Posts

Showing posts from August, 2021

Marketers to Watch: Highlights and Key Themes from Our Interview Series

Image
Earlier this year, we compiled a list highlighting 16 brilliant minds for marketers to follow on LinkedIn . During this pivotal and unpredictable time in the business world, visionary and impactful thought leadership has never been more valuable. These folks bring it, and so we wanted to bring them to your attention. It's an eclectic collection featuring a wide assortment of perspectives, backgrounds, and specializations. People on the list range from up-and-comers to veteran pros and executives. Some of the inclusions stretch the traditional definition of a "marketer." But all are creators who have built tremendous personal brands and achieved admirable success as professionals (albeit while following radically different paths). Luckily for us, they're also generous in sharing their wisdom and insights, bringing value to the social media feeds they grace on a regular basis. Several were subsequently kind enough to participate in exte

Implementing Dark Mode in iOS 13

Image
One of the most exciting announcements at WWDC this year was the introduction of platform-wide dark mode in iOS 13. During WWDC a group of enthusiastic iOS engineers and designers from Instagram’s design systems team banded together to begin plotting out what it would take to adopt dark mode in our app. This week’s update to Instagram includes full support for iOS dark mode. This took months of work and collaboration between numerous design and engineering teams in the company. As such, we wanted to take some time to share how we approached adopting dark mode and some of the obstacles we encountered along the way. API Philosophy Apple did an excellent job shaping how dark mode works in iOS 13. Most of the heavy lifting is done on your behalf by UIKit. Because of this, one of the key principles we had when building out dark mode support in our app was that we should “stand on the shoulders of giants” and try to stick with Apple’s APIs as much as possible. This is beneficial for several 

Making instagram.com faster: Part 3 — cache first

Image
In recent years instagram.com has seen a lot of changes — we’ve launched stories, filters, creation tools, notifications, and direct… Continue reading on Instagram Engineering » * This article was originally published here

Instagram is now testing ads in the Shop tab

Image
Image: Instagram If you thought Instagram had run out of ad real estate, think again. The company confirmed to TechCrunch today that it’s starting a new test that’ll involve putting ads on its Shop tab. Ads will involve either a single image or carousel of them, and of course, will be shoppable. Only certain advertisers will have access at first, but there are plans to expand the product in the future. (Initial US-based partners include Away, Fenty Beauty, and Clare paint.) Of course, it’s no surprise Instagram is trying more ads in more places — that’s Instagram and its parent company Facebook’s main revenue driver. Earlier this year, Instagram officially rolled out ads in Reels, another new format that debuted only last year. The company also began testing sticker ads, which would allow people to include stickers in their stories advertising a product. Users will receive a cut of any revenue made through people tapping on the sticker and buying a product

Now Is the Time to Make LinkedIn a Strategic Priority. Here’s Why.

Image
At the outset of 2021, as we reckoned with the ramifications of a challenging year and looked with optimism toward better days ahead, we at LinkedIn set a directive for the coming weeks and months: Return to Growth . With our content, our platform, and our tools, we aimed to help resilient marketers and businesses around the world realize this ambition.  Today, we’re excited to share the growth our platform has seen; according to eMarketer, LinkedIn makes up the largest share of U.S. B2B display ad spending in 2021.  Marketers are gravitating toward LinkedIn to fuel growth, and seeing the results: Our advertising business has grown more than 5x over the past five years as we enable marketers to build trusted relationships with buyers.   LinkedIn is a top-three player in B2B digital advertising, and growing 3x faster than our category.   LinkedIn’s advertising business surpassed $1 billion in revenue this quarter for the first

Creativity is the New Competitive Advantage in B2B Marketing

Image
For years now, B2B marketing has largely been stuck in a funk, mired in a repetitive loop of focusing on a rational “just the facts” mentality in messaging.  Of course it’s important to communicate the value of any product or service. But B2B buyers today demand more. And research confirms that notion, indicating that 75% of B2B creative is ineffective. Buyers respond best to engaging content that both entertains and informs. For messaging to stand out — without the need to overspend on paid media — the content that wins is the content that connects on the emotional level, where decisions are most often made. After all, B2B buyers are people, too. And with a permanent shift to more digital buying – spurred by the pandemic – that’s projected to reach upwards of $15 billion by 2023, there’s never been a greater need to stand out from the noise.  In other words, the time for a creative renaissance is here. Taking a cue from the B2C marketi

