#Resource — Get All Facebook Video Requirements In This Cheat Sheet

It’s no secret that Facebook is giving significant priority to videos in News Feed: what’s a little more challenging to understand, are all existing Facebook video requirements to actually create and publish these pieces of media efficiently.

Indeed, between all Facebook & Instagram products, and all possibilities offered by smartphones (portrait & landscape orientation), it can get pretty confusing to come up with the right video at the right time.

Not a problem, Facebook just published a visual reference guide providing all criteria for Newsfeed, Instant Articles, Instagram, Stories, et Audience Network, including specs in terms of:

Aspect ratio.

Video length.

Objectives.

Caption support.

Sound requirement.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: a nice cheat sheet to optimize your Facebook videos efficiently.

Loomly is a visual social media calendar that allows you to publish videos to Facebook: start your 15-day free trial now.

#LongReads — Acknowledge These Positive Social Media Evolutions

It’s no secret that change is hard, be it within a company, an industry or platforms used by millions — or even billions — of people: that being said, change is also good, and we want to feature today some positive social media evolutions.

In this Long Reads TechCrunch Special Edition, we will focus on three pieces showing how social media are changing for the better:

Josh Constine shares Mark Zuckerberg’s 9 plans to attack election meddling on Facebook — and it’s both impressive & incredibly action-oriented.

Sarah Perez explains the real reason why Twitter is testing an expansion of tweets from 140 to 280 characters — and whom it will concern.

John Biggs reports the results from USC Information Sciences Institute researcher Emilio Ferrara, showing that not all Twitter bots are born bad and can even be used for good!

Yes, change is hard, but it’s good. And when positive social media evolutions happens, it’s our responsibility as professionals to notice it and spread the news: let’s do it!

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

#Data — Get Up To Speed On The Snapchat / Instagram War About DAU

There is a Snapchat / Instagram war and DAUs (Daily Active Users) appear to be the key metric to determine a winner.

So far, Instagram clearly has the upper hand, with 500 million DAU over 173 million DAU for Snapchat: in other words, about 3x more people use Instagram everyday than Snapchat.

Almost taunting Snapchat, which is celebrating its sixth birthday today by announcing Augmented Reality Sky Filters and new 3D Bitmoji Lenses, Instagram is casually claiming 800 million MAU (Monthly Active Users, up 100 million in less than six months, once again), along with new features fostering safety and kindness on the platform.

As the saying goes, war is bad for business, unless you win it: in this particular case of Snapchat / Instagram war, the real winners may end up being the users of both platforms, who get to use constantly improved platforms.

At Loomly, we love both Instagram & Snapchat, and while we already integrate with the former, we are actively working on ideas & projects to integrate with the latter as well: stay tuned.

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps you create better posts for Instagram and publish them manually via brand-new iOS & Android apps: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Tool — Rediscover Old Instagram Photos With Rewind

We love Instagram so much, and we post so many pictures to it that we can get lost in our own publishing history: Rewind is here to help us rediscover old Instagram photos, simply and quickly.

Rewind could not be easier to use:

Download the app.

Connect your Instagram account.

Start tapping the (almost) only button of the app and rediscover old Instagram photos.

That’s it!

Rewind also offers a cool option letting you be reminded every day of a memory — and you can of course share your memories with friends at the tap of a button.

Rewind is available for iOS, Android & Amazon.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: an efficient hack to rediscover old Instagram photos for #TBT posts.

Bonus: Rewind is also great to play Camera Roulette, a dangerous game invented by Product Hunt’s Founder Ryan Hoover. An idea you can actually leverage to engage your audience in a fun & unconventional contest.

Loomly is a simple social media calendar that provides you with Post Ideas so that you always have something to publish: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Update — Get Post Ideas From Twitter Trends, RSS Feeds & More…

Today, we are very happy to announce a significant update, building on one of the core, unique features of Loomly: Post Ideas.

To be more specific, Loomly will now suggest you four types of ideas :

Twitter Trends: trending topics from Twitter in your location.

RSS feeds: RSS items from your own custom selection of content feeds.

Loomly Inspiration: recurring, broad ideas based on best practices & Internet codes.

Loomly Idea: events, holidays & celebrations happening on specific dates.

Post Ideas are now presented in a new list-style interface in Post Builder:

Post Ideas are also now actionable right from your Dashboard, where you can simply select an idea and a calendar and jump to Post Builder to create a post from that idea:

You can set your Post Ideas preferences in a new dedicated tab in your calendar Settings page:

To activate Twitter Trends, you will need to select which location you would like Loomly to pull trends from and present as ideas:

You can leverage RSS Feeds in one of two ways, either generating ideas from RSS entries with the RSS Post Ideas option…

… or automatically generate Draft posts for all new RSS entries with the Assistive option:

Upgraded Post Ideas are already available to all Loomly users: login & check them out now!

We have even more of these exciting updates coming your way in the near future… stay tuned.

As always, we would like to thank you all for making Loomly possible with your extraordinary support, feedback & kind words: you are simply incredible!

The Loomly Team.

Loomly is a social media calendar that provides you with post ideas, so you never run out of inspiration: start your 15-day free trial now.

