Today in Digital Marketing - 206: Is Your Brand’s Dormant Instagram Account Perma-dead?

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. On today's show, another reason to take Google reviews at zensurance.com. Be protected Avocado Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by Home Tour from Glasshouse Guide. So maybe this is you. You manage the social media accounts for your brand and given everything that's been going on with the pandemic, you have left some of the accounts to grow moss, notably your Instagram account. Hell, you haven't posted on that since March. Have you permanently damaged its position in the algorithm?

Starting point is 00:01:12 In other words, when you do start posting again, will you have worse results? Agorapulse's social media lab tested that, and I'll have the results at the end of today's episode. There's even more reason to be nicer to people who leave reviews of your business on Google Maps. As you may know, Google calls people who do a lot of reviews local guides. There are different levels of guides. The more reviews they do and the more helpful people report their reviews are, the more their reviews will affect your Google ranking. Well, now these guides are getting even more prominence on the Google platform. Quoting the company, last year we announced a Google Maps pilot feature that

Starting point is 00:01:52 allowed people to follow select local guides. Today, we are expanding this feature and beginning to roll it out globally. If a Google Maps user has shared photos, reviews, or lists publicly, you can now follow them and get their recommendations, advice, and updates delivered to you to your Updates tab in Google Maps. Why is this important to a digital brand marketer? Because Google reviews, for better or worse, do affect your ranking. Not only in Google Maps, but in the entire Google platform, including the search engine. And it makes sense. If you're a terrible plumber, Google doesn't want to send people to you because that looks bad on Google. People just won't trust Google to service reputable businesses. And now that people can follow these local guides, they will have even more influence over the

Starting point is 00:02:42 decisions of others in your market. Also starting today, merchants in the U.S. with a verified business profile on Google can add a black-owned business label to their profile. Obviously, as a digital marketer, many, many of us use Facebook as a way of driving awareness or action. And let's look at what Facebook has faced in the last few months, shall we? A global pandemic in which many brands slowed or stopped advertising. A separate ads boycott in July. Their CEO hauled in front of an American antitrust hearing.

Starting point is 00:03:19 Yikes! All that must have done a number on their results this quarter. Nope, not really. Despite all that, Facebook announced yesterday they added another 100 million monthly active users in the last quarter. That brings them to 2.7 billion. Actually, they're past 3 billion now if you add in Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. 3 billion. That's 38% of the world's population. And of those, 66% log in every day. And all that talk about an ads boycott turns out did nothing to their bottom

Starting point is 00:03:58 line. In fact, in Q2, Facebook increased its revenue by 11%. The news wasn't as good at Google. Their total ad revenue fell 8% in Q2 compared to a year earlier. It was the first time in its history that ad revenue has declined from the previous year. I know many of you are accustomed to asking Alexa to play Spotify or turn on your living room lamps, but did you know it can help you sell real estate? Home Tour by Glasshouse Guide is an Alexa real estate skill now available. Winner of the 2020 Stevie Awards Tech Startup of the Year and honored by the Webby Awards in the category of Best Technical Achievement in Apps, Mobile, and Voice, Glasshouse Guide helps real estate agents and any home seller market their listings using Alexa. Try it out for yourself. Visit glasshouseguide.com and read about Home Tour and try it on your own

Starting point is 00:04:52 Alexa smart speaker. With COVID-19 upon us and social distancing becoming the norm, more and more of us are searching real estate from the comfort and safety of our own homes. Now, in addition to pictures and text descriptions online, you can enable buyers to have real conversations with Alexa about your real estate listings and get leads in the process. Visit glasshouseguide.com today. Again, glasshouseguide.com. I can't say I saw this one coming.

Starting point is 00:05:21 There's a new entrant into the product marketing and e-commerce space, and it is BuzzFeed. For years, BuzzFeed has made a little commission money off the side of its desk. Someone reads a listicle called the eight most amazing kitchen gadgets you've never heard of. And of course, each of those kitchen gadgets are tagged with an affiliate link. So when someone buys said kitchen gadget, BuzzFeed gets a cut. Well, now they have launched their own e-commerce platform called BuzzFeed Shopping. That way, readers can buy a product they read about right on BuzzFeed's platform without having to go to Amazon or somewhere else.

Starting point is 00:05:55 And as weird as this BuzzFeed announcement is, I am increasingly cheering for any anti-hero to Amazon. A new report out today found that Amazon takes about a 30% cut on each sale made by independent sellers on its site. 30%. Five years ago, that commission was about 19%. It's not just commissions you've got to cough up if you want to sell things there. There are seller fees too. Fees that now make up 21% of Amazon's total revenue. In fact, since 2014, revenue from seller fees has almost doubled the growth of its overall sales. In case that doesn't scare you, Amazon's own delivery network is now larger than the U.S. Postal Service

Starting point is 00:06:39 and is expected to surpass UPS and FedEx by 2022. But sure, Congress, we're not a monopoly. Okay, back to the thing I teased at the top. If you have been neglecting your brand's Instagram account, what impact will a resumption of posting have on your reach and engagement? The beautiful bastards at Agorapulse's social media lab tested just that with several accounts they have that were dormant for months. Here's how they resumed the content, quote, on each account, two posts per week were scheduled for four weeks. Some accounts posted

Starting point is 00:07:16 on Monday and Thursday, some Wednesday and Saturday, all accounts posted at the same time on those days and all in the morning. After averaging all accounts used for this test, we find the following regarding the new posts. Reach, 22% higher. Likes, 23% higher. And comments were even, unquote. And so, friends, it seems Monty Python was right all along. I'm not dead.

Starting point is 00:07:41 Well, he will be soon. He's very ill. I'm getting better. No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment. Well, Monday is a provincial holiday here in British Columbia, so no episode Monday. I will be playing Grounded this weekend, a new Xbox game where you've been shrunk down to the size of an ant and you're in someone's backyard and you are trying to solve the mystery of why you're suddenly the size of an ant. Thanks to Glasshouse Guide.

Starting point is 00:08:10 Check out their home tour, Alexa skill at glasshouseguide.com and special thanks to Jerry Barnum from my hometown of Nanaimo, Canada for permission to use this song, find him on Spotify or at jerrybarnhammusic.com. 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.

Starting point is 00:08:34 I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend. I'll talk to you on Tuesday. Sometime it feels like a long ride Oh, but I'm making my way back home Sometimes it feels like a long ride. Oh, but I'm making my way back home. Making my way back home. Sometimes it feels like a long ride.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh, but I'm making my way back home. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - 206: Is Your Brand’s Dormant Instagram Account Perma-dead?

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