Today in Digital Marketing - Here Come the TikTok Journalists

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

Vine is back, baby! And it’s… underwhelming. Your Google ads are getting more clicks… here’s why you DON’T want that Pinterest launches augmented reality — a little late, but they’ll be a big player And LinkedIn makes its employee advocacy functionality free. Can you help spread the word? Review this podcast at https://ratethispodcast.com/today AND/OR click https://ctt.ac/o713H to preview a tweet you can publish 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. TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA: Tod’s web site: http://TodMaffin.com Tod’s agency: http://engageQ.com LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/todmaffin Twitter: http://twitter.com/todmaffin Instagram: http://instagram.com/todmaffin Facebook: http://facebook.com/tmaffin Mixer: https://mixer.com/HappyRadioGuy SOURCES: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-makes-it-possible-to-temporarily-remove-sites-from-search-results/345688/#close https://www.marketingdive.com/news/planters-halts-ripeanut-campaign-after-kobe-bryants-death/571202/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-reconsiders-paid-search-redesign-amid-criticism/571110/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/pinterest-launches-virtual-makeup-try-on-feature-starting-with-lipstick/ https://wersm.com/linkedin-brings-elevate-and-company-pages-together/ https://boards.greenhouse.io/buzzfeed/jobs/2059003?gh_jid=2059003 --- 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 Tuesday, January 28th, 2020. I'm back from holidays. I'm still sick. Happy National Film Day, Venezuela. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, Vine is back, baby. And it's underwhelming. Your Google Ads are getting more clicks.

Here's why you don't want that. Pinterest launches augmented reality. A little late, but they will be a big player. And LinkedIn makes its employee advocacy functionality free. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. I can't believe I'm about to say this sentence, but here goes. BuzzFeed is hiring TikTok journalists now. For real. And paying them. The job description is to produce at least one video

per month for TikTok and Instagram stories. No mention of Snapchat, curiously. Quoting the job description, the ideal candidate should be creative, passionate about the upcoming election, and eager to show what 2020 means for them and their peers. Oh, and one more thing, you have to be a teen. This job is only open to high school or first-year college students, which, I mean, I'm not a labor lawyer, but seems a little contrary to age discrimination legislation. Anyway, the job is remote, so they are looking for people across the U.S., but particularly in swing states.

The spiritual successor to Vine has launched. The app is called Byte, that's spelled B-Y-T-E. It's from good pedigree. The developer was the co-founder of Vine. And it basically is Vine, right down to video loops restricted to six seconds. Twitter bought Vine in 2012, then killed it in 2016.

The next year, this fellow announced he was developing this new version And, well, here we are And it's a little... underwhelming? I know, I know, it's new It doesn't yet have the advanced editing tools that TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat have But more than that, to me, it just feels a little... I don't know, trite? Is that the word? Vine was pretty cool in its day, but now that we've seen this short video trend expand to longer form, like how TikTok has, these six-second formats seem a little old school and not in that hipster retro way.

I think for Byte to be successful, it'll have to innovate a little more and change the game rather than just return to the way it was. Anyway, they say they will soon roll out a pilot program to help creators monetize content using a revenue share system. Since its launch late last week, Byte has been ranking at or near the top of the free apps in the iOS store. Google says it will keep iterating on its new search engine design. A recent UI change made some people feel that ads more closely resembled organic results. The redesign is said to have increased the number of ad clicks. That's not necessarily a good thing.

On Google, you mostly pay by the click. And if people accidentally click your ad thinking it's organic, maybe that's not what you're after. CNBC reports that Google's ad revenue growth has been slowing a bit, which could be behind the redesign decision. For its part, it said the redesign earlier this month was meant to visually match the look and feel that search results have on mobile. According to Statistia, 90% of desktop searches take place on Google. It took them long enough, but now Pinterest has entered the augmented reality space, perhaps one of the best matches for AR online. Their new feature is on mobile and will, of course, let users virtually try on lipstick. If you find one you like, the product page is just a swipe up away. Interestingly, Pinterest went out of its way to say that it won't be doing any other enhancement to users' faces when they're trying on lipstick.

Things like smoothing out your skin. They say they will be expanding beyond lipstick into more beauty products and categories down the line. If you market in the B2B space, you may want to know that LinkedIn is merging its Elevate employee advocacy program with company pages. LinkedIn says they're making this move partly because they noticed that when a page admin posts on their page, 30% of the engagement comes from their employees who are 14% more likely to share that content versus other content types. This new merging also means that the paywall for Elevate is gone, and that functionality will be free. All that said, LinkedIn says it's going to take them till the end of this year to get all of Elevate's features moved over. After that,

the standalone app will shut down. If you've ever wanted to remove one of your brand's webpages from Google's index, there really hasn't been that easy of a way. You could remove it from your sitemap, I suppose, or even list it in your robots.txt file, but Google would only pick up on that next time it scans your site. Now they're offering a more direct route through an update remove. If you've ever wanted to remove one of your brand's webpages from Google's index, there really hasn't been that easy of a way.

You could remove it from your sitemap, I suppose, or even list it in your robots.txt file, but Google would only pick up on that next time it scans your site. Now they're offering a more direct route through an updated removals section in your search console. So now you can temporarily remove specific pages from Google's index. But this isn't meant for keeping it out for just a few days or a few weeks. When you use this tool, the removal will last about six months. The tools will also let you clear the page data

that Google has cached and delete the description snippet that they have until the page is crawled again. I suppose sort of similar to forcing a refresh of page metadata on Facebook using its object debugger. So yes, friends, I'm back. My wife and I enjoyed a week on the beach in Mexico. We both went down there with terrible colds, colds which we still have, of course. And a special note to those of you who are subscribed to the premium episodes,

things are getting quite busy here at my agency. We've added three new clients in the last month. And so for the time being, I'm pressing pause on the premium episodes. If you are subscribed, there's nothing you need to do. You'll continue to have access to all the episodes up there and you will not be charged for future months. I am hoping to pick that up again down the line. So stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, thanks for supporting the podcast that way. If you value a daily digital marketing news show, please take a moment to rate and review

this podcast. It only takes a second and it really does help. There's a link in this episode's description that makes that an easy one click process. And if your brand could use some help with your social media content, engagement or digital marketing, check out our agency at engageq.com. Follow me on social links to my channels and our agency are in this episode's I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow.