Social Media
Facebook Tests Another Layout to Promote the Various Facebook Stories Options
Facebook seems very convinced that more people would use Facebook Stories more often if they understood the various creative options available, and could more easily find them in their posting process. Last month, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong revealed that Facebook was working on a new iteration of the Stories composer screen, which placed more Stories options up front and within tappable reach. If Facebook is indeed concerned that people aren’t using such because they’re not sure they exist, or how they can add them, this would solve that. By better highlighting the creative options available, Facebook may well get more people using them, and boost engagement with Facebook Stories – which, Facebook says, is well on track to becoming the primary platform sharing option, and to overtake the News Feed by the end of the year.
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YouTube Takes Tougher Stand on ‘Hateful and Supremacist Content’
YouTube has announced that it will now take a stronger, more definitive stance against ‘hateful and supremacist’ content on its platform, by banning all videos which promote discrimination or exclusion against any specific group. That is a major ruling, which will impact thousands of YouTube channels. It’ll also see various channels caught in the crossfire, unleashing a flood of challenges and appeals, which could take some time for YouTube’s team to work through. The announcement addresses various concerns which have been raised with YouTube in recent times. Back in January, YouTube announced changes to its recommendation algorithm after reports found that its system was promoting conspiracy theories and fake news content, amplifying such misinformation. These are major areas of concern, and a significant part of the problem in each case is YouTube’s algorithm, which shows users more of what they like. YouTube could look to lessen the impacts of its algorithm, or even remove its algorithm recommendations entirely, leaving it up to users to decide what they watch, but that would also likely reduce the time users spend on platform. So if that’s not an option, what’s the next approach?
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Snapchat Is Releasing Special Landmarkers From LGBTQ Lens Creators for Pride Month
Snapchat is bringing a taste of Pride into its Landmarkers Lenses. The messaging application introduced Landmarkers in April as a way for Snapchatters to bring global landmarks to life, debuting the feature with Buckingham Palace in London. In order to mark Pride Month in June, several official Lens Creators who identify as LGBTQ designed Pride-themed Landmarkers to transform the Capitol Building, the Flatiron Building and the Chinese Theater into icons of Pride. Starting Thursday, Snapchatters who visit one of those three sites can open the app’s rear-facing camera, tap on the background to access Lenses, swipe over to the Landmarker Lens and watch the landmark transform in real-time. Also, throughout the month of June, Snapchat’s Discover page will feature Our Stories that celebrate Pride and dig deeper into LGBTQ identity and culture.
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Marketing
Amazon Replicates Pinterest Lens with ‘StyleSnap’ Feature
This week, at Amazon’s re:MARS 2019 conference, the company has announced a new in-app tool called ‘StyleSnap’, which will enable users to take a photo or upload a screenshot of any item of clothing and the system will find similar product matches, based on image recognition. Sounds, and looks, a lot like Pinterest’s Lens tool, right? Yeah, it’s pretty much the same thing. The fact is, everything is open for replication by your competition online, with the only real battles being fought, and won, on scale. The fact that Amazon has such an option, along with one-click shopping, on a platform most consumers already trust, could give them a leg up on Pinterest, which hasn’t yet established the same, seamless purchase flow and process. It’ll be some time before we see if Amazon’s new option takes any attention away from Pinterest, but it is another signal of potential concern for the Pin platform, which could limit its growth potential.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 17, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Announces Updated Ranking Factors for Post Comments
We know that more comments and engagement will equate to better organic reach for your posts within Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, as Facebook wants to encourage more of the same behavior, and keep users on platform for longer. So how does Facebook decide which order to show your comments in specifically? Well it depends. If Comment Ranking is on, Facebook says that its system uses the following signals to determine the order in which it displays your public post comments. 1. Integrity signals – This is pretty basic, but if a comment violates Facebook’s Community Standards, the system will remove it. 2. Insights from User Surveys – Facebook is always conducting user surveys, if the surveys indicate that users want to see a certain type of comment, or vice versa, that’s factored in. 3. Engagement Factors – Facebook wants people to engage more, so it makes sense for Facebook to highlight the comments that are already inspiring this type of response from other users. And there are, of course, other, user-controlled factors which will ultimately influence how post comments are displayed. Page admins can hide, and delete comments entirely, which can be helpful if the comments are spam links, off-topic and/or simply not contributing to the wider conversation.
