Daily Minute Master Series – March 31, 2021

March 31, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Has COVID-19 Made Marketers More Creative?

COVID-19 has had us all taking on new projects and hobbies while being locked away in our homes. Some of us have become expert knitters, bakers, and photographers. According to a recent survey from Bannerflow and Digiday, creativity is also spiking in our work, at least among in-house teams.

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TikTok Launches New ‘Playlists’ Feature to Group Clips into Themed Collections

This could be a great way to boost engagement with your content on TikTok. Late last week, TikTok began rolling out a new ‘Playlists’ feature with selected creators, which enables users to group their TikTok clips into themed collections.

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How to Target Multiple Language Audiences in One Country

Want to target a specific, smaller second-language audience in a dominant-language country? Learn this SEO strategy for international business success.

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Clubhouse Shows Us How Businesses Can Save Millions on Marketing

After launching in April 2020, Clubhouse has already been downloaded 10 million times and has around two million weekly active users. In the grand scheme of things, this might sound like a small amount — especially if you consider that Facebook has 2.7 billion active users on its platform, Instagram 1 billion, Twitter 330 million, and Snapchat 301 million.

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Eight Marketing Strategies Every Startup Or Small Business Can Afford

“How can we effectively market and scale with a tight budget?” It can be challenging to decide where to invest your time and limited resources in marketing. Should you invest in the top of the funnel or the bottom?

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How Digital Marketing Is Transforming The Music Industry

In today’s competitive music market, there is no shortage of creativity, opportunity and innovation. Because of setbacks in touring and shutdowns of concert venues, the music industry took a big hit in income from tour merchandising, live appearances and ticket sales. All of these factors typically make up a sizeable portion of revenue in the industry. As a result of the current global venue restrictions, first movers in various markets are innovating and envisioning a bright future ahead for the entertainment industry. Marketing professionals, labels, distribution companies and artists are pivoting to new methods of distributing and marketing.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 30, 2021

March 30, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

The Latest Hearing of Big Tech CEOs Was Another Missed Opportunity for Real Progress

So what did we learn from the big tech CEOs’ appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week? Not a lot. As with most of the other, similar hearings we’ve seen, where Government officials get a chance to publicly question the leaders of the major tech platforms, most of the queries devolved into over-simplifications of process, which served no real purpose and seemed to get us no closer to advancing the key focus on improving how social platforms, in particular, address the spread of misinformation and the facilitation of hate speech.

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Twitter’s Developing New ‘Community’ Tools to Share Tweets with Selected Audiences

Back in February, as part of its Analyst Day presentation, Twitter previewed a new, groups-like option called ‘Communities’, which would enable Twitter users to share their tweets within selected sub-groups of users, as opposed to sharing with everybody.

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Google: Fine If AMP Page Has More Ads Than HTML Page

Google’s John Mueller says the search engine’s recommendation to maintain parity between AMP and canonical HTML pages does not apply to ads.

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Google Says There’s No Limit on Title Tag Length

Google’s Gary Illyes says that industry standards on title tag lengths are externally created and not Google recommendations.

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How To Implement An Effective Email Marketing Strategy

The first email management system was created in 1972 and email marketing came soon after. Since its initiation, entrepreneurial types have used email to market and sell products. But more recently, some marketers have set email campaigns aside in favor of other digital channels such as social media and mobile messaging. While a multichannel strategy should embrace new channels to boost sales opportunities, marketers who deprioritize email should proceed with caution.

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Outsourcing Pros And Cons For Your Digital Marketing

Businesses today are so lucky. Technology has made it easy to hire a freelancer or connect with an agency to help with their digital marketing. Most of these freelancers or consultants can work on SEO or Google Ads without ever stepping foot in the office. (We’re now living in an age where, according to Upwork, 22% of American workers are expected to continue operating remotely by 2025.) Here’s the big question for your business: When is the right time to outsource? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 29, 2021

March 29, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

The State of SEO a Year Into COVID-19: What’s Changed

The pandemic has changed many things, especially how much we view the internet, online resources, and SEO. Read about how SEO has fared so far.

