Some good changes are coming to Facebook and Instagram! This week Facebook announced at the International Broadcasting Convention some much-needed changes to the video and streaming of Facebook also analytics changes and scheduling for IG.
Tech Crunch reported the changes on Monday morning. (https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/facebook-rolls-out-new-video-tools-plus-instagram-and-igtv-scheduling-feature/) Here is the overview of the changes:
- Live Video – Rehearsal Mode for page admins
- Live Video – Trim the beginning of a live stream
- Watch Party – ability to schedule a watch party
- Watch Party – In Creator Studio you can see Minutes Viewed and Unique 60s Viewers
- Watch Party – Hosting Page can go live and share real-time commentary
- Creator Studio – will show loyalty metrics, such as returning viewers
- Creator Studio – There will be a new Distribution metric. This metric gives you a score for each video’s performance based on the Page’s historical data.
- Creator Studio – Native Instagram feed and IGTV content will be able to be scheduled up to six months in advance.
- Creator Studio – Coming soon, the ability to edit IG content that has been published.
All of these features available for all pages as of today, although I haven’t seen the IG publishing on my creative studio yet.
Rehearsal of a Livestream is a useful feature. You can do a “dress rehearsal” of the stream and have it just available to page admins. This is helpful for significant events you have planned for your brand.
One of the things I love best is the ability to trim live videos after broadcast. This is true, especially if you do a “Broadcast will start soon.” After the broadcast, this can confuse people and have them think there is something wrong.
The metrics are great to see; Facebook is helping brands see who your best fans are and now showing who views your videos. I hope there is — way to target them in the future. However, the Distribution metric is what I am most looking forward to seeing — an easy way to compare the performance of the current video based on previous historical data. Yes, you could do this before, but it required a lot of slicing and dicing of data. This will allow you to quickly say, “This outperformed our previous videos.” with confidence.
Lastly is something you could only do with third-party apps. And that has been hit or miss over the last few years — the ability to schedule Instagram content. You had to use HootSuite, Sprout Social, Later, or a similar service. It would be ideal to have this native in the app, but this is a step in the right direction. Creator Studio is open to all, and everyone will be able to use this feature today if not soon.
I hope you find these new features as useful as I do!
