Social Media Tips – Week of December 29, 2025

Social Media Tips – Week of December 29, 2025

The holiday week brings some major platform shifts! Here's what you need to know:

📱 TikTok Deal Finally Signed — Closing January 22

After nearly two years of uncertainty, TikTok signed a deal on December 18 to sell its U.S. operations to an American investor group. Here's what we know:

• New ownership: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the new "TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC."

• ByteDance keeps a stake: The Chinese parent company retains 19.9%, with existing ByteDance investors holding about 30%

• Deal closes: January 22, 2026

• Algorithm stays: The recommendation algorithm will be "retrained on U.S. user data" and overseen by Oracle

What this means for school districts:

• TikTok isn't going anywhere; the app will continue operating

• Content moderation will be handled by the U.S. joint venture

• Continue your TikTok strategy, but maintain your cross-posting habits to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts

• The algorithm will remain largely the same for now

🎛️ Instagram Launches "Your Algorithm" Control Feature

On December 10, Instagram rolled out its most transparent feature yet: "Your Algorithm." This lets users see and customize what Instagram thinks they're interested in.

How it works:

• Tap the new icon (two lines with hearts) in the upper right of the Reels tab

• See the topics Instagram thinks you care about, summarized by AI

• Add topics you want to see more of, remove ones you don't

• Share your interests on your Story (like Spotify Wrapped!)

What this means for school districts:

• Users now have more control over what content they see

• Topic clarity matters more than ever; your content needs to be clearly categorized

• If you're posting about multiple unrelated topics, you may see weaker audience matching

• Niche consistency is key: stick to your lane and do it well

📉 Instagram's Algorithm Shift: Keywords Over Hashtags

The December algorithm update formalized what's been building all year: Instagram is now behaving more like a search engine.

Key changes:

• Hashtag weight continues to decline (remember: hashtag following ended in December 2024)

• Natural keywords in captions, bios, and alt text now drive discovery

• Early attention signals matter more, the first moments of content performance are weighted heavily

• DM shares ("sends") remain the single most valuable engagement signal

For school communicators:

• Write captions like you're optimizing for search

• Put your most important keywords in the first 2-3 sentences

• Focus on creating content people want to share in DMs

• Use 3-5 highly relevant hashtags, not 30

🔵 Bluesky Hits 40 Million Users, Launches New Features

Bluesky crossed 40 million users and continues rolling out features:

• "Find Friends" (Dec 17): Privacy-focused contact matching to find people you know

• Dislikes beta: A new signal for personalization, tell the algorithm what you don't want to see

• "Social neighborhoods": The platform is mapping communities to show more relevant replies

• Private bookmarks on mobile

• Testing end-to-end encrypted messaging

Should your district be on Bluesky?

• It's grown significantly (from 25M to 40M in 2025)

• Still primarily attracting journalists, creators, and tech-forward users

• Worth securing your handle and monitoring

• Not essential for K-12 communications—yet

📊 LinkedIn's 2025 Roundup: Video, AI, and New Metrics

LinkedIn Wrapped Up 2025 with several features school communicators should know:

• "Saves" and "Sends" metrics: See how many users bookmarked your post or shared it via DM

• AI-powered conversational search: Users can now ask LinkedIn professional questions in plain language

• BrandLink expansion: Creator monetization through video ads alongside premium content

• Calendly integration: Premium users can add scheduling links directly to profiles

• Video up 36%: LinkedIn continues pushing video content in feeds

For superintendent and district leadership accounts: These new metrics give better insight into thought leadership content that resonates beyond simple likes.

🎬 YouTube's End-of-Year Updates

YouTube released several creator tools as the year closed:

• YouTube Recap: A personalized year-in-review feature (think Spotify Wrapped for your viewing habits)

• AI image editing in Posts: Use Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash) to edit images directly when creating Posts

• Comment summaries: AI automatically summarizes themes from comments in the Studio app

• Collaborations feature: Invite up to 5 creators to be added as collaborators on a video

• Likeness detection tool: Upload your face to find unauthorized uses, including AI deepfakes

For districts creating video content: The Collaborations feature could be useful for joint announcements with partner organizations or student-led content.

💡 Quick Tip of the Week

As you wrap up 2025 and plan for 2026, remember these algorithm priorities across platforms:

Instagram: DM shares > Saves > Comments > Likes

LinkedIn: Saves & Sends are now visible metrics—track them

YouTube: Watch time + completion rate + rewatches

TikTok: Watch time + shares + comments

The common thread? Shareable content wins. Create content people want to send to a friend.

Tips return next Monday. In the meantime, this is a great week to:

• Reflect on your 2025 analytics and identify your top-performing content

• Plan your January content calendar

• Explore Instagram's "Your Algorithm" feature to understand how users might customize their feeds

Here's to a strong 2026!

Be on the lookout, tips drop every Monday!