Social Media
Instagram’s Test of Removing Like Counts is Being Expanded to More Regions
Instagram this week is expanding its test of removing like and video view counts to six more regions, including Ireland, Australia and Brazil. Instagram has said that it’s removing likes as part of a broader focus on user wellbeing. Individual users can still see their total like counts in the test, but they’re not publicly displayed, which, Mosseri says, reduces social comparison, and its associated negative impacts. It’ll also be interesting to note the overall effect on like counts – will the lack of a total number increase people’s propensity to like a post, or reduce it? If it leads to more likes, you can bet Instagram will be keen to keep the change, regardless of the other impacts. But if it is fully rolled out, it will lead to other challenges. At the moment, brands looking to work with influencers can use post like counts as a measure in their assessment – someone with a million followers, but four likes on each post, is probably not the ‘influencer’ they claim to be. With this change, you won’t be able to see that. You can still use comments as an engagement measure, and you can ask for engagement stats from the influencer his or herself, based on their analytics. But it adds another challenge, which is a subsidiary consideration for marketers, in particular, to keep in mind.
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Twitter Announces New ‘LiveCut’ Video Editing and Publishing Tool, Which Will Replace SnappyTV
Twitter has this week announced the end of its SnappyTV live video editing tool, and the addition of LiveCut, it’s replacement option, which is fully integrated into Twitter’s Media Studio. SnappyTV is a dedicated tool which live video producers can use to create highlight clips from their broadcasts, in order to share them via tweet and boost engagement. If you’ve seen any sports highlights embedded within a tweet, they likely came via SnappyTV. The new tools enable you to edit clips from live broadcasts, while there are also new scheduling options to help better plan your video content. It’s essentially the same functionality as SnappyTV, but better integrated into Twitter’s existing media management tool. As noted, it’s not for everyone – not all users will have access, and not everyone is obviously broadcasting live video via Twitter in the first place. But for those who are looking to make the most of their live content, it could prove to be a valuable, helpful option in planning and strategy.
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Marketing
Emoji SEO presents opportunities for video
Emoji search has been supported in Bing and Yelp since 2014, and Google has allowed it since 2016. One might assume that searching Google or Bing using emojis would lead to the same results as using the text equivalent (e.g., searching 🍩 would deliver the same results as “donut”), but that isn’t the case. For the most part, emoji-based queries in the search engines yield results that pertain to the emoji itself, but there are interesting opportunities for marketers, particularly with regards to videos in the search results. For emoji-based queries, the website results are typically from emoji resource sites, whereas the video carousel tends to include videos with the emoji itself or the word that matches the emoji in their titles. Those with the queried emojis in the titles often appear ahead of videos without them. Adding an emoji to your video’s title may increase its visibility in the video carousel. Users can search using emojis on both Google and Bing. Including them in your titles, meta description or within your content may increase your organic visibility when emojis are used in search queries. At this point, the optimization opportunity appears to be largest in video search.
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DuckDuckGo Now Handles 40 Million Searches a Day
DuckDuckGo was recently profiled in the New York Times, where it was revealed the search engine is now handling around 40 million searches a day. At last count, in January 2019, DuckDuckGo was serving around 34 million searches a day. This continues the steady growth of the niche, privacy-focused search engine. This leads to the inevitable comparison of DuckDuckGo versus Google. Though DuckDuckGo is growing, Google still holds a decidedly larger share of the search market. That may always be the case, as DuckDuckGo’s focus on user privacy comes with limitations. The important thing, at least from a business standpoint, is whether DuckDuckGo is turning a profit. DuckDuckGo has been profitable for the past 5 years, according to the Times’ report, and recent growth should help ensure that remains the case for the time being.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 23, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest Adds New Self-Help Tool to Assist Users Dealing with Mental Stress and Fatigue
Pinterest is rolling out a new set of self-help tools which are designed to assist users who are dealing with mental health issues by offering quick exercises that they can follow along with, right from the app. Pinterest says that its users conduct “millions of searches” related to emotional health on the platform every year, which is what prompted this new initiative. Mental health has rightfully become a key focus for social media apps in recent times, with various reports showing that social media usage itself can be linked to psychological harm. As Pinterest notes, these simple tools are not designed to replace professional care, while searches related to self-harm will still be routed to relevant off-platform resources. But these quick, immediate response activities may help users in need at different times, providing another way to help ease the stress and provide guidance – as opposed to basic keyword search results.
