Social Media
5 Digital Marketing Trends to Focus On During the COVID-19 Pandemic [Infographic]
The COVID-19 lockdowns around the world are causing major economic impacts, but one key benefit that we have in modern society, that hasn’t been available in pandemics of the past, is the internet, and increased connectivity, which has enabled many businesses to continue operation despite not being able to open their physical stores. And while the human impact of the crisis cannot be overstated, for those that are able, minimizing the economic impact through the available means could be the difference between staying afloat or going under, and suffering massive financial burden as a result.
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Anti-Lockdown Protests Provide New Challenges for Facebook’s Censorship Rules
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new set of challenges for Facebook’s rules around political speech, and what it deems acceptable, or not, on its platform. In many respects, the importance of accurate, timely, authoritative information has outweighed Facebook’s usual reluctance to enforce strict rules around what can and cannot be posted, but it’s also lead to some more delicate situations regarding potential censorship, and where Facebook will draw the line with respect to the discussions around the pandemic. The sale of face masks has been banned, myths around cures are not allowed. Facebook also recently started removing posts which suggest that 5G signal towers could exacerbate COVID-19’s spread.
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Marketing
Now more than ever, people are turning to apps to stay healthy, productive, connected, and informed. In fact, worldwide, average weekly time spent in apps grew 20% year over year in Q1 2020, suggesting apps are making a difference in how people navigate through this unprecedented time.
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How the Internet of Things will Transform Consumerism, Enterprises, and Governments Over the Next Five Years
Being successful in the digital age doesn’t just require knowing the latest buzzwords; it means identifying the transformational trends – and where they’re heading – before they ever heat up. Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, which now receives not only daily tech news coverage with each new device launch, but also hefty investments from global organizations ushering in worldwide adoption. By 2023, consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices globally. And it’s not just the ones you hear about all the time, like smart speakers and connected cars.
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When Clients Pause PPC: 5 Survival Tips for Marketers
Let’s be honest: COVID-19 is all over the news. No one can get away from the latest headlines, projected models, or local news. But what about those who live and breathe marketing? As marketers, not only do we have to deal with the personal aspects of a crisis. We are also dealing with client crisis as our own. There seems to be no escape. The world is in the middle of a crisis. If you’re not careful, a crisis can easily consume your work and personal life. As an agency-side marketer, here are a few survival tactics that have helped me. These tactics are both personal and work-related.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 29, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds Live Donations Feature for Fundraising via Instagram Live
Instagram continues to explore new ways to help people and businesses impacted by COVID-19. Today, Instagram has launched a new fundraising option within Instagram Live, which will enable users to raise funds during an Instagram Live stream – like a small-scale telethon via the app.
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Facebook Coronavirus Emojis
Facebook announced new set of emojis that are exclusively for the Facebook and Messenger apps. The emojis are meant as a way for users to share their support with each other. But some are finding them somewhat awkward.
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YouTube to Display Fact Checks in Search Results in the US
YouTube is expanding its fact check information panels to search results pages in the United States. YouTube’s fact check panels first rolled out last year in Brazil and India. Now, as more people turn to YouTube for accurate news and information, fact check panels are launching in the United States.
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Marketing
Will Social Distancing Accelerate a Trend Toward Home as Headquarters?
As COVID-19 sweeps around the world, vast swaths of the workforce find themselves working from home for extended periods for the first time. Many of them are learning how to structure time and use technology to make the transition as seamless as possible. But the coronavirus could accelerate a trend that was already underway. Even before social distancing and sheltering in place, home was becoming the logistical headquarters for busy people looking to make better use of their time. Whether it was skipping the commute or the line at the grocery store, online searches and shopping habits prior to the pandemic indicated a desire by people to spend more of their time on pursuits that give them joy, pleasure, or comfort (and less of it sitting in traffic).
