The ever changing world of Social Media.
In this continually updated blog we’ll be rounding up the latest platform changes in social media.
We’ll be predominantly looking at the big 4 (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn) with occasional forays into other platforms.
Alex McCann, owner of Altrincham HQ, has guided thousands of businesses in social media strategy over the last 15 years. With a client list featuring BBC, Manchester City, Selfridges, and Costa Coffee, his Manchester-based company manages over 200 hours of campaigns monthly, adapting to social media shifts in real time.
A former journalist with blogs reaching over half a million readers, Alex also led a 15,000-capacity arts festival. With 700+ customer reviews, Altrincham HQ is ranked the UK’s top social media marketing service on Freeindex, working with businesses nationwide on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
More info on our Social Media Training and Social Media Management

NOVEMBER’S SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATES
SCHEDULED DM’S ARE BEING TESTED ON INSTAGRAM – BUT IT’S ANDROID ONLY
Instagram has introduced an exciting new feature: scheduling direct messages (DMs) for future delivery. Currently accessible to select Android users, this update enhances communication by allowing messages to be sent at specified times, perfect for scheduling birthday wishes, business communications, and more.
Full story: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2514809/instagram-users-can-now-schedule-dms-heres-how
ADULTS NOW SPEND 4 HOURS AND 20 MINUTES ONLINE EVERY DAY
Not strictly social media, but TikTok is playing a big part in this rise.
Did you know? Adults in the UK now spend an average of 4 hours and 20 minutes online every day across their smartphones, tablets, and computers, according to Ofcom’s latest Online Nation report on digital habits. That’s a significant increase from 2023, when the average daily online time was 3 hours and 41 minutes. It’s fascinating to see how our digital lives are evolving, especially considering it’s an extra 39 minutes compared to just a year ago in 2022!
Full info https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/27/time-spent-online-by-adults-in-the-uk-jumped-by-nearly-an-hour-in-2024-says-ofcom/

LINKEDIN ACKNOWLEDGES THE POWER OF INLUENCERS ON THE PLATFORM
Are you using influencers for your B2B campaigns?
Influences are not just for Instagram.
But the one thing it’s keen to remind companies of is the power of employees on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, the collective network size of your employees is, on average, 12x larger than your company network.

See the full report here https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/marketing-collective/effectively-leverage-influencers-in-b2b-marketing

INSTAGRAM TESTS NEW COLLAGE FEATURE
Instagram is experimenting with a new collage feature, inviting select users to create vibrant Stories straight from their camera rolls. It’s another exciting move to boost the creativity and engagement levels of your Stories!
You can see from the example above of our visit to Food Unagi that this is different and more aesthetically pleasing than Instagram’s own layout app and feature
INSTAGRAM DELIVERS ANOTHER BLOW FOR HASHTAGS
On December 13th Instagram is removing the option to follow tags, while any topics that you already follow will no longer display posts and Reels in your feed.
Is this a sign that Instagram is ditching hashtags?
Or perhaps just demoting them?
Well – older instagram users might remember you were able to see recent posts on hashtags enabling say a local business to see all posts with #altrincham in for instance.
Now you can only see top posts under each hashtag
Whilst this latest change is designed to combat spammers you can’t help but feel it’s another blow for hashtags
In the old days of instagram they might make 30% difference to reach?
Now it’s closer to 10% if that
What next?
How important are hashtags to your instagram marketing?
LINKEDIN SEES RECORDS LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT
Key takeways from LinkedIn
“Member growth continues to accelerate, with markets like India and Brazil both growing at double digits. We are also seeing record engagement as we introduce new ways for our more than one billion members to connect, sell services, get hired, and share knowledge. “
“Weekly immersive video views increased 6x quarter-over-quarter and total video viewership on LinkedIn is up 36% year-over-year. “
Full press release here
https://news.linkedin.com/2024/October/LinkedIn_Business_Highlights_from_FY25_Q1_Earnings
TIKTOK INFLUENCES LANGUAGE
The word of the year is … Brat
As in a Brat Summer and Charlie XCX … and the endless TikTok Trends.
Other words shortlisted for WOTY include
– ‘era’
– ‘yapping’
– ‘brainrot’
– ‘delulu’
– ‘Rawdogging’
We’re not expecting you to jump on every TikTok word or trend as it wouldn’t be on brand.
But it shows TikTok’s dominance on cultural moments.
THREADS TO OVERTAKE TWITTER / X BY MID 2025
We said we would mainly talk about the big 4 on here.
And neither Twitter or Threads make the big 4>
But this is interesting
The app has surged to 275 million users, a sharp increase from 200 million in August. Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Threads is attracting more than a million new users each day. At this rate, Threads could be right alongside X in monthly active users by June next year.