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Facebook Identifies Significant Privacy Flaw in Messenger Kids App
Messenger Kids, the child-friendly variation of the company’s messaging flagship tool has suffered its first major blow – as reported by The Verge, over the past week or so, Facebook has been informing parents of children who have been using Messenger Kids of a flaw within its permissions process, which could have exposed their children to content from unapproved users. That violates the core promise of Messenger Kids, which is designed to provide parents with full control over who their children interact with – and the reassurance that comes with that. Regardless of the scale in question, the problem is that it again highlights a significant flaw in Facebook’s process, and the company’s capacity to manage information and user privacy. This is especially relevant in this case, not only because young, vulnerable users are impacted, but also because this is the core functionality of the app – this is the one key thing that this specialized version of Messenger is supposed to be designed to avoid.
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Marketing
Google Maps App Updated With Ability to Edit Business Information
Google has updated the Maps app on iOS, allowing business owners to edit their listing information without leaving the app. This will make it easier for verified owners and managers to edit their business profile. Business owners may find this feature especially helpful when looking up their own listing in Google Maps. Maybe you changed your hours or stopped offering a particular service, and the change isn’t reflected in the business listing. Now you can update the information immediately in the Maps app, rather than leaving the app and using a mobile browser or the Google My Business app.
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Advertising
Microsoft Advertising rolling out experiments A/B testing tool globally
Experiments is rolling out globally for testing ad copy, landing pages and bidding strategies and modifiers. Similar to drafts & experiments in Google Ads, experiments in Microsoft Advertising allows you to set up a duplicate of your campaign and run a test on a segment of its traffic. “This way, you can run a true A/B test within a campaign to determine whether a particular update will work well for you and your business,” wrote Subha Hari, senior program manager and Piyush Naik, principal program manager, for Microsoft Advertising in the announcement.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds New Warnings for Accounts Which Are Close to Being Banned
Instagram is taking a more active role in stamping out anti-social and concerning behavior on its platform, introducing new tools – and even removing post like counts – in order to focus on user well-being. The latest measure on this front is an update to its policy enforcement processes, which will see the platform implement time-based accruals of policy violations, which will also enable the implementation of new warnings for accounts that are close to being banned. The measure will give Instagram more capacity to take action against repeat offenders by limiting their capacity to stay just within the rules by removing the violating posts. Now, they’ll also have an ongoing record, so even if they do take action on the highlighted posts, they could still face penalties for ongoing concerns.
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Marketing
Google adds JavaScript SEO basics to its Search developer’s guide
On July 18, Google added a JavaScript SEO basics section to its Search developer’s guide. It includes general descriptions of how Google processes JavaScript as well as some best practices. In addition to an overview of how Googlebot crawls, renders and indexes JavaScript web apps, the guide provides basic tips, accompanied by links to more detailed Google resources, including the following: Describing your page with unique titles and snippets; Writing compatible code; Using meaningful HTTP status codes; Using meta robots tags and Fixing images and lazy-loaded content. JavaScript is a powerful tool for developers and can enhance the user experience. Understanding how Googlebot processes your JavaScript-powered web apps can help you make them more discoverable, which may ultimately increase your organic visibility and bring in more traffic to your site.
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Google Confirms Cause of Missing GMB Reviews – Will They Ever Come Back?
Google confirmed the cause of missing Google My Business reviews, an issue that may not be resolved any time soon. Several weeks ago SEOs began to notice Google My Business reviews were going missing. The company says legitimate reviews were inadvertently removed from business listings during Google’s efforts to remove fake reviews. If you take it at face value – legitimate reviews were accidentally removed and they may or may not be restored. Time will tell whether the issue gets resolved. In the meantime there’s nothing business’s can do as the problem is all on Google’s end.