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30 Marketing Statistics to Consider for 2020
When planning any marketing plan or strategy, you need to have research to back up what you are doing planning and doing. This could come from your own experience, or from industry data. For our weekly Marketing Fact Friday posts that we share on the ME Marketing Services social accounts, we keep up with what research is telling us about the marketing industry and its various branches (content, social media, advertising, email, etc.). We look for bits of research and statistics that are not your common stats you see everywhere. We like to find the lesser-published ones. Here are 30 stats we’ve put together for you to consider when executing your marketing plan or strategy this year.
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6 Marketing Tactics to Help Reallocate a Conference Marketing Budget
If there’s one constant in the world of marketing, it’s that everything changes. Whether it’s the Google algorithm upending your SEO efforts, Facebook pulling the organic page reach rug out from under you or a worldwide pandemic decimating your in-person marketing plans, life is always changing. So what happens when your conference marketing budget goes on hold and you need to reallocate the funds and the efforts? How do you pick up the pieces and refocus your conference marketing efforts to still drive revenue for your business?
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 28, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
12 Tips for Hashtag Challenge Ideas on TikTok [Infographic]
Hashtag challenges are an essential element of TikTok, providing inspiration for users to create their own takes on trending content, and take part in broader shifts. They’ve become so big that they’ve even passed a key social media milestone – they’ve been cloned by Instagram, which means that they must be gaining real traction. But more than just an engagement tool for regular users, businesses can also utilize hashtag challenges to expand their branding efforts on the platform. It’s not a given – it’s difficult to know what will resonate and catch on, and what’ll fall flat. But hashtag challenges do provide another consideration for marketers on TikTok, which, used well, can be huge for growing brand awareness and reach. To help with this, TikTok recently published this listing of tips on how businesses can create their own hashtag challenges on the platform.
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The Best Times to Post on Social Media During COVID-19 [Report]
Last month, Sprout Social published its latest listings on the best times to post to each of the major social platforms, based on insights gleaned from its 20,000+ user base, in order to provide guidance as to when you should consider posting to maximize response. But since then, a lot has changed. The COVID-19 lockdowns have lead to massive increases in social platform usage, and in some cases, significant shifts in when people are active. As such, this week, Sprout has published an update to its listings, which may help guide your revised strategy to cater to engagement changes during the pandemic. Here’s what they found – and note that all the time frames listed here are Central Time Zone (CST), though based on the data, these would be largely indicative for local time zones as well.
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Snap Launches First Commercial Option on Snapchat Shows
Snapchat is adding a new option for advertisers called “First Commercial.” This offering lets advertisers specify being the first ad a user sees that day in their first Snap show session. It will only be available in the US initially.
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Marketing
Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines: A Guide for SEO Beginners
We’ve all heard about Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines. But let’s be honest: there’s a lot to digest in this 168-page document. If you’ve been looking for a basic guide to Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines, then keep reading.
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Can AI Do A Good Job Writing Marketing Copy?
AI-powered copywriting technology may not be widely embraced, but it’s here. One of the firms pioneering the process is London-based Phrasee, launched in 2015.
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Why You Must Follow These 6 Basic Marketing Rules
There are just a few plain and simple direct-marketing rules to follow, and by committing to them, you’ll reap the long-term benefits you desire and develop a long-lasting business foundation. These basics are skipped by most businesses using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as their primary sources of communication. Realize you have choices, and you can make your marketing dollars work harder for you by offering people more than one reason and more than one means of responding to you. However many channels you market in, there are six basic rules you need to understand in order to succeed. These foundational concepts must be fully comprehended, practiced, managed and enforced.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 27, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
New Twitter Data Underlines the Emergence of Gaming – and Marketers Need to Take Note
If you’re not paying attention to the influence of gaming on modern culture, you’re missing out on maybe the biggest shift in how the next generation connects. Gaming is set to become a $196 billion market by 2022, and five of the top 10 channels on YouTube in 2019 were directly connected to the gaming community. Gaming is fast emerging beyond a subculture, with gaming crews like FaZe Clan helping to take it mainstream. Even rapper Travis Scott recently launched his latest music via a transformative live event in Fortnite, which saw 12.3 million concurrent viewers logged in to take part.
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Facebook Shares New Data on the Psychological Impacts of Social Comparison, and How It Can Be Reduced
Do you ever scroll through your Instagram feed and feel like you’re not doing enough with your life? Do you ever see Facebook updates from old friends and feel inadequate in your own everyday struggles and issues? Social comparison is a real and significant issue with social media platforms – but it’s also an unrealistic and unfair measure to put on yourself. The thing is, you’re looking at someone else’s highlights. Not many people post about their daily challenges and issues, but they do post about their wins – which means that while it may seem like their lives are great, and better than yours appears to be, nobody’s perfect. Everyone has their own problems to overcome. But when you’re only seeing one side of the coin, that can lead to negative self-perception.
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Snapchat Usage Up During COVID-19, Data Shows How User Behavior is Changing
Snapchat gained 11 million daily active users in the first quarter of 2020, bringing the total count to 229 million. An additional 11 million daily active users (DAUs) represents a 20% increase over last year. Engagement hit record highs as well. On average, more than 4 billion Snaps were created each day in Q1 2020. As people flock to Snapchat to stay in touch amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has published data about how users’ online activity is changing during this time.
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How Memes and Social Media Shape the Spread of Coronavirus
Vicky Chuqiao Yang is living through the coronavirus pandemic for the second time. She’s been working from home in New Mexico ever since the Santa Fe Institute — where Yang is a post-doctoral researcher using mathematical models to investigate societal complexities — shut down in mid-March due to the virus’ spread. She had already witnessed the jarring process of closing down society earlier in the year through her parents back in her hometown of Wuhan, China. In the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan, information about the situation was spotty and often inconsistent as officials censored initial reports of the virus’ rapid spread. All the while, Yang and her parents were keeping tabs on the epidemic from opposite sides of the globe via myriad social media rumors and news reports.
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Why LinkedIn May be the Most Effective Social Media Platform of Our Time
When most people talk about social media, they’re usually referring to platforms like Facebook or Instagram, but rarely think of LinkedIn as part of the vast array of social media platforms available. We tend to assume that LinkedIn isn’t such a valuable place to be and often, even businesses make this mistake, assuming that it would be far more beneficial to focus on their presence on Twitter, for example. There is a logic behind this – LinkedIn is a place for businesses, but I’m looking to advertise to real people, and they are going to be on other, more laid-back platforms, so I might as well go there, too.
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Marketing
Google Cutting Up to 50% of Marketing Budget
An internal email reveals that Google is cutting up to 50% of it’s marketing budget for the second half of 2020. The cuts to the marketing budget may be a way to contain the wildfire of reduced advertising earnings due caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This development comes less than a week from when Google is scheduled to discuss the first quarter 2020 financial results on April 28th.
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How To Adapt Your Marketing Strategy To The Current Market
Over the past few weeks, I have been struck by founders pulling marketing and advertising spend due to COVID-19. The rapid advancement of the current climate has fundamentally altered the marketing and advertising landscape. From March to June, advertising spend is expected to be down 39%, and over a quarter of Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) participants indicated they pulled their advertising entirely for the second quarter. Perhaps many marketers may be thinking about American Apparel’s disastrously received discount campaign during Hurricane Sandy and are thinking about holding off for fear of poor public perception.
