TAKUMI TRENDS LETTER #8 📈
Welcome to the TAKUMI insights subscription 📊.
If you’re looking for the inside scoop on influencer marketing 📱, creator culture🤳, and Gen Z insights 📈, then look no further. TAKUMI’s insights team is curating the most impactful industry news and developments right here 👇.
Facebook Touts 'Good Ideas Festival' for Small Businesses | Social Media Today🛍️
"Facebook this week expanded on a campaign to support small businesses as they recover from the negative effects of the pandemic. The social network started a seven-week virtual experience called the “Facebook Good Ideas Festival” to offer free training and advice on how to use its platform to strengthen its marketing strategies.”
TAKEAWAY 🔥: Facebook's 'Good Ideas Festival' launched on June 28th, but the main festival week will take place on the Facebook for Business and Instagram page from 12th-16th July. What's more, after the 16th you'll be able to watch back on any content you may have missed from the festival. A timetable of festival highlights is available on the Facebook for Business site and includes sessions such as Live Q&A's on how to generate business leads, growing your business through messaging, hiring new talent, and utilising Instagram Shopping to reach new customers, to name a few. In recent weeks, Facebook has announced further plans to boost its eCommerce offerings- such as introducing Shops to Whatsapp- and this virtual festival is both a strategic and exciting means to that end. Supporting small businesses- those that have been most affected by the pandemic- is a mutually beneficial move from Facebook, which says that the majority of its 10 million advertisers are small and medium-sized businesses. If their growth lags, so does Facebook. Nevertheless, we're excited to see what the festival has to offer! 👍
Head of Instagram Says Instagram Is No Longer a Photo Sharing App | The Verge👀
"The message that Instagram is sending is clear: it no longer wants to be thought of as the “square photo-sharing app,” as Mosseri puts it, but instead as a general entertainment app driven by algorithms and videos.”
TAKEAWAY 🔥: Instagram has made huge strides in the past year to improve and refine its in-app shopping experience and amalgamate this with other features, such as the recent expansion of ads into Reels. Reels itself is coming into its own, no longer merely a TikTok copycat but a feature which compliments- and is complimented by Instagram's other offerings. Watch the video clip in the article; it shows Adam Mosseri highlighting the main areas on which Instagram intends to focus its attention, namely 'creators, video, shopping and messaging'. We can look at each concept in isolation, but they are most effective when taken together, like an Instagram ecosystem that relies on each individual part for success. Instagram is fast becoming, quite literally, a one-stop-shop... and we're excited to see what Mosseri has in store! 🤩
Facebook Announces Bulletin, its Substack Newsletter Competitor | The Verge 📰
“Zuckerberg says Bulletin is part of Facebook’s mission to continue growing its creator monetization tools. “The goal here across the company is to support eventually millions of people doing creative work,” he said.”
TAKEAWAY 🔥: Newsletters are an effective way of sharing updates and information in one document, making them an ideal format for internal comms within companies and schools, for example. More recently, however, they've come to be associated with influencers and creators who want to share exclusive content and updates with their followers- making newsletters a great monetisation opportunity for social media platforms. Since purchasing Revue, Twitter has hinted at plans to integrate newsletters into the platform, and now it seems Facebook is jumping on the bandwagon too. However, unlike Substack and Twitter- which both take a cut from subscriptions- Facebook won't, at least not yet anyway. We love to see platforms offering new outlets for content, and this one, in particular, is sure to help increase the following, engagement, and earnings of creators 📈.
LinkedIn Publishes New Digital Magazine of Business Growth Tips | Social Media Today 📲
"LinkedIn has published a new 'Return to Growth' digital magazine, which provides a range of insights, tips, and interviews with experts to help inspire brands in revising and improving their post-COVID-19 strategies.”
TAKEAWAY 🔥: Now that the world is returning to a semblance of normalcy, LinkedIn is equipping businesses with tips and tools for driving growth and improving digital marketing strategy, via a free magazine. The mag, 'Ready for Business 2021', includes articles, user studies, case studies in utilising LinkedIn tools, expert interviews, key trends, and best practices 📑. Over the past few months, LinkedIn has been hot on sharing various handbooks and user guides for utilising the platform's tools effectively, and although tumultuous times are beginning to ease, they’ve left companies and consumers unsure of how to operate in this 'new' world. LinkedIn is giving everyone the encouragement to tread more confidently, and less cautiously.
"Exclusive Stories are only one part of Instagram’s broader plans for expanded creator monetization tools. The company has been slowly revealing more details about its efforts in this space, with Instagram Head Adam Mosseri first telling The Information in May that the company was “exploring” subscriptions along with other new features, like NFTs.”
TAKEAWAY 🔥: Subscriptions are all the rage. With Twitter's Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces, and the recent announcement about Facebook’s newsletter feature ‘Bulletin’, it's no wonder that Instagram is utilising the concept of exclusive content as a means for creators to monetise on the app. Screenshots of an internal prototype have circulated on social media, although Instagram has said that it isn't being tested publicly yet and has declined to comment in any further detail for the time being. The screenshots show the feature as 'Exclusive Stories', which would allow creators to post content onto their stories that are only accessible to Fans- those who pay a subscription 🔒. Exclusive Stories would offer creators the opportunity to be paid directly by their followers, which not only nurtures the relationships between creators and users but adds another means for creators to earn money aside from branded content and brand partnerships. We know that Instagram intends to streamline its focus on creators, and a subscription model will certainly help in achieving that goal.
MAD//Fest London | 7th-8th July 2021📣
TAKUMI are proud sponsors of MAD//Fest 2021- the UK's first outdoor industry festival this year. MAD//Fest London will be bringing the industry together IN-PERSON with their trademark mix of big brand keynotes, disruptors, pop-ups, bars, and DJs in the summer sunshine at the industry's re-opening party! 🎉
We will be taking to the main stage on Wednesday 7th July 3:40 pm BST with Digilearning and leading broadcaster June Sarpong to discuss the launch of a new initiative that will provide opportunities for young talent to hone their creative and professional skills at MAD//Fest London.
✨ If you or your colleagues are interested in attending the event, please get in touch. We have limited tickets- so don't hesitate! Get in touch: sophie.lee@takumi.com. ✨