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Pinterest’s Working on a New ‘Complete the Look’ Option to Help Users Find More Relevant Product Matches
Pinterest is now working on a new option called ‘Complete the Look’, which will take into account the products you’ve searched for and provide related recommendations, based on relative trends and other factors. The process essentially broadens its recommendations to visually similar or contextually related products, based on the aforementioned factors. Pinterest trained its model based on a dataset of images which included complete scenes of varying product matches. Pinterest then cropped out the specific products, which enabled the system to recommend similar matches based on what it had learned were relevant partners. The process will help connect more Pinterest users to relevant product matches and recommendations, which could help to further fuel its growing eCommerce ambitions. And with Pinterest leading the social media pack in terms of product discovery, the addition could prove significantly beneficial for users as they seek out just the right companion pieces in various contexts.
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Marketing
Google’s John Mueller Predicts Dynamic Rendering Won’t Be Needed in a Few Years
Google’s John Mueller predicts that dynamic rendering will only be a temporary workaround for helping web crawlers process JavaScript. Eventually, all web crawlers will be able to process JavaScript, Mueller believes. So in a few years’ time relying on dynamic rendering may not be necessary. Mueller made this prediction during a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout when a site owner asked if there’s any reason why they shouldn’t use dynamic rendering. Googlebot can already process every type of JavaScript page, and Mueller suspects all other crawlers will follow suit. What makes this prediction particularly interesting is that dynamic rendering was only introduced last year at Google I/O 2018. Now, a little over a year later, Mueller predicts this innovative solution for serving JavaScript to bots will only be needed for a few years.
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New Research Underlines the Ongoing Mobile Usage Shift, Highlights Audience-Specific Considerations
Based on feedback from over 1,500 US adults, Pew Research looked at the latest internet access and mobile usage habits, and found that the mobile shift is indeed in full force, but is specifically so in two key brackets: younger users, which you would expect, and lower income households. On the first point, Pew found that 37% of U.S. adults now mostly use their smartphone when accessing the internet, which is double the rate it was in 2013. The biggest increase over that period is in younger age groups. That, you would expect, will continue to increase and ripple through over time as smartphone and mobile connection technology improves, lessening the need for users to go online via any other means. In addition, 45% of non-broadband adopters, according to Pew’s data, say they don’t have high-speed internet at home because “their smartphone lets them do everything online that they need to do”. And again, with mobile and connective technology improving, you can expect to see this continue to rise. That finding is particularly interesting because smartphone adoption is generally higher among higher income regions, which, you would assume, would equate to such devices being more exclusive to people with more means. These new findings show that may not be the case. While technology adoption may be lower based on overall income status, the improvement of mobile offerings looks to actually be superseding the need for other alternatives. If you want to connect with lower income audiences, mobile may well be the best way to go in this bracket too, another key consideration in the larger consumption shift.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 14, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Acquires Indian eCommerce Marketplace Meesho to Increase Operations in Indian Market
The Social Network has this week announced that it has acquired Indian social commerce market Meesho in order to further expand its presence in the rising Indian market. The acquisition will enable Facebook to better connect with eCommerce opportunities in the region – which could become increasingly important as Facebook also seeks to roll out its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency – initially focused on funds transfers in the Indian market – in the coming months. If Facebook’s on-platform payment process works, the company could quickly build its own, on-platform marketplace, and become an essential utility for connecting Indian users with quick and easy payments in varying forms. If Facebook can make it a key element within the Indian marketplace, that will be a huge win, and will provide a huge boost for the currency and Facebook’s on-platform network moving forward.
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Marketing
Google launches new search menu with icons
After a few months of testing it now appears Google has started rolling out the new search bar with icons. Instead of just using text to show the various search categories or verticals for news, video, images, maps, shopping and so on – Google is showing icons that represent those categories as well. Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that this is now rolling out to searchers today. Throughout the day we have seen numerous reports from readers that they are seeing the new Google search bar. Now we are able to see this consistently on all browsers we are testing it on. Any change to the user interface of one of the most used web sites in the world will be noticed. Will it impact search marketers or SEOs? As we said before, this change will probably not impact us much but it does give a new fresh look to the Google search results page.
