We all know nothing ever stays the same with the business tools and social media platforms we use on a regular basis. Here are some of my favorite changes/updates of late!

Yoast Plugin 6.0. Yoast SEO is decidedly the best SEO plugin for your WordPress website, and it’s free! If you’re not using it, you should be! This one little change they made to the newest version excites me no end! Updates usually fix bugs, but often add new features. In the latest update, they have almost doubled the characters allowed in the meta description, from 156 characters to 320! Much like when Twitter doubled their character limit from 140 to 280, it allows those of us who always need just a few more characters to make sense. Now there’s more room for those all important keywords!

Speaking of Twitter. As I mentioned above, in one of their latest updates, Twitter has doubled their character limits from 140 to 280. But in addition to that, they’ve added a new threads feature that allows you to do what they call Twitterstorms. This new feature makes it easy to automatically publish multiple tweets in a row, and is rolling out to Android, iOS, and Twitter.com in the coming weeks. 

Now on to Facebook … Wow, Facebook just keeps on a-changing. Here are some of the changes and updates (recent, not so recent, and currently being rolled out) I believe will actually enhance our experience on this very popular platform.

Schedule posts on your profile! My favorite! Facebook is releasing the ability to schedule posts on your profile! YES! Your profile. I love, love, love this! Of course it hasn’t been rolled out to me yet, but I’m watching for it. You’ll know you have it when there’s a little dropdown arrow to the right of your “post” button.

Life Events. Life events have been around for ages, but not everyone knows about them, or uses them. You might want to check them out. On your Timeline click on Life Events above the status post box, select category, then select sub-category, fill in information, add a photo if you want, set privacy and post.

Answer a Question.  This is a new feature where Facebook asks a random question you can answer and post on your timeline so people can get to know you! It is accessible when you click on the three dots below your post.  It also shows up near the bottom of your left sidebar as “Did You Know?”

Collection. If you do Facebook ads, you might want to take a look at Facebook Collections. In Facebook’s own words, “Collection is an ad format that makes it easier for people to discover, browse and purchase products and services from their mobile device in a visual and immersive way.” You can read more about it.

Video. Facebook announced last month that videos will get priority in News Feed that meet one or both of these two criteria: 1) Videos people proactively search for and/or visit a Page to find, and 2) Videos people return to watch from the same publisher or creator week after week.

Polls. Released in November, Facebook now has a a two-question poll feature using GIFs or images to respond to the question on your profile. This can be a fun way to poll your followers and get engagement! You’ll find the polls feature when you click on the 3 dots below your post!

I can’t wait to see what’s coming down the pike for 2018!