Today in Digital Marketing - 112: How to Trend Worldwide on Reddit — In Just Seconds!

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, March 9th, 2020. Happy National Napping Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, TikTok now has free calls to action on your brand's videos. But there's a catch. Google Ads makes some welcome changes to attribution reporting, a roundup of coronavirus news as it relates to digital marketing, and I am going to tell you how to go trending on Reddit

Starting point is 00:00:25 in just seconds. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. I don't think a day goes by when some new web app comes out and promises to use AI to help you optimize your digital ad campaigns, or use AI to find recommendations for your campaigns, or AI for all sorts of things for your ad campaigns. And if you're one of those marketers who hasn't jumped on board yet, don't worry, you're not alone. A new study by Advertiser Perceptions says exactly half of advertisers, they asked, have no plans to use AI in their marketing. What's interesting, I think, isn't actually that number as much as how much that number has gone up in the last year alone.

Starting point is 00:01:06 When they asked the same question last April, only 36% of people said no, no plans for AI. Quoting Marketing Dive, AI gets a lot of lip service in the marketing world as an important but new technology. But this later report from Advertiser Perceptions suggests AI may be more hype than reality for many marketers. Instead, the pioneers for using AI in marketing remain brands with big budgets, such as IKEA and Sephora, unquote. As for those who do use AI to help with their ad campaigns, only 20% of them use it to help steer campaign strategy. 42% use AI to customize existing creative. And only about 38% of those polled said they thought it was inevitable that AI would be used to create original ads. All right, the moment that you have been waiting for. I talked about it at the top.

Starting point is 00:01:58 I plugged it in the title. If you've ever wanted to go trending on Reddit, now you can globally in just seconds with just a couple of keystrokes. Want to know how? Here's how. Give Reddit a lot of money. I'm sorry for the clickbait, but yes, as of today, you can now buy the top position of the popular feed in a new ad unit that they are calling Trending Takeover. This is the first time you've been able to buy your way into the trending section of that page. By contrast, you've been able to buy a trending position on Twitter since forever. Today, at least for me, Coca-Cola has it to promote the hashtag show up. But pity Coca-Cola because almost nobody is using it the way that they want, which appears to be to start conversations

Starting point is 00:02:43 around an energy drink. In the first page of results for the show up hashtag, I found an escort using it. Someone complaining that a politician isn't taking the coronavirus seriously enough. And some guy who tweeted, remember kids, there's a Coca-Cola creepy pasta about a failed energy drink that killed people. Anyway, back to Reddit. When you buy their trending takeover unit, you get it for 24 hours. If someone clicks it, they end up on a landing page that features posts and communities based on keywords that you, as the advertiser, gets to select. Don't go looking for this on their self-service platform.

Starting point is 00:03:16 For now, this is only available by having a conversation with a rep. And I presume showing up, sorry Coca-Cola, with a big budget. You probably know that you can connect your brand's Instagram account to your Facebook business manager, and when you do that, you get some cross-posting abilities, like being able to automatically post an Instagram story on your brand's Facebook stories as well. Well, soon, it seems, you'll be able to go the other way too, cross-posting your brand's Facebook story over on your Instagram account. Quoting TechCrunch, If fully launched, the cross-posting feature could give a little boost to the total stories available on Instagram, so the algorithm has more to choose from when ranking what it shows first.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Unquote. TikTok now lets you put a link to a website on a video. Yes, an actual call-to-action link where people who are watching your brand's video can tap and be taken to a website. That's the good news. The bad news is you are limited to one of three websites, Wikipedia, Yelp, or TripAdvisor. Still, it's actually quite nice if you're in the restaurant or lodging space and you've got reviews that you're proud of on those latter two sites. Google Ads has simplified its attribution reporting. These reports help you understand the path through which someone converted.

Starting point is 00:04:46 It appears they've combined some reports, removed a few others. In the end, those reports will now contain these sections. Overview, top paths, path metrics, assisted conversions, and model comparison. Also, by the way, the search attribution is now just called attribution. If you're looking for it, they've redesigned that a bit as well. All in all, some nice changes that gives you some easier to understand metrics like the percentage of customers who converted after multiple clicks or the percentage of customers who engaged with ads on specific devices and those who used more than one device. Some nice changes. All right, I'm going to wrap up today with a coronavirus as it affects digital marketing update.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Yes, there is a crossover. Google My Business, for instance, is now prompting brands to keep their listings up to date if you're somehow impacted by the virus. For example, updating your hours of operation if you're closed early now or adding some notes to your business description if you're changing something important. Also, a number of marketing conferences have been canceled or postponed. PubCon Florida, which was scheduled for March 24th, has not been rescheduled yet. SMX Munich was also postponed after the country's Minister of Health banned events larger than 1,000 participants. They are planning a virtual conference. SEMPDX in Portland, which I think they call the Engage marketing conference, has been rescheduled to August. SMX Advanced in Seattle, which was scheduled for June, is actually still on.

Starting point is 00:06:11 This despite the Centers for Disease Control saying Seattle is one of the areas hardest hit by COVID-19. They have, however, banned travelers from countries with a high infection rate and will implement a strict no handshake policy. Good luck with that. But, you know, it's not a big deal when conferences cancel or when Google asks you to check your listing. No. No, you know it's a big deal when someone comes out with an icon pack for it. And that has now happened. Icon Finder has released a large pack of icons that you can use for free that show people sneezing, washing their hands, and using hand sanitizer. The link to that pack, of course, is in this episode's description.

Starting point is 00:06:53 I changed the settings on our Xbox last night to stay on, even if there's no activity, and I left my Farm Together farm running. I woke up to 1.5 million gold and three very tired farmhands. Is it cheating if you only play against yourself? By the way, if you have farmed together and are on Xbox, come find my farm. It's called Dagna Ranch, D-A-G-N-A, Dagna Ranch. And please, I beg of you, do not sell my mushrooms. I still need them to cook with and get tickets to pay my farmhands.

Starting point is 00:07:22 Thank you. If you get value from this daily news show, please rate and review this podcast. You'll find a link in this episode's description that makes that a simple one click. Follow me on social. Links to my channels are in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:07:35 See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 112: How to Trend Worldwide on Reddit — In Just Seconds!

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