Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Bets Big on Ecomm-Integrated Live Shows

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

It's finally here — Facebook group comment moderation via third-party tools. But there's a catch. Actually, there's several. Also: Pinterest drops Story Pins for, well, let's face it, a TikTok format... YouTube is planning some solid enhancement for brands that publish videos... the transformation of a brand's product-focus marketing to content.... And most SEO pros are ready for Core Web Vitals. Are you?  Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at b.link/pod-newsletter ADVERTISING:- Ads: b.link/pod-ads- Classifieds: b.link/pod-classifieds- Brand Takeovers: b.link/pod-takeover JOIN THE COMMUNITY:- Slack: b.link/pod-slack- Discord: b.link/pod-discord- Podcast Perks: b.link/pod-perks ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Rate and review: b.link/pod-rate- Leave a voicemail: b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- Twitter: b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: b.link/pod-linkedin- TikTok: b.link/pod-tiktok Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, it's finally here. Be protected. Be Zen. YouTube is planning some solid enhancement for brands that publish videos, the transformation of a brand's product-focused marketing to content-focused, and most SEO pros are ready for core web vitals. Are you? It's Tuesday, May 18th, 2021. Happy International Museum Day.

I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. As the owner of a social media engagement and moderation agency, there have been a few things I've been hoping the platform gods would bestow upon us, functions that haven't existed before, that I put squarely in the, oh my god, why don't you have this yet, camp. And today, we learned that one of these things is now here. A Twitter edit button? No.

The ability to see and reply to Instagram DMs in our third-party tools? No. But the next best thing, the first implementation of Facebook group moderation in the API. This has always been a huge gap. Third-party tools have been able to post to groups for a long time,

but the API for moderating comments in that group has always been lacking. Well, today, Sprout Social announced that it supports that very function. But this being Facebook, it's not as simple as just connecting your group, and it's not nearly as full-featured as you think. First, your group has to be aligned with a Facebook brand page. It'll be that brand page that is identified as the moderator, not an actual person. That's probably good for our uses.

That said, if you authenticate the group in Sprout and then set your native Facebook experience as interacting with the group as yourself, then all likes that you make in Sprout will appear as interactions from your personal profile and not the page. With me so far? Because here's where it gets weird.

When a member of your group is engaging with the group by posting messages or comments, they, the group user, will need to grant access to the Sprout app. If access isn't granted, posts from that group member appear as just the anonymous name Facebook user in Sprout Social. So now I guess we'll have to create a couple of posts telling people how to grant access to an

app, which I think it's fair to say is probably a little confusing for most average users. Also, if a user likes your Facebook page and is also a member of your Facebook group, they will actually have two separate profile cards in Sprout. Apparently, this is an API limitation. And the most important form of moderation for a brand, being able to delete a comment and ban a user, also not supported. You'll have to do that from the group directly. So what is available? Pinning a comment, liking a comment, and replying to a comment. Also within Sprout's ecosystem, you can tag a comment, email it to someone, presumably on your team,

or send the message to an integration. So not exactly what we all hoped for, but certainly better than our previous option, which was nothing. Facebook today announced a new weekly live shopping show. Starting this week and every Friday through July 16th, a number of beauty and fashion brands will cycle through, doing live shows that have direct e-commerce functionality in the broadcast. Quoting the company,

For shoppers, this means you can discover the latest products from your favorite brands and ask questions about the size, fit, and tips in real time. And for brands, live shopping offers a chance to build relationships with customers, provide new entertaining content, answer questions, and streamline the purchase process through convenient checkout with shops. You can tune into the live shopping streams on each brand's Facebook page or by visiting the Shop tab or bookmark on mobile. And if you see something you love, you can easily purchase items presented during the live shopping stream

by tapping on the products featured in the stream and checking out all without leaving Facebook. Unquote. Today's premium newsletter has the full summer schedule. Most analysts in this space say e-commerce-enabled live shopping broadcasts are among the highest priority for most major social media platforms. Pinterest today announced the launch of a new video format called an Idea Pin. They say it's meant for creators who want to tell their stories using background music, creative editing tools, and more.

The videos can be up to 60 seconds long. Huh. One-minute videos. Music. Editing tools. Is it just me? Yeah, this sure sounds a lot like TikTok. Just like Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, or is it Showcase?

