What You Need to Know from Facebook’s F8 Conference

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference is a showcase for the company’s new products, upcoming changes and overall vision for the future. This year’s F8 conference, held May 1 and 2, seemed like business as usual – with splashy announcements and a keynote speech from CEO Mark Zuckerberg – despite Facebook’s recent high-profile privacy controversy. Here are…

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Tips for Creating Better Ads in Instagram Stories

It’s not just you. Instagram Stories are mesmerizing. They capture your attention and keep you entertained. In the first year of Instagram Stories (as of August 2017), the company reported that Stories helped users stay on the app longer and visit it more often. Instagram said users under 25 spend more than 32 minutes a…

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Your 5 Step Guide to Creating a Great Instagram Story

1. Plan ahead. Like all great stories, plan a beginning, an end, and most importantly, stick to the plot! The beginning posts of your IG story must be attention grabbing for your audience. This is when you announce you’re about to tell an amazing story and create a screen tapping hook that yells, “Hey, something…

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Tips for Taking an Addictive Boomerang

A short, hypnotic video catches your attention as you scroll through your Instagram feed. It captures an action – a person jumping into a pile of leaves, a cat chasing a toy, or a spoon digging into an ice cream sundae – in a video that plays forward, then backward, over and over. Without even…

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How Brands Can Use Instagram Location & Hashtag Stories

In May, Instagram released two new features to help people find Stories related to their interests. Through the Explore tab, users can now search by location or hashtag, and scroll through a compilation of Instagram Stories that have a particular location sticker, hashtag sticker, or hashtag in a caption. The Explore tab also features select…

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The Story Behind the Stories

Snapchat pioneered Stories. Then Instagram followed. And now Facebook has jumped on board. The basic functionality of Stories is the same across all three social networks. Users compile photos and short videos – enhancing them with filters, text, drawings and other tools if desired – into a slideshow that is viewable for 24 hours, and…

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How Brands Can Use Snapchat Memories

Over the past month, Snapchat has started to roll out one of its biggest changes to date. The app’s newest feature, Memories, allows users to save snaps in a private long-term collection within the app. This is a major shift from Snapchat’s defining characteristic – that snaps last only for a few seconds, or for…

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Photo Fun with Foodie

Increase contrast, reduce saturation, change brightness! Photo editing can become a time-consuming ordeal, but it’s necessary to deliver an image that will stand out for a few seconds before being lost in the mass of content. The Foodie App has taken my lackluster pictures and turned them into perfectly balanced, vivid images with a click…

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Snapchat Geofilters: On-Demand & Ready for Your Brand

With $5 and a little bit of creativity, you can now create your very own Snapchat geofilters. Last week, Snapchat made on-demand geofilters – digital graphics overlaid on a photo or video – open to anyone in the US, Canada and the UK, including individuals and smaller brands. The company is intentionally making this new…

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Instagram Opens Advertising To All: What This Means for Brands

Instagram Advertising

After nearly 18 months of testing, Instagram announced this week it’s ready to open paid advertising to all businesses as well as allow advertisers to use Facebook targeting to direct ads at Instagram users. Additionally, back in June, the company announced it would soon be expanding its advertising interface to include call-to-action buttons, allowing users…

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