Social Media
Instagram’s Reportedly Working on a New Tool Which Replicates TikTok’s Key Features
This week, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong has found that Instagram is once again replicating a competitors’ features, this time with TikTok in the firing line. As explained by Wong, Instagram is working on a new, TikTok like tool called ‘Clips’: “Just like TikTok, “Clips” allows users to record segments of videos into a single video Story. Just like TikTok, users can overlay music on clips. Just like TikTok, users can adjust the speed and timer of each video clips.” So, just as it’s done with Snapchat’s Stories, AR masks, YouTube, Houseparty, Squad and a range of other apps and functions, Facebook, through Instagram, is looking to add in yet another similar function in order to fend off competition, and keep its 2.7 billion active users (across its “family of apps”) from straying to these shiny new offerings. As such, it’s no surprise to see Instagram looking to copy TikTok, or any new app and tool. It may seem a little cheap, a little tacky even to be so blatantly copying your competition. But it clearly works. Snapchat’s growth has stagnated since Instagram stole Stories, while Houseparty was sold to Epic. You may not like how Facebook goes about squeezing out smaller challengers. But it works.
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Facebook to sunset ability to register, login to apps using only a phone number or email
Facebook is ending its Account Kit function next year, a feature developers could integrate into their apps to allow users to register and log into an app using either their phone number or email address without having to enter a password. Access to the Account Kit ended for new apps on September 9. For developers who already have the Account Kit integrated into their existing apps, the function will cease to exist on March 9, 2020. Any app developers using the Account Kit will have until June 9, 2020 to retrieve user data collected via the Account Kit function. By removing this feature, Facebook is taking more responsibility for how user information is being managed and boosting its user privacy and security measures. App marketers who relied on the easy access it offered users will now have to implement new methods for registrations and logins. They will also have to find new ways to collect the user information they had access to via the Account Kit function.
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More Details Emerge Around Facebook’s Coming News Section
As we move closer to an official release, more details are slowly emerging about Facebook’s new dedicated news section, which will showcase content from a selection of ‘trusted’ publishing partners, in an effort to boost engagement and discussion across The Social Network. This week, The Information got hold of an internal memo which provides some insight into how the new section will operate, including notes on how Facebook will choose what content to display, and the role that human editors will be playing in that chain. If The Social Network can establish a new, trusted panel of news providers, and then promote them to its billions of users, that could have a significant impact on the broader news cycle. Previous research has shown that some 43% of Americans get at least some of their news content from The Social Network. If Facebook can use its news push to promote more accurate sources, and force out some of the junk, that could go a long way to re-establishing trust in media organizations more broadly.
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Marketing
Adobe adds Customer Journey Analytics, designed to be accessible to all marketers
Adobe has released Customer Journey Analytics as part of its Adobe Analytics platform. The new analytics offering is powered by Adobe Experience Platform and is touted as an easy-to-use, interactive analytics interface that enables “anyone in an organization” to work with data, not just data scientists. According to Adobe Analytics Product Marketing Manager, brands can pull together metrics around orders, conversions, visits and more across different channels using a drag-and-drop model. With Customer Journey Analytics, teams can bring in data sets from point-of-sale systems and call centers, for example, to gain product insights that are better aligned with how consumers interact. Getting as comprehensive view of the customer journey across online and offline campaigns and channels as possible is a key challenge for marketers. With more avenues for customers to engage with companies than ever and data sets in far-flung systems, the amount of data to wrangle and make sense of is overwhelming. Adobe is attempting to make both the stitching together of disparate data and the analysis much more user-friendly for the average marketer.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 25, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Takes Next Steps into Mind Control with Acquisition CTRL-Labs
According to reports, Facebook has acquired a start-up called CTRL-Labs, a company’s which is working on software that would enable people to control a digital avatar, using only their thoughts. Facebook is reportedly paying between $500 million and $1 billion for CTRL-Labs, which it will bring into its experimental research teams to continue its work on the next phase of digital connection. Which could be connecting Facebook directly into your brain – which doesn’t sound like a particularly great idea. Of course, there are benefits to such a system. Facebook has noted that such innovation would help people with severe paralysis, similar to how its automated image recognition technology helps the visually impaired. Facebook has shown time and time again that it’s not particularly good at thinking through the full range of potential implications of its tools – whether that’s how people’s personal data can be misused, how political operatives can manipulate users through its ad system, how that ad system itself can be used for discriminatory targeting. Facebook is very ambitious, and rightfully so, but it’s repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn’t put enough weight or consideration into the potential negatives of its functions.
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Snapchat Expands Ad Length Limits, Announces New Ad Formats
Snapchat has this week announced a range of new ad and content updates designed to maximize audience attention, and provide advanced options for marketers. According to AdAge, Snapchat is now looking to allow ads of up to three minutes in length in selected formats, up from the 10-second limit which has been the core threshold on the platform. The extended Snap ads will be skippable, but will enable expanded brand messaging for those who are able to engage Snap’s audience for longer period. Up till now, advertisers have only been able to utilize longer video messaging by prompting Snap viewers to ‘swipe up’ to see more, so longer ads have, essentially, been possible, though not hosted direct on Snap’s platform, and not up front, intruding viewer behavior. The ads will be attached to Snap’s expanding selection of Snap Original programming, short, TV-show style video series’, hosted within the app, which have been slowly gaining ground, and boosting appeal with younger consumers. According to AdAge, Snap is also adding in a new, interactive option for its unskippable six-second video ads, with a “swipe up” option to better drive viewer response (you can see an example of this in the far right screenshot at the top of the post). That seems like a lesser addition here, but the potential to drive more direct response will help Snap advertisers get a better understanding of ad performance, and return on ad spend.
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Marketing
Google’s new snippet settings give webmasters control over their search listings display
Google has released new snippet settings to allow webmasters to control how Google search displays your listings, the company announced on the Google webmaster blog These settings work either through a set of robots meta tags and an HTML attribute. As far as we know, Bing and other search engines do not currently support any of these new snippet settings. Google just came out with support for these new settings. There is no real way to preview how these new snippet settings will work in live Google search. So you just need to implement it and wait for Google to show them. You can use the URL inspection tool to expedite crawling and once Google crawls it, you should be able to see the revised snippet in the live search results. One of the bigger requests SEOs, webmasters and site owners have wanted was more control over what Google shows for their listings in the Google search results. These new settings give you more flexibility in terms of what you do and do not want to show in your search result snippet on Google.
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Nextdoor in new deals with directories to monetize local search
Nextdoor is probably the most interesting company in local search that isn’t named Google, Facebook or Yelp. It’s not really on the mainstream local SEO to-do list at this point but it’s definitely a massive site with lots of traffic and engagement.The site announced deals home services directories Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor and Handy (owned by HomeAdvisor), which will present small business contractors in local search results as sponsored listings. Thumbtack says that in addition to appearing in sponsored search results, contractors will also be featured on Nextdoor business pages, which are very similar to Facebook local business pages and present relevant member conversations about the business. Nextdoor is likely moving toward a public offering and needs to grow revenues. Direct ad sales to SMBs are extremely challenging and would require a significant investment of time and personnel. This is an easier way forward in the near term for the company. Nextdoor has an opportunity to become a top-tier local search destination in a way that many others, including Thumbtack do not. It has developed a member culture of local contractor referrals and could drive considerable search volume and leads provided it makes the right moves and conditions users to utilize its search box. And in one version of the future it could also challenge Facebook as a local search destination and SMB ad platform.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest Announces New Business Profile Format, Shop the Look Collection Ads
This week, Pinterest has added some new considerations into the mix, with the addition of Shop the Look collection ads, along with an updated profile format which enables users to include video as their cover image. First off, on Shop the Look collections – Pinterest is expanding its shoppable post format into paid ads, enabling businesses to showcase multiple, buyable items within each Pin. Shop the Look collections will essentially expand into product catalogs, with the capacity to display a range of products. Advertisers will be able to tag up to 25 items in a Pin image, while a preview showcase of four items will be shown along the bottom of the Pin. The addition of these expanded Shop the Look ad options will provide more ways for brands to drive direct purchases from Pinterest, which could help maximize shopping potential among browsing consumers. Pinterest says that the new Shop the Look ads will be rolling out in the U.S. “over the coming months”. The addition of these expanded Shop the Look ad options will provide more ways for brands to drive direct purchases from Pinterest, which could help maximize shopping potential among browsing consumers. Pinterest says that the new Shop the Look ads will be rolling out in the U.S. “over the coming months”.
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Twitter Launches Lists as Alternate, Swipeable Timelines on iOS
After first announcing its experiment with adding lists as alternate, swipeable tweet feeds back in June, Twitter is now rolling the option out to all users on iOS. Users will now be able to pin up to five selected lists from their ‘Lists’ settings and have them appear as swipeable feeds from the home timeline. This will give users more ways to access specific discussions on the platform, which may make it a more engaging, interactive experience. Twitter lists have long been considered an underrated feature – something Twitter itself has even acknowledged in the past – with many ‘power’ users exclusively utilizing lists to curate their on-platform experience. Given this, it makes a lot of sense for Twitter to provide more options on this front, while the capacity to be able to separate tweet discussions by topic will also make it easier to maintain context within each discussion, and may improve engagement as a result. Overall, this seems like a good update for Twitter, and it’ll be interesting to see how if and how users take up the swipeable streams option.