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How to Conduct a High-Level Ecommerce Usability Study
When time is of the essence, conducting a heuristic evaluation of your online shop will help you learn how to increase sales now. A heuristic evaluation is a method of finding usability problems. It helps you quickly identify the website’s health without having to do a long exhaustive study. You will not be reviewing every detail, you will be generating a high-level overview of usability factors best known to influence sales. The beautiful thing about a usability study is that, once identified, problems are fairly intuitive to fix.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 23, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
NFL Draft Via Social Media Offers Insights Into Online Security
For the first time in National Football League history, draft day is going remote and online. Social media will play a big part in that transition, and teams have to work in that world securely. In recent years, the NFL turned the day its teams pick their stars of tomorrow into as big an event as any regular season game. Thousands of fans showed up in cities across the country just to see what college kids their favorite teams would tap for their rosters. Coronavirus made that mega-event impossible, so draft war rooms dispersed from Green Bay to L.A. will send in their picks via video conferencing and keep fans updated via Twitter and other platforms.
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7 Brands Experimenting With New Social Media Marketing Approaches During COVID-19
As the COVID-19 outbreak spread last month, I noticed there seemed to be two kinds of brands. Those who went quiet and were going through the crisis communications playbook when it came to content on social channels. And, those who decided to switch it up, adapt to the new circumstances and take some calculated risks. It’s been fascinating to watch. Now, some of these new approaches have been riskier than others. But, the point is these seven brands adapted and changed quickly to their new environments and they acted decisively and knowing full-well they were taking a bit of a gamble.
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Travel Attractions Turn To Social Media To Keep Public Entertained
Pleasure travel is on the outs as long as COVID-19 restrictions remain in place. That means there are millions of tourist who love getting out in the world left without any options to satisfy their “get up and go.” Also, it all leads to travel destinations relying on those tourists needing to hang on until the skies are friendly again. To give frustrated explorers a pressure valve and to stay on people’s minds, several destinations moved to social media to remain in the global mix. The following is just a sample of online options.
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Marketing
Zoom Releases New Update to Address Security Concerns
With Zoom usage soaring amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, the multi-participant video streaming tool has released a new, large-scale update that aims to address its various security and privacy concerns, which have come into much sharper focus in recent weeks. As explained by Zoom:
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Consumers Value Reviews Over Credentials
A study of over a million review site transactions and a survey of over 12,000 consumers may show that licensing credentials matter less than ratings and reviews. Thus, it may not be enough to be The Best when customer satisfaction expressed through ratings and reviews matter most to consumers. This may have implications for how all businesses can cultivate more sales.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 22, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Snapchat Posts Increases in Both Users and Revenue in Q1 2020 Report
With the global COVID-19 shutdowns set to significantly impact Q2 2020 reports, Q1 may be the best true indicator we have for some time as to where the major social platforms are placed, and how their growth plans are actually panning out in a normal operating environment. On that front, Snapchat, and parent company Snap Inc., would appear to be on the right track, maybe not for transcendent growth, but for stable, steady increases that look set to solidify its position within the social media space. First off, on active users – Snapchat posted an increase of 11 million DAU on its last report to 229 million – which represents a 20% jump in active users year-over-year.
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LinkedIn to Let Users Add Polls to Posts
LinkedIn has been spotted working on a feature that will allow users to easily add a poll to any post. The feature was uncovered by Jane Manchun Wong, an expert at finding unreleased features by reverse engineering apps.
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Social Media Platforms Step Up To Aid Older People Struggling With COVID-19
The distancing and quarantine procedures that are now familiar to the world due to COVID-19 can be easier for younger generations to accept. Whether it’s millennials or Generation Z, millions of those under 50 grew up with computers, cellphones and tablets tuned to social media and inviting personal and professional connections over long distances. Recent forced isolations can be easier if you’re already accustomed to reaching out to other humans virtually. Unfortunately, older individuals who grew up in a world in which social interaction meant going outside and mixing with human beings face to face can struggle with finding contacts and other resources in the age of mandatory social media. In some spots, special services stepped forward to serve the senior set.
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Snapchat Offers Glimpse of Social Media Advertising Prospects in the Pandemic
Snapchat reported its advertising revenue hit $462 million in the first quarter—a 44 percent year-over-year increase that impressed Wall Street—and the company gave a sense of how advertising is still growing, even if at a slower rate, through the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re really pleased that the business has continued to grow under these conditions,” said Derek Andersen, Snapchat’s chief financial officer, in an earnings call with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday.
