Today in Digital Marketing - 🎶 I’m a Can of Soup

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Google introduces call display for your Google My Business calls… a U.S. Supreme Court case could dramatically shift the ownership structures of TV stations… One big platform throws its weight behind Web Stories… and the TikTok duet that got duetted and duetted and may have become one of the single most impressive pieces of amateur musical theatre in history.Join our Slack community! TodayInDigital.com/slackNot subscribed yet? Subscribe links at TodayInDigital.com HELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST:Produced by: engageQ.com Advertising: RedCircle.com/brands and TodayInDigital.com/adsTranscripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio)TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA:Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffinTod’s agency: engageQ.comTikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffiTwitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin (game livestreaming)Source links and full transcripts at TodayInDigital.com Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, Google introduces call display for your Google My Business calls. A U.S. Supreme Court case could dramatically shift the ownership structure of TV stations. One big platform throws its weight behind web stories. And the TikTok duet that got duetted and duetted and may have become one of the single most impressive pieces of amateur musical theater in history. It's Tuesday, October 6th, 2020. Happy National Noodle Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Instagram is celebrating its 10th birthday today by doing what Instagram does best, copying other apps. They're launching Stories Map.

You know, like the Snapchat map. Well, kind of. It's actually a private map and calendar of the Instagram stories that you've shared over the last three years. And if you're thinking, wait a minute, I thought they deleted my stories after 24 hours. Nope.

They aren't publicly viewable, but Instagram still has them. There's some other things new as well. Some mental health tools and the IGTV shopping platform I reported on yesterday. They're also jumping on the iPhone customization trend and letting you change to a number of different app icons, including a rainbow-colored pride icon

and the old-school brown Polaroid camera icon. Perhaps though more in line with our work as digital marketers, they're introducing a kind of automated comment hiding feature. It will automatically hide comments similar to others that have already been reported. Like Twitter's hide replies feature, they'll still be viewable, but users will have to tap view hidden comments to see them. This is not in the API yet, of course, so all this will have to be done manually on your phone for the time being

and not through a third-party tool. The updated app is rolling out on iPhone and Android starting today. Google is testing what may end up being a very powerful measurement tool, the ability to see recent calls made to your company from Google Maps or Google Search via your GMB profile. There's no announcement on this yet, but people have seen it. Google does seem to already, in fact, have some help page documentation on it. So it's kind of a caller ID log, essentially, for calls that came from Google. It looks like call information will be stored for 45 days.

It's currently in beta and only available for a small group of U.S. businesses so far. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may shift the balance of media ownership in that country. The case is an appeal by the Federal Broadcast Regulator, called the FCC, and is about its previous attempts to loosen restrictions on a company's ability to own both a TV station and a newspaper in the same market. The FCC's board is appointed by the federal government, so, you know, right now it leans heavily to the right toward less regulation overall. But that said, they've been actually trying to change restrictions on cross-ownership for 17 years now. Each time they've tried, the courts have ruled against them. Media lobbyists are for

the change, of course, and consumer groups are arguing against it. Last year, an appeals court stopped their most recent attempt because it said they didn't consider how the change would affect ownership of media by women and minorities. Earlier, I told you about a new WordPress plugin that will let you create vertical stories for content on your website. Now we learn that one big platform is throwing its weight solidly behind web stories, and that platform is Google. Starting today, the Google mobile app will be showcasing web stories in its Discover section. That section is used by more than 800 million people each month. The new Stories carousel is now visible in the US, India, and Brazil.

You can make web stories from your site using that WordPress plugin if you use WordPress or apps like Make Stories or Newsroom AI. Or if you want to hardcore nerd your way into it, you can even hand code those stories. Which brings us to the recently ignored but never forgotten lightning round. If you market a podcast and you're seeing a drop in downloads, and that drop is about 3%, it's probably because of a change to the measurement methodology used by the IAB.

Specifically, downloads from the Apple Podcasts app on Apple Watches are no longer counted. A couple of rebrandings in our world. Bing has a curvier logo. It is also now called Microsoft Bing. Come on. And G Suite, that's the business version of Gmail and Drive and Docs and all that. Google now calls that Google Workplace. Facebook is killing off a post type.

And that post type is videos. No, I'm kidding. Actually, it's notes. Remember notes? They were kind of a rich text format similar to like an article on medium.com. People in our digital marketing world did use that format for longer things like, say, contest rules. They've been sunsetting this for a month now but it will disappear entirely on October 31st. And if you use the Ahrefs SEO tool and are seeing some big changes in your organic traffic estimates, they say not to worry, it's a bug, and they are fixing it.

And finally, the other day I reported on the new Duet formats, available now in TikTok, and said we're probably going to see some pretty creative uses of them. And we have. And one of the best I've seen has been happening for the last few days now. It all started with this guy. And we're fighting in a grocery store. And I love you, but I don't know if I like you.

Obviously a musical theater fan, he's green-screened himself into a grocery store aisle, hitting all the musical metaphors, the emotional moments. Fine. Still, we're fighting. He screens himself into a grocery store aisle, hitting all the musical metaphors, the emotional moments, the high notes for the diva tenor, and then this lady duetted it. And we're hiding in a grocery store, and I love you, but you don't know what I love. Then this girl duetted their duet and added captions. The first guy is now dad, the second lady was mom, and this girl is labeled child.

And we're fighting in a grocery store. Then more and more people started adding themselves to the song. An employee, a Karen asking to speak to the manager, the squeaky wheel on a grocery cart, the automatic door chime, the produce mist sprayers, a can of soup, who literally just sings the line, I'm a can of soup. Remember, these are people recording themselves on top of others

who had recorded themselves on top of others. So kind of like how a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy tends to become illegible at some point, by the time it got to the guy doing the part of the PA system, the audio was starting to fall apart a bit. And as it picked up steam, new variations of it, new additions to the ever-growing duet were showing up on People's For You feed. This series of videos was then shared on Twitter, where it took a life of its own there, with comments like,

And, And, I need to know if mom and dad are still together. Act two, please. And, amazing. Some things are worth the Chinese government having all your info. I've said it before, and I will say it again. If you think the only marketing opportunity

for your brand on TikTok is advertising to 14-year-olds, you have clearly never been on TikTok. Bit of a heads up, episodes this week will be a bit shorter than usual. We are having a provincial election here in British Columbia, and during the elections I've been doing long-form interviews with the candidates for a little regional hobby podcast that I do.

So all this week I'll be doing those interviews, then producing the shows and stuff. And of course I have a real job too, running a digital engagement agency. So most of my time is actually in there. Anyway, I'll try to get the most important stuff in. But like I used to say, when I was on the speaking circuit, no audience has ever booed me for them getting to the bar faster. Talk to you tomorrow.