I always get them confused. YouTube Shorts. Actually, to be fair, this is more like a mashup of TikTok videos with stories, or story pins, since you can chain up to 20 of these videos together. In fact, Pinterest will use this Idea Pin name instead of story pins from now on. As for that all-important music catalog, they've cut a deal with Epidemic Sound to give creators a selection of free tracks to use. Pinterest says, like TikTok, it will let people export their Idea Pins to other platforms.

They say in early testing, this format got nine times the average comment rate. You'll be able to see the format in analytics, and Pinterest says their next step, making Idea Pins shoppable. This new format is rolling out today to all users with a business account in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. YouTube is also making some nice upgrades to its Creator Studio management platform. First, they'll be adding defaults to their mobile posting workflow, and that will include templates. So if you tend to publish the same kind of content using the same text for the title and description fields, you'll get a bit of a head start. They'll also let you clone your upload settings from a previous video, and soon you'll be able to upload videos directly from

your Google Drive. Also, they will start doing those pre-published checks on mobile uploads. This is how the desktop upload flow works now. It's a series of screens that checks for ad suitability and any glaring policy violations prior to it going live instead of getting that dreaded policy violation email days later when their scanner finally catches up. And finally, apparently they're working on some kind of AI-based auto-suggest feature for the title and description fields and maybe even the thumbnail image.

All these planned upgrades they teased in a creator update, but did not give any specific launch date. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free without insurance your assets are at risk from major financial losses data breaches and natural disasters get customized coverage today starting at 19 per month at zensurance.com be protected be zen we are about a month away from the next significant google

search algorithm update called the Page Experience Update. Although Google engineers have been saying for more than a year now that this really isn't going to be a huge deal, many SEO people in this space have already started to get their sites ready for it. The biggest chunk of this new update will be Core Web Vitals, a group of three metrics that measures how fast your page loads, how soon someone can interact with it, and how much the page layout jumps around. SEO consultant Mary Hines did a Twitter poll, and of the 850 votes, at least the 850 before I went into the booth here, more than 60% of people say that they have already worked

on their sites or their client sites in preparation for this. Barry Schwartz, who writes for seroundtable.com, said, quote, I'm not surprised to see 60% as the number here. I thought maybe it would be more. Why? Because this is something Google is telling people to work on, despite also saying it won't be a big deal, likely just a tiebreaker.

But it is something super easy to put on an SEO audit. Should SEOs tell their clients to focus on other things that may be more important to SEO? That depends on what the client has done to date with their SEO efforts. In case you're struggling to move from a product marketing focus to a content marketing focus, here's how one big consumer brand is trying. The hair product company L'Oreal has launched

a seven-episode online video series about the cultural impact of hairdressing. Quoting MarketingDive.com, the show was conceived and directed as a TV show. Each episode runs for 30 to 45 minutes on YouTube and is available in six languages. The series seeks to reach hairdressers around the world who buy its products that are made for salons. Instead of product marketing, the digital-only series uses content marketing

to forge deeper connections with its consumers than possible with traditional advertising channels. Marketers are putting 20% of their digital ad budgets into branded content and influencer marketing combined, representing a larger portion of digital marketing budgets than any other category a survey by Advertiser Perceptions found. Unquote. A big name has thrown its weight behind a stronger first-party data platform. Walgreens Advertising Group says its platform will let brands reach consumers via over-the-top services, connected TV, and traditional linear TV. platform, Walgreens advertising group says its platform will let brands reach consumers via

over-the-top services, connected TV, and traditional linear TV. Yes, I said Walgreens. And that platform is impressive, serving a potential of 2.5 billion daily impressions. It also partnered with OpenAP to let advertisers use Walgreens' first-party data as part of TV campaigns, which I guess, technically speaking, makes that first-party data as part of TV campaigns, which, I guess, technically speaking, makes that second-party data now, right? I'm starting to lose track of it all. A Walgreens VP said in a statement that the goal is to support audience-led and channel-agnostic media approaches. An Interactive Advertising Bureau survey recently found marketers boosted CTV spending 22% to reach consumers on the platforms where they spend the most time.

That actually ended up being a faster growth rate than both mobile video and desktop video. You can be forgiven if you haven't heard of the Walgreens ad group before. They only launched it in December after their primary competitors like CVS, Walmart, Target, and Kroger all started rolling out their own ad platforms. Remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter too, complete with images, related videos, links to dive deeper, and even newsletter-exclusive content. And there's a free tier as well. You'll get an issue every Friday. The newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops.

Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in this episode's notes. I'm Todd Mathen. Talk to you tomorrow. I felt your eyes You didn't write I know there's more

Than this We hide So let's go And create Tonight There's no way to try To hold back