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Marketing
Why SEOs Should Start Measuring Search Visibility Instead of Ranking
What is the O in SEO for? Optimization, of course! But what does an SEO professional optimize? For much of the history of SEO, it’s been for ranking positions for important keywords. It isn’t hard to understand why. When Google created it’s first search results page with its characteristic “10 blue links,” it automatically created a hierarchy of click probability. SEO pros quickly noticed that people tended to click on the #1 position the most, and the number of clicks went down sharply from there.
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Google Makes it Free to Sell Products in Search Results
It will soon be free for merchants to list products in the Google Shopping tab in search results. SEOs and site owners focusing primarily on organic search can, for the first time, add Google Shopping to their toolkit. Before the end of the month, this change will take effect in US search results with plans to expand globally by the end of the year.
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How Ecommerce Companies Can Do More with Less Shopping Ad Budget in 2020
Are you running Google Ads campaigns for your ecommerce store? Online retailers spend a full 76% of paid search budget on Shopping Ads. Yet, studies have shown that nearly half that spend is wasted. One simple change may be all it takes to eliminate ad spend wastage in your Google Shopping campaigns. Join this sponsored webinar as Jeff Deutsch, Marketing Director at Longtail UX, shares how optimizing your landing page and improving online shopper experience from Google Shopping Ads can boost your conversions.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 21, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
5 Digital Marketing Trends to Focus On During the COVID-19 Pandemic [Infographic]
The COVID-19 lockdowns around the world are causing major economic impacts, but one key benefit that we have in modern society, that hasn’t been available in pandemics of the past, is the internet, and increased connectivity, which has enabled many businesses to continue operation despite not being able to open their physical stores. And while the human impact of the crisis cannot be overstated, for those that are able, minimizing the economic impact through the available means could be the difference between staying afloat or going under, and suffering massive financial burden as a result.
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Anti-Lockdown Protests Provide New Challenges for Facebook’s Censorship Rules
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new set of challenges for Facebook’s rules around political speech, and what it deems acceptable, or not, on its platform. In many respects, the importance of accurate, timely, authoritative information has outweighed Facebook’s usual reluctance to enforce strict rules around what can and cannot be posted, but it’s also lead to some more delicate situations regarding potential censorship, and where Facebook will draw the line with respect to the discussions around the pandemic. The sale of face masks has been banned, myths around cures are not allowed. Facebook also recently started removing posts which suggest that 5G signal towers could exacerbate COVID-19’s spread.
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Pinterest Search Trends During COVID-19 [Infographic]
With Pinterest seeing increased usage amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, social media management tool Tailwind has compiled a new listing of rising search trends to help you tap into the latest shifts. The trends are likely much as you would expect – increases in topics related to self-care, home-schooling, board games, etc. But Tailwind’s listing provides specific insight into the key search queries within each segment, which could help you devise a more effective Pin strategy.
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Marketing
How to Deliver Helpfulness Through Your App
Now more than ever, people are turning to apps to stay healthy, productive, connected, and informed. In fact, worldwide, average weekly time spent in apps grew 20% year over year in Q1 2020, suggesting apps are making a difference in how people navigate through this unprecedented time.
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How the Internet of Things will Transform Consumerism, Enterprises, and Governments Over the Next Five Years
Being successful in the digital age doesn’t just require knowing the latest buzzwords; it means identifying the transformational trends – and where they’re heading – before they ever heat up. Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, which now receives not only daily tech news coverage with each new device launch, but also hefty investments from global organizations ushering in worldwide adoption. By 2023, consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices globally. And it’s not just the ones you hear about all the time, like smart speakers and connected cars.
