What if you have different segments of customers that you engage with on social media? How do you keep your content relevant to people with different needs and interests?

A new feature currently being tested by Instagram could be the answer. It will let you share your stories with smaller groups of followers. 

For example, if you have a B2C product and a B2B product, you could share different stories with those different groups. 

You’ll have to do a bit of work categorising followers but it could be worth it if you have diverse customers or if you’re Colleen Rooney. 

Meta is working on an ad-free subscription service for the EU that could cost around $17 a month for both Instagram and Facebook.

But do they really want you to subscribe, or is this as Matt Navarra suggests in an article on the Drum, that they see this as a way to get users to opt-in for personalised ads?

Personalised ads are a violation of GDPR and Meta has already been fined for using them. Of course, very few people will opt-in to be tracked for free. But if the alternative is a monthly fee, more may go for the option.

Which could be good news for advertisers as well as Meta itself.

Ad-free X Premium

TikTok recently floated the idea of an ad-free subscription service, Meta followed and now X is jumping on board. It is working on a tiered subscription program that will offer the basic subscription, a 1/2 the ads subscription, and a no-ads subscription.

This could be popular with the users who are sticking with X and make up for the decline in ad spend on the platform.

But will people actually pay?

Events on WhatsApp

What happens when you want to tell your WhatsApp group about an event you are running? You can add it to the general chat, but that can get overlooked or easily forgotten. You just have to keep reminding people or send people a link to register.

But maybe not anymore. WhatsApp Beta is testing a new events feature for community group chats. You’ll be able to create an event which will send a notification to all group members who can then RSVP. 

This could be useful for work groups as well as customer groups.

Social links on Google Business Profile

When people look for you on Google it’s often your Google Business Profile they will find first. But if they just view your profile and leave they may never see you again. 

That’s where a new feature from GBP will help. You can now add your social profiles to your profile making it easy for people to stay up to date with you.

You can add as many as you like but I’d recommend only adding the ones where you are the most active. 

New Instagram Secret Sticker

Stickers on Instagram help you discover how engaged your story viewers are. Are they just flicking past or are they paying attention?

Instagram is working on new stickers that could be great for getting deeper engagement from your audience. My favourite is the Secret sticker. You’ll be able to hide a secret, like a special offer, or whisper code behind the sticker. That secret will only be revealed when a viewer sends you a message.

I think this is fun and it could be a good way to get to know your customers more. I’ll definitely be giving it a try if it gets beyond the test phase.

#Instagram is working on a new sticker: Secret 👀 pic.twitter.com/pphrEvDiHq

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a)

There will never be clickable links in your Instagram feed

It’s frustrating that you can’t add a link to your Instagram grid captions. It’s annoying for us as businesses and it makes it hard work for our audience who have to click away from the feed to find the link.

But it’s also part of the joy of Instagram. In some ways, I was relieved to hear that Adam Mosseri confirmed that they will not be adding links to captions. 

His reason? They don’t want it to become a news site. This is odd because I see a lot of videos from news organisations I follow in my feed.