Max's monthly round-up is back and here are a list of changes that he mentioned from last night's talk.
Every month at SIMS, Max provides a brief run-down of just some of the tech-related news that may affect small businesses, and agencies that work with small businesses and we post the links here. If any of these catch your interest, but you're not sure how they would affect you, feel free to get in touch and ask!
Max's monthly round-up at SIMS
Here's what Max spoke about:
http://blog.instagram.com/post/138938416772/160208-accountswitching
It's finally happened. You can now handle multiple accounts within Instagram.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/publish-on-twitter-instagram/id927931359?mt=8
After Sam's talk on Instagram, there were questions about how to schedule posts to go out on Instagram, here's an app that does that for you. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but according to the description they have over 1 million users, so it could be worth a look.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2016/01/introducing-adwords-app-for-ios.html
For those that want to run their ads on the go (or check what their ad agency is up to!), then the new Adwords for iOS app is here.
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2016/01/announcing-ga-support-for-accelerated.html
If you are thinking about implementing AMP, then you need to know how many people are viewing your content, otherwise you don't know if it's worth it! Official Google Analytics support will help.
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/01/29/firefox-tests-warning-when-any-form-is-sent-over-http/
Don't panic, this won't affect your users any time soon, they mention that there is no plan to roll this out to users browsers, but the Chrome team have been making similar noises and all signals indicate that encrypted-by-default is the direction that everything is heading from now on. If you're about to build a new website, bear that in mind.
A really handy resource with all of the latest social media image and media sizes. Rather than a blog post that goes out of date, this resource promises to be a single location that can be kept current more easily.
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/shopkey-ecommerce-keyboard/id1081041575?mt=8
We know a few of you use Shopify. This is just a neat little app that provides you a custom keyboard with all your products in it, making linking to them from anywhere in iOS.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/17/11027594/facebook-instant-articles-all-publishers
Facebook are reportedly opening up their “Instant Articles” feature to all publishers. If you publish content, this has to be worth a look.
http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/introducing-autotrack-for-analyticsjs.html
There are a few things that Google Analytics does not do, but that a lot of people want. Up until now, people have been using plugins, or writing their own version of some of these features. Google have now produced an official add-on that supports these features.
https://blog.twitter.com/2016/making-customer-service-even-better-on-twitter
Twitter are providing a built-in way to ask people to DM you. All you have to do is include a link in your tweet to your special DM link and Twitter's apps will add in a button for the users to press.
http://searchengineland.com/google-no-ads-right-side-of-desktop-search-results-242997
It's been part of a long-running test, but Google have confirmed they're getting rid of the right-hand column of adverts, this may mean there's less screen real-estate to fight for with your ads, which may drive up prices for some of your search terms, or it may send your ads under the search results depending on your bids.
You can now make edits to your Google+ / Google My Business in the search results themselves. When you're logged in to your Google+ account, it'll save you the time of logging in to Google My Business.
http://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-amp-error-report-240572
Google have historically indicated that things are important to them by building a tool that lets you check what they think. Their new AMP system for content publishers is apparently no exception, with a new report being added to Search Console for people to see any errors in their implementations.
http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/test-with-confidence-using-campaign.html
Google are letting you apply some of the A/B testing techniques that some people may be using on their website to their adwords campaigns, discover if the changes you want to make to your ad campaigns are going to have the desired effects.
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/local-businesses/
Potentially useful for those that don't have access to their Google My Business account, there is now a way of providing that information to Google using structured data (microdata, people still use lots of different terms for this), and a Google My Business API for developers.