#LongReads — Keep Up With Twitter Latest News

If you read social media publications, then you may have noticed how much everybody is talking about Twitter recently: as it’s getting harder to keep up with Twitter latest news, we made a short selection for of what we thought was worth noting.

In this LongReads episode, we feature 3 articles:

In a pretty incredible (updated) story for The Daily Best, Bryan Patrick Byrne explains how Twitter fixed a bug that allowed advertisers to target users based on derogatory terms… following his own reporting of that bug a few days earlier: impressive & quick turnaround.

On TechCrunch, Natasha Lomas highlights how Twitter is using tech tools to quash terror & terrorism-related tweets & accounts.

Adweek’s David Cohen announces (back to back) two major Twitter live stream: Tommy Hilfiger’s fashion show #TOMMYNOW (yesterday) & the Global Citizen Festival (this Saturday). Two “short reads” that confirm the rise of Twitter as a live platform and a serious competitor on that front for YouTube (which is also live streaming many events).

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: a very clear hint that Twitter is doing some intensive work to improve the platform, as much on the content side as on the features side.

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

#Data — People On Pinterest Each Month (And Bonus Data)

Last October, Pinterest was reaching the 150-million-monthly-active-users mark, and in June of this year, the platform announced a new $150 million round of financing… all of this leading this month to a new milestone: there are now more than 200 million people on Pinterest each month:

As of today, more than 200 million people use Pinterest every month. That’s two hundred million people discovering new ideas and trying them in their real lives, from Salt Lake City to Rio to Tokyo. We’ve grown nearly 40 percent since last year, and more than half of all Pinners live outside the U.S.—if Pinland were a country, it’d be the 7th largest in the world!

To celebrate this milestone, Pinterest is teasing us with a couple of new things:

Upcoming new features (currently not disclosed).

Beta version (to allow Pinners to test such features).

Board sections (boards within boards, an example of new features)

Sustained growth, worldwide presence & product update: Pinterest is getting stronger than ever, and at Loomly, we love what we are seeing!

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

#Update — Download Your Brand-New Loomly Mobile App (iOS & Android)

Today, we are particularly happy to announce a major update, probably one of the largest projects we have been working on since the inception of our platform: the all-new Loomly mobile app!

The Loomly mobile app is available right now to all Loomly users:

Loomly for iOS: download here from the App Store.

Loomly Android: download there from the Google Play Store.

Note: you will need an existing Loomly web account to login to the Loomly mobile app, both on iOS & Android. If you do not have a Loomly account yet, simply create a new one here.

This very first version of the Loomly mobile app allows you to:

Access all calendars & posts created from Loomly.com.

Update the state of posts, assign posts to a collaborator & comment on posts

Receive push notifications triggered by all interactions inside Loomly.

Publish to Instagram in a simple two-step process.

If you have a smart watch mirroring notifications from you smartphone, you will receive Loomly push notifications in there, too!

Post creation and edit features are currently in development and will be available soon via an upcoming update.

In the meantime, and as you probably know by now, your questions and suggestions are truly appreciated: if you would like to let us know how we can make the Loomly mobile app better, please feel free to reach out to us at contact@loomly.com.

In any case, and as always, we want to thank you all immensely for sharing your feedback with our team and guiding us in the development of Loomly as a multi-platform solution: you are simply the finest community of users we could ever dream of.

Last but not least, a special thanks goes to Ari, our Lead Software Engineer on this project, who has done a remarkable job building both apps from the ground up in record time for you all.

Sincerely,

The Loomly Team.

Loomly is a simple social media calendar now available as a web and mobile (iOS & Android) application: start your 15-day free trial now.

#Resource — Discover Growth Opportunities With The New Facebook IQ

Facebook IQ is Facebook’s research department and shares insights drawn from the platform’s two billion users’ activity & behavior: in order to make these insights even more accessible, Facebook just launched a new version of the portal yesterday.

In particular, the new Facebook IQ makes it easier to build more effective campaigns, with:

People Insights, such as Hot Topics in Australia in July 2017.

Advertising Insights, including Better Together: How High Value Gamers Find Community on Facebook.

Vertical Insights, like Fashion on Facebook and Instagram From Top to Toe.

Tools & Resources, for instance the Cross Border Insights Finder, which compares Facebook Insights across countries.

In particular, the new Insights To Go slide-based section offers amazing filtering features, letting you find the latest Facebook stats in just a few clicks:

Subscribe to the Facebook IQ newsletter to receive timely insights into your inbox.

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

#Books — Get Your Team Weekly Email Book Summaries

Previously, we featured Instaread on Loomly Toolkit as a way to read any book in minutes: today, we would like to share another reading-enabling service that sends your whole team email book summaries every week, BooksAtWork.co.

Just because your team is 100% focused on work, does not mean you guys cannot rip the rewards of reading non-fiction books: 15-minute (or less) summaries sent to everyone in your company over email help collaborators develop themselves, become more creative and get new opportunities to bond over their shared readings.

You can read a sample summary of The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results here.

BooksAtWork.co is a service available as a subscription, starting at $19 per month.

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