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When Clients Pause PPC: 5 Survival Tips for Marketers
Let’s be honest: COVID-19 is all over the news. No one can get away from the latest headlines, projected models, or local news. But what about those who live and breathe marketing? As marketers, not only do we have to deal with the personal aspects of a crisis. We are also dealing with client crisis as our own. There seems to be no escape. The world is in the middle of a crisis. If you’re not careful, a crisis can easily consume your work and personal life. As an agency-side marketer, here are a few survival tactics that have helped me. These tactics are both personal and work-related.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 20, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Conducts Research to Measure Angst Caused by Misinterpretation in Comments
Amid all the angst and disagreement online, which has arguably lead to more societal division, and tribalism within communities, how much of that negativity is actually triggered by misinterpretation? People get angry at each other’s tweets, comments and posts all the time, but is that anger justified? How often do you post something, only to have others read it the wrong way, and respond more aggressively than you might have expected?
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Facebook Unveils New ‘Care’ Reactions to Help Express Responses to COVID-19
After it was spotted in testing late last month, Facebook has now officially unveiled its new ‘Care’ Reactions for both Facebook and Messenger, which will provide another quick response option for COVID-19 related updates.
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LinkedIn Is Working on Polls and a New Hashtag ‘Presentation Mode’
This could be a big one for LinkedIn marketers – according to a new discovery in the back-end code of the app, LinkedIn is developing its own poll option for posts, which would give users the capacity to query their LinkedIn followers on anything and everything.
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Marketing
Apple and Google to Team Up on Data Sharing to Help Contain COVID-19 – The Pros and Cons
The big tech news to end last week was that Apple and Google have agreed to a partnership which will enable health authorities to better track COVID-19 patients, and alert people who’ve been in contact with them, which could provide significant help in containing the virus.
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How to Measure Share of Voice in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing opened up a lot of new exciting ways to promote our brands and products. But it also increased the number of metrics we need to track. It can even become a bit overwhelming to try to keep an eye on your brand health, brand awareness, traffic, ROI from ads, conversions, etc. In addition to that, you need to understand how all these numbers look in the broader context, compared to your competitors. Otherwise, you’re trying to manage your business blindfolded. Luckily, there’s a metric that illustrates exactly that: your place on the market. The share of voice metric is a great starting point for mapping your industry and can be a source of comprehensive competitor insights.
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How to Leverage Google Discover to Connect with Users: 4 Key Takeaways
Google Discover (previously known as Google Feed) is a personalized content feed created by Google that proactively serves relevant content to users. While traditional search requires users to input a query, Google Discover anticipates user behavior to surface new and interesting content. Discover is available to mobile users on the Google App, Android devices, and Google.com on all mobile browsers (when logged into a Google Account). In addition to serving the latest news, Google Discover aims to make “exploring your interests easier than ever” and is one piece of a larger initiative to switch the focus of search – from instant information to understanding more intricate user journeys. With infinite access to information, Google is trying to filter and highlight content for the drifting Internet user.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 17, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Snapchat Provides Tips for Creating Effective AR Experiences as Lens Usage Increases
Like all social platforms, Snapchat has seen a significant increase in usage amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, but more specifically, Snap has seen a big jump in AR usage. According to Snapchat, over 75% of its users engage with its various AR tools every day, on average, and that’s increased even more in March, as people look for alternative ways to engage with the outside world – even virtually.
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TikTok Is Launching New Parental Controls to Better Protect Minors in the App
TikTok is releasing an important new function called ‘Family Pairing‘ which will give parents more options to better manage their kids’ time in the app, while also protecting them from unwanted exposure to both offensive content and potential predators.
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YouTube’s Struggle: Soaring Views, Declining Revenue
The latter half of March held a bullish outlook for YouTube: users would be home more, increasing screen time. This meant more demand, which in turn, would mean more content and more ad spots. There was some trepidation around what ad spend would look like in the Coronavirus reality, but there was optimism surrounding the ability for YouTube creators to gain audiences and capitalize on ad revenue.
