Social media is forever changing which makes it easy to miss an update from time to time. Twice a month, we look into three of the latest key updates from the past few weeks from the various social media giants. Here’s what’s been happening recently…

Facebook Launches New Tools to Help Boost the Global COVID-19 Vaccination Effort

Facebook is launching a new push to help promote the global COVID-19 vaccination effort, in order to maximise take-up where possible, and move us closer to a return to normal life.

In order to help get more people vaccinated, faster, Facebook is launching a new tool that will show users in the US where they can get vaccinated, along with links to make an appointment at their local provider.

As you can see here, the new tool will highlight providers on a map and provide relevant information to make a booking.

Facebook’s partnered with Boston Children’s Hospital and VaccineFinder on the new display, which will be made available in Facebook’s COVID-19 Information Centre, which it will highlight in user feeds.

In addition, Facebook’s also expanding its COVID-19 info centre to Instagram, to further its awareness push.

Find out more about Facebook’s vaccination push here

Twitter’s Working on a Dedicated Tab for Spaces

As Twitter continues to develop its new audio Spaces tool, in order to tap into the latest social engagement trend, it’s now looking at how it improves Spaces discovery and maximises awareness of in-progress conversations.

Twitter is now working on a new, dedicated Spaces tab in the app, which when tapped, would take users through to a full listing of in-progress audio Spaces and likely other dedicated features.

Clubhouse, the current leader in the audio social space, has its virtual ‘hallway’ in the app, with each discussion taking place in a ‘room’, so you can browse through the real-time discussions in progress and join in as you see fit. A dedicated Spaces tab would essentially serve the same purpose and as Twitter brings Spaces to more users, that could become an even more important element in connecting more people to relevant Spaces content within the app.

Which could eventually give Twitter the upper hand over Clubhouse. Clubhouse has now seen 13 million total downloads, which is amazing growth for an invite-only app, but Twitter has 192 million daily active users, a huge pool from which it could potentially drive significant audience reach for audio social broadcasters, which prove to be a key lure for its Spaces offering.

Will big-name broadcasters keep running rooms on Clubhouse if they can reach 10x or 20x more people on Twitter instead? If Spaces ends up offering all of the same features, it’s hard to see Clubhouse battling through.

TikTok Adds New Auto-Reply Message Option for Business Accounts

This could be handy – TikTok has added a new, automated response option for messages to business accounts, which could make it easier to manage common queries and/or provide relevant information.

As you can see in this example below, shared by social media expert Matt Navarra, in your Business Suite tools (for TikTok business accounts), you can go to ‘Message settings’ and create either a welcome message for when people DM your business, or an auto-reply, based on the keywords of your choosing.

The simple set-up process enables you to enter in relevant keywords in a message that will trigger your automated response – so if people regularly ask, for example, what hours your business is open, the keyword ‘hours’ would likely be a fairly safe catch-all for such and you could provide that information without needing to manually intervene.

Used well, automated messages can help maintain connection, and provide quick response – but they do need to be approached with caution, in order to provide the optimal user experience.

They could also be misused – which is why TikTok has also implemented a process which requires all automated response messages to be reviewed by the TikTok moderation team before going live.

It’ll take some thought to get it right, but if you know the most common queries, and you can identify the keywords for such, it could be very handy, while a welcome message can also help people feel like your brand is responsive and more active on the channel.

And with more businesses looking to tap into the growth of TikTok, there’ll no doubt be significant interest. The new settings are being rolled out to business accounts, so you may have them now, or you may get them shortly.

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