Advertising has featured heavily in this month’s roundup of all the social media news worth knowing. Last month it was Pinterest, this month it is Instagram and Foursquare looking to monetise their platforms. Let us not forget that Instagram has access to users’ data on Facebook, making advertising a very attractive proposition as this means fairly pinpoint targeting. Find out how this works and more by finding out everything you need to know from October.

Twitter opens up direct messaging to non-followers

Twitter has added an option that lets followers direct message those not following them. In the past, users had to follow each other before sending direct messages, but now businesses don’t have to follow thousands of followers to reach them.

To activate this feature you have to visit Twitter’s account settings and tick the box marked “Receive direct messages from any follower.”

This new addition could become a really powerful tool for those companies who actively use Twitter as part of their customer service, as management issues like dealing with complaints can be now directed from the Twitter feed to private messaging, preventing the need to discuss them in public.

Twitter advertisers can now schedule promoted and organic tweets

Twitter has announced a new tool that allows advertisers to schedule organic or promoted tweets for dates and times up to a year in advance. This feature is currently accessible only from Twitter’s Ads Products, and might become genuine competition to third-party tools that already exist, like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. As automation and social advertising is becoming more popular, this new feature may become especially useful to those businesses who want to make the most of their advertising budget in an effort to promote their business, and not have to worry about being available at the times they wish to broadcast their message.

Instagram ads rollout begins

After months of speculation, Instagram at last revealed what its new advertising feature is going to look like. US users are already able to see samples of new ads appearing in their feed, and it won’t be long until they make their way over here too. Adverts, like photos and videos, are marked out from other content as being ‘sponsored’. They will use the data from both Instagram and Facebook (remember everything you put about yourself on Facebook is targetable by advertisers) to target users according to their interests, likes, and who you like or follow on both networks.

So far Instagram has partnered with only a few brands (Adidas, Ben & Jerry, Burberry, GE, Lexus, and Levi’s being examples) that may become great case studies on how to effectively use Instagram advertising.

Vine lets users edit and save posts before sharing

Vine has finally allowed users to make multiple videos, edit them, and save for later.

Until now, creating the perfect Vine has been a rather difficult task, but thanks to Vine’s new updates for iOS and Android, users are able to work on more than a few sessions. The new update “Sessions” makes it possible to manage up to 10 in-progress videos at once, save them, and return to any of them later on.

The second new feature, ‘Time Travel’, lets users prevent their six-second videos from messing up by allowing them to remove, reorganise, and replace any shot within the clip before posting. In the past, if the video was not right, there was no other way than to start recording the video from the beginning. But now you can avoid all that extra hassle by being able to delete unwanted frames or moving them anywhere within the timeline.

Twitter launches emergency alerts

To help users get important and accurate information, Twitter introduced a system for emergency alerts, which aims to help spread critical information. Without a doubt, Twitter has played a vital role in recent years in bringing information during natural disasters and emergencies. Thanks to this new feature, users can specify from which accounts they would like to receive alerts that will enable them to stay on top of information in times of crisis or when other lines of communications are down.

Foursquare opens its ads platform to all small businesses 

Location-based app Foursquare has launched a new advertising platform in an attempt to help small businesses all over the world advertise themselves more effectively. Foursquare Ads will be available to purchase via auction with a minimum bid of $1.00. Until now, only a limited number of large advertisers had access to paid ads, but now SMEs are able to test this form of advertising. And it looks like they are very keen, as already “800 small businesses in 36 countries have taken ads in the limited beta.”

Bing now includes pins in image searches

If you haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Pinterest, this news may change that, as Bing now includes pins in image searches. Now when users search for something on Bing, relevant Pinterest boards called  “image collections” will appear alongside results on the right hand panel. This latest update can become an additional traffic source to these businesses who have a Pinterest presence as the Pinterest boards will show the user’s account name, board name, as well as a link to visit the board.

Pinterest updates its ‘Acceptable Use Policy’

Pinterest added new promotions guidelines to their Acceptable Use Policy, which may be crucial to businesses who are running competitions on the network. Make sure you read them if you want to avoid having your competitions scrutinised, as some of the new guidelines are against common tactics, which until now have been often used by businesses to run competitions on Pinterest.

Other news worth checking out:

• Facebook launches first video ads within its mobile apps
• Facebook page insights updated
• Facebook enables post edits
• HootSuite adds Gmail and Pinterest support
• Curalate’s Fanreel gives brands the power to integrate user-generated images into websites
• Flickr for iOS updated with automatic uploads
• Instagram to arrive on Windows Phone soon

By Kasia Piekut