Instagram recently rolled out a new feature allowing you to publishing up to 10 photos and videos in a single post.
February 2017
#Loomly — Major Update: Upload & Schedule Videos
#Tool — Create Contracts Effortlessly With The Standard Freelance Agreement
If your work as a freelancer, then you know how painful it can get to kick-off a project with a new client you have never worked with: this is where the Standard Freelance Agreement comes into play.
Developed by AND CO in partnership with the Freelancers Union, the Standard Freelance Agreement is a simple — yet life-saver — online tool allowing you to draft contracts like a breeze:
- Input client information
- Define project details
- Select ownership rights
- Set agreement, payment & termination terms
- Input your information
- Review your contract, sign it electronically and send it to your client
What’s in it for Social Media Managers: being vetted by an independent third-party, fair for both freelancers and companies, and compliant with the upcoming Freelance Isn’t Free Act, contracts made through the platform enable healthier relationships, allowing everyone involved to focus on what really matter, work!
Loomly is a simple social media calendar tool built with freelancers in mind: start your 15-day free trial now.
#Resource — Enjoy These 180 Fresh Background Gradients
Whether you want to design iOS-like social media visuals, get a bit creative with your landing pages or take your social ads to the next level, this collection of 180 fresh background gradients can come in handy!
Here are a couple of graphics made from these background gradients:
You can download these 180 amazing background gradients as .PSD and .SKETCH files on Gumroad through a name-a-faire-price system.
Just keep in mind that this project took its creators 83.2 hours of design work and 47.4 hours of coding.
What’s in it for Social Media Managers: these background gradients were meant for web designers & developers, but they can definitely prove highly useful to create social media visuals.
Loomly is a visual social media calendar that lets you preview your posts before you hit publish: start your 15-day free trial now.
#New — Get Inspired With Pinterest Discovery Tools
Pinterest is arguably the largest inspirational pinboard in the world, and these brand new Pinterest Discovery Tools are only going to consolidate this leadership position.
Three new features are now going to make finding ideas on Pinterest even more powerful and easier:
- Pinterest Lens (Beta): perform searches without your keyboard, simply by using the camera of your smartphone in the Pinterest app, and Pinterest will suggest you some related ideas.
- Instant Ideas: when you see something you like on Pinterest, the app can now offer you similar pins, with the tap of a button. As a (great) side-effect, each new Instant Ideas request will personalize your feed even more.
- Shop the Look: or, in other words, e-commerce at your fingertips. Shoppable pins (from a selection of merchants) will now allow you to purchase products and checkout directly inside Pinterest.
What’s in it for Social Media Managers: whether you are using Pinterest for inspiration (for instance, to find post ideas) or as a communication / marketing / sales channel, these new Pinterest Discovery Tools will definitely help you raise the bar.
Loomly is a visual social media calendar tool that helps you create better content for Pinterest: start your 15-day free trial now.
#eBook — Design Epic Social Media Graphics
We already shared all sorts of tools & tips that help create better social media graphics.
Today, we are adding an eBook to this list: Social Media Images: The Ultimate Guide To Designing Epic Graphics by Venngage.
This eBook won’t teach you how to become a proficient designer, but rather:
- Where to look for inspiration.
- Why you need to experiment with existing visual styles.
- How to come up with your own style & illustrate your brand voice.
What’s in it for Social Media Managers: ideas for your next social identity as well as impactful ways to convey your messages on your favorite platforms.
Loomly is a visual social media calendar that lets you preview your posts before you hit publish: start your 15-day free trial now.
#Data — Browse The 2017 World Map Of Social Networks
Since 2009, Vincenzo Cosenza has been publishing a world map of social networks every year, as a mean to visualize which platform is the most popular in each country.
Here is the 2017 version:
#Quote — Mark Zuckerberg About Building A Global Community
As Facebook just turned 13 — which also happens to be the minimum legal age to be on Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy note yesterday sharing his ambitions for generations to come, the questions we will need to address as a global community, and how Facebook can help in the process:
Today we are close to taking our next step. Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.
[…]
We may not have the power to create the world we want immediately, but we can all start working on the long term today.
For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families. With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community — for supporting us, for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all.
[…]
Our job at Facebook is to help people make the greatest positive impact while mitigating areas where technology and social media can contribute to divisiveness and isolation. Facebook is a work in progress, and we are dedicated to learning and improving. We take our responsibility seriously, and today I want to talk about how we plan to do our part to build this global community.
[…]
There are many of us who stand for bringing people together and connecting the world. I hope we have the focus to take the long view and build the new social infrastructure to create the world we want for generations to come.
According to Mark Zuckerberg’s note, building a global community is by nature a global challenge, which will require us to find ways to build a Supportive, Safe, Informed, Civically-engaged & Inclusive community.
In other words, after 13 years spent connecting the world, Facebook now aims at building a better global commynity, or simply put, a better world.
What’s in it for Social Media Managers: as social media professionals, we have a a great deal of power — and consequently a great deal of responsibility — regarding the way we shape these online platforms. We can therefore contribute to making the world a better place. Literally.
Loomly is a social media calendar that helps you create better posts: start your 15-day free trial now.
#Loomly — Why Social Media Tools Cannot Post Automatically To Instagram
Loomly integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ & LinkedIn.
Posts can be scheduled and published automatically to all the above platforms except Instagram.
Here is everything you need to know about this limitation.
1. How social media tools publish posts
Social media tools like Loomly publish posts to social networks through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Through their respective APIs, social media platform allow third-party applications to:
- Collect data, for instance to: get your username, your profile picture and the stats of your posts.
- Send data, for instance to: publish a post.
2. Why social media tools cannot post automatically to Instagram
Each social network decides what kind of data third-party applications can collect and send through the API.
While Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ & LinkedIn all allow third-party applications to publish content to their respective platforms, Instagram does not.
This means that it is technically not possible to post automatically to Instagram through the official Instagram API.
3. The risk of using social media tools that claim to post automatically to Instagram
There are indeed social media tools out there that claim to post to Instagram.
Such tools achieve that in one of two ways:
- Either, they reverse-engineered the official Instagram API and figured out how to bypass the limitation described above: what might sound like a clever hack, is actually an illegal one, as a total violation of Instagram’s Platform Policy (see Section A. General Terms, Item #32).
- Or, they require your username and your password to do so, which is also against Instagram’s Platform Policy (see Section A. General Terms, Item #32), and is against web security 101.
In both cases, by using social media tools that claim to post automatically to Instagram, you are taking significant risks, which could lead to your content being deleted from Instagram, and your account hijacked or banned from the platform.
4. What to do until social media tools are allowed to post automatically to Instagram
Given all the above, we at Loomly obviously went the legal route and implemented the next best thing to automatic publishing, which is an automatic email reminder including the image and the caption of your post.
This will make it easy for you to share your post from a smartphone through a simple copy and paste process.
Of course, should Instagram ever allow third-party applications to publish posts to their platform, Loomly will activate such feature as fast as humanly possible.
We hope this explanation makes sense and encourage you to reach out to us at contact@loomly.com with any question or suggestion.
Thank you so much to you all for your understanding,
The Loomly Team.
Loomly is a visual social media planner compatible with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ & LinkedIn: start your 15-day free trial now.