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Marketing
Google September 2019 core update to roll-out later today
Google announced this morning on Twitter that it is releasing the September 2019 core update later today. Core updates impact how Google ranks web sites and how Google determines what is the most relevant web page for a specific query. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google does these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your web site or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update.
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Advertising
Google Adds New Video Campaign Options, Including Home Screen Ads on YouTube
Google is launching some new options to help marketers better manage their video ad campaigns, and reach consumers where they’re most active. First off, Google’s adding new TrueView ads in the YouTube Home feed, “a tremendous opportunity for any advertiser looking to drive more, high-value conversions”. In addition to these new YouTube ad formats, Google is also adding ‘Video Reach Campaigns’, which will enable brands to upload a range of video assets and have Google’s systems determine their placement. It’s essentially automated placement for video ads – while traditionally, marketers have maintained control over each element, by utilizing Google’s machine learning processes, it may be possible to optimize your video ad delivery for better results. As we head into the holiday period, you can expect almost every digital ad platform to be offering new tools and processes, and these video ad tools definitely provide a lot of potential, particularly the new opportunities to gain exposure in YouTube’s main feed.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 23, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook is Removing its Group Stories Option as of September 26th
After recently announcing a new multi-contributor Stories option for public figures, Facebook has followed that up with the removal of its similar ‘Group Stories’ functionality, which enables Facebook group members to contribute to a single, collaborative Story within that group. Facebook launched the first iteration of group Stories to selected users in November 2017, before expanding the functionality to all groups last December. But while group Stories added a new consideration for group engagement, it also added extra moderation workload for group admins. Facebook says that archived group Stories will remain viewable, but users will not be able to re-share them. Facebook also notes that any pending Stories admins have queued will also be deleted next week.
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YouTube reworks verification requirements, displays verified checkmark more consistently across platform
YouTube has updated eligibility verification requirements for creator and branded channels and has rolled out a new “look” for the program, displaying verified checkmark icons more consistently across YouTube channel pages, in search, and in comments. The goal of the new program is to eliminate confusion around what a verification checkmark represents: “Through our research, we found that viewers often associated the checkmark with an endorsement of content, not identity.” YouTube’s new eligibility rules impact marketers managing branded channels and those tasked with evaluating influencers on the platform. For marketers in charge of their company’s YouTube presence, YouTube says channels with large audiences owned by a brand or person widely recognized outside of YouTube and have a strong presence — or have a name that can be confused with another channel on YouTube — are typically verified. The new verification program could help marketers charged with identifying and building relationships with influencers. A verification checkmark is meant to be seen as an indicator of authenticity rather than simply a high subscriber count. YouTube said the new verification program applies to all channels and that channel owners will not have to apply: “We will automatically apply the new verified treatment.”
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Pinterest Enhances Group Boards With New Collaboration Tools
Pinterest is enhancing users’ ability to collaborate on group boards with the roll out of three new features. The new collaboration tools include more reactions for feedback, the ability to sort pins, and a central hub for communicating with group members. New reactions allow users to provide quick feedback on pins which can be seen by other group members. Pinterest is creating a redesigned space for group members to communicate with each other. This will be rolling out in the coming weeks. These updates will be rolling out to all Pinterest users worldwide on all platforms. The new reactions and sorting feature are available now by updating the Pinterest app.
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Marketing
TripAdvisor says it blocked or removed nearly 1.5 million fake reviews in 2018
The powerful influence of reviews on purchase behavior has spawned a cottage industry of fake-reviews, a problem that is growing on major sites such as Amazon, Google and Yelp, among other places. TripAdvisor is one of those other places, where reviews form the core of the company’s content and the principle reason consumers visit. In its inaugural TripAdvisor Transparency Report the company says that 2.1% of all reviews submitted to the site in 2018 were fake. Given the volume of review submissions TripAdvisor receives – more than 66 million in 2018 – that translates into roughly 1.4 million fake reviews. TripAdvisor says that 73% of those fake reviews were blocked before being posted, while the remainder of fake reviews were later removed. TripAdvisor defines “fake review” as one “written by someone who is trying to unfairly manipulate a business’ average rating or traveler ranking, such as a staff member or a business’ competitor. The company uses a mix of machine detection, human moderation and community flagging to catch fraudulent reviews. Consumer trust is eroding online. It’s incumbent upon major consumer destinations sites to police their reviews aggressively and prevent unscrupulous merchants from deceiving consumers. Yelp has been widely criticized for its “review filter” but credit the company for its long-standing efforts to protect the integrity of its content.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 20, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook is Expanding its Playable and AR Ad options Ahead of the Holiday Season
Facebook has this week announced the expansion of its interactive ad options, including playable games, and AR tools which let you ‘try on’ make-up. First off, Facebook’s bringing video poll ads to your News Feed, an engaging, interactive way to grab user attention. Video poll ads already grab attention through movement, but users can then also interact with them, and when they do, they’re shown additional information about the brand and/or product. Facebook’s also expanding its AR ad tools, which its been testing with selected make-up brands in the US. Facebook’s now planning to open these ad tools up to more advertisers via its beta program this fall. And finally, Facebook’s also expanding its playable ad format, which enables Facebook users to play a game in order to drive downloads, conversations and other brand objectives. Interactive tools like these can be a great way to maximize campaign performance, and are definitely worth considering, either for current or future campaigns.
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Twitter Provides Option to Hide Replies to Users in the US and Japan
After launching the initial test of its option to hide tweet replies to Canadian users back in June, Twitter has now announced that the experiment is being broadened to users in Japan and the US, a significant expansion of its test pool. The process enables you to hide any reply from your tweet responses, giving you more control over how your conversations are presented. And as per the last frame, users are still able to see any hidden replies, they’ll just have to tap into the options to do so. It’s an interesting experiment, and as noted in the results thus far, it does appear to be having the desired effect, prompting users to reconsider how they respond and engage on the platform. If it works to make Twitter a more civil, welcoming place, or even if it just helps some users feel more comfortable about their interactions, it’s likely worth it, while the capacity to be able to view what’s been hidden should minimize potential misuse.
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Advertising
Store visits now available for Google Ads smart bidding optimization
Advertisers who have store visits measurement in their Google Ads accounts can now incorporate store visits data in their smart bidding strategies. The update allows stores with physical locations to optimize with and for foot traffic in addition to online conversions with smart bidding. Smart bidding strategies use machine learning aimed at predicting when a conversion action is most likely and adjust bids at the time of auction accordingly. Store visits in smart bidding is now available to all advertisers in Search and Shopping campaigns.
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Search Ads 360 rolls out auction-time bidding for Google Search campaigns
Google Search Ads 360, the enterprise-level search management piece of Google Marketing Platform that enables advertisers and agencies to manage campaigns across multiple search engines, has added auction-bidding for bids on Google Search. For Search Ads 360 users, this brings the Smart Bidding capabilities offered in Google Ads to your Google Search campaigns. Smart bidding uses machine learning to make real-time bids based on a number of signals such as device, location and time of day. Auction-time bidding analyzes your account history, conversions registered by Floodlight, Google Marketing Platform’s conversion tracking system, and other signals to predict when a conversion is likely to occur from an ad click. In contrast, a Search Ads 360 bid strategy analyzes campaign performance approximately every 6 hours to set keyword bids and set or recommend bid adjustments.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 19, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Implements New Restrictions on Diet and Cosmetic Surgery Ads
After consulting with various experts on mental health and wellbeing, Instagram has announced that it will implement new restrictions on posts related to diet products and cosmetic surgery. Various groups have raised concerns about the impact of such advertising, particularly on younger, more impressionable users. This comes in the wake of Instagram also testing the removal of total Like counts on posts in some regions, and removing graphic images of self-harm, a decision it announced back in February. In combination, these efforts seek to reduce the harmful impacts of social media, and the pressure it can place on users. In addition to the new restriction on diet and cosmetic surgery ads, Instagram has also said that any content which makes a “miraculous” claim about a diet or weight-loss product will now also be removed from the platform.
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YouTube Adds New ‘Masthead’ Ad Option for TV-Connected Viewers
This week, YouTube has announced that it’s adding TV screen-specific targeting to its prominent Masthead ads, which will show up first thing when a user opens their YouTube TV app. The Masthead ads will take up prime TV real estate – likely the closest thing to traditional TV ads on offer from a digital platform as yet. And while users can, of course, scroll past these ads, you’ll notice that there’s no skip option. That could hold more appeal for certain advertisers looking to maximize their coverage. The option, currently in beta testing, will enable marketers to purchase Masthead ads on TV screens on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, with the usual custom audience targeting options available for YouTube ads. In some ways, it feels a bit ‘back to the future’, that more and more people are now connecting their YouTube and digital platform video content into their home TV sets, which is shifting us back to the traditional advertising experience.
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Facebook Announces New Portal Devices, Including TV-Connected Camera/Streaming Service
Almost a year after its initial launch, Facebook is rolling out three new versions of its Portal video calling device, including one which connects to your home TV set, which could be a major step for the device itself, and for Facebook’s broader video ambitions. The TV connected device clips onto the top of your home TV set, enabling you to make the largest screen in your home a digitally connected platform, both for video calling and video streaming. It won’t give you full Facebook functionality on your TV screen as yet, but it will give you video calling, the capacity to watch video content with friends, while connected via Facebook, and the ability to stream content from selected partners – including, of course, Facebook Watch. In addition, Facebook’s also bringing WhatsApp video calling to Portal, along with Messenger calls, which, Facebook also notes, will be end-to-end encrypted. While the device itself seems solid, seems functional, and there’s a lot like about the latest Portal updates, what seems to be holding the device back from becoming a more significant consideration is privacy, and Facebook’s various data security and misuse issues. Facebook has sought to alleviate these concerns by reiterating the privacy features of Portal. Each version of the device comes with a cover that slides over the camera, and there are indicator lights which show when it’s recording. Facebook also notes that its Smart Camera and Smart Sound tools utilize AI technology “that runs locally on Portal, not on Facebook servers”.
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Advertising
Microsoft Advertising’s product, similar audiences now available to more advertisers
Microsoft Advertising is continuing to invest in audience targeting products. Two audience solutions are now in open beta, the company announced Wednesday. Product audiences is aimed at converting past site visitors, while similar audiences can help advertisers reach more new customers. Product audiences are retargeting lists for specific products in your shopping campaigns. Triggered via product IDs, users can be retargeted with products they’ve previously engaged with on your site. This is similar to Google Ads’ shopping retargeting lists. Microsoft says early testing has shown up to 40% lower acquisition costs and 100% higher conversion rates from these audiences. These two initiatives bring parity with Google Ads offerings. Microsoft is well aware of its position in the market and the need to reduce friction for advertisers to get campaigns up and running and the importance of having parity with Google when it makes sense.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 18, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest brings Shoppable Pins to visual searches for fashion, home products
Pinterest announced on Tuesday it has advanced its Lens capabilities, making it possible for the visual search tool to now identify more than 2.5 billion fashion and home products. With this latest advancement, the company is adding fashion and home related Shoppable Pins to visual search results. Users will also now be able to save photos from their Lens searches and turn them into a Pin that they can save to a board. Pinterest will then use the “Lens’ed” photos to power future recommendations for the user. Pinterest’s visual platform is a natural fit for home and fashion marketers, and the company’s push to wed its visual search technology with shoppable pins makes it even more so. By bringing shoppable pins to Lens search results and recommendations, the company is giving branded Pins more exposure and helping to shorten the customer journey by bridging the gap between product discovery and purchase.
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LinkedIn Adds New ‘Skill Assessments’ Option to Beef Up Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is adding a new way for users to display their professional competencies, with a new ‘Skill Assessments’ option that will test your knowledge, and provide you with a badge to demonstrate your proven understanding. The option will facilitate expanded capacity to show your competencies, beyond Recommendations and Endorsements. It’s a good option for LinkedIn, which further integrates its LinkedIn Learning platform into the main app. The actual results are kept private to users, and if you don’t pass, you’ll have complete control over the visibility of the results. LinkedIn will also recommend Learning courses you can take to improve your skills, and pass the test at a later stage. And given LinkedIn’s unmatched insights into professional skills and competencies, no one is better placed to keep you updated on the latest in-demand skills, and help you display your capacity in the same.
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Marketing
Snapchat Launches Political Ads Library for Increased Transparency
As reported by CNN, Snapchat has now added a new Political Ads Library, which anyone can view as a downloadable spreadsheet via Snap’s website. And while it’s not as advanced as similar options available on other platforms, the listing includes all the political and issue-based ads on Snapchat, facilitating further research by third-parties. The listings can actually serve two purposes – first and foremost, they’re about transparency, and ensuring political groups are not using digital platforms to manipulate voters. But from a marketing perspective, it’s interesting to also see how, exactly, political groups are using Snap as they seek to connect with younger voters. As noted, it’s not as advanced as similar options on Facebook and Twitter, but given Snapchat’s unique allure with younger audience groups, there’s a lot that can be gleaned from the resource.
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Facebook Outlines Evolving Efforts to Detect and Remove Hate Speech and Extremist Content
This week, The Social Network has provided an update on its ongoing efforts to detect and remove hate speech from its platforms – and in particular, how its focus for such content has expanded beyond known, foreign terrorist groups in order to incorporate more local threats. Facebook notes that its definition for such content is “based on their behavior, not their ideologies”, which has enabled Facebook to take a more general approach to what can be defined as terror-related material. Facebook is also looking to help people leave hate groups by providing links to specialized assistance, while it also has a team of more than 350 people, “with expertise ranging from law enforcement and national security, to counterterrorism intelligence and academic studies in radicalization”, who are working to develop its policies and enforcement actions. Now that we’ve seen the full impacts of such, and the direct links between online activity and real-life acts, it’s important that the platforms take action, and address such wherever they can.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 17, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook video marketers get new tools, metrics for Live, Watch Parties, Creator Studio
Facebook is releasing new features and metrics for its Live API, Watch Parties and within its Creator Studio, all of which can be used by marketers to advance their video efforts. Video creators on the platform are also getting a new trimming tool for Live video, allowing them to trim the beginning or end of a Live video. Facebook is also extending the maximum duration for Live broadcasts via the Live API from four hours to eight hours. Facebook is making it possible for video creators to publish and schedule video content on Instagram and Instagram’s long-form video app IGTV. Page admins will be able to schedule video content on the Instagram platforms up to six months in advance via the Creator Studio, and Facebook reports it is working on new drafting and editing features for videos published to the Instagram Feed and IGTV which will be available in the coming months. Facebook’s video tools and metrics help marketers fine tune their efforts, offering more ways to connect with users and more insights into the content that is delivering engagement. Being able to do small things — like rehearse a Live broadcast or schedule content six months out — not only expands a video marketers took kit, but gives brands more flexibility and control in terms of the video content they’re producing on the platform.
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YouTube’s Testing a New Option to Display Each Users’ Comment History in Channels
YouTube is working on a new profile card option which would display a full listing of any users’ comment history, within a specific channel, when that users’ name is tapped/clicked. As you can see here, the new listing would display the users’ full comment history on that channel – not their entire comment history across the platform overall. that might come as a relief to those who have a penchant for composing pithy, yet potentially offensive, YouTube comments. And as noted by TechCrunch, it can also help in assessing people who should become “approved users”, who’s comments get published automatically, without requiring approval. The feature is now in testing, along with a new test of a personalized message option for users who are likely to become subscribers, in order to see if that added personal touch helps increase subscriber counts.
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Marketing
Google Search Console adds Datasets to enhancement reports section
Google has added a new report to Google Search Console to let you see how your datasets are performing in Google Search. The new report can be found in the enhancements section under “Datasets” if, and only if, you use Datasets markup on your web pages. Google in 2018 launched Google Dataset Search, a search service to find data from sciences, government, some news organizations. Google also launched new schema that developers can use to markup your web page content, when applicable, with dataset schema. This schema makes it possible for searchers to better visualize data represented on a web page directly in Google’s search results. Having more information from Google about the health of our pages in search is a good thing. If you have implemented datasets schema, this new report should be able to help you find potential issues and debug them going forward.
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Google tests “in this video” search feature
Google often shows video results in its search results, in fact, Google has a feature to show suggested clips, a method to jump you to the portion of the video that answers your specific query. Now, it appears, Google is testing showing “in this video” – a timeline that shows you what sections of the video talks about sub-topics. The “in this video” section shows up under a video snippet in the Google search results. It will show you sub-sections of the video in a timeline format, letting you click to jump ahead to that specific portion of the video. Clearly, between the suggested clip and this feature, Google knows what content is within the video. Google is able to jump over irrelevant portions of your video and send people directly to the section the searcher wants to see and hear. Structuring your video content in a clear and understandable way so that humans and robots can easily breakdown the format of the video may become more important in your video SEO strategy.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 16, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Expands ‘Today In’ Local News Section to More Than 6,000 US Cities and Towns
Facebook has this week announced that localized versions of the offering, which is designed to promote increased civic engagement, will now be made available to over 6,000 cities and towns across the US. Today In’, which is available via in-feed prompts, or via your Facebook apps listing, highlights the biggest news stories of interest in your local region, as well as local Page posts which are generating discussion, upcoming events, weather, local groups, school updates, etc. The intention of ‘Today In’ is basically to keep you updated on happenings in your community, in order to prompt increased participation. This new expansion, Facebook says, will also bring more localized content to “news deserts” – places which have a limited supply of local news. Facebook sources this localized content by “supplementing the available local news with relevant articles from surrounding areas”. In addition to this, Facebook’s also expanding the Facebook Journalism Project Community Network grant project, which aims to fund local journalism, while it’s also testing its breaking news indicator with more local news publishers in the U.S.