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How to Use LinkedIn Conversation Ads for Better Conversions
Wondering how to improve your marketing results on LinkedIn? Have you heard of LinkedIn Conversation Ads? In this article, you’ll discover how to use LinkedIn Conversation Ads to automate Messaging conversations that pre-qualify your leads and prospects for specific offers.
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Marketing
Google is Launching a New Video Series to Replace its In-Person Conferences
Google is bringing several of its top advocates together for the first time in a new series of videos. No, it’s not called “Google: Endgame” –this crossover event is called Webmaster Conference Lighting Talks.
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How to Succeed in Google Discover
Google Discover (previously known as Google Feed) is a personalized content feed created by Google that proactively serves relevant content to users. While traditional search requires users to input a query, Google Discover anticipates user behavior to surface new and interesting content. Discover is available to mobile users on the Google App, Android devices, and Google.com on all mobile browsers (when logged into a Google Account). In addition to serving the latest news, Google Discover aims to make “exploring your interests easier than ever” and is one piece of a larger initiative to switch the focus of search – from instant information to understanding more intricate user journeys. With infinite access to information, Google is trying to filter and highlight content for the drifting Internet user.
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Google Ads Data Hub testing audience lists for display campaigns, adding new features
Google’s Ads Data Hub, the analytics and measurement platform for Google campaign data, announced upcoming enhancements Thursday. It also confirmed it is beta testing audience activation for display campaigns. The company said it has been updating the infrastructure that underpins Ads Data Hub (ADH) to be able to scale it to more customers and simplify querying.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 16, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Publishes New Research on What Consumers Want to See from Brands During COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented situation for everyone, and for brands and marketers, it’s left many unsure as to what they should be saying, whether they should be advertising at all amid the crisis, and what consumers expect. Of course, many businesses are simply unable to advertise or market – event-focused brands, for example, are completely adrift. But while millions of businesses have been limited by the global shutdowns, millions of others are still in operation, and are still looking for ways to stay afloat and maximize their existing opportunities, and lessen the long-term financial impact. So how should brands be marketing in the current environment?
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Facebook Is Testing Longer-Lasting Stories, With an Option to Keep Stories Active for 3 Days
With the Stories format slowly gaining traction on Facebook, The Social Network looks to be experimenting with a new option that could increase Stories views – and potentially make them a more interesting proposition for the older Facebook audience. According to a new discovery by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook is testing a new option that would enable users to keep their Facebook Stories active for up to three days, as opposed to the current 24-hour expiry.
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Instagram Has New Call-to-Action Stickers for Gift Cards and Delivery
Instagram is rolling out a new tool businesses can use to promote food delivery and gift card purchases in their stories.
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Marketing
Strategies for Amazon’s New Product Targeting on Seller Central
Earlier this month, Amazon Ads announced that Product targeting would be available on Sponsored Display for U.S. sellers. Now available via Seller Central, the expanded capability means reaching shoppers who are browsing similar and/or complementary product types and categories. Previously, Seller Central targeting was limited to just audience choice. This change means the abilities to target specific product IDs and categories are now available.
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What top SEOs are telling their clients now [Video]
The COVID-19 crisis has been crippling for so many businesses, and agency SEOs are having to advise their clients when so much is uncertain. But SEO is a long-term game, so it is important to balance short-term pullbacks with making changes that can hurt down the road. In this clip from Live with Search Engine Land, Path Interactive’s Lily Ray, Merkle’s Alexis Sanders and Pedro Dias of APIs3 share the advice they are giving their clients in this trying time.
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Content and coronavirus: How you can differentiate from the masses
All coronavirus all the time: that’s what everyone’s content looks like right now. It makes sense, because most digital marketers feel compelled to respond to the crisis. However, the proliferation of “conronacontent” also creates a dilemma and a practical problem. There are a ton of me-too listicles and volumes of “how COVID-19 is impacting e-commerce” data circulating. This creates a kind of content din and raises the fundamental question: what should you be creating and how do you differentiate your content when everyone is basically doing the exact same thing? We know content is foundational for SEO success, but rising above the rest is easier said than done, particularly now.