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Advertising
Heads up, advertisers: Facebook is shrinking mobile News Feed ad space
Beginning August 19, posts and ads in the mobile News Feed will display at a 4:5 aspect ratio, which means they’ll be shorter than at the original 2:3 aspect ratio. For advertisers, this means ads will show fewer lines of text and the maximum height for photos or videos in the ad will be reduced to fit new design. According to Facebook, the new ad layout will only allow for three lines of text, after which users will see a prompt to display more of the text. That’s a change from displaying as many as seven lines of text before the “See More” prompt. Ad copy will need to be tighter than ever to get your messages across — or entice users to click to “See More.” Videos will also need to be optimized for the new size, otherwise they will be automatically “masked” when the changes take effect next month.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 19, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter’s Trying Out New Icons to Add More Clarity to Reply Streams
Last September, Twitter revealed that it was working on a set of radical changes to how tweet replies were presented, adding in new signals which highlighted replies from the original tweeter, identified responses from connections, and so on. And now, Twitter’s rolling out another version, using icons instead of words to delineate conversational contributors. The new icons are less intrusive, but still provide the same additional context. You just need to know what each icon means. Twitter’s trying to be more transparent, more inclusive in its testing, which has merit, but it also highlights just how long it can take, and makes Twitter seem like it’s afraid to take decisive action. But it is moving. Slow, but this latest test shows that it is getting there. It’s not perfect yet, but maybe, with the addition of color-coding for each icon or something similar, it could be right, it could fit in and help better clarify tweet replies.
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Marketing
Google closes Chrome Incognito Mode loophole to improve privacy
Google is beefing up Chrome’s Incognito Mode. The company confirmed in a blog post on Thursday that it is closing an API-related loophole that made it possible to detect when people were privately browsing in Chrome. Google explains that some publishers with paywalls had been using the loophole to “deter metered paywall circumvention.” In other words, publishers were able to detect the availability of the FileSystem API, which would return an error message in Incognito Mode. They could then potentially infer that the user was trying to circumvent paywall metering and compel the user to log-in, return to public browsing mode or otherwise prevent that person from accessing the desired content. There’s no clear data on how many users take advantage of private browsing to avoid metered paywalls, but Google acknowledged publishers would be impacted by the change. These changes may compel more publishers to reduce or abandon metering and embrace a “hard paywall.” In other words, no free content. That could frustrate searchers who would encounter more links that have registration or subscription screens, creating a poor user experience.
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Advertising
Parallel tracking for Google display ads: Mandatory as of July 31
Starting July 31, 2019, advertisers that are using third-party tracking parameters will need to have made the switch to parallel tracking. Parallel tracking helps speed up landing page load times by separating tracking parameters from the landing page URL. With parallel tracking, the landing page and the tracking functionality loads separately. No more waiting for click trackers and any related redirects to load before the user can get to the landing page. Parallel tracking will soon be the standard method for handling third-party click measurement. It will be coming to video ads later this year, Google said Wednesday.
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Paid Search Gets Majority Of Digital Budget Amid Privacy, Tracking, Ad-Blocking Concerns
It’s hardly surprising that data privacy, tracking, and ad blocking top the list of concerns for digital advertisers. A study released Thursday from Marin Software analyzes responses from more than 450 B2B and B2C digital marketing professionals in the U.S. and the UK to understand their top priorities, challenges and opportunities for 2019. The data confirms that paid search remains the dominant digital ad channel — taking 39% of the total budget, at least among Marin’s clients, where paid social trails with 18% and display with 16%. Marketers cite three main challenges when it comes to their search campaigns. They are challenged to hit specific volumes, achieve investment and return on ad-spend targets, and integrate product feeds. Marketers cite three main challenges when it comes to their search campaigns. They are challenged to hit specific volumes, achieve investment and return on ad-spend targets, and integrate product feeds.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 18, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram’s Test of Removing Like Counts is Being Expanded to More Regions
Instagram this week is expanding its test of removing like and video view counts to six more regions, including Ireland, Australia and Brazil. Instagram has said that it’s removing likes as part of a broader focus on user wellbeing. Individual users can still see their total like counts in the test, but they’re not publicly displayed, which, Mosseri says, reduces social comparison, and its associated negative impacts. It’ll also be interesting to note the overall effect on like counts – will the lack of a total number increase people’s propensity to like a post, or reduce it? If it leads to more likes, you can bet Instagram will be keen to keep the change, regardless of the other impacts. But if it is fully rolled out, it will lead to other challenges. At the moment, brands looking to work with influencers can use post like counts as a measure in their assessment – someone with a million followers, but four likes on each post, is probably not the ‘influencer’ they claim to be. With this change, you won’t be able to see that. You can still use comments as an engagement measure, and you can ask for engagement stats from the influencer his or herself, based on their analytics. But it adds another challenge, which is a subsidiary consideration for marketers, in particular, to keep in mind.
