#Resource — “Meet” Awesome Freelancers On Freelance TV

Freelance TV is an awesome concept created by Dann Petty, a freelancer who drove 10,000 miles across the United States to interview freelancers about their daily lives.

The result is stunning:

A series of freelancers’ video interviews, released on a monthly basis as independent episodes.

Freelanced, a documentary about the freelancing life.

A Slack community to connect with other freelancers.

The currently available episodes feature freelancers in the world of product design, graphic design & photography: we really hope some future interviews will feature a social media manager!

In any case, this is probably one of the best video resource out there about freelancing.

Although Dann Petty is self-funding his initiative, every one can pitch in, directly on Freelance.tv, to support the project and contribute to completing it faster.

And as a project made for freelancers, by a freelancer, Freelance TV definitely resonates with our values and our vision at Loomly!

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps freelancers collaborate with their clients: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Data — Number Of Instagram Users (Again)

The number of Instagram users is not growing, it’s rocketing!

Earlier this year, we were reporting that Instagram had just reached 600 million monthly active users.

Yesterday, Instagram announced they had just crossed the 700 million users mark:

That’s 100 million new users in less than four months.

In comparison, the last 100 million users took them six months to recruit.

In other words, not only is Instagram growing, it’s accelerating.

And if you look above, you will see that almost 700,000 people liked the announcement of the 700,000,000 users mark: that’s about 1 in a thousand, and at this scale, such engagement is just plainly amazing.

Congratulations Instagram, that’s a well-deserved success.

Loomly is a social media calendar solution that lets you create and preview content for Instagram: start your 15-day free trial now.

#LongRead — Explore Fred Cavazza’s 2017 Social Media Landscape

Fred Cavazza published the first version of his Social Media Landscape back in 2008.

Fred Cavazza‘s social media landscape evolution from 2008 to 2017

As he puts it:

I was far from expecting to see them overtake the web and shift the balance of power. And yet, here we are, 10 years laters with social platforms reigning supreme on the digital world. If the landscape hasn’t changed much since last year, advertisers still struggle to adapt / conform to the mobile-first paradigm. With this post, I invite you to reflect on the last trends and practices.

In this pretty unconventional long read (compared to the articles we feature in general on this blog), you will learn from Fred Cavazza’s take on the big guys — Facebook, Google & Twitter — as well as about his methodology to come up with this 2017 Social Media Landscape:

Credit: Fred Cavazza

Most importantly, you will get a grasp of 2017 usage trends, which appear to be an intensification of existing trends rather than actually disruptive new trends:

Most online/social time is spent of smartphones.

Visual content rules.

Live videos.

Ephemeral videos are losing to stories.

Social commerce is here to stay.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: an interesting photography of today’s usage and trends, which can help adjust one’s brand strategy and identify new opportunities and territories to pursue.

Loomly is a social media planner that helps you preview any content you publish: start your 15-day free trial now.

#New — Improve your Ads Targeting With LinkedIn Matched Audiences

LinkedIn is a fantastic social network if you need to target professionals — either to reach out to a B2B audience or when leading employer brand marketing campaigns — and their targeting capabilities just got a serious update, with Matched Audiences.

Credit: LinkedIn

Following a six-month extensive pilot program, LinkidIn is introducing today (and rolling out this week) Matched Audiences, with the following features:

Website Retargeting: create target audiences from your website visitors, reengage with them and nurture those most likely to drive revenue with always-on campaigns. This feature yielded a 30% increase in CTR and a 14% drop in post-click cost-per-conversion during LinkedIn’s pilot program.

Account Targeting: upload a .CSV file listing company names and match that against LinkedIn’s Company Pages, in order to reach decision makers at your target companies. This feature yielded a 32% increase in post-click conversion rates and a 4.7% drop in post-click cost-per-conversion during LinkedIn’s pilot program.

Contact Targeting: upload a CSV list of your existing clients & leads’ email addresses, through available integrations with Marketo, Eloqua or Liveramp, and engage with them via LinkedIn Sponsored InMail messages. This feature yielded a 37% increase in click rate (CTR) during LinkedIn’s pilot program.

To be very transparent, our team is super excited to see LinkedIn ads targeting capabilities get better, with Matched Audiences, given the fantastic yet merely untapped potential of the platform!

Loomly is a visual social media planner that lets you create better content for LinkedIn: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Fun — Get Philosophical Thoughts With Every New Browser Tab

Nowadays, everything seems to be about optimization — “harder, better, faster, stronger” would say Daft Punk — and although we do want to help you be the best at what you do with Loomly, we also think, as human beings, that sometimes it’s great to escape from this frenzy and get a bit more existential.

ShowerThoughts will provide you exactly with this much needed break, offering you philosophical thoughts when you open a new tab in your browser:

Sure, these philosophical thoughts are closer to sarcasm than nietzscheism, but they do a pretty good thought-provocative job.

Some of the philosophical thoughts we got when playing with this plugin were:

“I don’t know if I like popcorn while I watch movies, but I do know that I like popcorn while I watch pre-show entertainment at the movies.” — Artdilly

“Mars is a planet inhabited entirely by robots.” —Bohemian7

“We have woken up over 10000 times, but we’re still not used to it.” —ortseam98

“The first person ever to use sarcasm probably ended up sounding pretty stupid.” —Tokyoz

ShowerThoughts is available for free here in the Chrome Webstore.