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Twitter Expands Test Pool for Spaces on Android, as Clubhouse Falls in Daily Download Rankings

Is Clubhouse, and audio social more broadly, a genuine, lasting interactive trend, or will the app simply fade out, like many other fad platforms before it? It’s impossible to know of course, at this early stage of the game. But the challenges are rising for the first breakthrough app of 2021, with Twitter looking to expand its audio Spaces tool, and latch onto the momentum of Clubhouse’s initial push. And this won’t be good news for Clubhouse’s prospects – today, Twitter announced that it’s boosted the amount of users that can now access Spaces via Android.

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Twitter Previews Potential New Account Safety Tools, Launches New Update for Birdwatch

Twitter’s looking to provide more options and transparency over its rule violations and moderation processes, with a range of new tools currently in consideration that could give users more ways to understand and action each instance.

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Snapchat’s Working on a New ‘Remix’ Feature for Snaps

We’ve already seen various apps try to copy TikTok’s key features, and various others looking to add in similar UI and other elements. And now, Snapchat is testing out another TikTok-inspired option, with the addition of a new ‘remix’ option on user Snaps.

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5 Big Content Trends You Need to Know Now

Content marketing and SEO have been hitting some awesome high notes. We’re careening toward a bright future of more useful, helpful, technically amazing content that aligns with user habits, preferences, and search needs. Content is getting better because we’re getting smarter about how we strategize, research, create, and publish it. And as a result, content marketing is no longer some type of marketing experiment, but a proven strategy that can work for any brand.

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Old Truths And New Marketing Truths After The Pandemic

Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, and especially forced lockdowns, many behaviors have changed for good – from the rise of eCommerce, to the shift to smart TV, to localization and digital transformation. Marketers will need to think hard—and differently—about what the consumer in the new normal will think, feel, say, and do.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 26, 2021

March 26, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Twitter’s Assessing the Potential of Emoji-Style Reactions and Up and Downvotes on Tweets

This will no doubt be welcomed with open arms by Twitter users, and will see no negative over-reaction whatsoever in response. According to TechCrunch, over the past month, Twitter has been surveying users about the potential of adding a broader set of emoji-style reactions on tweets, giving people more ways to quickly engage in the app.

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Google Shares Technical SEO Best Practices For Ecommerce Sites

Google provides guidance to SEOs and ecommerce site owners on best practices for providing the search engine with accurate information about products. When Google has timely and accurate product data it can apply special formatting in search results to assist shoppers with their buying decisions. Additional data that Google can display for product pages includes ratings, pricing, and stock levels. When product pages can display this information in search results it has the potential to increase traffic from Google to ecommerce sites.

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State of Email Marketing 2021 Benchmark Report

Email marketing remains a crucial channel for many organizations due to its accessibility, ease of use, and effectiveness in reaching target audiences. Since 2018, Validity and Demand Metric have researched email marketing to examine which tactics marketers are using, how well they are working, and what challenges prevent greater success with email. Although the use of email continues to evolve, this study’s purpose remains the same: to help companies understand what separates high-performing email marketers from the rest of the pack. This report summarizes the latest survey results and shares insights from more than 450 study participants.

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Why It Makes Sense To Merge Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing

Is the design of your sales and marketing organization dysfunctional? If so, you probably already know it. Most organizational structures aren’t designed with a slide-rule to use after months of contemplating their design. Instead, they form organically over time. Few business leaders do anything but follow the traditional model of creating “departments” around any functional need they see as vital to their business activity.

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New SEO Tool Gathers Google Search Insights From 60M Queries

A new, free tool for SEOs provides insights about Google search features from an analysis of 60 million US queries. Developed by Local SEO Guide, the Local-Pack-O-Meter tracks data for ten different types of Google search features such as local packs, knowledge panels, shopping, job postings, ads, and more.

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Pinterest Search Trends Show All-Time Interest in Travel

Pinterest’s latest report on recent search trends show that people are more interested in travel now than they were before the pandemic. According to Pinterest’s data, people are searching for travel-related topics more now than at any point in the site’s history.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 25, 2021

March 25, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Instagram Announces That Stories Drafts are Coming Soon

Instagram has today announced that it will soon add a new option to save your Instagram Stories as drafts, to be posted at a later stage.

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Facebook Says That People Have Raised Over $5b Through its Donation Tools

While questions continue to be raised about the role that Facebook now plays in our daily interactive process, and the negative impacts in regards to fake news, misinformation and facilitating the growth of concerning movements, at the other end of the spectrum, Facebook’s connective efforts are also yielding positive results, in many ways. One of those is through the promotion of causes, with Facebook’s unmatched scale providing new opportunities for non-profits to raise awareness and funds via the platform’s various tools.

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Google: Zero Click Claims Are Misleading

Google offers convincing evidence that claims surrounding “zero click” searches are erroneous.

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2022 Will Restart the World of Digital Marketing, What Does That Mean?

The death of cookies is undoubtedly the privacy revolution in the digital environment. The facts that have restricted the information collected by cookies, such as the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari, the total elimination of third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022 and the iOs14 as the most secure operating system in existence so far; has put the entire digital advertising industry in check. 2022 is the year that Google Chrome will eliminate third-party cookies worldwide, an act that Safari and Firefox have already done. With these three browsers we already cover almost 100% of the most used browsers in Chile and Latin America. But what are third-party cookies? They are those that allow us to know information about users such as their behavior on the web or their interests, in addition to the personalization of advertisements, basically we obtain a user profile thanks to them.

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How TikTok is Changing Healthcare Marketing

When a severe breathing problem sent Nina Luker to the emergency room in early February 2020, she feared COVID-19, the respiratory illness just beginning its sweep through the country. The news turned out to be much worse: Within weeks, she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 DLBCL (diffuse large B-cell lymphoma). Luker, 25, already knew more about TikTok than most people. As head of North American partnerships at Shuttlerock, a mobile-first video ad platform, she had experimented to see how it might work for her clients. Pre-cancer, Luker’s first post chronicled a night hanging out with friends in her New York City apartment, her long blonde hair flowing as she danced. After her diagnosis, though, TikTok turned into a kind of cancer lifeline. Her short videos captured numerous vulnerable moments in her cancer journey — but just as many that showcased her fighting spirit. With TikTok along for the ride, she danced her way through chemotherapy.

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Best Practices For Marketing To Gen-Z

Marketers targeting Gen-Z confront a murky collection of challenges. These range from making sound decisions on which influencers partner with brands to underscoring authenticity in ways that don’t backfire.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 24, 2021

March 24, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Facebook Outlines its Evolving Efforts to Combat Misinformation Ahead of New Investigation

Ahead of this week’s House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation into how social platforms are tackling misinformation, Facebook has provided an overview of its evolving efforts to better protect users and reduce the distribution of false reports on its platforms.

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Twitter Tests Improvements to Tweets With Photos & Video

Twitter confirms it’s testing long requested updates to publishing tweets with photos, and working on YouTube integration for a better video experience. With these tests Twitter is working on ways to address several of the most widespread complaints from users. When it comes to posting photos on Twitter, users express dissatisfaction with how images are cropped in the timeline, and the extent to which photos are compressed when uploaded. To address those issues Twitter is testing changes to the photo publishing process which includes the option for 4K image uploads.

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17 Black Hat Techniques That Can Harm an SEO Campaign

Black hat tactics are heavily penalized by Google, whether done consciously or otherwise. Read about 17 of them that can hurt your optimization efforts.

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Ignoring These 4 Marketing Trends Could Cost You in the Long Run

Although the pandemic made executing marketing plans and 2020 goals a chaotic process, the good news is that we have a fairly good idea of what you shouldn’t ignore in your marketing campaigns. Now you have the chance to implement new strategies and be several steps ahead in 2021. Whatever you do, don’t reduce your marketing budget. It might look like you’re saving money, but you’re losing it in the long run. Marketing your business is how you’re going to increase sales and keep your business thriving. Cutting costs in your marketing budget is going to short circuit your business. Take the time to double down on your marketing initiatives while your competitors are cutting back on theirs — an advantage you don’t want to miss.

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Conversational Marketing Is The New Direct Marketing

Marketing has changed drastically over the last decade, fueled by the evolution of technology and the demands of more discerning, sophisticated and impatient consumers. Yet, despite consumers’ evolving preferences for how they access products, services and information, I would argue that most brands lag behind their customers’ desires and needs — they continue to rely on high-frequency, one-way communications while striving to instill urgency to drive conversions.

