Four31 Digital

Just a few more days left of August - where did summer go!? - so here are the awareness days, weeks and months for September that you can use in your content marketing.

A new digital service is going to be launched in 2025 by the UK's HM Revenue & Customs for paying alcohol duties, which the agency says will “simplify and modernise” the processes for alcohol duty approvals, returns and payments.

The LCBO is the primary manager of alcoholic drinks distribution in Ontario, Canada but, from autumn 2024, most of Ontario's 7-Eleven stores will also start selling beer, wine, cider, and ready-to-drink cocktails in a move designed to increase consumer convenience responsibly.

If you use Instagram carousels, then Instagram now allows you to post up to 20 photos and videos in one, doubling the number that you can include. The increase gives you more scope to tell brand stories, show your product in action and much more. If you already use carousels, then try testing the expanded version to see how it resonates with your audience.

It's Instagram Reels Birthday, marking the launch 4 years ago of the hugely popular feature that has revolutionised content creation on the platform. Reels allows users to create and share short, engaging videos set to music or original audio, offering a fun and creative way to connect with followers. Reels has become a popular tool for influencers, brands, and everyday users to showcase their creativity, share moments, and entertain audiences. Some fun facts about Instagram Reels: * 2.35 billion people interact with reels every month. * India is the biggest market for the feature followed by the USA and Brazil. * Reels get 22% more interaction than standard video posts. * The majority of Reels' audience is from the 25 to 34 age group. * Users can now upload reels of up to 90 seconds. Are you using Instagram Reels on your account?

If you are selling alcohol into India, then you'll want to take a look at the new strengthened advertising laws that the country has just introduced that will outlaw surrogate commercials and the sponsoring of events.

It's summer in the Northern hemisphere but that's no reason to take your foot off the social media marketing pedal! Now is the time that your audience is scrolling through their timelines in their downtime and you want your brand to be catching their attention. Awareness days are a great hook to link your brand to and there are plenty coming up in August. What awareness day can you use for your drinks brand?

Meta is rolling out an interesting new feature allowing advertisers to showcase custom offers directly on Instagram ad call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Advertisers will be able to highlight multiple competitive promotions (eg percentage or cash discounts) on the call to action, potentially increasing user engagement and click-through rates. So far it's limited to single-media ads in Instagram Stories and not available to all ad accounts yet but watch this space.

Happy, sad, silly, we use emojis everyday to bring our online interactions to life and today they are celebrated with their very own World Emoji Day! Here are 6 fun facts about emojis: World Emoji Day is 17 July because that is the date shown on most calendar emoji. The first emoji were invented by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita in 1999. Around 10 billion emojis are sent every day! Each emoji has to be approved by Unicode Consortium - a group who decide which new emoji characters should be introduced. There are currently 3521 emoji to chose from, according to Emojipedia. The top three emojis are tears of joy, red heart and smiley heart eyes. What's your favourite emoji?

It’s app round-up time for June with Instagram the most downloaded app globally for the 8th month in a row with around 61m downloads. TikTok came in second with roughly 52m downloads. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram complete the top five, with Telegram coming in at around 32m downloads. It looks like Instagram is still a good - and growing - place to focus your marketing efforts and as TikTok is also still doing well, short-form video content is continuing to be popular.