The new features you need to know from last week – Facebook, AdWords, Pinterest, Instagram and WordPress

A round up of the latest platform updates from the main social networks, AdWords and WordPress

Last week was a busy one for many of the marketing, advertising and social media platforms, while there wasn't anything earth-shattering, I'm going to give to you a round up of all the changes that gave you, even more, options for you marketing effort in the weeks ahead.

Facebook Ad 'stories' like feature to Messenger, called 'Messenger Day'

Facebook have continued with their approach 'to defeat Snapchat we must become Snapchat', and have launched a new clone of the Snapchat stories feature, this time for Facebook Messenger. It's called 'Messenger Day' and works like 'stories'- the content is live for 24 hours, can be seen by any of your friends on the platform, and automatically deletes after the 24 hour period ends. They've integrated it effectively into the app, without adding much additional friction. It is likely it will become a key pillar of the way Facebook intends to monetize Messenger - they could also follow Snapchat and play ads midway between users stories.

Facebook video Mid-roll Ads

First up, Facebook launching mid-roll ads for 'regular' videos after using this approach with Facebook live. It comes at no surprise that Facebook has added this option for marketers to push their videos in front of even more. This has been an option on Youtube for a long time but as Facebook venture into to creation their own video content Netflix-style this could be good for brands with larger budgets to spend and a nice revenue driver for the platform. Personally, I've not had this appear in my news feed - If you have I'd love to hear what you think of the experience as a marketer and a viewer.

Pinterest Visual Search

If you have the Pinterest browser extension installed you will be able to hover over a picture, press the little magnifying glass and you will be greeted with many similar pins. This will be especially useful for consumers who are still in the research phase of the customer journey. For example, if you see a new cooker you like on a lifestyle magazine website you can hit the icon and be greeted with more options for you to consider. Now for the marketer products can be pinned and are displayed as suggestions, so you can get you product and brand front and centre of the customer mind when they do move on to consider purchasing. Only time will tell if this feature will be well used but it is neat and has potential.

Google AdWords Account-level Call extension

If you are already using call extension on the ads on Google, you will know that it can be a bit of a pain to set these up across multiple campaigns or ad groups. This week Google has started to roll out the ability to set up the call extensions at the account level meaning that you can do it once and only once. This will mean that the extension has the potential to show on all your ads but you will still only pay once a potential customer hits the call button, which isn't a bad thing. You can read the full announcement on the official AdWords blog.

Instagram rolling out Geo-location Stickers

Facebook are releasing Geostickers for Instagram stories for users in specific locations including New York, Jakarta and Cardiff. According to a statement by Instagram, these new stickers are designed to match the vibe of the location it represents. If this takes off I can see that in the near future you could be seeing branded stickers available for when stories are being created in store or tourist attractions. Here is what you can expect if you're lucky enough to be in New York.

WordPress for Google Docs

For those of us who use WordPress for their blog, collaborating on a new post with your colleagues has been like a relay race - we all take our turn to add our thoughts. But, WordPress has a new way for use to create blog posts with our peers via a new add-on for Google Docs. All you need to do is install it from the Google web store and give google docs access it to your WordPress account. And you're ready to go. Write your article, share it with colleagues and perfect it together. Once you're ready to publish, go to the Add-ons menu and open WordPress.com for Google Docs. A sidebar will appear, click the Save Draft button and the blog post will be saved as a draft ready for a final check before you schedule it to go live. This may not sound amazing but it will surely streamline the process when collaborating with others on your next masterpiece.

That's it for this week - can't wait to see what next week brings.