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Twitter Announces New ‘LiveCut’ Video Editing and Publishing Tool, Which Will Replace SnappyTV
Twitter has this week announced the end of its SnappyTV live video editing tool, and the addition of LiveCut, it’s replacement option, which is fully integrated into Twitter’s Media Studio. SnappyTV is a dedicated tool which live video producers can use to create highlight clips from their broadcasts, in order to share them via tweet and boost engagement. If you’ve seen any sports highlights embedded within a tweet, they likely came via SnappyTV. The new tools enable you to edit clips from live broadcasts, while there are also new scheduling options to help better plan your video content. It’s essentially the same functionality as SnappyTV, but better integrated into Twitter’s existing media management tool. As noted, it’s not for everyone – not all users will have access, and not everyone is obviously broadcasting live video via Twitter in the first place. But for those who are looking to make the most of their live content, it could prove to be a valuable, helpful option in planning and strategy.
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Marketing
Emoji SEO presents opportunities for video
Emoji search has been supported in Bing and Yelp since 2014, and Google has allowed it since 2016. One might assume that searching Google or Bing using emojis would lead to the same results as using the text equivalent (e.g., searching 🍩 would deliver the same results as “donut”), but that isn’t the case. For the most part, emoji-based queries in the search engines yield results that pertain to the emoji itself, but there are interesting opportunities for marketers, particularly with regards to videos in the search results. For emoji-based queries, the website results are typically from emoji resource sites, whereas the video carousel tends to include videos with the emoji itself or the word that matches the emoji in their titles. Those with the queried emojis in the titles often appear ahead of videos without them. Adding an emoji to your video’s title may increase its visibility in the video carousel. Users can search using emojis on both Google and Bing. Including them in your titles, meta description or within your content may increase your organic visibility when emojis are used in search queries. At this point, the optimization opportunity appears to be largest in video search.
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DuckDuckGo Now Handles 40 Million Searches a Day
DuckDuckGo was recently profiled in the New York Times, where it was revealed the search engine is now handling around 40 million searches a day. At last count, in January 2019, DuckDuckGo was serving around 34 million searches a day. This continues the steady growth of the niche, privacy-focused search engine. This leads to the inevitable comparison of DuckDuckGo versus Google. Though DuckDuckGo is growing, Google still holds a decidedly larger share of the search market. That may always be the case, as DuckDuckGo’s focus on user privacy comes with limitations. The important thing, at least from a business standpoint, is whether DuckDuckGo is turning a profit. DuckDuckGo has been profitable for the past 5 years, according to the Times’ report, and recent growth should help ensure that remains the case for the time being.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 17, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Rolled Out a Tool in the U.K. for Users to Report Scam Advertising
Facebook rolled out a special tool exclusive to the U.K. that enables people to report ads that they believe to be scams or misleading. Facebook users in the U.K. who encounter an ad that they believe to be a scam or misleading can click the three dots that appear in the top-right-hand corner of every ad on the social network, clicking Report ad, clicking Misleading or scam ad and, finally, clicking Send a detailed scam report. The social network has a dedicated internal operations team in place to handle reports submitted via the tool, and that team will take down ads that are in violation, as well as investigate trends and suggest improvements to the process. A Facebook spokesperson said in an email, “While the tool is currently available on Facebook in the U.K., we’re certainly not ruling out the possibility of taking something like this to other markets if it works well.”
