The social media updates you need to know for October.

Social media trends, updates and content ideas to fuel your inspiration.

Andy Lambert

Oct 31, 2024

Hey 👋

Here’s your monthly digest of the social media updates and best practices you need to know.

For new readers, this is a monthly newsletter focused on simplifying social media marketing. Each issue covers:

Key new social media trends, data, and platform updates
Practical tips to help grow your brand's online presence

No fluff, just the important details you can actually use. Let's dive in.

View on web for the best experience.

📣 The social media data, trends and new features you need to know

Here’s the slide deck, giving you a network-by-network run through all of the most important updates you need to know for October.

TL;DR Here’s the four key themes that dominated this month.

Instagram, TikTok and YouTube remain the platforms that are driving overall growth and brand discovery.
YouTube Shorts is looking like an increasingly good opportunity for brands. More on this below.
Different formats on Instagram yield different results. The right strategy considers a mix of Carousels, Stories and Reels.
Bluesky continues to grow and brand research continues to fragment across platforms (Quora, Reddit etc.). Here, working directly with creators, influencers and communities can be our advantage.

🚨 Stats of the month

This month, there are three standout statistics that you need to know…

Firstly, how people research brands on social media continues to evolve. This latest research from Datareportal sheds some interesting light into what users’ platform preferences are when it comes to researching which products to purchase.

Whilst social networks still reign supreme here, what surprised me is how highly Q&A sites like Quora and Reddit rank. Reddit in particular is very interesting, their rate of traffic growth over the last six months has been stellar.

If we think how many businesses prioritise their own blogs over non-owned surfaces like Q&A sites or forums, it’s clear to see there’s a missed opportunity here. As an example, at Adobe we have a team of ambassadors (not employees of Adobe, just genuine fans) that respond to questions on Reddit to enable us to have coverage and capitalise on the high intent that exists in those spaces.

Secondly, in some positive news, Instagram is not just all about Reels. In fact, according to Buffer, engagement rates of carousels has overtaken Reels.

That said, Reels still drive more reach, so the right strategy contains a balance of Reels for reach and Carousels and Stories for deeper engagement.

Thirdly, YouTube Shorts is having a moment right now. The max upload length has increased from 60 seconds to 3 minutes, which gives us much more freedom for expression. YouTube have also made the decision that all videos 3-minutes and under will become Shorts. That’s a big move and demonstrates YouTube’s commitment to the format.

As a result of this, Shorts performance is gaining momentum and YouTube continues to look like an increasingly good opportunity for brands.

📣 New feature of the month

Given what we know about the strong engagement rates of carousels and the opportunity of Reels to reach new audiences, this latest update looks like the ideal combination of both.

You can now add music to your carousels, which will then mean the post will show up in the Reels feed. Yes, it’s a bit confusing how Instagram is thinking about the main feed and the Reels feed, but dubious product strategy aside, this presents us all with an interesting new opportunity to increase both reach and engagement.

BONUS:

If you want to build your content calendar and share this with a team, we’ve now enabled all of this for free in Adobe Express. I’m incredibly proud to be able to bring features like this to businesses of all sizes, without the costs that’s usually associated with tools like this.

Let me know if you have any questions at all!

👉 Tip of the month

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted Adobe MAX, the worlds’ largest creativity conference. As usual, it was an unbelievable experience that I feel very fortunate to be part of.

For the event, I attempted something I had been meaning to do for years. I created a social media strategy that will work for any business. You can watch this walk through of how you can set up or optimise your strategy and I also created 16 post idea templates that you can use for free and remix to make your own. You’ll find them on this deck from page 20 onwards.

If you’re feeling like your social media strategy needs a refresh for 2025 or just a little creatively stuck, I hope this helps you out!

👀 3 other interesting things.

1️⃣ If you work in B2B and are based in the UK, this event is for you. We open to doors to the first-ever conference dedicated to social media in B2B next week. There are a couple of tickets left if you want to join us.

2️⃣ The latest podcast episode is now live. I’m joined by Leila Woodington, Head of Marketing at VEED. Leila has a fascinating background working at Facebook and Snap and shares how VEED are balancing brand and performance marketing to help them grow at an incredible rate.

3️⃣ I’ve relaunched my book! Social moves fast, so I thought it was time for an update. If you’ve bought a copy already and want the updated version, feel free to reply to this and I’ll send you a digital copy for free.

📬 See you next time!

That’s it for this month, I hope you found this useful 🙌

Made with ❤️ by Andy