Today in Digital Marketing - How the Instagram Explore Algorithm Works

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Some new numbers on the market penetration of both TikTok and Snapchat A dive into the algorithm of Instagram’s Explore tab Pinterest ecommerce — better late than never Those Twitter account names you’re squatting so people don’t do anything stupid with them MAY be expiring soon. And today is pretty much your last day to get your Black Friday ads approved by Facebook The Premium feed, with exclusive deep-dive interviews with social algorithm experts, is at http://patreon.com/todayindigital 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. Find Tod here: Twitter • LinkedIn • Instagram • Facebook • Web Site • Email [e-mail] --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

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. It is Tuesday, November 26th, 2019. Happy National Cake Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, some new numbers on the market penetration of both TikTok and Snapchat.

A dive into the algorithm of Instagram's Explore tab. Pinterest e-commerce, better late than never. Those Twitter accounts you've been squatting on so people don't do anything stupid with your brand name. Those accounts may be expiring soon. And today is pretty much your last day to get your Black Friday ads approved by Facebook. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Ten years ago, Google embarked on a mission to speed up the web. It figured that it was in a unique position to incentivize brands to make their web pages load faster because they could and did penalize slow loading pages in their all-important search engine. So has it worked? Is the web any faster 10 years later? The answer at the end of

this episode. Very interesting numbers from Social Fresh this week. This comes from their most recent state of social media presentation. They do these high level briefings for their brand clients each quarter. Among the findings, the average user of TikTok opens that app eight times a day and spends 46 minutes a day in there. Nearly seven out of 10 users are between the ages of 16 and 24. But don't count Snapchat out. Their numbers show that they reach 90%, 9-0, of all 13 to 24-year-olds. Some other interesting numbers.

Twitter users are 20% more likely to recall ads than on other platforms. Organic engagement on Instagram continues to decline. And 60% of Instagram users check in on that app's Explore tab at least once a month. Maybe that's a generational thing, because I think I've checked that tab maybe twice in my entire life. Speaking of the Explore tab on Instagram, how does it work? How does the algorithm figure out what to show each users and how can we as evil marketers take advantage of that? Instagram has now revealed the answers to, well, at least the first two questions, and has provided some detail on how their Explore algorithm works. Quoting The Verge,

to make its recommendations, the Explore system begins by looking at seed accounts, which are accounts that users have interacted with in the past by liking or saving their content. And from them, it selects 500 pieces of content. These candidates are filtered to remove spam, misinformation, and likely policy-violating content, and the remaining posts are ranked based on how likely a user is to interact with each one. Finally, the top 25 posts are sent to the first page of the user's explore tab.

The second takeaway is that by Instagram's own telling, the best way for users to shape what content they see in the explore tab is by interacting with the stuff they like. If you don't want to see certain types of posts, then your best bet is indeed to use the see fewer posts like this tool, which you can access by clicking the three dot menu in the top right corner of each post. The algorithm will notice. A little late to the e-commerce party. Pinterest is doing some serious catch-up.

They're releasing a new feature that lets people buy from a small group of online shops. The new feature is called the Pinterest Shop, and will have hundreds of what it calls product pins. These are small posts that have e-commerce functionality right in the pin themselves. Pinterest stock declined last quarter, but they actually grew revenue faster than Google or Facebook, a 47% growth in sales compared with the same quarter the previous year. But that's revenue, not profits. And all that said, Pinterest continues to lose money. This year, they expect to lose between $10 and $30 million. Another reminder, folks, Black Friday is now three days away. If you do not have your brand's ads already set up

and in the hopper for Facebook to review them, there is a very real chance that those ads will not get approved in time. This is different than previous years when ad approvals seem to be maximum a day long. Many, many digital marketers are finding that their ads are taking two, even three days to get approved by Facebook. And if you did put your ad in and it does get approved before Black Friday, remember, do not make any changes to that ad creative or the targeting, no matter what the client says, no matter what the boss says. Don't do it because that will send it back into a review cycle and you will almost assuredly miss the Black Friday window. Also, many people are reporting bugs with automated rules on Facebook.

So if you have rules that pause campaigns when, you know, something like the ROAS falls under 1.0 or whatever your rule is, it is entirely possible that those rules are simply not firing and that your campaigns are continuing to run at a loss. Until those rules bugs are fixed, you really shouldn't be relying on them at all. All right, time for the lightning round. If your brand uses Instagram's IGTV, you can now see reach numbers in there. Facebook's Creator Studio now lets you tag people in Instagram posts. The former CMO of Facebook is now running the digital strategy of Michael Bloomberg's run for the U.S. presidency.

TikTok says that they are hiring a head of marketing in the U.S. Sprout Social has fixed its Google Analytics bug, so now you can add your GA channels back to their platform. Looks like more people are seeing Facebook's test of having two rows of stories across the top of its website. Apparently, we are going to get stories, and we are going to like it, goddammit. And all advertisers globally can now buy YouTube's masthead either cross-screen or on TVs.

It is priced with the CPM model. Finally, in the lightning round, if you've been squatting on some Twitter handles for your brand to make sure that other people don't do anything nefarious with it, it's entirely possible you haven't logged into that account in a while. Twitter is now sending out emails warning people to at least log into the account within the next couple of weeks or so, or they risk losing that account. Oh, and for whether the web is indeed faster now, thanks to Google's efforts and bribery,

the answer is no. In fact, the web has become slower in the 10 years since Google started trying. Quoting Search Engine Journal, this appears to be an industry-wide trend, which indicates it's not necessarily due to the content management systems, but something else, like ad tracking and advertising scripts. Yes, friends, once again, it's always our fault. And finally, this tweet from brand and social strategist Moshi Zakian. Black Friday and

Cyber Monday is the toughest time of the year for ad buyers. Every day this week will be more stressful than the last. So please be mindful of our mental health. We're doing our best to make you money. I am heading out of town today to give a keynote speech about social advertising tactics. So no episode tomorrow. You can take that time to follow me on social media. You can find my links in this episode's description or at the bottom of todayindigital.com or check out our little agency, engageq.com. I'm Todd Maffin. I will see you on Thursday.