Today in Digital Marketing - 204: Because GeoCities.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, your brand might now be eligible to be endorsed by Google. An update on a new WordPress plugin. Spoiler, it's bad news. Sprout Social adds approval workflows for replies. And Facebook's latest inspiration, GeoCities and MySpace. God help us all. It's Wednesday, July 29th, 2020. Happy Tiger Day, India. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital,

Starting point is 00:00:27 and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Google has opened up more industries that can qualify for their Google Guaranteed or Google Screen label. These are special tags that accompany their local services ads. In the past, only a few types of businesses could get these, like HVAC companies, electricians, and plumbers. But now, at least in the U.S., a whole bunch more have been added, including architects, tax specialists, videographers, and lawyers. Actually, there are 17 subcategories of lawyers now available. Having this tag applied to your listing can really help, as visually, it sort of implies an endorsement from Google.

Starting point is 00:01:07 As I mentioned, it's only in the U.S. right now, and apparently some categories aren't available at all to certain regions in the U.S. You've got to apply using a web form to get into this, and there is a link in this episode's notes if you'd like to check it out. Facebook's NPE team has a new app out. NPE stands for New Product Experimentation, and it's the in-house group that tries out new apps to see if any catch on. This is the group's 10th new app, and it's called Egg. That's E.GG. It's sort of a way to make full-screen stories

Starting point is 00:01:42 that aren't focused on a primary image or a video. So you're mostly using background colors and stickers. They call them free-formed mixed media collages. You can resize the elements and share them with other egg users. Apparently, the app was inspired by early web platforms like GeoCities and MySpace. My God. GeoCities? MySpace. My God. GeoCities? MySpace? Like, are the developers too young to remember what a clusterfuck those sites were? Quoting socialmediatoday.com, it doesn't seem like the

Starting point is 00:02:16 type of thing that will gain any real momentum, but Facebook's NPE team is all about throwing things at the wall and seeing if anything sticks. The team uses emerging app trends to inform its decisions about new directions, then builds apps based on those usage behaviors in the hopes of keeping Facebook ahead of the game. Unquote. A little while ago, I told you about Bing's new WordPress plugin that would immediately submit any new pages or posts that you published to their search index and have them searchable right away. Today, we learned that plugin is a little bit buggy. Apparently, a number of webmasters this morning received an email from Microsoft that says, quote, there seems to be a large number of failures in submission of URLs to our index, resulting in customers not seeing your domain on priority in the index and with

Starting point is 00:03:06 full functionality, unquote. So this is happening to you. They say, first, check to make sure your API key has been entered correctly. And then if that's not it, they suggest reaching out to them via the plugin contact information. To be clear, this bug does not mean that you are not getting into Bing. It just means that while this bug is around, you will still be added. It'll just be by Bing's regular crawler

Starting point is 00:03:29 and not this instant ad plugin for WordPress. Just a reminder that this Saturday is an important date in California's Consumer Privacy Act because that's the day when litigation could start against advertisers that are not compliant. For its part, at the beginning of the month, Facebook automatically opted all advertisers into what it called a limited data use setting for California. When it's on, it restricts the way data from California users can be stored and processed. Remember, this applies

Starting point is 00:04:03 if you are targeting any California resident. It's not about whether your business is based in California. That said, it's really only large brands that are affected here. For the CCPA to apply, your company must have annual gross revenues above $25 million, or have the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices, or you earn more than half of your annual revenue from selling consumers personal information. If none of these are you, apparently this act doesn't apply to you. You have nothing to worry about. That said, I am not a lawyer.

Starting point is 00:04:39 If you're concerned, talk to a lawyer. There is a way to extend the transition period and keep limited data use on until mid-October in Facebook. Look for that toggle switch in your business manager. Which brings us to the lightning round. Spotify had a good quarter, hitting almost 300 million users in total. That's up 29% compared to the growth in Q2 of last year. Of those 300 million, 138 million are paying for Spotify's premium service. That's 46%. Not bad. Yesterday, I mentioned Agorapulse's new Power Reports add-on. At the time, I didn't know what the pricing would be after their free trial expires in September. Turns out they don't know the price

Starting point is 00:05:24 either. They are still figuring that out, which is fair. A small bug at Sprout Social today with Twitter DMs and Facebook PMs not sending was fixed pretty quickly. So if that was happening to you, it shouldn't be now. Speaking of Sprout Social, they announced a new feature today, reply approvals. These are similar to content workflows where other people on your team have to approve content before it goes live. Now there is an approval process for applying to comments, posts, and reviews. And I probably don't have to tell you that being an online advertiser can be a little stressful, sometimes a lot stressful, which is why it's great to see that independent Facebook ads consultant Andrew Foxwell has set up a group called the Mental Health Support Group for Online Advertisers. It's a great idea, and there is a link in the notes if you'd like to join.

Starting point is 00:06:09 Yes, it is World Tiger Day, something that is mostly celebrated in India, since they have about 75% of the world's tigers. And here's something I bet you didn't know. There are fewer than 4,000 tigers left in the wild. I'm talking about in the whole world. Fewer than 4,000. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the world tiger population has dropped by more than 95%. The main cause? We are putting cities where their natural habitats are. The current average cost per click for the

Starting point is 00:06:38 word tiger in Google? $1.49. As always, full transcripts to each episode are at todayindigital.com and follow me on social media. All my links are in this episode's description. You'll find a quick link that will let you rate and review this podcast, something I would very much appreciate. I'm Todd Mathen. Talk to you tomorrow. So part of your job is to manage your brand's social media accounts. That can get busy, especially if you're running a paid campaign. You've got comments to moderate, reviews to reply to, issues to escalate to management,

Starting point is 00:07:19 and that engagement comes in around the clock. That's why you might need a social media engagement firm, a partner who's handling all that for you, either just evenings and weekends or offloading it entirely. And that is where my agency, EngageQ, can come in. We've handled the social engagement for dozens of brands. We start with a brand briefing to collect the info we need, answers to the most common questions, and an escalation path.

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Today in Digital Marketing - 204: Because GeoCities.

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