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Gen Z Marketing Isn’t Easy. Logitech’s Allying With TikTok Stars To Make It Work

Gen Z, loosely defined as those born after 1996, continues to grow as a dominant customer demographic that brands are dashing to win over. Presently, the group accounts for 40% of the United States consumer population and commands upwards of $143 billion in spending power. However, those tasked with marketing to this lucrative group are finding that the usual approaches may no longer be as effective.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 23, 2021

March 23, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Facebook’s Looking to Launch Audio-Only Rooms to Hook Into the Social Audio Trend

Yes, Facebook’s Clubhouse clone is coming, and it could be here very soon, according to a new discovery in the back-end code of the app. As you would expect, with the sudden rise of audio social, Facebook has also been working on its own live audio meeting rooms feature, which would enable Facebook users to create audio broadcasts that users can tune into, and participate in, within the app. This is actually not a major stretch for Facebook to create, as it already has its video Rooms feature that it added in May last year, which enables users to create private video chats that others can drop into. Building a public, audio-only version of the same is technically something of a step back, reducing the data load by shutting off video, while also making them open to all users.

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Instagram Tests New Labels to Show When a Feed Post is Re-Shared to Stories

You know what Instagram doesn’t like? People sharing their regular feed posts to Stories. Well, maybe it’s not so much that Instagram doesn’t like this as it is that some users have complained about it, and now it’s testing a few different approaches to try and stop people from re-posting their regular, static updates to their Stories as well. Instagram’s latest experiment on this front sees new labels added to Stories posts that have been re-posted from a users’ main feed.

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Facebook Update Will Target Specific Groups and Individuals

Global Facebook update will target individuals and groups that break official community standards and impose limits on their reach as well as removal.

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How Long Does SEO Take?

One of the most common questions I get as an SEO professional is, “How long does SEO take?” It’s also one of the most frustrating questions because, while clients understandably want a definitive answer, there is simply no way to provide one due to all of the variables involved. This is because, in addition to all of the variables that play a role in the optimization of your own website, you also have to evaluate those same variables in your competitors’ optimization efforts.

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Three Marketing Analytics Trends are Driving Performance in 2021

The rapid shift to digital has impacted customers’ expectations of companies and evolved their behaviors. Personalization, trust and valuable interactions are the cornerstones of customer experience — 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. As businesses accelerate their digital transformations to keep up with the changing landscape, marketers have the opportunity to deepen relationships with their customers and humanize engagements.

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Efficacy Versus Embellishment: The Next Era In Marketing Messaging

As human beings, we are drawn to showmanship in every form. From captivating performers like Beyoncé to mesmerizing architectural feats like the Golden Gate Bridge, there is something truly human about trying to do something bigger, if not better, than anyone has ever done before. There is much debate about the role that the news media has played in our current state of affairs, but some say it’s reminiscent of 19th-century yellow journalism — which we clearly survived. We’ve come to expect hyperbole at every turn, and the question is whether we can simply decide to filter out the noise to arrive at the truth.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 22, 2021

March 22, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Facebook is Reportedly Working on a Kids Version of Instagram

As reported by BuzzFeed, according to an internal company communication, Instagram is now working on “a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time”.

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Facebook Previews Next Gen Digital Control for AR, Which Responds to Muscle Commands

As Facebook looks to the next stage of digital connection, which includes the development of its own AR-enabled glasses, it’s also working on new control tools that will enable people to interact more seamlessly with these overlays and options. Such controls are a key part of the experience – in order to make best use of AR overlays, you need to be able to interact with them easily, without disrupting your everyday tasks. Voice commands are one option, while other research has focused on eye-based controls, with varying results. But Facebook’s research has actually pointed them to the wrist being the key control point for such interactions.

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YouTube Begins the Roll-Out of its TikTok-Like ‘Shorts’ Option in the US

After announcing a coming expansion of its TikTok-like ‘Shorts’ video option last month, YouTube has today launched an initial beta of Shorts to selected users in the US.

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Twitter Tests New Option to View YouTube Clips In-Stream

Today, Twitter has announced that it’s launching a new test on iOS that will enable users to play YouTube clips in-stream.

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YouTube Adds Real-Time Subscriber Counts in Channel Dashboards

YouTube is updating Studio dashboards with real-time channel subscriber counts, removing the need for creators to use third-party tools to access that data.

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How Paid Search Incrementality Impacts SEO (Does 1+1=3?)

