Today in Digital Marketing - 149: TikTok Removes…. MUSIC?!?!!

Starting point is 00:00:00 A surprise move by TikTok that radically changes how brands make videos there. A new Facebook feature means you will want to beef up your brand's organic content. A weird YouTube bug may be exposing the names of people on your marketing team. How to get your video's timestamps tappable in Google results. And Canada finally gets access to one of Google's most popular features. It is Monday, May the 11th. Happy National Anthem Day, Argentina. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing. And a quick note before we start here. If you are here because you saw this on Product Hunt, welcome. I put out an episode every weekday around 5 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to subscribe in your app if you like what you hear today. Okay, let's get started. A strange and sudden change in the TikTok app that may affect your content work there if your brand produces TikTok videos. Over the weekend, and apparently without warning, TikTok removed the ability for brands to use their full commercial music library in their videos.

Starting point is 00:01:10 Now, business accounts can only use a new so-called commercial music library. This is actually a big deal to brands that are trying to reach people on that platform because music is one of the main cornerstones of TikTok. Brands can still use user-generated sounds, and regular users can use the full library. Other than that, not a ton of transparency on this decision from TikTok, but if you're wondering why Interior Crocodile Alligator isn't available anymore, now you know. I drive a Chevrolet movie theater. Organic content on Facebook might become even more important for local businesses soon.

Starting point is 00:01:45 The social media giant Today announcing a new section called Businesses Nearby. It works like you think it does. Users pick a category and then select a geographic radius from 1 mile to 500 miles. They'll also be able to see that store's hours, pickup and delivery options, and can, of course, send this store a private message. But, and here is the important part for the digital marketers among you who are also responsible for your brand's social media content, the results are not laid out on a map. Instead, Facebook surfaces organic posts from your brand's Facebook page, which means if you have scaled back or abandoned your organic content efforts, now might be the time

Starting point is 00:02:25 to pick those back up again. Also, they're adding a nice little touch for page admins to Facebook Messenger. Soon you will see a section called Business Inbox, which sounds like it'll work the same as the Page Inbox on desktop or the horribly buggy Pages mobile app. Google has added a new feature to its local inventory ads. Now you can indicate if you offer curbside pickup, and it'll show up as a little banner over the top of the ad block. It should be available now for you if you are in one of the 14 countries in which local inventory ads are a thing. But because it's in beta, you will have to contact your Google ad rep to get it turned on in your account or fill in a little form. There is a direct link to that form in this episode's notes. Google says even if you're

Starting point is 00:03:08 not running local inventory ads, you can still let customers know whether your store offers pickup, delivery or curbside pickup using Google My Business. You can add or edit attributes to your business profile that will appear on search and Maps. This is available globally, but it's organic and not ad-based, so your reach may vary. A weird YouTube bug is back. If you've got a web page, like a blog post on your brand's website, and that page includes an embedded YouTube video on it, and someone finds that page in Google search results,

Starting point is 00:03:45 this bug also shows them the name of the person or brand account embedded YouTube video on it, and someone finds that page in Google search results, this bug also shows them the name of the person or brand account that uploaded the video. And it's not that subtle either. It's metadata right in the listing that says uploaded by, and then the name of the account that uploaded the video. Even weirder, the metadata on the listing shows the date published not of the web page when it was published, which of course is how it's supposed to work, but the date the embedded video was uploaded. So if your video was uploaded in 2014, but the blog post you published was posted in 2019, Google shows that listing as having been published in 2014. This was a bug we thought got fixed in February, but some people are seeing it again now, so

Starting point is 00:04:31 if you're seeing it, that is what it is. If you use a podcast app that supports chaptering, like Apple Podcasts or Overcast, you may have noticed that you can jump directly to specific stories in this very podcast by tapping on that chapter name. And the same kind of functionality is coming more directly to YouTube. Yes, I say more directly because we've been able to manually hack this for years now by putting timestamps into the description field of the video. So, you know, like 1 minute 22, interview with Dave. 2 minutes 45, Dave shows us his shoes, and so on.

Starting point is 00:05:07 It works well. So well that YouTube is now taking some of those manually timestamped videos and creating timelines that show up in Google listings. It looks really sharp. Directly under the video is a timeline, and users tap each description block to go right to that point in the video. So far, the testing seems to only be showing up on mobile results. If you've seen that and thought, well, how do we get our brand's videos to do that?

Starting point is 00:05:30 Here's how. Just put manual timestamps in your video description field, like you've been able to do all along. Yeah, it seems Google is parsing those timestamps and turning them into metadata it can use to create a tappable set of chapters. Even better, it doesn't seem to need any particular format. You can put the timestamp at the beginning, followed by a hyphen and then the segment info, or put the segment info right up front, and then put the timestamp in parentheses at the end. Google seems to be able to handle all sorts of formats.

Starting point is 00:06:00 So you know Google won't list all videos this way. In fact, only a few will get this timeline, even if you do have timestamps there. The main criteria is that it has to qualify to be part of a carousel in the organic listing results. This isn't something that you control. This is how Google decides to present it. And for the time being, as I said, it seems to only be on mobile results. But still, maybe something you should be adding to all your brand's YouTube video uploads in the future. All right, time for the lightning round.

Starting point is 00:06:34 Well, Canada, it only took 15 years, but Google Voice is now available for organizations that use Google's G Suite product. Plans range from $10 to $30 per user. That's in U.S. dollars, mind you, so, you know, $6,000 to $10 to $30 per user. That's in US dollars, mind you, so $6,000 to $10,000 Canadian or something. You'd think with everyone at home that traditional pay TV would be killing it, and you would be wrong. Analysts say that group just had

Starting point is 00:06:56 the worst quarter since they started tracking. There are now as many non-subscribing households as there were subscribers in 1988. Monopoly, the board game, has a brand new extension, the Breaking Bad edition. Seems a few years late, but whatever.

Starting point is 00:07:13 And Twitter this morning announced it will now hide tweets about the coronavirus that conflict with public health advice. If you're new to this podcast, it's just like this. Every weekday, eight minutes or less, everything that changed that day in the world of digital marketing, social media community management, online PR, and internet ad buying, and nothing more. No long interviews, no rambling, just get what you need to know and get out. As for me, my name is Todd Maffin. For the last 10 years, I've owned and run a social media engagement agency called EngageQ.

Starting point is 00:07:46 We handle the engagement and moderation for a bunch of brands, as well as organic content and social media ad campaigns. Link in the notes. Before this, I spent a decade as the national technology columnist for the CBC. That's Canada's version of NPR and PBS. So if you like what you heard today, subscribe to the show now, and I will keep you up to speed on your industry every weekday in a way that respects your time.

Starting point is 00:08:10 A little embarrassed to admit this, but we're that family now. Our second Xbox just arrived today. But can you blame me? My wife is like four levels away from Pirate Legend in Sea of Thieves, and if my wedding vows can't be interpreted to assist in RPG leveling, I have to question everything in the world then. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 149: TikTok Removes…. MUSIC?!?!!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.