Today in Digital Marketing - Filled with Sadness and Disgust? Fantastic! 👍🏻

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

On today’s show: Now you can schedule Instagram Stories from the Desktop! At least if you use Buffer. Facebook’s launched yet another app trying to get the teen market back I found a nice little app that claims to let you A/B test your YouTube videos And surprising research about the effect of negative emotions on your ads Today in Digital Marketing is brought to you by engageQ digital. Can we help you with YOUR brand’s digital marketing and social media? Let’s chat. http://www.engageQ.com or call 1-855-863-6233. More about Tod: Twitter @todmaffin • LinkedIn • Facebook • Web Site --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Thursday, October 3rd. I'm Todd Maffin. On today's show, now you can schedule Instagram stories from the desktop. At least if you use Buffer. Facebook has launched yet another app trying to get the teen market back. I found a nice little app that claims to let you A-B test your brand's YouTube videos. And surprising research about the effect of negative emotions on the ads that you are running. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Facebook has added again. They've launched a new app trying to win back the hearts of young adults.

It's called Threads. Actually, it's an Instagram spinoff more than anything, kind of like how Messenger was a Facebook spinoff. Actually, no, not kind of. Pretty much exactly like that. The app is a private message app for Instagram friends. But they're obviously hoping it'll dip a little bit into Snapchat and maybe a little bit into the TikTok world, because unlike Facebook Messenger, Threads opens up a front-facing camera immediately on launch.

After that, it's pretty much identical to Instagram's existing DM system. What does it mean for you and me as marketers? Not much for now, though perhaps that'll become another small placement on the main ads platform, much the way Messenger is a placement now. Great news if you use Buffer to line up your brand's or client's posts. This afternoon, they launched the ability to schedule Instagram stories right in their dashboard. Don't crack open the champagne quite yet. It's not completely automated. Stories don't automatically get pushed onto your brand's account.

Wouldn't that be nice? No, this workflow is like the way we all had to publish to Instagram before their API allowed direct publishing. So as a recap, you will upload the vertical video to Buffer, drop it onto a scheduling slot, and even put in a caption for the text overlay. Then when it comes time to post, you will get a notification on your phone, it'll copy the video and caption over to your phone, then you switch to Instagram and post manually. But still, having the reminder and the ability for brand managers to schedule and get that text overlay copy approved in advance, big change, and a welcome one.

Ran across a cool little app on Product Hunt today. It's called Film Hope, and it will let you A-B test YouTube thumbnails and titles. How does it do that? Actually, it's kind of clever. It taps into the API and switches out the thumbnails and titles over and over again throughout a 24-hour period, measuring the views that you're getting. Then when it finds a winner, it locks it in. But people, remember, like all these tools, when you hand your brand's credentials over via the API,

that tool has control over your brand's channel. So maybe test it out with your personal channel first. But it's worth a look. Filmhope.com Do you have a connected TV at home? Would you even know if you did? Might be something to Google a bit, especially given new research showing video ad impressions on connected TVs now make up half the number of impressions. Same period last year, that was only at 31%. The study by software firm Extreme Reach says connected TVs now have twice the video impressions than mobile devices.

I'm going to say that again in case you missed it. Connected TVs have twice the video impressions than mobile devices. So what exactly are we talking about here? Oh, we're talking about Amazon Fire, Roku, Apple TV, Google's Chromecast, to name a few. Even the so-called skinny bundles like Sling, Filo, Hulu, and YouTube TV run ads. As will the recently announced NBC Peacock service. I know we've all heard something like this in the Monday morning marketing meeting. Oh, we like the ad. It's fine. But does she have to be so sad? I feel like that'll just turn people off.

Well, a study out this week says don't obsess too much over the moods portrayed in your ads. In fact, sometimes the worse the mood, the better the conversions. The study was done by tech companies Myriad and Spark Neuro and found, quoting Media Post, sadness sells and disgust is surprisingly motivating, unquote. The study looked at a potato chip brand, Lysol Wipes, and Jeep Wrangler. Again, quoting from Media Post, What's been missing is a measurement of how viewers' feelings

might impact the way they see a brand in a particular scene. In the first part of the study, Myriad put products and signage into content likely to spark the specified emotions, then asked 900 participants to assess the impact. For food and drink brands, sadness is the most effective at raising a brand's value, with an average increase of 17%. A bag of chips inserted into a very sorrowful scene between a mother and child boosted valuation 27%. Some of the findings were really unexpected. Scenes that triggered joy, for example, generated a 16% lift in value for Lysol wipes, but generating disgust worked even better with a rise of 22%, unquote. So there you go. In the end, we are all horrible people.

Okay, lightning round. Not really marketing related, but in case you care, Google has added incognito mode to Google Maps if you'd like to temporarily hide your location history. Some chatter in the SEO forums today of another Google algorithm possibly rolling out today. Some SEO pros are reporting unusual fluctuations, especially among arts, news and sports websites. My buddy Steve Dotto did a great interview with the team behind Bonjoro today. They make an app that makes it really easy to make custom welcome videos to people who join your mailing list, among other uses. You can find his interview on his YouTube channel,

which is called Dotto Tech. Twitter has put out its October social calendar. They do this every month, and if your job includes coming up with social posts, it's always a good resource to have on hand. For instance, tomorrow is World Animal Day. You can find the calendar on Twitter's blog.

Well, tomorrow on the podcast, some tactics on getting your brand out on TikTok. And finally, apparently there are a lot of Overwatch fans out there, judging from a couple of emails that I got. So if you're on Xbox, find me. My gamertag is HappyRadioGuy, all one word, but fair warning,

I do not pocket faras. That is what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by engageq.com. If you're listening to this on the web and have not yet subscribed, you will find direct one-click links for your podcast app at bit.ly slash todayindigital. I'm Todd Maffin. Follow me on Twitter at toddmaffin.com, and I'll see you tomorrow.