Tag Archive for: marketing

Daily Minute Master Series – May 12, 2020

May 12, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

‘Now more than ever, expert medical advice matters most.’ That is the message being delivered by RACGP President Dr Harry Nespolon, who has welcomed measures being taken by popular social media platforms to halt the concerning spread of medical misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. Twitter announced its plans on 11 May to warn users when a tweet is deemed to contain disputed or misleading content. It will take posts on a case-by-case basis, and only remove those that are deemed as harmful.

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Pinterest Launches Updated Business Community to Facilitate Connection Between Business Owners

Pinterest has announced the launch of its updated Pinterest Business Community platform, which aims to facilitate discussion about Pinterest tactics, and other business tips, among Pinterest users.

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Twitter Adds New Labels on Potentially Harmful COVID-19 Misinformation in Tweets

With COVID-19 misinformation continuing to circulate through social media platforms, Twitter has announced some new measures to help slow the spread of falsehoods, including a new label to alert users to potentially harmful COVID-19 misinformation.

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5 Simple Tips to Use Twitter to Increase Your Search Visibility

Does social media impact SEO? If so, how? These have been controversial questions in the digital marketing community for a long time now. This may come as no surprise to most SEOs but, in my opinion, the answer is: “It depends.”

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Marketing

Google Ads Beta Testing Curbside Feature Pickup in Shopping

Google Ads has released an update to help local businesses trying to move inventory during COVID-19: a curbside pickup indicator.

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Many Marketers Unlikely to Attend In-Person Conferences Until COVID-19 Vaccine

The majority of marketers say they will not attend any conferences or live events in 2020 unless a vaccine is available that would protect them from COVID-19. In fact, more than 66% of those surveyed said they would only attend online or virtual events in the fourth quarter without a proven vaccine in place. More than 250 marketers answered our survey. The majority hailed from the United States, though we saw many respondents from regions in Europe and Asia. Overall, respondents said there was just a 4-out-of-10 chance they would attend a conference through the rest of the year. That sentiment comes as the United States this week passed 80,000 deaths tied to coronavirus and many states are beginning to lift restrictions aimed at enforcing social distancing. Several vaccines are being developed and tested now, and one has moved into Phase II trials.

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Advertisers Signal Glimmers of Optimism

Here we are at the beginning of May. Many businesses still can’t resock inventory, but the initial jolts to supply chains and fulfillment systems have somewhat subsided. The mortality rate attributed to COVID-19 declined in the U.S. last week, “but remains significantly elevated.” Roughly half of small businesses said they could survive just two months in late March, and the gradual reopenings by states are now “a source of uncertainty rather than confidence,” for many of them. Overall, business confidence in the U.S. plummeted 17 points in April.

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Best Practices for Marketing During and After COVID-19

A global crisis can either paralyze a marketing team or galvanize it to thrive. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: some companies are cutting back on marketing (in some instances, laying off the entire marketing team), while others are being more agile and coming up with interesting ways of engaging their audience during these difficult times. If you want to stay in business, you can’t stay idle for long. As a business owner myself, I understand why many entrepreneurs would want to cut down completely on marketing activities. Being conservative feels like the safe choice when there’s uncertainly about how long the crisis will last. But we have to balance financial responsibility with the need to keep consumers informed and engaged when things get tough.

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Daily Minute Master Series – May 11, 2020

May 11, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Instagram is testing out some new ways to navigate through your Stories feed in the app, in order to help people find more Stories content that they’re interested in. Reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong posted this example of one of the new tests in action, which would enable users to side the main Stories frame down to reveal the Stories tray at the top of the screen, then switch through to each.

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Facebook Outlines a Range of New Video Tools, Including Messenger Rooms for Group Video Hangouts

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a range of new video tools across Facebook’s family of apps, in order to meet demand and evolving use-cases during the COVID-19 lockdown. Zuckerberg made the announcements via Facebook Live stream, noting that with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic set to carry on for some time, live video is likely how we’re going to see a lot more announcements and events. Here’s what’s coming to Facebook’s various video tools. First off, on video calling – which Zuckerberg says is the most used type of video interaction in its apps around the world. Catering to this, Facebook will soon double the capacity of group video calls on WhatsApp from 4 to 8 participants.

