Daily Minute Master Series – November 8, 2019

Social Media

YouTube Launches Updated Desktop and Tablet App Layout

YouTube is rolling out a new desktop and tablet app update which utilizes an updated presentation style, and provides additional control options. The updated format provides more room for each preview panel, enabling additional context on each from the main screen. In addition to this, YouTube has also added an ‘Add to Queue’ option, which will make it easier for users to quickly build video playlists. And YouTube’s also adding its ‘Don’t Recommend Channel’ option to the desktop version. The feature was launched on mobile earlier in the year, providing an additional way to control the content recommendations that YouTube provides. The changes are relatively small, in a broader sense, but they add extra functionality to YouTube on desktop, which will help improve navigation, while also better showcasing content from the main screen. That could also provide some additional considerations for marketers, depending on where the majority of your YouTube traffic comes from, though the impacts in this sense are minimal.

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Marketing

WhatsApp rolls out SMB product ‘Catalogs’ to support local discovery and commerce

Facebook is now formally rolling it out in selected markets including Brazil, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, UK and the U.S., with more countries coming soon. Catalog allows businesses on WhatsApp to showcase products and services and share them with customers via the app’s messaging function. Consumers can also discover businesses and see and browse products directly on the business profile. It’s not entirely clear but it doesn’t appear that businesses will be able (at this point) to sell directly on WhatsApp. But they can link to pages where products can be sold or other conversions can happen. hatsApp is positioning itself as a complete commerce platform for small businesses. Although transactional capabilities are currently not present, I would expect them to be introduced in the future. 

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Salesforce launches hybrid Content Management System built to integrate with other platforms

Salesforce launched a new content management platform on Thursday, the Salesforce Content Management System. By entering the CMS space, Salesforce aims to give content marketing teams a tool anyone can use — “from novices to experts” reads the announcement — and capable of creating personalized content powered by Salesforce CRM data. Salesforce calls it a “hybrid” CMS, meaning users can create, manage and deliver content on the platform, and then distribute to other digital platforms not powered by Salesforce by using the company’s Experience Builder or Commerce Page designer tools. Marketing teams already plugged into Salesforce’s CRM will now be able to create more personalized content at scale via the company’s new content management system. And, if the CMS is as user-friendly as it is being billed to be — and actually does integrate with other platforms — teams won’t be limited based on their design resources, nor will the content be restricted to the Salesforce ecosystem.

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New Report Examines the Impact of Instagram’s Hidden Likes Experiment on Influencer Engagement

This week, influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor has released a study of content from more than 154k Instagram influencers, each of whom sees at least 30% of their following coming from users in the regions in which Instagram’s hidden Like counts test is currently running. For context, Instagram’s hidden like counts test is currently live for users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Brazil, Japan and New Zealand. The results here are not definitive – while they do reflect an overall reduction in Like activity in regions impacted by the change, HypeAuditor’s categorization (influencers with 30% of their following in the test regions) does leave a few questions around the specific methodology. But the data does show that the removal of total Like counts is seemingly having some impact on overall engagement stats for influencers. So, if you’re an influencer, you may well see a reduction in your Instagram engagement – but then again, that wouldn’t definitively impact reach, or even engagement on balance. The data provides some interesting, yet non-definitive, insights into the Instagram Like test. Hopefully, Instagram will soon be able to provide more clarity around the impacts that it’s seeing and recording within the test regions.

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