Today in Digital Marketing - 106: {following}

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Ding dong, the bots are dead. TikTok’s growth may level off soon. A new potential way for your brand to thumbstop on Facebook And my plea to the world — your keyboard’s F key is NOT your friend Can you help spread the word? Review this podcast at https://ratethispodcast.com/today AND/OR click https://ctt.ac/o713H to preview a tweet you can publish Today in Digital Marketing is brought to you by engageQ digital. Can we help you with YOUR brand’s digital marketing and social media? Let’s chat. http://www.engageQ.com or call 1-855-863-6233. TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA: Tod’s web site: http://TodMaffin.com Tod’s agency: http://engageQ.com LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/todmaffin Twitter: http://twitter.com/todmaffin Instagram: http://instagram.com/todmaffin Facebook: http://facebook.com/tmaffin TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@todmaffin Mixer: https://mixer.com/HappyRadioGuy SOURCES: https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/28/facebooks-3d-photos-feature-now-gives-any-image-simulated-depth https://www.emarketer.com/content/tiktok-to-surpass-50-million-users-in-us-by-2021 https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/28/messenger-removes-discover/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Friday, February 28th, 2020. Happy Yukon Heritage Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, ding dong, the bots are dead. TikTok's growth may level off soon. A new potential way for your brand to thumb stop on Facebook. And my plea to the world, your keyboard's F key is not your friend. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing.

Hey, remember when Mark Zuckerberg was like, chatbots, am I right? Yeah, chatbots. Okay, marketers go forth and make chatbots. A funny story about that. Facebook is shutting all that down. Well, not really. They're not shutting messenger bots off, but they certainly aren't drunk and giddy on them anymore. Three years ago, chatbots were deeply integrated into Facebook Messenger's strategy,

and a whole crop of Messenger bot web apps popped up promising to 50 times your marketing blah blah blah. In the end, with only a few exceptions, the bots didn't get a lot of uptake among users. And the ones that were built were mostly brain-dead and couldn't do a lot other than say hi or give a store's hours. And so, as you may have noticed, as of this week, the Discover tab in Messenger where bots used to live is now gone and replaced by a tab called People, which features, wait for it, stories! Yeah! Messenger stories, which are actually Facebook stories copied over to Messenger. Why stories in this real estate? Well, because, I mean, obviously Facebook is junk on stories like everyone else, but

the real reason is, unlike bots, Facebook can and does monetize stories in the form of ads placed between them. Ads that digital marketers like you and I can place. So I guess this means good news for us. More potential reach for your stories ads. Of course, if your bot has become critical to the success of your business, Facebook will also be happy to sell you ad space to promote it. The bots are not completely banished. If your company uses one, they're still accessible by users in Messenger, but they will have to search for your brand manually there. And so, adios, poncho the weather cat.

We hardly knew ya. An interesting forecast from eMarketer today suggests TikTok will capture the usage of one in five U.S. social media users this year. Last year, the app's membership nearly doubled. But they also say growth could start leveling off around 2022 as they hit saturation of their primary demographic. And there are some new players with big wallets poking around, like Firework and even Facebook. All that said, not everyone thinks you should trust your brand to TikTok. The CEO of Reddit, which, you know, to be fair, I suppose competes in terms of eyeballs and time spent,

his name is Steve Huffman, this week he called TikTok fundamentally parasitic and compared it to spyware. In particular, he is most concerned parasitic and compared it to spyware. In particular, he is most concerned about TikTok using device fingerprinting to track user behavior. What is device fingerprinting? That's the method by which individual users can still be identified even when they have disabled cookies or hidden their IP address. Now, to be fair, it's often used for good to prevent identity theft and credit card fraud, but privacy advocates say that it also lets companies compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories, even when they're trying to avoid being tracked. And, in case you didn't know already, TikTok is majority owned by a Chinese company with ties to

the Chinese government. For the record, a TikTok spokesperson called Huffman's accusations baseless. So where do you and I stand then in the world of digital marketing? TikTok, like many early entrant social platforms, is still largely the domain of large brands. Brands that have enough spend to warrant a personal rep on the TikTok side to help them place the campaigns and so on. There really isn't a self-service platform like Facebook or Google that is open to everyone. Yes, there is an ads website on TikTok, and sure, it has a button that says create an ad, but that button is a lie, because all it does is take you to a form where you put in your basic brand info and they promise to reach out to you at some point maybe.

And so, perhaps for the better, we must rely on an organic presence for our brand. TikTok does have virality built in, though it is different than Facebook's simple share this to my friends functionality. TikTok's is more iterative in nature. People riff on your content. So, make something riffable. Maybe even goofy if your brand's voice could support it. It's still a playground out there. So, you know, have fun. And of course, follow my TikTok for a weekly poorly lit look into the life of my cat. Link in the episode description. Speaking of being more creative with your brand's content, Facebook has announced it is letting you

turn regular photos into 3D photos. If you've ever seen a 3D photo on Facebook, you probably had one of those, wait, what the hell is this moments? If you're on the mobile app, as you move your phone around, like physically up, left, down, and so on, the image moves with you as if you could see different sides of it. Until now, that functionality was the domain of a specific kind of photo that only specific kinds of smartphones could take. Well, now they've figured out how to put a depth map onto 2D photos, as in regular old photos, and it is compatible with any decent phone like an iPhone 7 or higher or a mid-range Android device or higher. And as a social media content person, you might always be trying to be thumb-stopping, having your content be so compelling that people stop scrolling for a moment and engage with your post. 3D photos are still pretty new, and they're really cool to look at, so maybe try them out?

Facebook says it'll work with pretty much everything that has depth, like your face in a selfie or more complex scenes. A couple of catches, you can't edit 3D photos. They also can't be added to an album. And here's the big catch. If you're posting a 3D photo from a page, for some reason unknown to me, you cannot use it in any ad format, from a boost to a full campaign.

Finally, this public service announcement. If you are reading a Facebook post and you're interested in being notified about responses to it, for the love of God, don't type F or following. Stop it. Every time someone does,

everyone gets notified that there's a new comment. And then you go and check and it's not a comment you're interested in. It's some other idiot who typed F. People, stop. There is a feature literally just for this. It has been built into Facebook for years. Tap or click the three dots on the post and select turn on notifications for this post.

See? Easy peasy. Well, if you get value from this daily digital marketing show, please rate and review this podcast. It really does help. You'll find a link in this episode's description that makes that a simple one click. Big Dave from Australia says, I have been tuning into Today in Digital Marketing since October. Very informative, and the marketing news is bang on the money. Thank you, Big Dave. Follow me on social. Links to my channels, our agency, and TikTok videos of my cat are in this episode's description. Have a restful weekend, friends. I'll talk to you on Monday. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca.