Starting July 18 (tomorrow), a Facebook link preview update will enforce a new rule preventing customization of link metadata included in Facebook posts.

What does it mean, exactly?

This means it will no longer be possible to edit the meta title, description & image associated with a link in a Facebook post.

Posts including custom metadata will automatically revert back to the original metadata associated with the shared URL when published on Facebook.

For instance, if you share Loomly’s homepage and edit your link preview as follows:

Your post will automatically revert back to:

Which posts will get impacted by this change?

This Facebook link preview update will impact:

• All new posts published starting tomorrow.

• All posts scheduled before tomorrow for a date later than tomorrow (including tomorrow).

However, posts that have already been published won’t be retro-actively affected by this change.

Why is Facebook implementing this Facebook link preview update?

As Matthew Robertson explains on the official Facebook for Developers blog:

By removing the ability to customize link metadata (i.e. headline, description, image) from all link sharing entry points on Facebook, we are eliminating a channel that has been abused to post false news.

While potentially surprising and not particularly practical for most of us who rely on editing link preview metadata to control how our posts appear on Facebook, this is a step in the direction of slowing down — if not stopping — the spread of false / deceiving information, or as we all like to call it: fake news.

This update is consistent with Facebook’s broader effort to stop the spread of misinformation, as we’ve seen it in the past, here and there.

As a community of high-quality, value-added, true content creators, there is no doubt we will benefit from this update on the long run.

What to do about this change?

Although we won’t be able to customize how link previews appear on Facebook when publishing posts to Facebook anymore, there are actually three things we can do:

• Take a step back and understand why this is happening and what’s in it for us in the long term (see above).

• Keep in mind that we can still optimize how our own links — i.e. links to content pieces we publish on our platforms, such as blogs & websites — appear on Facebook, using Open Graph meta tags.

• Wait for Facebook’s upcoming solutions to the new challenges introduced by this update:

We’re working to find other solutions that allow publishers to share customized content on our platform, and we will have more to share in the coming weeks. […] Our goal is to support publisher workflows and app functionality, while limiting malicious misrepresentations of underlying link content. As content customization evolves we continue to work closely with our partners to support the best tools for sharing links on Facebook.

We hope our explanation of this Facebook link preview update makes sense and clarifies things as much possible.

As always, feel free to reach out to us at contact@loomly.com, should you have any question or suggestion about this — or anything else.

Thank you for everything,

The Loomly Team.

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

In an effort to fight low quality links in News Feed, Facebook is updating its ranking algorithm:

Our research shows that there is a tiny group of people on Facebook who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day, effectively spamming people’s feeds. Our research further shows that the links they share tend to include low quality content such as clickbait, sensationalism, and misinformation. As a result, we want to reduce the influence of these spammers and deprioritize the links they share more frequently than regular sharers. Of course, this is only one signal among many others that may affect the ranking prioritization of this type of post. This update will only apply to links, such as an individual article, not to domains, Pages, videos, photos, check-ins or status updates.

This is bad news for clickbait, sensationalism and misinformation, and a big win for high-quality, informative content.

If you do not share low quality links on your Page, you should not get penalized by this News Feed ranking algorithm update.

The best way to make sure of that is actually to follow Facebook’s basic guideposts, i.e. publishing meaningful, informative, authentic & safe content.

What’s in it for Social Media Mangers: an opportunity and an incentive to keep doing great work by focusing on high quality content.

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

Last week, Twitter announced and started rolling out a major UI update and here is everything you need to know about this new Twitter redesign:

Credit: Twitter

• Rounded profile pictures replace the previous square images with rounded corners.

• Icons have been updated, in particular the Reply icon, that is now in the shape of a comment bubble rather than a curved arrow.

• A new, more consistent font and bolder headlines “make it easier to focus on what’s happening.”

• The lateral menu from the Android app is now also available in the iOS app.

• Engagement counts now get updated live in mobile apps.

Credit: TechCrunch

Of course, our team at Loomly is working on updating our platform to reflect these changes in your post previews.

Bonus 1: you can see what users think of the latest Twitter redesign here, on Twitter of course.

Bonus 2: if you really do not want to switch to the new Twitter redesign, there is a Chrome extension for you!

Loomly is a social media calendar tool that lets you plan, create and publish your tweets to Twitter: start your 15-day free trial now.

Last month, we were telling you about the new Snapchat self-serve ads manager and the potential challenge associated with creating vertical video creative: it looks like Snap had a plan to address this challenge all along, as it just announced the Snap Publisher Tool.

