SOCIAL
Meta Announces ‘Recurring Notifications’ for Business Messaging, a Significant Shift in its Platform Approach
This is an unusual switch up in Meta’s business messaging rules.
This week, at its first-ever ‘Conversations’ messaging conference, Meta announced ‘Recurring Notifications’ on its Messenger Platform, which will enable businesses to send ‘proactive, automated messages, to people who have opted in to receiving them’.
As you can see here, businesses will soon be able to send recurring notifications to users that opt in, with the upfront prompts outlining the frequency of messages that they’ll likely receive if they choose to get them.
Businesses will be able to send sales notifications, updates, newsletters – pretty much whatever they like, with the frequency options ranging from daily to monthly, ‘so businesses can reach customers at any moment in their journey’.
Which is pretty much the exact opposite of how Meta has run its messaging platform this far, with strict limits on how many times a business can message users, even if they’ve opted in.
As explained by Hootsuite:
“Businesses can only contact someone after receiving a message from them first. Once you’ve received a message, you have 24 hours to reply. After that, Facebook used to let businesses send one message. But as of March 4th, 2020, that option will be gone. Beyond that, the only remaining option is to send a Sponsored Message. These ads can only be sent to existing conversations.”
Indeed, in Meta’s Messenger Platform and IG Messaging API Policy Overview, it explains that:
“Businesses will have up to 24 hours to respond to a user. Messages sent within the 24 hour window may contain promotional content.”
Brands can then use its ‘One-time Notification’, which enables businesses to send one follow-up message after the 24-hour messaging window has ended. But Meta has been very careful about allowing businesses to potentially overuse its messaging API, for fear of them spamming their device to notifications hell, through random promotions and alerts that could quickly become very annoying.
It seems that Meta is no longer as concerned about this, and with users having to opt in, with a clear overview of how many messages they can expect if they do, that looks like it’s now enough for Meta to be fine with letting brands unleash in your DMs, if you allow them.
And there’s good reason for this – money.
“Recurring Notifications is a new, optional premium feature that we intend to charge businesses for in the future. It is currently available to all businesses using Messenger Platform as part of a free trial period. We currently charge businesses to send messages from the WhatsApp Business API and we’re listening to customer feedback to guide decisions on our pricing model.”
After struggling to find an adequate means to monetize its messaging platforms, Meta seems to have settled on charging businesses to use its messaging tools – though when it will start charging, and how much it will cost to use such, is still not clear.
Meta’s keeping this all in-house for now, in the hopes that brands will start using these new business messaging features, and build a reliance on them, before it brings in costs. Once businesses are getting results from these features, it will be harder for them to say no, and Meta could bring in a lot more revenue from its messaging platforms, very quickly.
This is a key focus for developing markets, where WhatsApp, in particular, is already a key connection platform. If Meta can get more businesses even more reliant on WhatsApp, with new business tools like this, and its new WhatsApp Cloud API, that will bring in a whole new range of brands that will need to keep paying Meta to support their business initiatives.
Meta’s keeping the timing under wraps because it doesn’t know when it will see optimal take-up of these new options, but it likely has a threshold in place for when it pushes the button and rolls out charges for the various elements.
It’s the old honey trap technique – lure businesses in with offerings they can’t refuse, then increase the costs, when they’re already stuck in the trap.
And it could work, with these new options providing valuable functionality that will help many businesses build on its messaging platforms.
But it’s interesting to note the shift in ethos here, and how Meta will bend its own rules if it sees benefit.
SOCIAL
Persuading Anyone Is as Simple as this Technique Proven by a Leading Psychologist. It Comes Down to 4 Simple Words

You can read this article to find out — but, of course, it’s your choice. Much of what we do in life is an act of persuasion. As a father to two small children, I can tell you that at any moment in my day-to-day life, I am trying (usually failing) to convince the two little ones to do something: …
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SOCIAL
Snapchat Provides Posting Tips on How to Maximize Your Platform Presence

Looking to build your organic presence on Snapchat, and maximize your reach and resonance with Snap users?
This might help – this week, Insider got hold of a pitch deck that Snap has been sending to users that have been selected for its ‘Snap Stars’ influencer promotion program.
Snap Stars, as Snapchat describes, are:
“…public figures or creators who bring some of the best and most entertaining content to Snapchat. Through their unique perspectives, Snap Stars give their audiences unprecedented access into a diverse and global set of interests, including the arts, beauty, news, gaming, music and more.”
By joining the program, Snap Stars are eligible to have their content featured across the app, and once creators are accepted into the program, Snapchat provides them with a range of notes on how to make more effective, app-specific images and clips.
As per Insider, those tips include:
- Focusing on ‘day in the life experiences’ by posting 20 to 50 Snap stories a day, so that subscribers are engaged for longer
- Posting directly to the Snap Map, a feature that allows Snapchat users to see each other’s location, so that users who aren’t subscribed can easily discover your content
- Making a strong ‘tile’ on your feed, which is the most recent Snapchat photo or video taken
- Captivating viewers in the first one to three snaps so they watch the whole story
- Encouraging non-subscribers to subscribe a few times a week, and subscribers to turn on story notifications
- Using captions, since a lot of people watch stories with sound off
- Balancing commercial content with authentic personal content
So, that’s a lot – 20 to 50 Snaps every day is a big commitment, and it’s likely going to be hard for most people or businesses to provide consistently entertaining content at that scale.
But as with all social platforms, maintaining consistency, and building presence is important, and showing up is a big part of that. As such, it’s not surprising that Snap’s pushing regular posting. But even then, it’s a lot.
And do people really like that ‘day in the life’ stuff – like ‘Going to the shops’, ‘At the shops’, etc.?
I’ve seen many wannabe Snapchat do this, and it feels like overkill – but I guess, if you’re entertaining, and you know the platform, that could help to further ingratiate your profile with your audience.
Posting direct to the Snap Map is another interesting tip, which could help to improve discovery, while managing how your profile appears in the app is another opportunity to get attention.
Most of the tips here are pretty straightforward, and what you’ve likely read before. But the output rate that Snap recommends is significant.
Then again, this is for users that Snap wants to turn into platform-specific influencers, so it may not relate to people not in that category. Still, some interesting food for thought.
Time to start Snapping your every activity throughout the day.
SOCIAL
LinkedIn Adds New Option to Share a Post with Multiple Members at Once

LinkedIn has added a new option to forward a LinkedIn feed post to multiple members at once, while you’ll also now be able to create a new group message when forwarding a post.
As you can see in this sequence, you’ll now be able to select multiple recipients when sharing a LinkedIn post, with the capacity to either forward the post to each member separately, or create a new chat group with the selected users. You can also add a personal note to your message to include your own thoughts or points.
It could be a good way to spark more in-depth discussions in the app, and encourage engagement, while you could also use this to introduce connections to each other over shared interests.
With more social media interactions switching to DMs, every platform is now working to optimize DM sharing, and provide additional ways to lean into more private engagement behavior.
LinkedIn also recently added new DM tagging options, to help categorize your messages, along with its ‘Focused Inbox’ approach, which separates your Inbox messages into ‘Featured’ and ‘Other’ folders, which can also help to streamline engagement.
LinkedIn recently reported that conversations in the app are up nearly 20% year-over-year, which is why it’s now looking to improve its DM options, and facilitate even more of these conversations.
And again, the broader usage shift has seen more and more people shying away from public posting, and the angst that can come with it, to enclosed group sharing – which LinkedIn is looking to better facilitate with this update.
LinkedIn’s rolling out the new multi-forwarding option to all users from this week.
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