Today in Digital Marketing - Instagram is Basically TikTok Now. RIP Instagram.

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Google Ads may face some competition for search budgets. Now that TikTok has search advertising, Instagram takes a crack at TikTok's feed with their own redesigned feed. Why are consumers leaving fewer reviews? And Meta hates your clickbait. It's Monday, March 28th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. When women are shown in ads, as a general rule, they convert better.

Starting point is 00:00:53 Not in all cases, but in many. More so than putting men in. But that doesn't mean people trust those brands using women in their creative. According to a new study, the top three brands whose ads respondents felt best represented progress for women in advertising are all, as it turns out, makeup brands. CoverGirl, L'Oreal, and Maybelline. The study found consumers are more likely to trust products and services related to nurturing household chores and clothing when women are featured in their advertising.

Starting point is 00:01:29 That said, the survey, which polled 2,000 U.S. women and men, also found that the representation of women in advertising is expanding among products and services as brands in home improvement, tech, automotive, and financial services also benefit from featuring women. The data suggests that if you aren't representing women in your ad campaigns, it may be time to start. Three out of four respondents want to see messages of female empowerment in advertising, and 85% believe these depictions have a positive impact on real women. More than 70% answer that they expect brands to take a stand on societal issues,

Starting point is 00:02:03 including the problems women face. Remember, these studies are from a mixed gender study. The study was done by Engine Insights. Well, the TikTokification of Instagram continues. Several changes being tested this week as the app tries to keep up with its younger competitor. Here's another change to keep in mind for content managers. Instagram is now testing a new fully immersive feed, which features, yes, a single, very TikTok-like, vertical, full-screen scroll feed with all the content, including reels,

Starting point is 00:02:40 stories, and even regular posts in one place. The test feed does appear to be a bit chaotic, but the update could enable algorithmic improvements based on user response to each post instead of the current format, which presents things in multiple different ways and displays more than one post at a time. It will be interesting to see whether the experiment could give your content a boost or if it's going to just keep users away from using the app. Personally, to me, this reeks of desperation. Meanwhile, TikTok is testing a new ad option for marketers. The platform has launched

Starting point is 00:03:17 search ads in beta for some advertisers, which could provide a new opportunity to get in front of people with high purchase intent. Here's how it works. When users search the platform for keywords, select partners can show them ads in the results. The new search ads will be labeled sponsored and will appear above the others searched for terms listed on the search results page, which generally means they'll appear within the first four results displayed. Advertisers in the test group also have access to TikTok's data, which includes a list of the search terms that drove clicks to their campaigns. We marketers are always looking for a way to get our content to the top of Google. The real top, of course, are ads, but I'm talking about the organic method.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Well, if your content is lacking, maybe try the format. Google appears to now be displaying its Visual Stories component on mobile in the US. The feature shows a collection of web stories that it algorithmically selects based on the user's queries. These stories are like Instagram stories or Snapchat's OG version, but they're hosted on your brand's own website. So how can you get your content to rank within this new visual stories block? Google's best practices include keeping your title shorter than 70 characters, making sure Google can find your story, of course, you know, making sure the text stuff is all in place. Make sure you're not including a no index attribute in your story. This, of course, blocks Google from indexing the page.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Add your stories to your website's sitemap and make sure that your web stories follow the metadata guidelines. So while Google works on bumping stories up the ladder, it also seems to be doing some spring cleaning. The company has announced that it will be deprecating the URL search parameters tool in Search Console in one month. The URL tool allowed site owners to have some control over how Google crawled their site by specifying how certain parameters affect the content on their site. Google confirmed that going forward, you won't need to do anything to specify the function of URL parameters on your site

Starting point is 00:05:23 as, quote, Google's crawlers will learn how to deal with URL parameters automatically. We recently reported about Yelp's surplus of stale reviews. Well, apparently, it's a common theme. Consumers are just leaving fewer reviews. New data indicates that even Google review growth is declining. Similar to Yelp, Google review growth peaked several years ago and declined through the last year. The study found that regardless of industry or brand, the trend was relatively consistent. Annual growth in reviews from 2015 to 2017, followed by a decline from 2018 to 2021. Premium newsletter subscribers today are seeing a chart, and let me tell you, it is just, it looks like the bottom just drops out of it.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Although Google's 2020 growth exceeded Yelp's by almost one-fifth, it was still down significantly from previous years, and last year, it saw a year-over-year decline of 18%. Why are consumers leaving fewer reviews? The analysis suggests several factors could contribute to this. Reviews happening on other platforms like OpenTable, or they're being done on social media platforms like TikTok. It looks like fewer young people are interested in leaving reviews at all, and people are increasingly not even trusting them. The survey was done by Near Media.

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Starting point is 00:07:25 need to easily manage your leads and customer accounts from one login. Plus, you get access to over 250 curated products to resell to local businesses. Go from a struggling agency to a superhero agency today. Learn more by booking a demo at vendasta.com slash superhero today. That's vendasta.com slash superhero. Meta is coming for your clickbait videos. The company announcing it will now detect and penalize video clips that employ watchbait video tactics. Those baity tactics include using things like withholding key information, sensationalizing content, or misleading viewers about the true nature of the video. And why? Well, because it annoys people. To help you with what not to do, Mita has some examples of watchbait titles.

Starting point is 00:08:14 His reaction was priceless. This is the worst way to wake up. And your bestie just sent a crazy message to your girlfriend. The company says that thumbnails, titles, or video descriptions that suggests something is going to happen in the video but doesn't can also annoy viewers. The platform states that you should make video posts that inform and set accurate expectations. Pinterest is stepping up its creator talent poaching efforts in the U.S., the platform announcing today that it is more than doubling its initial investment in its creator fund

Starting point is 00:08:52 with an additional $1.2 million in cash grants, ad credits, and other resources for underrepresented groups. The program consists of four cycles, one for each quarter, based on themes, fashion and beauty, wellness, lifestyle and home, and food. They plan to expand the creator fund into additional markets later this year. What does this mean for marketers? Nothing directly. It's not like you'll be getting any of this cash, but it may very well bring influencers over to try their hand at Pinterest, which could mean more emphasis for all of us to place on that platform. If nothing else, move it to your watch and wait list if it's not already there. So I embarked on a new, I don't know, hobby, masochistic endeavor. I'm trying to move all

Starting point is 00:09:41 of my domains onto this free server that I have. I have this like lifetime plan. And it basically lets me host as many websites as I want with as much traffic as I want, as much storage as I want. And normally those servers are pretty bad, but this one's actually really good. I got a lifetime deal for it. So I'm trying to move all of the agency sites. We don't do website development for clients. So my site, the agency site, eventually the podcast site. It's such a mess. Domain management, DNS servers, SSL certificates, it's all like just so needlessly complicated. But soon, I won't have to pay every month. I'm very much looking forward to that.

Starting point is 00:10:19 All right, talk to you tomorrow. Free, yeah. La, la, la, la, la, la, la.

Today in Digital Marketing - Instagram is Basically TikTok Now. RIP Instagram.

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