for photographers:

Blurred girl holding a piece of paper with the word Please in front of her.

(1) Twitter finally stops penalizing us for using photos
I wrote a post about this problem back in December — begging Twitter to step penalizing us for attaching a photo by taking away characters from our 140-character limit. Well, they recently announced that they are lifting that penalty and now we can add a photo and still have our full 140-character limit. They haven’t given a firm date for this yet, just that we should expect it “…over the coming months” (you can read their announcement here). Now, if we could just get one 10-character hashtag added on to that 140-character limit… ;-)

insta

(2) Instagram’s new algorithm goes live
So far, I haven’t noticed a difference as it’s only been live a few days now, but the order you’ll see things in your feed might be slightly different (here’s a good article on the new rollout this week from TechCrunch). So far I haven’t noticed a big difference, and I haven’t really talked to anyone who says there’s something noticeable under the new scheme, so….so far so good, but posts are no longer in the chronological order we’re used to seeing.

By the way — a big thanks to everyone following me over on Instagram — I’m coming up on 75,000 followers, and I’m really enjoying the very friendly community of sharing there (I think it’s the friendliest of the social sites by far).

fb

(3) You’re probably missing most of my posts on Facebook
Facebook picks and chooses which posts you see, even if you’ve chosen to follow someone — they choose whether you see that person’s posts or not. That’s especially true for people like me with a Facebook Brand page. I have nearly 190,000 people following me, but only a small percentage ever see my posts UNLESS I actually pay to have them boosted. Then Facebook shows them to more people.

Facebook uses a computer algorithm to sense if what a user is posting might possibly be an ad or promotion (right or wrong, and it’s often wrong), and instead of showing my post to the 190,000 people who have asked to follow me, instead it will literally show it to just 230 or so people. Ugh. That’s why so many people miss my calls for submissions for The Grid’s Blind Photo critiques, or when we do a free Webcast or if I give away free copies of my book, or free tickets to my seminars. They simply don’t ever see them. If I don’t pay to boost them, Facebook makes sure virtually nobody sees them. However, if you want to see these types of things from me, you can request to see all my (or any users) posts. Here’s how:

fbprefs

On your Facebook page – go to your Newsfeed Preferences and choose which of the pages you follow that you want to see all their posts (as shown above). That’s it. :)

incono

Iconosquare (stats for Instagram) goes Pro!
I’ve been raving about the online service Iconosquare, which is a site that helps you grow your Instagram audience by helping you determine everything from the best day and time to post, to which type of posts get the most engagement, and so on. Really amazing stats and incredibly useful. Anyway, they’ve just upgraded their service to Iconosquare Pro, and if you haven’t looked at them in a while, it’s worth checking out. Here’s the link.

Hope you found that helpful.

I’m off to Orlando tomorrow…
…for my seminar. I hope I’ll be seeing you there! (it’s not too late if you want to come out and spend the day with me). Next stop, Ft. Lauderdale on Thursday.

Have a good one. :)

-Scott

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