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LinkedIn Adds New ‘Find an Expert’ Post Option to Connect with Relevant Freelancers
Back in July, LinkedIn rolled out its new services listings for profiles, which enable freelancers and SMBs to list the services that they provide on their LinkedIn profile, and be found for the same in search results. Now LinkedIn’s adding another element to this offering, with a new post option that enables users to fill in relevant fields in order to put out a call for help from experts. The new post type seeks to simplify the process of finding relevant freelancers and professionals, while also making your request for help stand out within LinkedIn feeds. Interested providers can click through for more specific info, helping (ideally) to filter your responses down to more relevant providers for each. Initially, these tools were only available to a limited subset of users, but LinkedIn says that the new posting option is now available to all users globally, both on iOS and Android, while services listings on profiles are in the process of being expanded to more regions.
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Facebook’s Testing a New ‘Chat’ Post Type to Connect Users to Private Messenger Chats
Facebook is testing out a new Facebook post type which would funnel viewers through to a private chat group on Messenger. The new post type – spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong – would essentially enable users to promote a private Messenger chat group, and link their connections through to it. Given the overall rise in messaging use across all social apps, it makes sense for Facebook to be looking at ways to better incorporate connection to more private discussion. Depending on how its rolled out (if it’s rolled out), it could also provide new ways for brands to spark discussion around their products and offerings with their most dedicated fans. You could ask people for their opinions, or pose a question related to your industry, and start a discussion on key trends. That would be dependent on it becoming a post option for Pages, which we don’t know about as yet.
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Marketing
Google now gives more preference to original reporting in search
Over the past few months, Google has been rolling out algorithmic updates to its rankings algorithms to give more preferences to stories that were the original source. Original reporting will not only rank better in Google Search but soon will also rank better in Google News, including Google Discover. In addition to original reporting ranking better, the stories will stay at the top of the news cluster for a longer period of time, Richard Gingras, the Vice President of Google News told us. Google is now talking about this change because of two reasons. The first is that the company has recently updated its search quality raters guidelines and added specific items around original reporting. The second is Google is now happy with how the new algorithms are working around original reporting being prioritized in search. If you are a publisher and you produce news content, it might not just be enough to do “value add” type of reporting. You may need to work harder to be the original news source of the topic to get real traction and traffic from Google. At the same time, this has rolled out over the past few months and if you saw any significant traffic changes from Google, this may be one of many reasons why.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 12, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram’s Reportedly Working on a New Tool Which Replicates TikTok’s Key Features
This week, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong has found that Instagram is once again replicating a competitors’ features, this time with TikTok in the firing line. As explained by Wong, Instagram is working on a new, TikTok like tool called ‘Clips’: “Just like TikTok, “Clips” allows users to record segments of videos into a single video Story. Just like TikTok, users can overlay music on clips. Just like TikTok, users can adjust the speed and timer of each video clips.” So, just as it’s done with Snapchat’s Stories, AR masks, YouTube, Houseparty, Squad and a range of other apps and functions, Facebook, through Instagram, is looking to add in yet another similar function in order to fend off competition, and keep its 2.7 billion active users (across its “family of apps”) from straying to these shiny new offerings. As such, it’s no surprise to see Instagram looking to copy TikTok, or any new app and tool. It may seem a little cheap, a little tacky even to be so blatantly copying your competition. But it clearly works. Snapchat’s growth has stagnated since Instagram stole Stories, while Houseparty was sold to Epic. You may not like how Facebook goes about squeezing out smaller challengers. But it works.
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Facebook to sunset ability to register, login to apps using only a phone number or email
Facebook is ending its Account Kit function next year, a feature developers could integrate into their apps to allow users to register and log into an app using either their phone number or email address without having to enter a password. Access to the Account Kit ended for new apps on September 9. For developers who already have the Account Kit integrated into their existing apps, the function will cease to exist on March 9, 2020. Any app developers using the Account Kit will have until June 9, 2020 to retrieve user data collected via the Account Kit function. By removing this feature, Facebook is taking more responsibility for how user information is being managed and boosting its user privacy and security measures. App marketers who relied on the easy access it offered users will now have to implement new methods for registrations and logins. They will also have to find new ways to collect the user information they had access to via the Account Kit function.
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More Details Emerge Around Facebook’s Coming News Section
As we move closer to an official release, more details are slowly emerging about Facebook’s new dedicated news section, which will showcase content from a selection of ‘trusted’ publishing partners, in an effort to boost engagement and discussion across The Social Network. This week, The Information got hold of an internal memo which provides some insight into how the new section will operate, including notes on how Facebook will choose what content to display, and the role that human editors will be playing in that chain. If The Social Network can establish a new, trusted panel of news providers, and then promote them to its billions of users, that could have a significant impact on the broader news cycle. Previous research has shown that some 43% of Americans get at least some of their news content from The Social Network. If Facebook can use its news push to promote more accurate sources, and force out some of the junk, that could go a long way to re-establishing trust in media organizations more broadly.
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Marketing
Adobe adds Customer Journey Analytics, designed to be accessible to all marketers
Adobe has released Customer Journey Analytics as part of its Adobe Analytics platform. The new analytics offering is powered by Adobe Experience Platform and is touted as an easy-to-use, interactive analytics interface that enables “anyone in an organization” to work with data, not just data scientists. According to Adobe Analytics Product Marketing Manager, brands can pull together metrics around orders, conversions, visits and more across different channels using a drag-and-drop model. With Customer Journey Analytics, teams can bring in data sets from point-of-sale systems and call centers, for example, to gain product insights that are better aligned with how consumers interact. Getting as comprehensive view of the customer journey across online and offline campaigns and channels as possible is a key challenge for marketers. With more avenues for customers to engage with companies than ever and data sets in far-flung systems, the amount of data to wrangle and make sense of is overwhelming. Adobe is attempting to make both the stitching together of disparate data and the analysis much more user-friendly for the average marketer.
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Daily Minute Master Series – September 11, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Adds New Tools for Public Figures, Including Multi-Contributor Stories and Product Tags
Facebook has this week announced a new set of updates for public figures – and they provide an interesting glimpse as to where we might see Facebook Stories, in particular, headed in the near future. First off, Facebook is adding a new option that will enable multiple public figures to contribute to the same Facebook Story – “giving fans a variety of perspectives around a specific topic or event”. The option is similar to Facebook’s Group Stories option which enables group members to contribute to a collaborative Story in the same way, though this is obviously more focused on events. Facebook’s also adding a new sticker for Facebook Stories which aims to make it easier for fans to engage with celebrities and brands via the option. Interestingly, Facebook notes that this option will be available to Pages, not just public figures, providing another consideration for brands looking to utilize Stories to increase engagement.
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Twitter Officially Launches Option to Drag to Re-Order Attached Tweet Images
After it was spotted in testing back in July, Twitter has now officially launched the capacity for users to rearrange their attached tweet images via a simple drag and drop process. Now, when you attach two or more images to your tweet, you’ll be able to drag and rearrange how they’ll look, saving you the minor headache of having to upload them in the order you’d prefer. I say ‘minor’, but it is annoying. And while it is a simple addition, sometimes it’s the simple ones that end up being the most useful, while the capacity to maintain more control over your tweet presentation is key for brands looking to maximize their performance.
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Marketing
Google Expands Outcome Based Buying and Automated Bidding to More Campaign Types
Google has announced that it’s bringing its outcome-based bidding option to more ad types, while also expanding automated ad bidding to all non-guaranteed deals. First off, on outcome-based bidding – up till now, Google has only enabled automated bidding on a CPM basis, meaning that campaigns where CPM is not your target outcome cannot utilize the option. In order to provide additional flexibility for more campaign types, Google is now adding outcome based buying to Display and Video 360 campaigns. The addition will provide more flexibility in your Google ad campaigns, and expand the capacity for brands to better reach their intended targets. Google is also making its automated bidding option available to all non-guaranteed deals. The capacity will enable more advertisers to utilize Google’s advanced machine learning to maximize their ad results, with automated tools now available for a broader set of Google ad types.
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Google to treat nofollow link attribute as a ‘hint’
Google has announced Tuesday that today the nofollow link attribute (i.e. rel=”nofollow“) will be seen as a “hint” rather than as a directive for ranking purposes. In addition, Google is adding two additional link attributes, in addition to the rel=”nofollow” to provide a bit more context about the content you’re linking to. Today Google will treat the nofollow attribute as a hint for ranking purposes. Meaning Google might count a link as credit, consider it as part of spam analysis or for other ranking purposes. On March 2, 2020, Google will use it also for crawling and indexing. That means will Google use it as a “hint” as to what should be indexed or crawled but it is better to use robots.txt or meta tags for that purpose anyway. Google told us there should be no significant impact to the search results as a result of the change. If Google starts counting nofollowed links on large and respected sites that simply implemented a nofollow link policy as a blanket rule and now Google counts those links, you might see those links start counting for sites; if and when Google decides to change how it respects the nofollow attribute. The nofollow link attribute has been a staple of the SEO industry for almost 15 years and now it is changing for the first time, in a big way.
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