SEO and SEM together can produce better results than using one or the other. Read on to learn more about paid search incrementality and see it in action.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 19, 2021

March 19, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Facebook Ups its Enforcement Around Rule Violations in Groups

Facebook has announced some new, harsher rules for group interactions, which will see the reach of some groups restricted, and some groups banned outright, due to repeated rule violations on the platform. First off, on political groups – back in September, in the lead-up to the US Election, Facebook announced that it was removing civic and political groups from its group recommendations in the US, along with newly created groups, in an effort to reduce the impact of divisive content and misinformation.

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Twitter’s Working on a Dedicated Tab for Spaces

As Twitter continues to develop its new audio Spaces tool, in order to tap into the latest social engagement trend, it’s now looking at how it improves Spaces discovery, and maximizes awareness of in-progress conversations.

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TikTok Adds New Auto-Reply Message Option for Business Accounts

This could be handy – TikTok has added a new, automated response option for messages to business accounts, which could make it easier to manage common queries and/or provide relevant information.

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LinkedIn Launches ‘Do Business Where Business is Done’ Campaign to Highlight Relevant Content

Have you noticed the gradual rise of non-business related posts on LinkedIn over the past few years? Some people share updates about their family life, some share memes, others share jokes or more light-hearted content not specifically related to their business interests.

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YouTube Rolls Out Copyright Checks Tool, Which Analyzes Your Video Prior to Upload, to More Users

After first previewing the tool last September, then launching an initial, small-scale test in February, YouTube is now expanding the roll-out of its pre-publish Checks tool, which analyzes the content of your video for a range of potential violations, including copyright concerns, before you publish your clip.

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5 Key SEO Tactics for Growing Organic Traffic

Starting with the impact in mind when growing organic traffic makes it easier to prioritize SEO objectives and tactics. Read about 5 of them here.

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Daily Minute Master Series – March 18, 2021

March 18, 2021/by Corey Padveen

The Marketing Rundown

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News & Updates

Clubhouse Closes in on 13 Million Downloads on the One Year Anniversary of the App

You may have only heard about it recently, but Clubhouse actually celebrates its one-year anniversary this week. The audio social app, which has seen a sudden rise in popularity as people seek out new ways to socialize amid the pandemic, is still in invite-only mode, and is still only available on iOS (for now). But even so, according to new data from app analytics provider App Annie, Clubhouse is fast closing in on 13 million total downloads, with almost a third of them occurring in the US.

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Instagram Adds New Tools to Protect Younger Users, New Safety Guide for Parents

Instagram is upping its efforts to stamp out predatory behavior in the app with a new range of features designed to protect younger users from ill-intentioned adults. First off, and most significantly, Instagram is now implementing new restrictions that will prevent adults from sending messages to any users under the age of 18 who don’t follow them.

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Facebook Shares Details of Coming Newsletter Platform to Attract Top Creators

With Twitter recently acquiring newsletter maker Revue, Facebook is also looking to jump on to the newsletter trend, by developing its own newsletter creation and distribution tools as a means to help creators generate more revenue from their efforts. Reports of Facebook’s likely move into newsletters circulated back in January, shortly after the Revue announcement, and now, the platform has provided some insight into how its process will work.

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Google Predicts These 4 Pandemic Changes Are Permanent

Companies have changed the way they do business since the pandemic. In a new report, Google forecasts which of those changes are here to stay.

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Google: Possible Quality Issue if Copied Content Outranks Original

Google’s John Mueller says there might be a site quality issue if copied content is consistently ranking above the original source. Mueller addressed this topic during the Google Search Central SEO hangout recorded on March 12. Site owner Mohammad Mehdi Abbas tells Mueller his original content is being stolen and republished by other websites. The stolen content is now ranking about his own. He asks Mueller how to protect his site from content theft, and how prevent copied content from ranking above his in the future. That leads to Mueller saying there may be an issue with site quality if this is a problem that keeps happening.

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21 Low-Cost Marketing Tips

With 100 employees and US $ 10 million in annual revenues, Cynergy Systems – a software developer in the United States – applies effective and economical advertising techniques. Its founder and president, Carson Hager, is blunt: “In reality the traditional means of marketing do not work for us. Also, we do not have a large budget for it.” The lesson from Carson, 36, is simple: Before starting an expensive ad campaign, consider cheaper, but just as effective, options. Here are 21 tactics, which require a minimal investment or have no cost at all. And that they will surely bring very good results to you and your business.

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