OCTOBER’S SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATES
THE BEST TIME TO POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Hootsuite analysed 1 million social media post and found that the best time to post on social media in 2024 overall is 8:00 AM on Wednesdays.
But every social media platform is different.
The best time to post on TikTok is 3 PM on Thursdays.
The best time to post on Facebook is 7 AM on Saturdays.
The best time to post on Instagram is 5 AM to 7 AM on Wednesdays.
The best time to post on LinkedIn is 7 AM – 8 PM on workdays.
Read the full report here https://blog.hootsuite.com/best-time-to-post-on-social-media/
(As always every business is different do check your insights and test and experiment)
INSTAGRAM STORY REACH DECREASES THE MORE YOU SHARE
An older update from earlier in the year – but an important one for people to know
There is a limit to how much you can share on Stories before the impact and reach decreases.
- On Facebook if we post more than once every 4 hours we get penalised
- On Instagram if we post more than a couple of stories a day we get penalised
That’s the reality.
There are people who still share 5-10 stories a day, but those days are gone
1-2x a day for stories is now the sweet spot and 90% of people polled found the same.
Less is more sadly on the Meta Platforms.
CAROUSELS GET THE MOST ENGAGEMENT ON INSTAGRAM
Buffer – the social media scheduling platform – has analysed the data from more than 4 million posts sent from Buffer from January 2022 to October 2024
A pretty comprehensive data set I’m sure you’ll agree
Despite that fact that Instagrammers still post more single image photos than any other content type, data shows Reels Are Best For Reach — But Not Engagement
You might want to look at Carousels for engagement
- Reels get 1.36 times (36%) more, reach than carousels
- Carousels get 1.12 times (12%) more engagement than Instagram Reels
- Carousels get 2.14 times (114%) more engagement than Instagram single-image posts
Which would you like more?
Reach or community engagement
Adjust your content type accordingly
INSTAGRAM CAROUSELS WITH MUSIC GET ARE ELIGUBLE TO BE SHOWN IN THE REELS TAB
One of those quick tips direct from Instagram
“Using music on carousels and photos now makes them eligible to be shown in the reels tab, which can also help with reach.”
Have you tried this?
INSTAGRAM CLARIFIES YOUR OWN LOGO ON VIDEOS IS OK
Instagram Clarifies That Including Your Own Logo on a Reel is OK
“The answer is no, that’s actually good to go. What we try to do is not recommend Reels with logos from other apps, but if it’s your own logo, don’t worry about it.”
That quote is direct from Adam Mosseri of Instagram
So – your own logo – go for it
TikTok Logos – avoid
LINKEDIN EXPLAINS HOW THE ALGORITHM WORKS
Rishi Jobanputra (Senior Director, Product Management) at LinkedIn has explained in a LinkedIn post how the LinkedIn Feed (algorithm works)
Here are a few factors that influence what appears in your Feed.
Your Profile: Your experience, your skills, and your education help us determine your interests, and the most helpful content to you.
Your Network: The people and organizations you connect with or follow directly impact the content in your Feed.
Your Actions: When you like a post, join a conversation in the comments, or repost an article, it helps us understand what content is helpful to you. On the flip side, when you scroll past a post, mark it as “Hide,” or indicate you don’t want to see a certain type of content, we learn from that too.
And from that it moves into Connected and Un-connected Content
“Connected Content” refers to posts, videos, newsletters or articles shared by people or organizations you’re connected with or follow. This could also include content they’ve created or reposted with their perspective.
“Un-connected Content” refers to content surfaced based on your interests, professional experience, and what your network is engaging with, shared by people and organizations you haven’t followed
Importantly you are encourage to hide clickbait content
“What you won’t see as much of? More personal posts from people that you aren’t connected to or follow, or posts that fall into “click-bait” territory (designed to get you to click with no substance). We’ve heard from members that these posts aren’t helpful, so we’re continuing to iterate and test how to surface only the more relevant content from outside your network. We encourage you to tap the “hide” button on things you don’t want to see in your Feed. “
Full Info: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-how-linkedin-feed-works-rishi-jobanputra-tshdc/
TWITTER / X BLOCK BUTTON MADE REDUNDANT
2 years of Elon Musk’s Twitter and X and this could be the final straw
X’s engineering page announced recently that, for users with public accounts, blocking someone will prevent that person from interacting with the blocker’s posts but will not stop them from viewing the posts.
At present, the block function prevents users from both interacting with and viewing posts from those who have blocked them.

This month, we reached 451,128 people on social media for Altrincham HQ.
An impressive figure considering we were out of town in Lisbon, Benalmadena, Birmingham and London a lot of the month
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NEED HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Looking for authentic ways to grow your social media
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation
We can chat about whether online or Face 2 Face is better for you
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
We offer Social Media Training on
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Facebook
* Twitter
* TikTok
* Blogging
We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk