#LongReads — Watching The Rise Of Social Media Reality

Since their early days, social media have always been a way for users to share a part of their reality, but as social media permeate our lives & habits a bit more every single day, it’s worth wondering if we are not reaching a point where social media is taking over reality: welcome to social media reality.

In this week’s #LongReads section, we are feature three pieces — which are not all that long actually — showing what is at stake when it comes to social media representing reality:

In the New York Times, Sarah Maslin Nir decrypts how Instagram has evolved from a post-card-platform where users save trip memories to a travel guide tourists actually use to decide what to visit next.

On Vice, Drew Schwartz reports that a US congressman has introduced a bill aiming at classifying presidential tweets as protected records: we all know history is remembered through history books, except in this particular case, the book is a social network.

For TechCrunch, Jordan Crook rightfully highlights how the most popular tweets of the year — including the most liked tweet in history — reflect the state of the world, although it could also be argued that, in some ways, social media define what the world is paying attention to, or not.

As edges between social media and reality are blending, it’s getting harder and harder to actually decide whether we want to look at social media through the world or to look at the world through social media, opening the way for a new social media reality.

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps individuals & teams alike create better content for their audiences: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Loomly — Get Even More Productive With Your New Notifications System

Today, we are happy to announce a significant Loomly update we have been working on for a while now: introducing your brand new notifications system.

The goal of this update is to make notifications more exhaustive, more clear and more actionnable.

In particular, this new notifications system includes 5 key features:

On The Radar widget: in lieu of your former Today’s Posts widget, you will now find a new On The Radar widget, letting you see at a glance all your posts, from all your calendars (with filtering options), planned for today — with the ability to look at posts up to one week in the past as well as one week in the future — and identify quickly which ones are good to go, and which ones require your attention.

Post Overview widget: replacing the old Notifications widget, the new Post Overview widget gives you a summary of how many posts overall (i.e. in all your calendars) you have in each state — Draft, Pending Approval, Requires Edit, Approved, Scheduled, Published, Failed & Passed — letting you know where you need to focus your efforts. You can filter posts by Assignee, to see exactly who needs to do what in your team.

Comments widget: previously included in the Notifications widget, comments have now been extracted into their own Comments widget, which lets you deal with comments just like you would deal with emails, marking them as read / unread as you go. Here again, you can filter comments by Collaborators: that’s particularly useful when you are looking for a particular comment.

Comments notifications: in addition, you can now receive notifications for all comments, and not only those mentioning you personally. This option is disabled by default and you can enable it from the Notifications tab of your Account.

“Everybody” notifications: last but not least, when you assign a post to “Everybody”, all collaborators in your calendar can now receive a notification.

This new notifications system is already available to all Loomly user: log in to your account and check it out!

As always, we have only been able to design this major update thanks to your amazing feedback and we hope you will enjoy your new notifications system, and most importantly, that it will help you (and your team) get even more productive.

Thank you so much for everything: you are the best community we could dream of.

The Loomly Team.

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps individuals & teams create content more efficiently: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Data — Social Media Appeal Among Teenagers & Young Adults

According to eMarketer’s latest forecast, social media appeal among teenagers & young adults keeps on following a consistent trend:

Credit: eMarketer

Facebook usage among users aged 12 to 17 and 18 to 24 will fall 3.4% vs. 2016, while the overall growth of the platform is boosted to 2.4% thanks to older user groups, in particular seniors.

Instagram not only keeps on growing, but is actually accelerating, with 23.8% forecasted growth in monthly active users in 2017 vs. 2016, particularly expanding its user base among those under 12 years old by 19.0% and those ages 12 to 17 by 8.8%.

Despite disappointing second quarter 2017 results, both from a financial & user based perspectives, eMarketer has increased its projections for Snapchat, with the biggest upward revision made to the 18-to-24 group, whose usage is expected to escalate 19.2% in 2017 vs. 2016.

What’s in it for Social Media Manager: an interesting insight (confirmation) of how user groups, in particular teenagers & young adults, are moving from one platform to another, keeping in mind Twitter’s latest re-gain in popularity with avant-garde users willing to speak their minds.

Loomly is a simple social media calendar that helps you create better content for your audience on Facebook & Instagram: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Tip — Set Up A Publisher Logo With Facebook Brand Asset Library

After a short blogging break in August, as our entire team was focusing on crafting new major features — and surprises — coming up very soon, Loomly Toolkit is back to its regular publishing fequency of one short post weekday. It’s good to be back and connect with you all again: happy Monday!

Last week, Facebook announced an interesting update allowing certain Page owners to upload their publisher logo to a new Brand Asset Library, with the goal of displaying this logo next to their content on the platform:

To start, we are introducing these logo treatments exclusively for articles in Trending and Search, but the eventual goal is to extend these to all places where people consume news on our platform.

Credit: Facebook

This update is supported by a recent study by PEW Research Center showing that only 56% of online news consumers could recall the source of a new link viewed on social sites.

If you are an eligible publisher, you can upload your logo assets through the Brand Asset Library located under Publishing Tools on your Page:

If the last link you see is Canvas, that means that you do not have access to this feature yet (Facebook is rolling out this update to large media outlets first).

If you do have access to Facebook Brand Asset Library, then you can follow this guide to upload your publisher logo.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: an (upcoming) opportunity to go one step further in branding the content from their Facebook Pages throughout the entire Facebook ecosystem.

Loomly is a social media calendar that lets you preview your post before you publish them to your social networks: start your 15-day free trial here.

#Loomly — Receive & Download PDF Receipts With Your New Billing System

Following last week’s pricing change, today we are very happy to announce a major update of our billing system, which now allows you to:

Set specific billing details, including company name, address and tax information (for instance, VAT number for European Union customers).

Receive PDF receipts over email upon successful payments, directly in your inbox.

Download copies of your receipts in PDF format as well from the Billing tab of your Account, even retroactively.

This new billing system is already available, to all Loomly users, from the Billing tab of your Account.

As always, this is a feature we built based your needs, determined from on all the amazing feedback you were kind enough to share with us.

And, as always, we want to thank you dearly for your support.

Have a fantastic week,

The Loomly Team.

Loomly is a visual social media calendar that helps you preview what your posts will look like once published: start your 15-day free trial here.

#Loomly — Take Advantage Of Our New Pricing Model

Today, on August 1st, 2017 we are happy to introduce a new pricing model, evolving from our historic, calendar-based Simple Plan, to a segmented set of five brand-new plans:

Why we are doing this

Since Day 1 — and actually even before that — we have always been focusing on what you, our beloved users, told us you wanted.

Speaking with you on a daily basis helped us understand that, while a price per calendar was offering some flexilibity, it was actually not a perfect fit for all of you.

Moving away from a calendar-based pricing, and towards a plan-based pricing, allows us to make Loomly:

More affordable for individual users and small teams, who can now connect more social accounts without paying for multiple calendars.

More scalable for larger teams, who can now create as many calendars as they need with all-inclusive plans.

Who can benefit from this new pricing model

If you signed up for Loomly before August 1st, 2017 11:00AM PST: whether you are already a Loomly customer, or still enjoying your free trial, and even if your free trial is over, nothing changes for you, you can still benefit from our Simple Plan. If you would like to take advantage of our new pricing model, simply reach out to us at contact@loomly.com.

If you sign up for Loomly after August 1st, 2017 11:00AM PST: you automatically benefit from our new plan-based pricing at the end of your 15-day free trial.

What’s in it for you

This new pricing model rolls out with three updates, letting you:

Save 20% with annual subscriptions compared to monthly subscriptions.

Enjoy a lighter version of Loomly, optimized for individuals (rather than teams), in calendars where you are the only collaborator.

Select alternative workflows, depending on your needs, with three options: Original (the one you already know), Lite (where approved posts get scheduled automatically) & Zero (where your posts can either be saved as Drafts, or get Scheduled & Published).

In addition, this new pricing model serves as the foundation for many upcoming and exciting updates, including:

A brand-new billing system, offering better & downloadable receipts (ETA: August).

A new referral program, which will let you earn money when you recommend Loomly around you (ETA: August).

A completely redesigned notification system (ETA August).

An improved user interface (ETA: September).

Native iOS & Android mobile apps (ETA: September).

Many, many more new features, targeting distinct & specific use cases…

More than ever, we want to thank you all dearly for your feedback and your support: it’s an honor to have the privilege of getting up in the morning and building Loomly for you.

Sincerely,

The Loomly Team.

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