Loomly is a simple yet powerful social media calendar that helps you delight your audience: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Loomly — Update: Discover Your New List And Calendar Views

This month, our team is happy to introduce a “design” update, including new list and calendar views, as well as a couple of new features.

Besides a user interface lifting, your new list view now allows you to:

Sort posts by date, subject, copy & comments, either in ascending or descending order.

Filter posts by date format, channel, media, status & assignee.

Your new calendar view went through a minor appearance update (with “rounded” post items instead of “square” ones) but comes with four new cool features, letting you:

Filter posts by date, format, channel, media, status & assignee.

See post ideas on their corresponding dates.

Create quick posts (just like you do on your dashboard) directly from a calendar cell.

Drag and drop posts to update their date.

While we certainly took the liberty of coming up with most of the visual updates in your new list and calendars views, all new features were inspired and sparked by your outstanding feedback.

Since Day 1, you have been amazingly supportive, and for that, we thank you dearly.

The Loomly Team.

Loomly is a visual social media planner that helps you create better content for your audience: start your 15-day free trial now.

#LongRead — Be Nice (On Social Media) And Go Viral. Or Just Be Nice.

In his opinion piece for AdWeek, GlassView VP of Business Development Peter Dakich explains why it pays to be nice on social media.

This is not really a long read per se — 632 words — but a good read that definitely sparks a deeper reflexion about the stakes, for brands and individuals alike, of being nice online.

While (antagonizing) Super Bowl ads flopped, “nice” viral videos have become hits. That’s because no matter what our political leanings, we all like kittens and puppies and agree that we ought to treat people with disabilities with respect and that teens should get a chance to have fun.

In the war zone that is our News Feed, such messages also give us a chance to say, “I’m about more than politics.” Smart advertisers should seize this moment and say something positive that can’t be construed as an attack on one side or the other—at least until baby pics start dominating the News Feed again.

Countless of recent hits tend to support this idea, such as this divorced father-of-two who keeps celebrating his ex-wife’s birthday to set an example for his sons, to this IHOP waiter‘s random act of kindness with a disabled customer and this Starbucks employee delivering coffee and pastries to fire fighters & policemen: all three stories of kindness went viral.

Of course, the appearing lesson here is that random acts of kindness have a huge viral potential.

But there is much more here.

Social media are a great place to spread any kind of behavior and emotion and, as social media professionals, we have the power to decide which kind of behavior and emotion we want to spread.

So, why not being nice?

Maybe it will help a post go viral, but if it does not, at least it will contribute to sharing a good vibe.

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps you create better content: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Tool — Make Outstanding Photo Collages With Pasted

What if “old” was the new “new”? That’s kind of the philosophy behind Pasted, a super simple iOS app that lets you make good old-fashioned photo collages!

Based on an idea by Shins frontman James Mercer, and developed by The Brigade‘s spin-off Spruced, Pasted allows you to:

Select a couple of images from your phone library.

Cut them in whatever shape you feel like.

Paste them together.

Add a background.

Apply some filters.

Toss in some stickers.

That’s it: it’s fast, it’s easy and it’s just super cool.

Here is a quick sample of what we were able to make in minutes with the app:

Although the app comes with its fair share of free sticker sets, you can take your photo collages to the next level with additional ones through in-app purchases ($1.99).

Pasted is available for free in beta on iOS.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: a simple, fast & free solution to create a different kind of visuals that will stand out on social media, contrasting with pixel-perfect photos & images.

Loomly is a visual social media calendar tool that lets you preview your posts before you hit publish: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Data — Number Of Tweets For United Nations Real World Issues

While social media are certainly a go-to place for first world problems, our favorite platforms also play an important role when it comes to discussing real world issues.

According to this study by SOAS University of London, which analyzed more than 150 million tweets, here are the 10 most popular topics on Twitter as defined by an official United Nations list of real-world issues:

Terrorism
Racism
Climate change
Human rights
HIV/AIDS
Pollution
Disease
Poverty
Equality
Discrimination

And here is a more visual way to understand how many tweets are related to each of the most-talked-about issues:

Credit: SOAS University Of London

While most of these conversations were dominated by negative words and tones, the mere fact that people do take these real world issues to social media is a sign of hope.

Loomly is a social media calendar that lets you preview your posts before you hit publish: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Fun — Track Meme Trends With Me.Me Trends

Inspired by the r/MemeEconomy subreddit, the team at Me.me created a super fun tool allowing all of us to track meme trends!

Me.me Trends basically works like Google Trends: type in one or more terms and a graph will show you how popular your phrases have been over time, in the realm of memes.

If you have some time to ~~waste~~ kill, there is even an awesome “random” feature that will give you trends for a couple of related terms… when playing with it, we got:

Xbox vs. Nintendo vs. Playstation.

Donald Trump vs. Hilary Clinton.

Obama vs. Biden.

Fun fact: Me.me actually teamed up with data scientist and former NASA researcher Evan Freitag to create Me.me Trends!

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: beyond having fun or placing bets with your coworkers, Me.me Trends can prove very useful when creating posts for your audience, either when hesitating between two topics, or when trying to surf a trending topic.

Loomly is a visual social media planner allowing you to preview your memes before publishing them on social media: start your 15-day free trial now.