August has been another busy month for social media; is it ever not? Facebook and Twitter feature heavily in this list, but we would expect nothing less from two of the most widely used platforms for marketers. Catch up on everything that has been going on this past month…

Facebook contests no longer need an app

This one only just made it in this month’s roundup. Facebook have changed their terms to allow contests to be run on a page’s timeline; there is no longer a need for a specific app. This is great news as not only did the average Facebook page owner not know about this requirement (with many simply ignoring it), it didn’t make much sense anyway.

LinkedIn launches new Company Page analytics

The importance of LinkedIn for businesses is growing, and so is the need for data. Until now, measuring content performance and other page insights wasn’t as easy, but thanks to a new analytics tool, page managers are able to quickly monitor data such as post performance and engagement.

Facebook’s updated Page Insights

LinkedIn is not the only network with an upgraded analytics tool: Facebook have released a new and improved Page Insights. Insights provides you with more detailed information about the people who are engaging with your posts, when the best times are for posting on Facebook, and post performance is now easier to see as various metrics have been aggregated into one place, giving a post performance ‘report card’.

Facebook to launch shared photo albums

Shared Photo Album’s are a new way to encourage more engagement with images on Facebook by allowing up to 50 individuals to contribute photos to a photo album. This isn’t a tool for businesses however, as the feature is not available for page albums. This is a really neat feature that allows Facebook users to contribute as a group; perhaps a sign of things to come for business pages in the future?

Anyone can now embed Facebook posts

Twitter has allowed the embedding of live tweets on websites for quite a while now, and Facebook have caught up by allowing anyone to embed posts from Facebook. They have also made some improvements to the feature since it was first announced, such as including video in the embedded posts.

Twitter’s Lead Generation Card expands

Twitter are thinking more about how they can make their service better for marketers and specifically for lead generation with the introduction of Lead Generation Cards. Twitter cards bring a richer experience to the platform by allowing users to expand a tweet and see additional information – for example, if you expand a tweet containing a link to a YouTube video, you can watch the video directly from your feed. Lead Generation Cards allow brands to earn email sign ups from users, directly from Twitter, and users don’t even need to fill in a form. The cards are only available to select brands at the moment but hopefully soon more of us will get the chance to use them.

Twitter is launching ‘Related Headlines’ to show the story behind each tweet

Twitter is diving deeper into the theme of using social media for journalism with a new feature, Related Headlines. The network is planning to turn tweets into news by showing links below the tweet and linking it to sites where a tweet is embedded from. Every time someone tweets about something newsworthy, you will be able to open the miniature sitemap and see a glimpse of ‘the stories behind the Tweet’.

Tweetdeck gets a makeover

Tweetdeck is back with some really handy features! After 3 months of waiting, users’ patience has been rewarded with a new tweet panel and features including the ability to reply to multiple users, preview images, shorten links, and auto-generate usernames & hashtags.

Other news worth checking out:

• YouTube live-streaming now available to channels with over 1,000 subscribers
• Share and view your Google Drive photos and videos through Google+
• Instagram now lets you upload videos from your phone gallery
• Facebook makes ads prettier with Shutterstock partnership to offer free stock images in ad creator
• Instagram buys HD video app Luma
• HootSuite adds extra security measures as spammers increase efforts to gain unauthorized access
• Browse your Instagram photos on the web with Copygram
• Social sharing service Buffer now lets you post and schedule content to a Google+ Page
• This virus creates fake followers on Instagram
• Foursquare begins crowdsourcing local business data collection with questions that appear after check-ins

By Kasia Piekut