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Marketing

Why Marketers Need Identity to Build Consumer Trust in a Cookieless World

For years, cookies were the connective links that helped marketers understand and reach consumers, but no more. Navigating this uncharted terrain is doable though. The keys to success are privacy-friendly, identifiable connections and relationships with those who have them. Lots of factors have forced marketers to look beyond the cookie – from consumer privacy demands and California’s sweeping privacy law to the rise of so-called walled gardens and an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

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21 Actionable SEO Tips for Explosive Growth [Infographic]

Are you looking for ways to bounce back after the COVID-19 lockdowns are lifted? Want to improve your website’s SEO to enable growth post-coronavirus? The team from Boom share their SEO tips for success in this infographic.

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Virtual Events and the Future of Business Gatherings in the Post COVID-19 Era [Infographic]

With physical events set to remain on hold for some time yet, more businesses are looking to virtual meet-ups, with the use of video tools soaring, and people finding new ways to connect, in replacement of major summits and conferences. The question now is whether people will go back to regular, in-person meet-ups and events when they’re actually able to do so once again. Of course, many events will likely go back to normal, and resume as they always have, but given the massive costs involved in travel and attendance to such conferences, and the capacity for online tools to replicate the experience, in large part, without those same overheads, it may well be that the event industry is changed forever as a result of COVID-19. Nothing can replace meeting people in-person, but depending on your goals in attending such events, maybe, people will be re-thinking their approach moving forward.

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Daily Minute Master Series – May 8, 2020

May 8, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Pinterest has announced that it’s updated its Shopify app, adding a new option that will enable Shopify merchants to quickly and easily feed their entire product catalog directly into shoppable Pins.

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New Research from Facebook Shows Engagement with Local News Providers Booming Amid COVID-19

Given the rapid evolution, and massive impact of COVID-19, on everybody, it’ll come as little surprise to discover that news organizations are seeing significant increases in online engagement at present. But the specifics of that engagement could reveal some valuable insights for your own content approach. This week, Facebook’s CrowdTangle analytics platform has published a new overview of Facebook Page engagement stats from over 2,700 US local news publishers’ during March and the first half of April 2020. And again, while the broader trends are as you might expect, the detail is interesting to note. First off, CrowdTangle says that local news pages saw a big spike in interest as COVID-19 cases began to rise in the US in mid-march.

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YouTube Expands Ad Formats for TV Screens

YouTube is accelerating its TV-screen ad options. Google’s internal numbers that show sharp growth in consumption on TVs, and there’s been speculation these numbers will remain consistent as COVID-19 keeps consumers at home. The ad formats may be familiar to regular advertisers on YouTube, but the move signals Google’s intention to continue its growth in the realm of connected TV instead of just an app on user phones.

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Marketing

Project Management Tools Take Center Stage as Distributed Marketers Crave ‘Single Source of Truth’

With the lion share of marketers currently working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, digital workflow and project management tools are having their moment to shine. And with good reason, too. As organizations become distributed overnight, now more than ever, we need one central source of project information.

“Marketing teams really need a single source of truth. They need a place where they can collaborate, not just with other marketers, but other people in the company because they’re usually our stakeholders,” said Brad Sanzenbacher, senior corporate communications manager at Wrike. “If they can get visibility in a centralized hub, they don’t need to come and ask you for status, they don’t need to host meetings to figure out the status of projects,” he said during his presentation at Discover MarTech.

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Not just Martech: Vendors Go All-In on Professional Services to Speed Digital Transformation

Recently, one of Acquia’s customers who had not previously worked with the digital experience platform’s professional services team reached out to set up a meeting. The customer was being approved for an FDA test related to COVID-19 and, in less than a week, expected a rush of traffic to their website.

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Zoom Acquires Encryption Startup Keybase to Help Make Video Calls More Secure

Video conferencing service Zoom is acquiring Keybase, a startup that will help it implement end-to-end encryption to protect calls from unwelcome guests and clandestine monitoring. Financial terms of the deal, negotiated over Zoom calls amid shelter-in-place orders, were not disclosed. As coronavirus drives vast swathes of economic and social life online, Zoom usage has exploded from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million by the end of April 2020. But that explosion has exposed security weaknesses in the videoconferencing software. A wave of so-called ‘Zoom bombings’, in which uninvited guests disrupted video calls, were particularly embarrassing, and led some schools and businesses to ban the software.