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Google tests showing weekly site visits in automated ad extension
Google has several types of automated extensions that can display in search ads — seller ratings, call extensions, dynamic sitelinks, etc. It’s currently testing a new version that highlights a site’s popularity. Spotted by Kristie TC Liu, digital marketing strategist at KoMarketing in Boston, the automated extension on a WeWork ad says, “10K+ visits this week” and is preceded by a people icon. “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Google is always running tests. If this one proves successful — presumably the success metric here is click-through rate — and rolls out, it could mean a boost for more popular sites.
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Google Maps displaying redirect notice alerts when users click on business website URLs
For approximately five days now, if a searcher tries to click your website URL within your Google Maps listing, they will receive a “redirect notice” from Google. The notice reads: “The previous page is sending you to [the URL you clicked on],” and then adds, “If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.” This is likely causing a drop in traffic from Google Maps and may be impacting local businesses in terms of foot traffic and website traffic. Is this a feature or a bug? Did Google intentionally make this change or was this change made by mistake? Since Google has not responded yet, we don’t know how long it will take for the issue to be resolved. If people are getting these notices when trying to click over to your website, it might surprise them, concern them, or possibly scare them not to click through to your website. This may result in less traffic to your web site, potentially less visits from customers to your physical location, and ultimately less revenue for your company.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 13, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
LinkedIn Officially Launches Photo Tagging, Adds Video Within Messaging
This week, LinkedIn has released a blog post outlining a few of those smaller updates, officially confirming the addition of photo-tagging, while also outlining its new video messaging functionality. LinkedIn’s photo-tagging option has actually been available to most users since April, but the platform has now officially launched the functionality to all users. In order to further tap into the rising video trend, LinkedIn has also added a new option to record video clips with its messaging process. Video is big on LinkedIn – according to LinkedIn’s own stats, its users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post. This option adds to that capacity, and provides another way to make your messaging stand out on the platform. LinkedIn is also moving the messaging and post buttons within the app to make them easier to access at all times. And lastly, LinkedIn notes that users can now find all the groups they’re part of, and the hashtags they follow, on the right side of their feed on desktop – “or by clicking on your profile picture at the top left on mobile”. This will enable people to better curate and manage the news updates they see on the platform.
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Marketing
Yoast SEO 11.4 adds FAQ structured data, UX improvements
Yoast SEO’s latest update enhances its FAQ blocks by automatically generating structured data to accompany questions and answers. The update also introduces some UX improvements and addresses issues with AMP pages when viewed in Reader mode. The corresponding FAQpage structured data will be generated in the background and added to Yoast’s structured data graph, which may help search engines identify your FAQ page and figure out how it fits into the overall scheme of your site. At this year’s I/O conference, Google announced support for FAQ markup, which may mean that searchers will be presented with FAQs as rich results more frequently. Being able to easily and efficiently equip our FAQ sections with structured data can yield better odds of earning prominent placement on SERPs.
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Google Search Console Now Shows 90 Days of Search & Discover Data
Google is making an adjustment to the performance report in Search Console, which will now display 90 full days of data by default. This change will affect data shown for clicks from search results and clicks from the Discover feed. The content shown in Discover is tailored to an individual’s search and browsing activity. As long as your content is indexed in search results it is eligible to appear in Discover. Discover only appears on mobile devices, so it primarily surfaces mobile-friendly web pages. It may help even more if the content is an AMP page.
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Bing now supports batch mode for submitting URLs to Bing
Bing announced it has added support to submit URLs to the search engine in batch mode. That means instead of making an API request for each URL you submit to Bing, you can batch multiple URLs into a single API request. Bing said it supports up to 500 URLs per batch submission. If you launch a brand new site and that site is large, it can be useful to batch the URL submissions for efficiency. This also comes into play when you restructure your web site or maybe even start using the Bing indexing API for the first time. As we said before, Bing has taken a turn when it comes to discovery. It wants webmasters and publishers to push it content versus crawling and indexing content in the traditional manner.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 12, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter is Now Testing its ‘Hide Replies’ Option Among Users in Canada
Back in March, Twitter confirmed that it was testing a new option which would enable users to hide selected replies from their tweets, offering a new way for people to control their on-platform experience. Canadian users can now try out the functionality, which some will see as a means to remove dissenting opinions from the stream, and others will see as a welcome update to maintain a level of civility on the platform. Being able to hide selected tweet replies will enable users to have more control over their Twitter experience. There are risks of misuse, which is why Twitter is testing it on a relatively small scale to begin with, but it could end up being a valuable, helpful option, removing trend-jackers and spammers, and facilitating a more engaging tweet stream.
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Facebook launches new market research app after pulling similar app in January
Facebook has rolled out a new Study from Facebook marketing research program that involves users downloading an app to collect data from their phone. The company said the the information it collects will go toward product development initiatives. Facebook is promoting the program by running ads asking people to participate. If someone clicks on an ad, they’ll will be asked to register — and if they qualify — will be asked to download the Study with Facebook app from the Google Play Store. Facebook is compensating users for participating in the market research program, but did not give details on how much money users would earn. (Facebook’s previous research program paid users $20 a month to have the app installed on their phone.) Facebook said it is not collecting user IDs, passwords or any content like photos, videos or messaging. Facebook’s mismanagement of user data has been a thorny issue for marketers. Advertisers have reaped the benefits of the company’s ad targeting capabilities, but marketers want safe platforms — and channels — where their messaging can be heard without the risk of people’s data being misused, or worse, stolen.
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Marketing
Google June 2019 core update finished rolling out on June 8
Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed that the June 2019 core update that began rolling out on June 3rd finished rolling out on June 8th. It takes time for these updates to roll out because Google has many servers and data centers around the world, and it takes time for them all to get this update. We saw some early data around this, while it was still rolling out. Heck, even large publications like the Daily Mail and now CCN, among others are publicly saying how badly this update hit them. Google has not given us data on how large of an impact these updates are, like it used to with some Panda and Penguin updates, but did say it announces these core updates because they are “noticeable.” When Google releases larger updates, knowing when the update began and ended is useful for tracking traffic increases and decreases in our analytics. The timestamps help us understand if a site got hit by a specific algorithm update, technical issue, or other issue that might be unrelated.
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Google Trends gets integrated into Data Studio via free third-party app
UK-based marketing firm StrategiQ has released a Google Trends connector for Data Studio. Initially developed for its own clients in July 2018, the now-free tool allows users to extract search trend information directly into their Data Studio reports. Google Trends data has long been a resource for gauging keyword traffic, content planning and assessing daily as well as long term search trends. This solution helps to consolidate that valuable information onto Data Studio, where you can create custom reports to share with clients and colleagues. Google has yet to release an official integration for Trends and Data Studio. Since this is a free, third-party offering, StrategiQ does not provide a service-level agreement or guarantee a minimum uptime.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 11, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram and Facebook Add New Features for #PrideMonth
Instagram has officially announced its latest Pride Month features, with some new creative and functional tools to help support the LGBTQ community. The new color additions were actually spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong late last month, and provide some interesting considerations for Stories color-coding beyond Pride. In addition to this, Instagram is also adding in more gender listing options for users. Instagram’s new Pride features will go live from this week – meanwhile, on Facebook, The Social Network is now highlighting Pride-themed backgrounds for your updates. And while most of these additions are simple aesthetics, the change to gender listing options on Instagram is significant, and will provide utility beyond Pride Month alone.
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Snapchat’s Latest Updates to Its Commerce Experience Hint at Things to Come
Snapchat’s continuing its heavy push into commerce by bringing native checkout to five influencers on the app. On June 6, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian West, Shay Mitchell, Spencer Pratt and Bhad Bhabie received a small update to their profiles: a shop button that lets users buy items from their respective brands. The native commerce feature is powered by Shopify and is the same technology that was previously used with SeatGeek to sell tickets to live events and in a small beta with Kylie Jenner last year. As of now, the influencers keep all revenue on sales. Merchants receive no customer data unless someone follows through with a purchase. “This is clearly a move to cater to the top-end influencers and get them focused on Shopify and Snapchat as top-of-the funnel channels, as opposed to just their Instagram page,” said Mike Rossi, CEO of Smile.io, a rewards program company. “Snapchat’s ability to monetize becomes much stronger if they become the source of the customer data.” Rossi said this new feature puts brands and influencers in a position to use Snapchat’s ad services more to retarget customers who didn’t end up purchasing anything. For Shopify, he said the ecommerce platform sees Snapchat as a yet another sales channel where Shopify wins because it’s simplified the checkout experience.
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Marketing
Salesforce to acquire data analytics platform Tableau
Salesforce on Monday announced that it has entered into a deal to acquire the popular analytics and data visualization platform Tableau for $15.7 billion. The acquisition is yet another move by the CRM that brings in new technology and tools that should bring better data — and understanding of that data — to users. Digital marketers often struggle with data for many reasons, but industry news like this point to a shift from which we will benefit. Extracting valuable insights and takeaways from data can be challenging, and people learn and absorb more information visually. While it’s a useful practice, it’s often a time-consuming task. Tableau’s capabilities should relieve the heavy-lift for digital marketers, and allow us to focus on the value of our insights instead of being “stuck” in data.
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Google brings the Assistant to Waze
Google Assistant has already come to Google Maps. Now it’s coming to Waze for Android in the U.S. in English. Google Assistant will now enable users to do a number of other things while driving, such as make calls, play music and initiate Waze commands hands free. The Google Assistant will likely come to the iPhone version of Waze at some point in the near future. Google needs to be careful to maintain Waze’s unique character as it does these reciprocal integrations. Waze has managed to successfully introduce ads for SMBs and enterprises into the app without alienating users. It has been much more creative and experimental than Google Maps on the ads front and done some innovative things, such as coordinating with out-of-home campaigns. Google will likely continue to use Waze as a kind of ads sandbox and testing ground before importing them into the flagship product, as the company seeks to drive more revenue from more Google products.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 10, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Snapchat’s Working on a New ‘Join Group Chat’ Sticker – Just Like Instagram
Reverse engineering specialist Jane Manchun Wong discovered a new, in-development tool on Snapchat which would enable users to add a ‘Group Chat Sticker’ to their Snaps, which viewers would be able to tap on to quickly join a private group discussion via Chat. Incidentally, Wong also discovered the exact same functionality in development at Instagram last month. It makes sense, of course – neither app wants to lose ground by failing to keep up with audience demand for features, and if one of these new additions catches on, and other app doesn’t have it, it could put it at a disadvantage. If it’s relatively easy to implement, and they’re able to do so, it’s logical for each platform to follow through. But it does make each platform feel more ‘same-y’, with the layouts and formats becoming increasingly similar across apps.
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Marketing
Google to buy unified data platform Looker for $2.6 billion to strengthen Cloud analytics
Google announced plans to acquire unified data and analytics platform Looker for $2.6 billion in an all-cash transaction. Once the deal is complete later this year, Looker will join Google Cloud. Looker is a unified data platform that integrates data into the daily workflow of users and enables organizations to extract value from the data. The combination of Google Cloud and Looker will enable customers to harness data in new ways to drive their digital transformation,” said Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud. As martech investments continue to grow and digital transformation catches on, the need for data and analytics is highlighted more than ever. The addition of Looker to the Google Cloud ecosystem could afford users the ability to strengthen their analytics, which in turn should lead to better decision-making and improve digital execution.
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Time spent with mobile now exceeds TV
Americans will spend more time on their smartphones (and tablets) than watching traditional TV, which is broadly defined to include video downloaded from the internet, according to a new forecast from eMarketer. While time with traditional TV is declining, audiences are still consuming a lot of video content across devices, OTT in particular. However, when it comes to video, TV still dominates. Mobile beats TV is a sensational headline, but that doesn’t really tell the full story, which is one of a fragmenting video audience and changing medium. The big screen in the living room, family room or bedroom is still the top video consumption device, but increasingly it’s just another digital screen. Indeed, “TV” is rapidly becoming another digital channel, with the same targeting and attribution capabilities as online video or display. So while mass-audience reach on TV may be declining, better targeting and personalization are increasingly being enabled by the changing video consumption landscape and the digitization of TV.
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Advertising
Campaign-level conversion actions now live for Google search, display campaigns
Google said Thursday that campaign-level conversion action settings are available for search and display campaigns. They’ll be supported for video campaigns later this year. Until now, conversion action settings applied to an entire account. Sure, you could segment by conversion type at the campaign level, but all counted conversions were totaled up in the “Conversions” column. You can now choose which conversion actions to include in the “Conversions” column at the campaign level. This will allow you to analyze performance and optimize campaigns based on the most relevant conversion action types. Google says, “This feature should be used when your campaigns are aiming to capture different conversion types.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 7, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook’s Cryptocurrency is Reportedly Set to Launch Later This Month
TechCrunch has reported that Facebook will release an overview of the specifics on June 18th, with the launch of a whitepaper that will explain how Facebook’s on-platform currency will work. The currency is now believed to be called ‘Project Libra’. “The digital token is designed to function as a borderless currency, without transaction fees, and will be aggressively marketed in developing nations where government-backed currencies are more volatile.” Facebook, reportedly, will target India first, with a specific focus on funds transfers via remittance. By making that process fee-free and simple, Facebook will look to build on its internal funds transfer process, with a view, eventually, to keeping that money on platform, and facilitating an increasing amount of purchases in-app. The project has the potential to be one of the most significant shifts in Facebook’s history, facilitating a whole new element within The Social Network that would enable purchases, exchanges and more.
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Instagram Adds On-Screen Lyrics to Music Stickers
Instagram is officially launching its new music stickers with lyrics option, which displays the song lyrics on screen, enabling users to sing along. The option may help Instagram fend off rising competition from TikTok, which has become popular among younger audiences largely due to its short, music-themed videos. Similar to Vine, the short video format of TikTok lends itself to music clips. Vine was able to fuel the careers of several musicians through viral trends, and TikTok looks to be filling that same gap. Instagram will be hoping to negate some of that with additional music options, but it’s hard to see them knocking TikTok off course entirely, given the app’s rising usage.
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Marketing
Google search update aims to show more diverse results from different domain names
Google announced on the Search Liaison Twitter account just now that it has updated its search results to show a more diverse set of search results. That means Google will aim to show no more than two results from the same domain for a particular query in the top results. Google said “A new change now launching in Google Search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results.” Google added, “This site diversity change means that you usually won’t see more than two listings from the same site in our top results.” Google said “Site diversity will generally treat subdomains as part of a root domain. IE: listings from subdomains and the root domain will all be considered from the same single site.” This only impacts the core results, not the additional search features such as top stories, video snippets, image carousels or other vertical search features listed among the other web results. This can impact those who aim to try to get their domains to dominate for specific queries. This is more often seen in the reputation management industry but can also related to other areas of search.
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Google Analytics is Blocked by Firefox, Mozilla Explains Why [UPDATED]
An updated version of the Firefox browser was released this week which blocks all trackers including Google Analytics. That means traffic data may be affected when visitors are using the latest version of Firefox. Mozilla claims it’s making this change in order to keep users’ data private. Google Analytics offers a wealth of non-personally identifiable data and businesses will be worse off by having reduced access to it.Traffic from users on other browsers will be tracked as usual, although this does create a slippery slope. According to a Firefox developer most of Google Analytics’ data will be unaffected, which is great news for SEOs and site owners.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 6, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Tests Another Layout to Promote the Various Facebook Stories Options
Facebook seems very convinced that more people would use Facebook Stories more often if they understood the various creative options available, and could more easily find them in their posting process. Last month, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong revealed that Facebook was working on a new iteration of the Stories composer screen, which placed more Stories options up front and within tappable reach. If Facebook is indeed concerned that people aren’t using such because they’re not sure they exist, or how they can add them, this would solve that. By better highlighting the creative options available, Facebook may well get more people using them, and boost engagement with Facebook Stories – which, Facebook says, is well on track to becoming the primary platform sharing option, and to overtake the News Feed by the end of the year.
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YouTube Takes Tougher Stand on ‘Hateful and Supremacist Content’
YouTube has announced that it will now take a stronger, more definitive stance against ‘hateful and supremacist’ content on its platform, by banning all videos which promote discrimination or exclusion against any specific group. That is a major ruling, which will impact thousands of YouTube channels. It’ll also see various channels caught in the crossfire, unleashing a flood of challenges and appeals, which could take some time for YouTube’s team to work through. The announcement addresses various concerns which have been raised with YouTube in recent times. Back in January, YouTube announced changes to its recommendation algorithm after reports found that its system was promoting conspiracy theories and fake news content, amplifying such misinformation. These are major areas of concern, and a significant part of the problem in each case is YouTube’s algorithm, which shows users more of what they like. YouTube could look to lessen the impacts of its algorithm, or even remove its algorithm recommendations entirely, leaving it up to users to decide what they watch, but that would also likely reduce the time users spend on platform. So if that’s not an option, what’s the next approach?
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Snapchat Is Releasing Special Landmarkers From LGBTQ Lens Creators for Pride Month
Snapchat is bringing a taste of Pride into its Landmarkers Lenses. The messaging application introduced Landmarkers in April as a way for Snapchatters to bring global landmarks to life, debuting the feature with Buckingham Palace in London. In order to mark Pride Month in June, several official Lens Creators who identify as LGBTQ designed Pride-themed Landmarkers to transform the Capitol Building, the Flatiron Building and the Chinese Theater into icons of Pride. Starting Thursday, Snapchatters who visit one of those three sites can open the app’s rear-facing camera, tap on the background to access Lenses, swipe over to the Landmarker Lens and watch the landmark transform in real-time. Also, throughout the month of June, Snapchat’s Discover page will feature Our Stories that celebrate Pride and dig deeper into LGBTQ identity and culture.
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Marketing
Amazon Replicates Pinterest Lens with ‘StyleSnap’ Feature
This week, at Amazon’s re:MARS 2019 conference, the company has announced a new in-app tool called ‘StyleSnap’, which will enable users to take a photo or upload a screenshot of any item of clothing and the system will find similar product matches, based on image recognition. Sounds, and looks, a lot like Pinterest’s Lens tool, right? Yeah, it’s pretty much the same thing. The fact is, everything is open for replication by your competition online, with the only real battles being fought, and won, on scale. The fact that Amazon has such an option, along with one-click shopping, on a platform most consumers already trust, could give them a leg up on Pinterest, which hasn’t yet established the same, seamless purchase flow and process. It’ll be some time before we see if Amazon’s new option takes any attention away from Pinterest, but it is another signal of potential concern for the Pin platform, which could limit its growth potential.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 5, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Will Now Enable Advertisers to Boost Branded Content Partnerships as Ads
Instagram has officially announced the launch of its new Branded Content Ads option, which will provide additional ways for businesses to maximize their on-platform influencer partnerships. Up till now, brands have been able to work with popular Instagram users on ad campaigns to promote products through branded content, but those posts would only reach the followers of said influencer. Branded content ads will enable advertisers to promote these Instagram posts just like they would any other ad, expanding the opportunities for reach and engagement. With the capacity to utilize influencer-created content in your paid promotions, you’ll have access to more insights on performance, which will extend the response beyond that influencer’s audience alone. Instagram says that Branded Content Ads for the main feed will be available to all advertisers “in the coming weeks, and for Stories over the coming months”.
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TikTok is Reportedly Testing New Ad Targeting Options to Lure Marketers
As reported by Digiday, TikTok is testing both interest-based targeting and pixel tracking, similar to the ad tools on other social platforms. Digiday says that TikTok is able to use video image recognition and user engagement as signals to help categorize audience interests, while it’s also working on more specific data options, via pixel-type tracking, which would further enhance its categorization capacity. The app has more than 500 million active users worldwide, with a rising number of those coming from the US. Brands are, unsurprisingly, keen to tap into those trends, and TikTok, with the backing of parent company ByteDance, is moving fast to cater to that demand. Whether the app is a relevant consideration for your business obviously comes down to your target audience – but given the popularity and resonance of the app, it’s worth considering, and it may be worth experimenting with TikTok’s ad options to see what results it’s able to provide.
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Facebook Video Creation Kit gets new editing, resizing options and ‘Save’ feature
Facebook introduced several new Video Creation Kit features Tuesday, including a tool that will automatically create multiple versions of a video with different aspect ratios. Video advertisers will also have access to new templates, more font options, seasonal stickers and a new feature to save works in progress. Facebook is making it easier for advertisers to optimize the size of their videos for various ad placements. The company says it takes only a “click of a button” to automatically turn a single video into multiple videos with various aspect ratios for different placements like the News Feed or Stories environments. “You’ll save time and create video ads that appear customized for each placement, without having to shoot additional content or edit manually,” writes Facebook on its Media Blog.
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Marketing
Apple Maps refresh: Better data, more detail and a new ‘street view’
Several of the updates in iOS 13, announced yesterday, are playing catch-up to Google. Among them, Apple is adding a Street-View-like feature to Apple Maps. Users will soon be able to pick a map location and launch a 360-degree photographic view of the immediate area. Apple is calling it “Look Around.” Powering Look Around is a rebuilt basemap “from the ground up.” Apple says this is the result of 4 million miles of new data, which will deliver “broader road coverage, better pedestrian data, more precise addresses and more detailed landcover.” There’s little concrete data Apple has exposed about Maps’ usage and engagement. Clearly, Apple Maps and navigation have many millions of users. But it’s also clear that the combination of Google Maps and Google-owned Waze dominate smartphone maps mindshare. At the margins, Apple Maps improvements may win back some number of users.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 4, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Adds New Account Switching Option on its Web Version, Reveals New Mac App
Twitter has released a new, simplified account switching option on its web version, and within Twitter Lite. The process will make it easier for users working on multiple accounts to more easily move between them. In a separate announcement, Apple, at its WWDC event, outlined plans for a new version of Twitter for Mac, after Twitter removed support for its previous Mac app last February. According to Twitter, the new Mac app will be “fully native, with all the native features of a Mac app”. That would include multiple window support, window resizing, drag and drop and dark mode. Both are helpful additions for users on different systems, which will further expand the utility of Twitter’s apps. And while they may not seem like major updates, if you know the pain of regularly signing in and out of different accounts, and/or using Twitter via Safari, these will be very welcome changes for your process.
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Marketing
PayPal is Rolling Out its E-commerce Solution to All Businesses
PayPal’s e-commerce platform, used by Instagram Shopping and Facebook Marketplace, is now available to businesses of all sizes. The ‘PayPal Commerce Platform’ is designed to give any business access to a customizable payment solution. Starting today, the PayPal Commerce Platform is available in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The platform will expand to more than 40 markets by the end of the year.
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Apple Is Adding More Privacy Features for Location Tracking, Login and Email Signups
Apple announced a number of new privacy features to give users an alternative to data-driven advertising companies like Facebook, Google and hundreds of ad-tech providers. The updates—which will be in iOS13 this fall—will give people another way to log in to apps and websites through an Apple ID rather than through a Facebook or Google account. The feature, aptly called “Sign In With Apple,” could prevent users’ data from being collected for advertising while also acting as an added layer of protection from data breaches or misuse by third parties. Apple also plans to add additional restrictions on how third parties can track a user’s location on iPhone and iPad devices. For example, a person can provide one-time access. Or, if they want to allow an app to have longer access, Apple says it will provide them with a report that details exactly when the app collected their data and how it was used. Apple is also closing the door on some other methods developers have used to get around existing location-tracking protections. While some apps have used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi canning, Apple plans to start “shutting the door on that abuse as well.”
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Advertising
Local Inventory ads rolling out of beta in Microsoft Advertising
Local Inventory ads (LIAs) will be coming out of beta in Microsoft Advertising accounts early this month. The ads have been in testing for about a year. Microsoft’s Local Inventory ads function just as they do with Google Ads. When a user searches for a product, nearby retailers will be eligible to show ads for relevant inventory in stock in their nearby locations. LIAs feature an “in-store” label. When a user clicks on the ad, they may be taken to the advertiser’s website or a Bing hosted storefront page that includes product and store information. Advertisers that are already running Local Inventory ads in Google Ads can now fairly easily extend those to their Microsoft Advertising efforts. Local searches account for a growing number of queries, particularly on mobile. LIAs can help retailers with physical locations use Microsoft Shopping campaigns to help drive traffic to their stores.
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