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Daily Minute Master Series – April 15, 2020
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Publishes New Guide on How Advertisers Should Adjust Their Ad Approaches During COVID-19
The COVID-19 shutdowns across the world have had a huge impact on business, aside from society more broadly. Millions of people have had to adjust to working from home, some business are totally unable to operate, while many other organizations which are reliant on advertising are still measuring the impacts, which will evolve over time as more events are canceled, more celebrations are wiped out, and the situation continues to divert things from the norm.
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With Social Media Usage Up, and Advertisers Pausing Spend, Now May be a Good Time to Maximize Reach
We’re living in an unprecedented situation, and no one knows how it’s all going to play out, how long it’s going to take to resolve, and what the full impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be. The human impacts are almost too terrible to contemplate, and the economic impacts will be huge. But in amongst this, many businesses are still operating, and are still looking to maintain their revenue, in some capacity, in order to minimize the impacts of the largest global shutdown in history.
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YouTube Makes its ‘Video Builder’ Custom Video Creation Tool Available to More Businesses
As you’ve no doubt heard and read before in digital marketing circles, video content is a big deal, and you should, wherever possible, be looking to create video to compliment your digital marketing campaigns. Video is the best performing content type on Facebook, Tweets with video see 10x more engagement than those without, LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post – the list goes on. But while there’s little doubt that video content performs better, actually creating good quality video content isn’t easy – and especially so right now, amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, where organizing a full video shoot is simply not an option you can consider.
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YouTube Viewership is Up, But YouTubers Are Earning Less Money
YouTube traffic is on the rise amidst the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s not translating into greater earnings for video creators. The New York Times reported last week that YouTube traffic is up 15%. However, YouTube channels are reportedly earning less money amidst a surge in viewership. The same reason why viewership is up is also the reason why YouTubers are bringing in less money despite increased views.
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Marketing
Google Reveals How Search Behavior Has Changed During COVID-19 Pandemic
Google has published data on recent search trends, revealing the top 5 ways search behavior is changing during the pandemic. This data has been compiled in an effort to assist marketers with being more helpful to customers during this time. No organization is exempt from the shift in search behavior caused by the pandemic, and consumer behavior is changing daily as well. Google summarized its finding by listing these as the 5 shifts in consumer search behavior.
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How Much Is PPC Fraud Really Costing Your Business?
Is it true that PPC fraud (click fraud) really costs the average business 20% of their marketing budget? You already have enough on your plate in these extreme times. You shouldn’t have to worry about how much of your ad spend is being defrauded. And although the 20% mentioned above is a fair approximation, understanding what are the common practices and how ad fraud works will enable all of us to minimize our exposure to it, so that maybe the era of COVID-19 won’t be as devastating. The practice of PPC fraud is nothing new. In fact, PPC fraud has been around since the early years of PPC advertising. However, the techniques and the technology have been growing increasingly sophisticated over the years, with the volume of PPC ad fraud holding fairly steady.
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16-straight days of rankings volatility: SEOs dig into the COVID-19 effects on search
“We don’t know right now if the web is changing, if Google is changing something, if people’s behavior is changing; but, we also know that people are just doing things so differently that it’s nearly impossible to set [these things] apart,” said Peter Meyers, marketing scientist at Moz, commenting on the unprecedented search results volatility he and others have observed since COVID-19 broke out in the US. The global pandemic has caused nearly everyone to reevaluate their priorities, prompting businesses and search engines to adapt as well. During our search disruption episode of Live with Search Engine Land Tuesday, hosted by Search Engine Land News Editor Barry Schwartz, Meyers and search consultant Marie Haynes, Olga Andrienko of SEMRush and Mordy Oberstein of Rank Ranger discussed the magnitude of the fluctuations, as well as the factors that may potentially be responsible for them.
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