As summer heats up, so does the pace of social media innovation, so it’s no time to take your foot off the pedal on your biggest client campaigns. June 2025 has brought a wave of platform updates and new features that have the potential to reshape how beauty brands connect, create, and convert. To help you stay in the know, here’s a comprehensive roundup of the most important social media changes, with actionable insights for the beauty and lifestyle sectors.
What’s New On TikTok?
Real-Time Engagement and AI Support: Live DMs for Lead Capture
TikTok’s new ‘LIVE set up for client acquisition’ allows brands to activate Direct Messages during live streams. Viewers can instantly message the brand or creator without leaving the stream, making it easier to answer product questions or capture leads during a live product demo or beauty tutorial. For beauty brands, this feature is a game-changer for live shopping events, think real-time Q&As about a new skincare launch or exclusive offers for viewers who DM during the stream.
AI Assistant for Sellers
TikTok’s Seller Centre now includes an AI-powered chatbot that provides guidance on listing optimisation, marketing strategies, and real-time performance analytics. Beauty brands can use this tool to fine-tune their TikTok Shop presence, ensuring their product listings and campaigns are always optimised for discovery and conversion.
SoundCloud Integration
TikTok’s “Add to Music” feature now supports direct saving to SoundCloud. While this is a bonus for music marketers, beauty brands collaborating with musicians or using trending tracks in campaigns should ensure cross-platform visibility. Think about launching a summer lookbook with a custom soundtrack, driving traffic between TikTok and SoundCloud for a multi-sensory brand experience. Hello festival season!
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What’s New On Instagram?
AI-Powered Creativity and Accessibility: Instagram Edits App Gets Smarter
Instagram’s Edits app now offers advanced AI image tools, including sophisticated cropping, animation for still images, and collaborative editing features. For beauty brands, this means more dynamic campaign visuals and the ability to co-create content with influencers or fans in real time. For beauty brands, this means the potential to highlight a new launch with animated before-and-after transformations, or inviting followers to remix your campaign images, potentially boosting engagement and reach.
Voice Clip Transcription in DMs
Instagram has also rolled out voice message transcription in Direct Messages. This simple but powerful update ensures that product queries, influencer pitches, and customer feedback don’t get lost in translation. It’s a win for accessibility and for busy PR teams or brand ambassadors who need to keep conversations moving efficiently.
Read our guide to the creative mailer, and read more about how we use them for our clients here.
What’s New On Pinterest?
Visual Search for Seamless Shopping
Pinterest has introduced new visual search tools that let users shop for fashion and beauty items by tapping on parts of an image. For beauty brands, this means products featured in campaign imagery or influencer content can become instantly shoppable, shortening the path from inspiration to purchase. For beauty and wellness brands, this can be utilised by making sure your product imagery is optimised for Pinterest’s visual search to capture summer shoppers seeking the latest trends.
What’s New On Meta & Snapchat?
The AI Advertising Revolution: Meta’s Automated Ad Campaigns
Meta is moving toward fully automated AI-driven advertising by 2026. Soon, beauty brands will be able to generate entire ad campaigns, images, videos, and copy, by uploading a product photo and setting a budget. AI will handle targeting and budget allocation, freeing up PR teams to focus on creative strategy and storytelling.
Snapchat’s Smart Bidding
Snapchat has rolled out AI-powered smart bidding and budget allocation for ads, helping beauty brands optimise spend and maximise ROI. With beauty’s visual appeal, Snapchat remains a key channel for reaching Gen Z with AR filters and interactive content.
Key Talking Points
So what have we learnt? Here’s a recap of the key updates impacting potential reach and engagement for beauty, wellness and lifestyle brands.
Leverage AI for Content and Campaigns: Use Instagram’s new AI tools to create engaging, animated visuals for summer launches. Pair this with Meta’s upcoming AI ad features for smart, scalable campaigns.
Maximise Real-Time Engagement: Host TikTok live sessions for product drops, using Live DMs to capture leads and answer questions instantly. Utilise TikTok’s AI assistant to optimise shop listings and campaign strategy.
Make Shopping Seamless: Optimise your Pinterest and TikTok Shop presence to capitalise on impulse purchases and visual search-driven discovery.
How Would This Work In Practice?
A beauty brand launching a new SPF-infused foundation could use Instagram’s AI animation to show the product’s skin-blurring effect, host a TikTok live Q&A with a dermatologist using Live DMs for instant audience questions, and ensure the product is easily shoppable via Pinterest’s visual search and TikTok Shop.
WORK WITH FLIPSIDE PR
Summer 2025’s social media updates offer beauty PRs powerful new ways to connect, create, and convert. By embracing AI-driven tools, real-time engagement features, and seamless shopping integrations, beauty brands can stay ahead of the curve and deliver the vibrant, authentic experiences today’s consumers crave. Need help getting the ball rolling or bringing your practices up to date? Our traditional print & digital PR expertise and social media campaigns are ever-evolving to suit the digital landscape, and we’d love to work with you to bring your brand stories to life.
Contact Flipside PR today here.
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