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Marketing
DuckDuckGo expands its maps UI with a few familiar features
Privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo announced that it has expanded its local search capabilities with a dedicated maps tab, map re-querying and local autocomplete. Earlier this year, the search engine adopted Apple’s MapKit JS framework to power its map-related searches. In line with its focus on privacy, DuckDuckGo maintains that it does not send any personally identifiable information to Apple or any other third party, nor does it retain location information sent by browsers after a session ends. Map re-querying, which can be useful to limit generic searches like “vegan” to a desired area, allows users to refine local searches while staying in the expanded map view. Prior to this, each new map-related search required users to return to DuckDuckGo’s regular search page. These latest features are likely to improve its user experience, which may help it maintain growth momentum. Although its share of global search traffic is tiny, it’s worth looking at how referral traffic to your site from DuckDuckGo has been trending. DuckDuckGo is also an ad syndication partner of Microsoft Advertising.
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Why Google dropped Bing Discover pages from its index
Earlier this month, Google dropped a subset of Bing’s website from its index. The Bing Discover pages were completely dropped out of Google’s search results and resulted in Bing losing millions of pageviews from Google search. Google’s webmaster guidelines say, “Use the robots.txt file on your web server to manage your crawling budget by preventing crawling of infinite spaces such as search result pages.” Google specifically has said for a long time they do not want search results in its search results. And Bing Discover was just that. If you go against Google’s guidelines, no matter how big or small you are, Google may eventually take action against the site. You can lose millions of visitors as a result. Read and understand Google’s webmaster guidelines, stay within those guidelines and do not risk your site from being penalized or removed from Google search.
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Google to Discontinue the AdSense App for iOS and Android
Google is deprecating the AdSense app for iOS and Android in the coming months. By the end of 2019, the apps will be completely removed from all app stores. Google says the decision to sunset the AdSense app was made after the company conducted a review of its mobile strategy. There’s room to grow when it comes to AdSense on mobile. Google says only a third of users access AdSense from mobile devices. Although that’s still a fair amount of people who will be affected by these upcoming changes.That’s all the information available at this point. More details about the improved web interface will be released later this year.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 16, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Tests ‘Suggested Moderators’ to Help with Group Administration
Facebook’s continued push to boost groups usage sees another wrinkle added this week, with a new test of ‘Suggested Moderators’ – group members which Facebook’s system has identified as people who may be able to help you manage your online community. The new option will suggest group members as potential moderators based on their frequency of contribution and interactions within the group. In this sense, it’s similar to Facebook’s recent push on ‘Top Fans’, those identified within your group/s as key contributors based on their frequency of interaction. This new groups initiative may be following a similar line – if you turn your most engaged group members into moderators, that will likely make them feel more connected, and see them engage even more often. In this sense, it may be less about needing help to manage your community as it is to boost activity overall by establishing stronger bonds.
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Snapchat’s Testing a New, Dedicated Tab for its Exclusive Snap Shows
Snapchat is also testing out a new way to boost exposure for its exclusive content, with a new section, separate from Discover, focused solely on Snap’s owned content. The new ‘Shows’ section would make it easier to binge on Snap’s original content, while also staying on top of new episodes and programs as they launch. Snapchat remains hugely popular with younger users, and the addition of a dedicated Shows tab, along with these new programs, could prove a big lure for advertisers looking to reach those younger markets. In addition to new programs, and the test of its Shows tab, Snapchat has also recently launched two new initiatives to help up and coming creators – its ‘Animated Comedy Creator’ and ‘Scripted Comedy Creator’ programs. The aim of these programs, according to Variety, is to help creators envision to next generation of shows, directed towards an increasingly mobile audience.
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Marketing
Google may be testing shareable search results snippets
Several people are sharing screenshots on Twitter of a feature in the Google search results that lets you share search results. It has three icons, one to share, one to open the cache page and one to open the result in a new window. You can access this feature if you are in this beta test by clicking on the three dots on the top right of the search results. Google has tried sharing search results through Google+ and other means over the years. Here is Google trying it out again. Any change to the Google search results interface can impact traffic from Google search to your website. Although this seems like just a test and even so, it doesn’t seem like an interface that would impact traffic all that much.
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Google says shortnames bug resolved, local listings restored
The problem that was causing Google My Business (GMB) listings to disappear when shortnames were added has apparently been resolved, according to Google. A spokesperson informed last night that all missing listings have been restored. Google did not specifically comment on the issue of disappearing reviews, which several SEOs said was also happening after adding shortnames. Previously, Google said disappearing reviews was a distinct technical issue unrelated to shortnames. Shortnames should become a very helpful and potentially effective marketing and branding vehicle for local businesses, as well as a convenient search shortcut for consumers. They could evolve also into an informal analytics tool.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 15, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
YouTube Amplifies Monetization Options for Creators
YouTube announced new and expanded monetization options for creators at VidCon last Thursday. The platform unveiled Super Stickers that viewers can purchase during livestreams to show support for creators. The animated stickers, which will arrive in the coming months, are available in multiple languages and can be themed around different content categories, such as gaming, beauty and food. They build on the growth that YouTube has established with chat and tools like Super Chats, where followers pay to have their message be pinned to the feed during livestreams. YouTube claims that Super Chats, which rolled out two years ago, are now the biggest revenue source for roughly 20,000 channels, a 65% year-on-year increase over 2018. More than 90,000 channels have received Super Chats from users, according to YouTube, and some streams earn more than $400 per minute from the feature. After debuting channel memberships at VidCon last year, YouTube used the show this week to introduce membership tiers, which the company calls levels. Creators can set price points for five different levels that offer different perks to subscribers based on how much they pay. VidCon, now in its tenth year, has become a crucial showcase for YouTube as creator culture has become a dominant driver of interest in the platform, particularly among valuable young audiences like Gen Z.
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Google’s Invitation-Only Test for a New Social Networking Tool
Google started an invitation-only test of a social networking app, called Shoelace, that aims to bring people together in the real world — not just digitally — based on their activities and interests, Gizmodo reported. People who want to bring Shoelace to their communities can request a code to activate the app. Shoelace currently supports the latest versions of Android and Apple’s iOS. Shoelace users also need to have an active Google account to sign into the app. While it’s too early to tell whether Shoelace will be a hit with mobile users, the app already is inviting comparisons with Nextdoor, which focuses on connecting people based on their neighborhoods. By encouraging people to meet face-to-face, Shoelace is part of a broader effort by Google to address growing concerns that modern technologies like smartphones are having a negative effect on mental health.
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Marketing
New Google Shopping program enables customer photos to show with their product reviews
Google Shopping is bringing customer photos to the product reviews sections of advertisers’ listings. Reviews are accessible from the “View more” option on mobile Shopping ads or by clicking on the star ratings in a listing. Images are eye-catching, and thumbnail images of reviewers can add further social proof to ever-critical product reviews in Google Shopping. Along with the reviews themselves, it’s a step toward including more user-generated content (UGC) to inform users as they’re shopping. UGC can add an element of authenticity and credibility to retailers’ listings that manufacturer-supplied professional shots can’t.
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New Nielsen service offers podcast audience insights for advertising
Marketing research firm Nielsen has launched a service to provide podcasting networks with insights on their audiences such as genre preferences and purchasing habits. The data comes from Nielsen’s biannual podcast survey of 30,000 respondents. Networks can subscribe to the new Nielsen Podcast Listener Buying Power Service to have their podcasts included in the survey, which includes questions regarding genre preferences, purchasing plans, podcasts and other consumer and listener behaviors. Podcast advertising has been held back by a lack of listener insights, making it hard to target an audience and measure ROI. “Nielsen’s Podcast Listener Buying Power Service makes it easy for advertisers to go deep within a specific genre to target listeners with interests and buying habits that match those of the customers they want to reach,” said Cathy Csukas, co-founder and CEO of Cabana. Although Nielsen’s service does not provide live data and the sample size is relatively small, it does equip podcast networks with more information that they can use to attract advertisers.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 12, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Continued Its Efforts to Help People Understand Why Specific Ads Are Served to Them
Facebook added more information when users ask, “Why am I seeing this ad?”. Product manager Sreethu Thulasi revealed in a Newsroom post that people on Facebook who used its tools to investigate why specific ads were being to served to them will now see more detailed information on targeting, including the interests or categories that were used to match them to that ad.The source of that information will be made clearer, as well, such as if that person visited a specific website or liked a page, and people will be directed to controls that they can use to customize their experience on the social network. The Why am I seeing this ad tool already provided information on demographics that were used to match people and ads, as well as website visits that did the same.