10 Questions with Shupin Mao, Well-being tech lead

Image
Shupin Mao is a senior software engineer at Facebook. During her last four years at the company, Shupin helped several teams and gained experience across Instagram and Facebook, including the Instagram Well-being team. Here she shares what got her into engineering, favorite moments, lessons learned, and more. How did you become an engineer? When working on course projects during my undergrad and grad study, I felt the passion for solving coding problems, which was the main motivation to apply for an engineering position after graduation. After joining Facebook, I was still motivated to solve practical problems every day and learn new skills/knowledge, which affirmed my career choice. What was your first coding language? C was my first coding language back to school days. Objective-C was my first coding language at my full-time work at Facebook. What do you listen to while you work? All kinds of piano songs which can help me keep focused. For example, Ghibli’s relaxing piano pieces

Facebook hides friends lists on accounts in Afghanistan as a safety measure

Image
Facebook has started hiding friends lists from accounts in Afghanistan | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s head of security policy said the company is putting into place security measures for users in Afghanistan , including hiding “friends” lists and adding a tool to quickly lock down accounts. Nathaniel Gleicher said in a thread on Twitter that Facebook made the changes based on feedback from activists, journalists, and civil society groups. As the Taliban have regained control of the country over the past week, the group has found ways to push its messages on social media , despite being banned by YouTube and Facebook. NBC News reported Friday that people in Afghanistan fearful of the Taliban were deleting from their social media accounts and phones any photos that could show a connection to Western countries, the former Afghan government, or the Afghan military. People in Afghanistan will now have access to a one-click tool to lock down

eMarketer’s B2B Advertising Forecast 2021: 6 Key Insights and Revelations

Image
The long-term transformation to digital ads is here. This trajectory has been underway for several years, but it was accelerated by the pandemic and will not reverse itself.” - eMarketer B2B companies in the United States are expected to spend more than $10 billion on digital advertising in 2021, representing a 24.9% increase from 2020, which itself had already seen a massive jump from the previous year. Among formats, display advertising is pacing the field, with LinkedIn helping drive tremendous growth for this category. These are among the key revelations drawn from eMarketer’s US B2B Advertising Forecast 2021 . Published in July, the report features revised projections and numbers as a follow-up on the organization’s previous release from August 2020. There are some eye-catching insights within, shedding new light on the current and future direction of B2B ad strategies and investments.  Here are six findings from the new report t

How to Blend Organic and Paid Media Strategies to Drive More Conversions

Image
As the Head of Social Media Marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, I’ve always argued that building a strong community online can drive real business impact. And while proving this impact isn’t always easy , we now have research to help you get there.  Our team has uncovered that when LinkedIn Page Followers are exposed to both organic and paid content, they become 61% more likely to convert compared to those who only received paid content.  That’s a pretty impressive lift.  What this stat also tells us is that organic audiences are primed for conversion. By joining your community on LinkedIn, audiences have shown interest in your brand; and by engaging them with authentic organic content, you’re constantly adding value, helping them in some way, and deepening that interest.  So, it’s no surprise that they’d be more likely to convert when the time is right.  In our new guidebook “The Perfect Blend: Organic & Paid,”  we detail ho

Powered by AI: Instagram’s Explore recommender system

Image
This post was originally published on Facebook AI blog: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/powered-by-ai-instagrams-explore-recommender-system/. Continue reading on Instagram Engineering » * This article was originally published here

Navigating the Age of Agility in APAC: The Post-Sale Frontier is Real

Image
Editor's Note: This is the final post in a five-part series that discusses key trends in tech marketing. It is based on the APAC edition of the Age of Agility , a research report that LinkedIn produced after conducting one of the world’s largest research surveys of B2B technology buying and decision-making. Country reports for Australia & New Zealand , India and Singapore are also available now.  As tech marketers, we spend a lot of time focusing on before-the-sale marketing: building awareness, nurturing consideration, generating leads. And when a marketing lead converts into actual sales, we pop a virtual bottle of champagne and move on... But what about after the sale?  Post-sale support consistently ranks among the top three factors that decision-makers prioritise when choosing a vendor (60% in APAC, 68% in ANZ, 75% in India and 67% in Singapore).  This tells us that buyers are investing in an outcome, not a product. They expect their