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Daily Minute Master Series – May 7, 2020

May 7, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Sprout Social has this week released its latest Social Index report, which incorporates responses from over 1,000 marketers, and 1,000 consumers, in order to get a sense of how each group views social media engagement, and what variances there are between the two. You can read the full report here (with sign-up), but here are some of the key points of note. First off, Sprout asked marketers to identify their primary goals for using social platforms, with ‘Increasing brand awareness’ coming out as the clear top choice.

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Facebook Outlines Key Challenges and Plans for Improving Advertising Verification

Facebook’s Director of Product Management Rob Leathern has provided an overview of where the platform currently stands on advertiser verification, and how it’s looking to improve its systems in order to ensure that more businesses are verified, increasing ad transparency, and system integrity, into the future. Over the last few years, Facebook has significantly increased its transparency requirements for political advertisers specifically, with any person or Page running a political ad now required to submit official documentation for assessment. All Facebook ads are also now listed in its Ad Library, increasing transparency – but ideally, in order to provide full assurance, Facebook will eventually be able to verify all businesses on its platform, with more stringent qualification requirements, in order to maintain a more secure, accountable ad system.

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LinkedIn Temporarily Deindexed from Google

LinkedIn found itself deindexed from Google search results on Wednesday, which may or may not have occurred due to an error on their part. The telltale sign of an entire domain being deindexed from Google is performing a “site:” search and seeing zero results.

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Marketing

Google May 2020 Update – What We Know

Search results continue to churn three days after Google announced the May 4 2020 update. Google warned it may take a couple weeks to settle. This is why that might not be good. Most updates settle fairly quickly with minor changes along the way. This update is different. The changes are felt by many and the results seemingly change from day to day, even hour to hour for some.

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Google’s New Podcasts Manager Tool Offers Deeper Data on Listener Behavior

Google has introduced Podcasts Manager, a new tool that provides podcast publishers with listening data such as minutes played, listening duration and other retention analytics, the company announced Tuesday.

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These Are The Biggest Marketing Challenges Facing Brands In The Age Of COVID-19

Almost two months into life amid COVID-19, we’re still learning about how this unprecedented crisis is affecting us. Doctors are identifying new symptoms. Scientists are looking at how the prolonged social isolation could affect children. Social scientists are discussing the financial and economic ramifications of the virus. And marketers, like me, are watching how this new way of living is changing the way people do business. The effects have already been massive, but we’re only at the beginning. A recent study by Newscred looked into some of the biggest marketing challenges that COVID-19 is bringing to brands—here’s my take on what they found, and how your brand can turn these challenges into opportunities.

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Will Digital Marketing Replace Traditional Marketing?

How many years have marketers been beating the “traditional marketing is dead” drum? Since the old dial-up modem sound became synonymous with the world wide web? Probably. As world events move people online in greater numbers than ever before, the cry that traditional marketing is dead grows louder. But does that make it true? The fact is, about three of every four people prefer learning about products through content rather than traditional advertising. And for every 10 people, six of them say watching a Facebook video has influenced a purchase decision in the last 30 days; yet we all say we hate commercials on TV.

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Daily Minute Master Series – May 6, 2020

May 6, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Whats a second, isn’t this…? Didn’t Twitter already announce this? Today, Twitter has announced that some users on iOS and web will now see its new threaded tweet replies layout, which includes a line linking replies to the original tweet.

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Pinterest Adds 32 Million More Users in Q1, Now up to 367 Million MAU

Pinterest has repeatedly noted that it’s been seeing record high levels of usage amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, and now, we have some extra perspective on what exactly that means, with the company posting its Q1 2020 results, which show stable increases in both active users and revenue. First off, on users – Pinterest is now at 367 milllion monthly actives, up 32 million on its Q4 2019 report.

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Google on Using Quora for Links

Someone started a discussion on Twitter promoting the Quora website for link building. Google’s John Mueller responded with a comment that seems to indicate that Google is aware of the practice.

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Marketing

Shopify launches post-COVID POS, Yelp rolls out omnichannel tools for SMBs

Omnichannel has been a buzzword for years in the retail industry and has been vaguely synonymous with digital transformation. But now there’s more urgency, as traditional merchants large and small are having to place more emphasis on technology, e-commerce and integrated online and offline experiences (e.g., BOPIS) during the pandemic.

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Advertisers Signal Glimmers of Optimism

Here we are at the beginning of May. Many businesses still can’t resock inventory, but the initial jolts to supply chains and fulfillment systems have somewhat subsided. The mortality rate attributed to COVID-19 declined in the U.S. last week, “but remains significantly elevated.” Roughly half of small businesses said they could survive just two months in late March, and the gradual reopenings by states are now “a source of uncertainty rather than confidence,” for many of them. Overall, business confidence in the U.S. plummeted 17 points in April.

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Google Confirms May 2020 Core Algorithm Update Rolling Out Today

Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed that a core algorithm update is rolling out today – May 4, 2020. The update will officially be known as the “May 2020 Core Update.”

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Daily Minute Master Series – May 5, 2020

May 5, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Okay, events calendars may not look as impressive or full as they once did, but there are still plenty of seasonal celebrations and dates of note to keep in mind, which could help to improve your social media promotions, while also providing a level of inspiration and/or distraction for your audience amid the COVID-19 lockdown. Twitter has this week published its latest overview of the month ahead, including a listing of all the key dates of note.

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Snapchat Launches New Spin Painting Lens with Artist Damian Hirst to Raise Funds for COVID-19

Snapchat has launched a new, special edition, Lens, in conjunction with British artist Damien Hirst, which enables users to create their own spin painting, based on a style that Hirst popularized in the mid-nineties.

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Pro Tip: How Brands Can Enter TikTok with Brand Channels

TikTok was already the fastest-growing platform in history, but during quarantine, it’s gone to the next level. With so many stuck at home and nowhere to go, the platform has become an international pastime, with more than 100 million downloads in the month of March alone. This growth is driven mostly by 25-45-year-olds, as well as increasing numbers of consumers in older demographics. To keep up with consumer behavior, brands have been rushing to understand TikTok. They’re often feeling nervous – recognizing, rightly, that the rules of the road are new and very different from places like Instagram.

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Marketing

Apple and Google Provide New Overview of How the COVID-19 ‘Exposure Notification’ API Will Function

While debate rages around the potential privacy implications of the coming Apple/Google ‘Exposure Notification’ API, which aims to slow the spread of COVID-19 by alerting people when they’ve been in proximity to someone that’s later found to have coronavirus, both companies are now moving forward with the next stage of the plan. This week, Google and Apple have released more information on exactly how the process will work, along with example screenshots of the tracing app in action – while the companies also recently opted to change the name of the API from ‘Contact Tracing’ to ‘Exposure Notification’ to help ease anxieties around the process.

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Amazon Ads: Skyrocketing Growth in Q1

As advertising platforms continue to post initially healthy gains derailed by COVID-19 in Q1, many were interested to see where Amazon would net out during the pandemic. Unlike other platforms, Amazon acts as both advertising and fulfillment mechanism for many ecommerce brands. This means changes in distribution or fulfillment can affect those sellers in different ways. The mandates to shelter in place meant an increased reliance on delivery of goods, poising Amazon to be the servant many consumers would rely on. This, in turn, had the potential to continue the sharp year-over-year gains its advertising business had witnessed.

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17 Ways PPC Can Help Your Business Survive Economic Crisis

People are clicking, but are they buying? WHEN will they buy? Are they buying too much too fast? When will stores reopen and foot traffic resume? Consumer demand is evaporating for some businesses, while others may be unable to fulfill orders due to supply chain disruptions or shipping challenges. Dynamics shift daily, if not hourly. Now some good news: Search marketing is adaptable, measurable, and when done correctly, cost effective. Even with shifting data models, PPC pros can use timely trends to guide strategic decisions.

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Solving The Post-COVID-19 Marketing Puzzle To Replace Customers Lost Forever

Your customers are never coming back. Yes, the sun will come out. The bans will be lifted. Business will resume. But things will never be the way they were before. Each of us is changed. Our businesses are changed. Given that, there is no chance that your old offerings are going to meet the needs, hopes and desires of your changed customers without changes. Trying to sell your old offerings to the customers you had is a recipe for disaster. Instead, take a marketing, puzzle-solving approach to rebooting your business – creating, delivering, and communicating new offerings.

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Esports Emerges as In-Demand Beauty Marketing Channel

Once considered an opportunity to reach mainly male consumers, the world of esports and gaming is now attracting a growing pool of beauty brands and their female shoppers. Last week, MAC Cosmetics launched in China its second collaboration with the popular Tencent mobile game Honor of Kings, revealing a collection of 11 products corresponding to the game’s characters. The collaboration is inspired by five male heroes, named Bai, Shouyue, Yun, Xin and Liang, which are also members of the virtual boy band WXWZ.

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Daily Minute Master Series – April 29, 2020

April 29, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Instagram continues to explore new ways to help people and businesses impacted by COVID-19. Today, Instagram has launched a new fundraising option within Instagram Live, which will enable users to raise funds during an Instagram Live stream – like a small-scale telethon via the app.

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Facebook Coronavirus Emojis

Facebook announced new set of emojis that are exclusively for the Facebook and Messenger apps. The emojis are meant as a way for users to share their support with each other. But some are finding them somewhat awkward.

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YouTube to Display Fact Checks in Search Results in the US

YouTube is expanding its fact check information panels to search results pages in the United States. YouTube’s fact check panels first rolled out last year in Brazil and India. Now, as more people turn to YouTube for accurate news and information, fact check panels are launching in the United States.

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Marketing

Will Social Distancing Accelerate a Trend Toward Home as Headquarters?

As COVID-19 sweeps around the world, vast swaths of the workforce find themselves working from home for extended periods for the first time. Many of them are learning how to structure time and use technology to make the transition as seamless as possible. But the coronavirus could accelerate a trend that was already underway. Even before social distancing and sheltering in place, home was becoming the logistical headquarters for busy people looking to make better use of their time. Whether it was skipping the commute or the line at the grocery store, online searches and shopping habits prior to the pandemic indicated a desire by people to spend more of their time on pursuits that give them joy, pleasure, or comfort (and less of it sitting in traffic).

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30 Marketing Statistics to Consider for 2020

When planning any marketing plan or strategy, you need to have research to back up what you are doing planning and doing. This could come from your own experience, or from industry data. For our weekly Marketing Fact Friday posts that we share on the ME Marketing Services social accounts, we keep up with what research is telling us about the marketing industry and its various branches (content, social media, advertising, email, etc.). We look for bits of research and statistics that are not your common stats you see everywhere. We like to find the lesser-published ones. Here are 30 stats we’ve put together for you to consider when executing your marketing plan or strategy this year.

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6 Marketing Tactics to Help Reallocate a Conference Marketing Budget

If there’s one constant in the world of marketing, it’s that everything changes. Whether it’s the Google algorithm upending your SEO efforts, Facebook pulling the organic page reach rug out from under you or a worldwide pandemic decimating your in-person marketing plans, life is always changing. So what happens when your conference marketing budget goes on hold and you need to reallocate the funds and the efforts? How do you pick up the pieces and refocus your conference marketing efforts to still drive revenue for your business?

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Daily Minute Master Series – April 28, 2020

April 28, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Hashtag challenges are an essential element of TikTok, providing inspiration for users to create their own takes on trending content, and take part in broader shifts. They’ve become so big that they’ve even passed a key social media milestone – they’ve been cloned by Instagram, which means that they must be gaining real traction. But more than just an engagement tool for regular users, businesses can also utilize hashtag challenges to expand their branding efforts on the platform. It’s not a given – it’s difficult to know what will resonate and catch on, and what’ll fall flat. But hashtag challenges do provide another consideration for marketers on TikTok, which, used well, can be huge for growing brand awareness and reach. To help with this, TikTok recently published this listing of tips on how businesses can create their own hashtag challenges on the platform.

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The Best Times to Post on Social Media During COVID-19 [Report]

Last month, Sprout Social published its latest listings on the best times to post to each of the major social platforms, based on insights gleaned from its 20,000+ user base, in order to provide guidance as to when you should consider posting to maximize response. But since then, a lot has changed. The COVID-19 lockdowns have lead to massive increases in social platform usage, and in some cases, significant shifts in when people are active. As such, this week, Sprout has published an update to its listings, which may help guide your revised strategy to cater to engagement changes during the pandemic. Here’s what they found – and note that all the time frames listed here are Central Time Zone (CST), though based on the data, these would be largely indicative for local time zones as well.

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Snap Launches First Commercial Option on Snapchat Shows

Snapchat is adding a new option for advertisers called “First Commercial.” This offering lets advertisers specify being the first ad a user sees that day in their first Snap show session. It will only be available in the US initially.

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Marketing

Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines: A Guide for SEO Beginners

We’ve all heard about Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines. But let’s be honest: there’s a lot to digest in this 168-page document. If you’ve been looking for a basic guide to Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines, then keep reading.

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Can AI Do A Good Job Writing Marketing Copy?

AI-powered copywriting technology may not be widely embraced, but it’s here. One of the firms pioneering the process is London-based Phrasee, launched in 2015.

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Why You Must Follow These 6 Basic Marketing Rules

There are just a few plain and simple direct-marketing rules to follow, and by committing to them, you’ll reap the long-term benefits you desire and develop a long-lasting business foundation. These basics are skipped by most businesses using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as their primary sources of communication. Realize you have choices, and you can make your marketing dollars work harder for you by offering people more than one reason and more than one means of responding to you. However many channels you market in, there are six basic rules you need to understand in order to succeed. These foundational concepts must be fully comprehended, practiced, managed and enforced.

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Daily Minute Master Series – April 27, 2020

April 27, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

If you’re not paying attention to the influence of gaming on modern culture, you’re missing out on maybe the biggest shift in how the next generation connects. Gaming is set to become a $196 billion market by 2022, and five of the top 10 channels on YouTube in 2019 were directly connected to the gaming community. Gaming is fast emerging beyond a subculture, with gaming crews like FaZe Clan helping to take it mainstream. Even rapper Travis Scott recently launched his latest music via a transformative live event in Fortnite, which saw 12.3 million concurrent viewers logged in to take part.

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Facebook Shares New Data on the Psychological Impacts of Social Comparison, and How It Can Be Reduced

Do you ever scroll through your Instagram feed and feel like you’re not doing enough with your life? Do you ever see Facebook updates from old friends and feel inadequate in your own everyday struggles and issues? Social comparison is a real and significant issue with social media platforms – but it’s also an unrealistic and unfair measure to put on yourself. The thing is, you’re looking at someone else’s highlights. Not many people post about their daily challenges and issues, but they do post about their wins – which means that while it may seem like their lives are great, and better than yours appears to be, nobody’s perfect. Everyone has their own problems to overcome. But when you’re only seeing one side of the coin, that can lead to negative self-perception.

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Snapchat Usage Up During COVID-19, Data Shows How User Behavior is Changing

Snapchat gained 11 million daily active users in the first quarter of 2020, bringing the total count to 229 million. An additional 11 million daily active users (DAUs) represents a 20% increase over last year. Engagement hit record highs as well. On average, more than 4 billion Snaps were created each day in Q1 2020. As people flock to Snapchat to stay in touch amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has published data about how users’ online activity is changing during this time.

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How Memes and Social Media Shape the Spread of Coronavirus

Vicky Chuqiao Yang is living through the coronavirus pandemic for the second time. She’s been working from home in New Mexico ever since the Santa Fe Institute — where Yang is a post-doctoral researcher using mathematical models to investigate societal complexities — shut down in mid-March due to the virus’ spread. She had already witnessed the jarring process of closing down society earlier in the year through her parents back in her hometown of Wuhan, China. In the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan, information about the situation was spotty and often inconsistent as officials censored initial reports of the virus’ rapid spread. All the while, Yang and her parents were keeping tabs on the epidemic from opposite sides of the globe via myriad social media rumors and news reports.