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Twitter Launches “Twitter ArtHouse”
Twitter has announced a new creative team that will help brands to produce video content on their own platform: “Twitter ArtHouse”. Similar to Facebook Automated Ads, “Twitter ArtHouse” will provide marketers with a slew of advertising options and creative assistance. Efforts for Twitter-optimized video are part of a broader strategy to draw advertisers to the social platform while cozying up to content creators. Twitter is not the only social giant to look toward better monetization of creator content in order to draw advertisers to the platform. The growth tools are a particularly attractive offering, providing data insights like daily “follow” and “unfollow” data, which could also be an asset for brands looking to partner with creators.
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Marketing
Google News rolling out card layout on desktop search results
Google is now rolling out a new design for the Google News search results while on desktop. The new design removes the news clusters of stories and brings you a single featured story in a card-like result. Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land Thursday afternoon that it is rolling out. As you can see, the new design showcases a single news story and does not show alternative sources from other news publishers. This may result in some Google News publishers noticing a decline in Google News traffic, while others may see big increases in Google News traffic. The features and only story shown in the card will get all of the clicks, whereas before, Google would show numerous stories that shared in the click distribution from the news cluster.
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Bing showing a streamlined recipe carousel in search results
Bing appears to be testing or introducing a new way to show rich results on desktop. For queries that may relate to recipes, Bing is displaying a carousel that features just three recipes initially. It allows users to filter results by total time and other nutrition criteria, but does not immediately show the option to compare recipes. With the new carousel, the comparison option is available after a user selects one or more of the filters. The Bing recipe comparison pages feature elements such as rating, total time, nutrition and yield (servings), which are all properties from recipe schema. Bing’s recipe UX is an area where it stands out from Google. Providing all of the relevant details and adding structured data can increase the chances that search engines display your content as a rich result. It may also enable users to filter through rich results to locate your content.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 11, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
New Pinterest features encourage brands and creators to upload more videos
Pinterest has introduced a new and improved video uploader, a video tab on business profiles that allows brands to feature all their videos in one place, an analytics tool to help businesses better understand and analyze their traffic and get insights into performance over time and, finally, Pinterest is allowing creators and businesses to schedule videos ahead of time with a new Pin Scheduler tool. With these new features, the company is encouraging paying users to post actionable and inspirational how-to videos and tutorials tailored to Pinterest users. The brand is hopeful new tools intended to support brands and businesses will increase engagement and ad revenue on the platform.
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Sponsored Posts From Instagram Influencers Are Driving Less Engagement
A recent study shows that Instagram influencers are getting hit hard by the reported decline in engagement across the platform. According to data shared with Mobile Marketer, from analytics firm InfluencerDB, engagement rates for sponsored and organic posts are nearing all-time lows. The study shows that the engagement rate for sponsored posts was 2.4% in Q1 2019, down from 4% three years earlier. During the same time periods, the engagement rate of organic posts dropped from 4.5% to 1.9%. Engagement is reportedly down across every industry category of influencer including beauty, fashion, food, lifestyle, fitness, and travel. Despite not driving as much engagement, sponsored posts are still driving more engagement than organic posts. The study suggests that marketers may see better engagement with sponsored posts when they’re published by “nano-influencers.” Instagram is working on a new ad unit that will allow brands to expand the reach of sponsored posts, but it’s not ready for a wide rollout at this time.
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LinkedIn Just Added 3 New Marketing Objectives to Its Campaign Manager
The professional network said the updates now give marketers a full-funnel experience, from initial awareness through to conversion. LinkedIn is also optimizing its click pricing to align with the objectives of its advertisers, saying as an example that when website visits are chosen as the objective, advertisers will only be charged for clicks that go to their landing pages, and pricing will be optimized for all social actions (such as likes, comments and shares) in social engagement campaigns. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions senior product manager Amita Paul said in a blog post, “As a marketer, you’ve shared with us that one of your biggest challenges is ensuring that your campaigns can meet increasingly complex business goals. Whether you’re a new startup trying to increase share of voice or an established business-to-business player looking for leads, you need solutions that are flexible and can adapt to your unique objectives.”
