Today in Digital Marketing - How American Politics May Hurt Your Holiday Online Sales

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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. Today, American politics may be blamed for your poor online sales.

Starting point is 00:01:05 Twitter turns verification back on. Oh, wait, cancel that. It's off again. TikTok integrates two helpful platforms into their ads suite. And YouTube's analytics just got a touch better. It's Monday, August 16th, 2021. Happy Restoration Day, Dominican Republic. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Could we be heading for a more modest holiday buying season than we all

Starting point is 00:01:31 thought was coming? Early data from the University of Michigan is showing that consumer sentiment in the U.S. fell from 81 points in the last month to just over 70 points early this month. Drops like this are usually followed by reduced spending in the following months. To put that in perspective, this is the lowest rating in a decade and well below what economists say they expected. What is the consumer sentiment metric? It is taken from a telephone survey of at least 500 households and is based on how people answer questions about personal financial conditions and their feelings about the general economy

Starting point is 00:02:08 in both the near and long term. I should note that for phone surveys, you know, most of the time, these rely on landlines. And these days that means a much older skewed audience. How many people under 55 do you know who have landlines and are happy to sit through a phone survey? What's causing the volatility? Apparently politics.

Starting point is 00:02:29 This month's data showed that Democrats actually averaged 93 points, Independents 67 points, and Republicans just 46 points. The study's authors theorize that this is all about the huge jump in COVID-19 cases in the U.S. caused by the Delta variant. The country is currently averaging 129,000 new daily cases. That is up 700% from a month ago. The on-again, off-again saga of Twitter's blue check marks is off again. The coveted blue check mark, of course, shows that Twitter has manually verified that account

Starting point is 00:03:08 to be belonging to the actual person or brand. At least that's how it's supposed to work. Last month, the researcher found a whole bunch of fake bot accounts that Twitter had given the verification badge to, somehow making it through what Twitter said would be more of a thorough review process. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, Twitter acknowledged the error and deleted the accounts, but the case also provided some additional insight into how such a mistake could have occurred

Starting point is 00:03:34 and how Twitter's new system could still erroneously approve the wrong profiles. The problem, it seems, is that Twitter's verification process is now largely automated, with humans only intervening in the final stages. That means if spammers can work out what the system is looking for, they can likely push through false accounts and gain approval without those profiles meeting the new requirements. And so, today, Twitter announced it would once again stop verification applications until it fixes things. It has been a long time coming, but finally, today is the day when everyone can get DMs from their brand's Instagram account in their third-party tool of choice. It has been an enormous gap for so long. Until now, no legit third-party tools could show you your Instagram DMs because Instagram didn't put it in the API. Last month, they added it, but only turned it on for accounts with large

Starting point is 00:04:36 followings. Today, they emailed developers to let them know that as of now, developers can put Instagram DMs into their platforms for all businesses on Instagram, regardless of the account's follower count. Yes, this only applies to business accounts, but in theory, you should start seeing your brand's DMs in your tool of choice. Another sign that social video content will become a larger part of all of our campaigns. The company that owns Reader's Digest has bought social video company Jukin Media for a reported $100 million. You may not know Jukin Media by name, but I'll bet you know its properties. Fail Army, People Are Awesome, The Pet Collective, Weather Spy.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Together, their viral video channels get two billion minutes of monthly views they make part of their money licensing that video and so far say this year they've licensed more than 2 000 clips so this deal gives them access to a huge database of ugc user generated content a database so mature now that they've actually got a sub catalog of about 60 000 brand safe clips like that rat dragging a piece of pizza into a new york subway so mature now that they've actually got a sub-catalog of about 60,000 brand-safe clips, like that rat dragging a piece of pizza into a New York subway. Quoting Marketing Dive, UGC continues to be of importance to brands, agencies, and publishers looking to stay on top of viral trends in a cost-effective fashion.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Video, in particular, has remained a dominant category as people spend more time on apps like TikTok and Cut the cord in favor of over-the-top streaming. The Duke and Media deal is a bet by trusted media brands that those habits will endure over the long term and can increasingly be linked to other areas of business like its editorial first-party data and commerce operations. It's part of a larger transformation strategy where trusted media brands is vying to become a billion-dollar business, Forbes reported. So that's certainly a good deal for Trusted Media.

Starting point is 00:06:32 What about us lowly agency and brand marketers? Probably no real change here. This acquisition is clearly about them gaining a revenue channel, not locking up that database so nobody else can use those clips except them. I hope. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

Starting point is 00:06:59 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. A couple of nice additions to YouTube today for people who publish content there. First, real-time analytics cards in the YouTube Studio mobile app are getting improved at the video level and the channel level. Specifically, there are now dedicated tabs for reach

Starting point is 00:07:31 and engagement data. Until now, all we had in that real-time section was a general overview. Also, the mentions inbox is now available in YouTube Studio, the desktop version only for now. This will list all the other videos where your channel was mentioned. And there are now hashtag autocomplete suggestions based on what it thinks your video is about and what's trending. This is similar to how you see it everywhere else, like TikTok and

Starting point is 00:07:54 Twitter. You start typing the hashtag and YouTube will pop up some suggestions. This is available on both mobile and desktop. And finally, dark mode is now available for YouTube Studio and desktop. And finally, Dark Mode is now available for YouTube Studio on desktop. As brands and agencies cautiously dip their toes into the TikTok waters,

Starting point is 00:08:14 some are finding that it's not as easy as just cross-posting their current video assets. More than any social channel before it, I think, TikTok has its own language, its own memes, its own culture. That culture can be hard to understand if you don't spend a decent amount of time there. Now, TikTok is offering a bit of extra help with its latest creative guide for brands, basically a 101 course of how to build a business presence on the platform.

Starting point is 00:08:37 According to the company, to win on TikTok, businesses should tailor creative to the platform's unique characteristics. But TikTok creative does not have to be complicated. In fact, it can be much more simple and cost effective than other channels. This how-to guide provides background, best practices, and tips and tricks to help you get the most out of TikTok's creative solutions, unquote. And the guide does have some pretty detailed advice on videos, everything from recommended frequency to best practices with their call to action button. They also include a very helpful template showing TikTok's safe zones for your video clips. If you've ever done a TikTok, you'll know that much of the screen is covered up by various UI elements, buttons, comments, tabs.

Starting point is 00:09:15 This way you can produce content knowing it won't be covered up. Given that we're getting close to the holiday season, at least for planning, this might be a good time to peek in. We have created Thank you. Well, today at 3 o'clock Pacific, the first in our series of live TikTok shows called Rant Reviews, where I review people's websites live and make smart-ass comments about poor conversion rate optimizations. Think Jim Cramer, like from Mad Money, but all about Website UX. Oh, and with this button. I was really excited to get that button.

Starting point is 00:10:12 This week we will be doing it every day at 3 o'clock Pacific. Every day. So follow our TikTok channel. It's just at Today in Digital. Home automation update. Installed a HomeKit-enabled door lock today, so now we get a notification whenever it locks or unlocks. We can send time-limited entry codes to people. We can automate it a bit.

Starting point is 00:10:27 So it'll lock automatically after 15 seconds or unlock it as we get close to the door. I'm actually trying to figure out a way to write it off as a medical expense. Since my wife Jocelyn is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair full-time. But I don't know if I can stretch it that far. We'll see. That's it for today. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - How American Politics May Hurt Your Holiday Online Sales

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