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Why LinkedIn May be the Most Effective Social Media Platform of Our Time

When most people talk about social media, they’re usually referring to platforms like Facebook or Instagram, but rarely think of LinkedIn as part of the vast array of social media platforms available. We tend to assume that LinkedIn isn’t such a valuable place to be and often, even businesses make this mistake, assuming that it would be far more beneficial to focus on their presence on Twitter, for example. There is a logic behind this – LinkedIn is a place for businesses, but I’m looking to advertise to real people, and they are going to be on other, more laid-back platforms, so I might as well go there, too.

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Marketing

Google Cutting Up to 50% of Marketing Budget

An internal email reveals that Google is cutting up to 50% of it’s marketing budget for the second half of 2020. The cuts to the marketing budget may be a way to contain the wildfire of reduced advertising earnings due caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This development comes less than a week from when Google is scheduled to discuss the first quarter 2020 financial results on April 28th.

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How To Adapt Your Marketing Strategy To The Current Market

Over the past few weeks, I have been struck by founders pulling marketing and advertising spend due to COVID-19. The rapid advancement of the current climate has fundamentally altered the marketing and advertising landscape. From March to June, advertising spend is expected to be down 39%, and over a quarter of Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) participants indicated they pulled their advertising entirely for the second quarter. Perhaps many marketers may be thinking about American Apparel’s disastrously received discount campaign during Hurricane Sandy and are thinking about holding off for fear of poor public perception.

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How to Conduct a High-Level Ecommerce Usability Study

When time is of the essence, conducting a heuristic evaluation of your online shop will help you learn how to increase sales now. A heuristic evaluation is a method of finding usability problems. It helps you quickly identify the website’s health without having to do a long exhaustive study. You will not be reviewing every detail, you will be generating a high-level overview of usability factors best known to influence sales. The beautiful thing about a usability study is that, once identified, problems are fairly intuitive to fix.

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Daily Minute Master Series – April 23, 2020

April 23, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

For the first time in National Football League history, draft day is going remote and online. Social media will play a big part in that transition, and teams have to work in that world securely. In recent years, the NFL turned the day its teams pick their stars of tomorrow into as big an event as any regular season game. Thousands of fans showed up in cities across the country just to see what college kids their favorite teams would tap for their rosters. Coronavirus made that mega-event impossible, so draft war rooms dispersed from Green Bay to L.A. will send in their picks via video conferencing and keep fans updated via Twitter and other platforms.

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7 Brands Experimenting With New Social Media Marketing Approaches During COVID-19

As the COVID-19 outbreak spread last month, I noticed there seemed to be two kinds of brands. Those who went quiet and were going through the crisis communications playbook when it came to content on social channels. And, those who decided to switch it up, adapt to the new circumstances and take some calculated risks. It’s been fascinating to watch. Now, some of these new approaches have been riskier than others. But, the point is these seven brands adapted and changed quickly to their new environments and they acted decisively and knowing full-well they were taking a bit of a gamble.

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Travel Attractions Turn To Social Media To Keep Public Entertained

Pleasure travel is on the outs as long as COVID-19 restrictions remain in place. That means there are millions of tourist who love getting out in the world left without any options to satisfy their “get up and go.” Also, it all leads to travel destinations relying on those tourists needing to hang on until the skies are friendly again. To give frustrated explorers a pressure valve and to stay on people’s minds, several destinations moved to social media to remain in the global mix. The following is just a sample of online options.

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Marketing

Zoom Releases New Update to Address Security Concerns

With Zoom usage soaring amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, the multi-participant video streaming tool has released a new, large-scale update that aims to address its various security and privacy concerns, which have come into much sharper focus in recent weeks. As explained by Zoom:

Today we announced robust security enhancements with the upcoming general availability of Zoom 5.0, a key milestone in our 90-day plan to proactively identify, address, and enhance the security and privacy capabilities of the Zoom platform. By adding support for AES 256-bit GCM encryption, Zoom will provide increased protection for meeting data and resistance against tampering.

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Consumers Value Reviews Over Credentials

A study of over a million review site transactions and a survey of over 12,000 consumers may show that licensing credentials matter less than ratings and reviews. Thus, it may not be enough to be The Best when customer satisfaction expressed through ratings and reviews matter most to consumers. This may have implications for how all businesses can cultivate more sales.

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