The concept is simple: it’s a free, self-serve creation tool that lets you build Snapchat-specific content — i.e. in a vertical video format — without having to use expensinve tools such as the Adobe Suite, nor needing the associated skills.

Credit: TechCrunch

According to TechCrunch:

This browser-based tool imports existing brand assets, trims horizontal videos for the vertical format, offers Snap-provided ad templates for different objectives, adds motion to static photos, A/B test different ad variants for performance, and lets advertisers buy through the Ad Manager with one click.

The Snap Publisher Tool will be available in July.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: if Snapchat’s audience is appealing to your brand but your budget does not include room for expensive video creation, the Snap Publisher tool will allow you to take Snapchat ads for a try at minimal cost.

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

Snap, Inc just announced the launch of its brand-new Snapchat Self-Serve Ad Manager.

This is big news since, until today, you could only buy Snapchat ads through their sales team (reserving this ad product to enterprise customers) or via third-party applications (coming with a fee and making  ads less attractive from a financial point of view).

This new, official Snapchat Self-Serve Ad Manager is free, charges no markup and includes three main products:

• An Ad Manager to, well, manage your ads (buy, run, analyze, optimize).

• A Mobile Dashboard to preview how ads will look like inside the consumer Snapchat app.

• A Business Manager to assign roles and permissions to team members.

You can learn more about the all-new Snapchat Self-Serve Ad Manager in this comprehensive TechCrunch article by Josh Constine.

Most importantly, until this Ad Manager rolls out to all users in June — in particular in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany & Australia — you can apply to test it from here!

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

It looks like trending topics are a huge trend among social platforms: Facebook & Twitter have been having their own Trends for a while, LinkedIn recently joined the game with LinkedIn Trending Storylines, and now Google+ is launching Topics.

Credit: Blog.Google

According to Anna Kiyantseva, Product Manager Google+:

To help you sort through the many Collections and Communities where people share, we’ve created a new feature called Topics. With Topics, you’ll see a high-quality stream of Collections, Communities and people related to things we think you’ll be interested in. […] To see the recommended Topics, head to your home stream and look for the “Topics to explore” cards. Topics will be rolling out over the next day or so, so don’t worry if you don’t see any suggestions right away.

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: Google+ Topics is both a source of inspiration / curation for your social channels, and an opportunity to connect with people sharing some of your interests.

At Loomly, we LOVE this trend of trends & suggested topics… and we may have something in store for you related to this concept… stay tuned!

Loomly is a social media calendar that helps you create, preview and schedule posts for Google+: start your 15-day free trial now.

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.

Back in September, Twitter was announcing some updates to how characters were accounted for against the 140-character limit: yesterday, Twitter built upon this and announced a brand-new feature allowing you to enjoy longer replies.

Long story short: now, @usernames no longer count towards your 140 characters.

In greater details:

• @usernames you are replying to will no longer appear in the text of your tweets.

• Instead, @usernames will be displayed above the tweet itself, preceded by the mention “Replying to”.

• At any moment, you can click on this “Replying to” mention to see who you are actually replying to, and if necessary, remove or add people from your reply.

Our team is already working on reflecting these changes in Loomly, with an update scheduled for early next week.

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

Yesterday, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn Trending Storylines.

In appearance, this looks pretty similar to Facebook Trends & Twitter Trends: trending topics organized around hashtags.

When we take a deeper look, it’s actually much more: LinkedIn Trending Storylines regroup content from LinkedIn Pulse as well as third-party platforms, and either from influencers, industry experts or connections from your network.

Curation of content is personalized for each user, thanks to a combination of human work — 24 in-house editors — and algorithms — mainly machine learning technology — that makesure every LinkedIn trending feed gets populated with relevant content clusters.

This approach also aims at offering balanced news from different perspective, while avoiding political views and #fakenews.

Last but not least, LinkedIn Trending Storylines foster serendipity with hashtags and topic buttons, making it incredibly easy to either dive deeper into a specific subject by exploring new angles, or discover related stories.

This new feature has already started rolling out in English in the US and will be available in more countries and language soon.

When activated, you can find LinkedIn Trending Storylines on the top right hand side of your homepage on desktop:

Credit: LinkedIn

And under the Trending tab on your mobile homescreen:

Credit: LinkedIn

What’s in it for Social Media Managers: by leveraging the power of hashtags associated with a storyline, you can jump in a conversation, share your perspective and surf on the spread of news cluster to gain free impressions and engagement, “while supplies last.”

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

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.