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Advertising
Ad customizers are now available in all Microsoft Advertising accounts
Ad customizers have been around in Google Ads for several years, and now advertisers can use them in their Microsoft Advertising campaigns, too. With ad customizers, you can dynamically tailor your ad copy based on attributes defined in a feed. Can deliver ads that are more relevant to the query without having to build out hundreds or thousands of variations. Unlike Google, Microsoft Advertising allows you to apply ad customizers by audience, in addition to keyword, ad group, campaign or ad group.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 10, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook makes a play for creators with new tools, features for monetizing content
Facebook announced Tuesday a new slate of updates designed to provide creators with more opportunities to make money — and attract them to the platform, which is competing for creators’ attention with YouTube. Creators who meet Facebook’s Monetization Eligibility Standards will be able to take advantage of a new feature in its Ad Breaks ad unit that gives creators more options for video ad placements. The feature gives creators on the platform the ability to activate un-interruptive ad formats, like pre-roll or image ads, in video content that may not have a natural break for ads. Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager is designed to facilitate the relationship between brands and content creators. With the new updates, creators will have access to performance insights in the Brand Collabs Manager and able to share audience metrics with advertisers for more efficient and secure ad targeting. The Creators Studio tool now includes a new range of updates to support monetization efforts. Enhancements to the Creator Studio include a dedicated Monetization Overview section, new audience and retention insights, and the ability to now manage Instagram posts and IGTV in the Creator Studio. Facebook has been working to attract creators from other content-driven platforms (ahem, YouTube), and giving them more revenue opportunities could bolster those efforts and entice them to create more content on Facebook.
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How TikTok is testing in-app e-commerce
To some, TikTok seems like a digital fad. To others, it’s the next wave of social media. Whatever it is, it currently provides a direct line to the younger generation. While it’s undeniable that the social video app would love to make money from online retail, its success in the space remains to be seen. And while advertisers have been dabbling with TikTok in the U.S., the e-commerce part is still very much in its infancy. Some retailers have launched branded content campaigns on the app since last year. The primary issues for TikTok’s e-commerce ambitions in the US have to do with consumer behavior, explained eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman. Social shopping is much more engrained in Asia and it’s yet to really take off in North America. What could drive TikTok’s success in the social commerce space, however, is competition. As more popular social platforms continue to push e-commerce programs, the behavior could become more commonplace by everyday app users. According to Lipsman, TikTok’s US e-commerce forays are likely a way to simply test the waters, stake a place, and then wait to see if programs like Instagram’s checkout prove successful.
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Marketing
Bullish forecast predicts 31 million Americans will ‘shop’ on their smart speakers in 2019
EMarketer says that 31 million Americans “will shop via a smart speaker this year, up 31.6% from 2018.” The company defines “shopping” expansively as “browsing, researching products and adding things to a shopping cart.” In two years, eMarketer says the number will climb to 38 million voice shoppers, as smart speaker owners do more product research on the virtual assistant devices. EMarketer also says that 21 million people in the U.S. will make a purchase this year using a smart speaker. The important caveat is that these will almost entirely be digital goods: movies and music. Notwithstanding the sale of millions of smart speakers, and bullish forecasts, voice shopping and commerce have not really materialized. This is not to say that they won’t or that voice search on smartphones isn’t gaining real momentum.
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Google My Business Listings Getting Suspended After Adding Short Names
A number of SEOs have reported having Google My Business listings suspended after adding a short name to their profile. Short names were introduced in April as a way of allowing businesses to create custom URLs for their Google My Business listings. Now it has become apparent that adding short names is causing legitimate business listings to get suspended and removed from SERPs. Google hasn’t confirmed there’s a bug related to GMB short names, nor has it acknowledged that it’s even aware of this issue. So all this evidence is anecdotal, and the consensus is that removing short names fixes the problem. If you’ve recently had a GMB listing suspended after adding a short name, your best course of action is to remove it.
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