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Welcome to our latest digital marketing news update that we publish every two weeks. You can read the article below or, if you'd rather listen, click the player above. We'd love to know what you think of this format.
Instagram is testing trial reels
Meta has recently announced the launch of trial reels, a new feature which allows creators to share their reels only with people who don’t follow them, before their main audience, to see what performs best.
This allows users to test different ideas and formats without exposing it to their existing followers in the first instance. The creators can they make informed decisions about whether they want to proceed with trial reels for their existing followers.
To share a reel as a trial reel, users will create a reel as usual but toggle the ‘Trial’ option on before posting it, and it then won’t appear on their profile of in the feeds of their followers.
Learn more about Trial Reels here.
Bluesky to introduce subscription offering
It looks like Bluesky is working on a new subscription model. Mock ups teasing the upcoming subscription have been published to Github.
The subscription model is said to include custom Bluesky profile badges, custom app icons, profile customisations, higher video quality upload limits and higher quality video resolution. It also indicates that inline post translations, post analytics and bookmark folders could be coming in the near future. The mock ups also show pricing of $8 per month of $72 per year, but these have not yet been confirmed.
As Bluesky’s subscription model continues to be worked on and finalised, it’ll be interesting to see how the X rival app continues to perform.
Learn more about Bluesky subscription here.
Reddit launches Reddit Answers
Reddit have recently launched Reddit Answers. Reddit Answers allows ‘Redditors’ to ask questions using an AI-powered interface and be provided with summaries of relevant conversations and links to related communities.
With Reddit as we know it being a forum that allows discussion on pretty much any topic online, Reddit Answers provides a great way of users being able to find exactly what it is they need without having to dig through the huge amounts of content on the site.
Reddit Answers is being rolled out to limited users in the U.S. initially, with the plan to expand to additional locations in the future.
Learn more about Reddit Answers here.
Users can now reply to broadcast channels on Instagram
Meta has updated their ‘broadcast channel’ feature to allow followers to respond. Previously, users who had joined a creator’s broadcast channel could only respond to a post by reacting with an emoji. Now, creators are provided with the option to allow the groups users to reply to their posts.
Broadcast channels is a great way for creators to speak to their followers one-to-one, with announcements, exclusive deals and more. Now, you can ask your groups users direct questions and strike up two-way communication with your audience. Instagram will also organise the replies into groups so that your content doesn’t get lost amongst user replies.
Creators can also choose to keep replies toggled off if they wanted to.
Learn more about replying to broadcast channels here.