Today in Digital Marketing - Jumping Through Facebook Support Hoops

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, one marketer's horror story of getting locked out of his Facebook brand page and the steps he took to get back in within 48 hours. Plus, what Google says about those paid links in guest blog posts, how to advertise on the second biggest search engine in the world, and an update on my own project to give sequence email spammers a taste of their own medicine. It's Monday, January 18th, 2021. Happy Martin Luther King Day, America. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:35 A few important changes to the Facebook ad platform are happening tomorrow, Tuesday. The changes, all part of Facebook's preparation for the forthcoming changes to iOS devices. If you'll recall, Apple is moving the ad tracking opt-out from being a toggle switch buried in the settings to being a pop-up window that will ask users whether they really want that app they're using to track their data. Most people, of course, will say, no, don't track me. And that will, indeed, cause a ripple effect on all of our ad campaigns. The big change? Facebook will be removing 28-day click, 28-day view, and 7-day view attribution reporting from its web interface. It will still be available in the API for third

Starting point is 00:01:20 party tools. That doesn't mean, of course, that your ads won't continue to perform past seven days. Hell, you might have an ad convert a year after exposure. But Facebook will be pulling the 28-day reporting window off its ads manager. So export that data now on all your campaigns. It's reasonably easy to do. You go to the ads manager, then customize columns, add in all the attribution windows there. Then when you get the new report, export it. Jill David has a short walkthrough video and there is a link to it in the transcript of today's episode. And just before I went into the booth to record this episode, I noticed that some people on Twitter are reporting that their ads manager has already had the changeover happen. So definitely worth checking your own Facebook Ads Manager.

Starting point is 00:02:15 Quick, what is the second largest web search engine on mobile? Is it Bing? Yahoo? Nope. As of this month, it's DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that does not keep a log of your search history. I switched over to it a couple of months ago, as well as switching over to the Brave browser. And DuckDuckGo is pretty good. It's not as good as Google, but 95 times out of 100, it's just fine. And a week ago today, the search engine hit an impressive new milestone, 100 million searches in a single day. That's a 52% year-over-year increase. And if you're wondering,

Starting point is 00:02:53 yes, you can run ads on it. You do that through their partnership with Bing. Select all search networks when you're setting your campaign up. It seems every week I get at least one email from someone who's been locked under their Facebook account or business manager or ad account or some other horrible thing that Facebook has done. Here's what I got today. Quote, someone hacked my personal Facebook account, removed my business partner as an admin, and is now running ads on our platform for dog sweaters. It's funny if you're not me. I've canceled the credit card, emailed Facebook, opened up a support ticket through my business partner, uploaded my driver's license at least three times, no idea what to do next. The real kicker is I set up two-factor authentication and they bypassed it somehow and changed the phone number so now the code is going to a different phone, unquote.

Starting point is 00:03:41 And side note here, yes, two-factor authentication that is based on getting a code texted to your phone can be hacked. It's always best to use an actual authenticator app. These things happen all the time, unfortunately, but it wouldn't be terrible if Facebook had any kind of decent support. But most of the time, they don't. Most of the time, you're on your own. Most of the time. Not all. Friends, I have an actual success story to pass along. This from

Starting point is 00:04:08 my crazy talented friend Mark Blevis, who besides being an OG podcast pioneer, co-author with me of a book and the composer of the theme music of this very podcast, can now add one more credit to his CV. He's one of the few to actually get Facebook to resolve a big issue and in record time. He shared this in our Slack community over the weekend, and I thought, with his permission, I would read to you exactly how he did it. It is a little long, but Mark very graciously detailed the process he went through, so if it happens to you, you will have a starting point. So here's Mark's story. Quote, I have a Facebook support success story to share. It involves reclaiming the French version of our brand page set up long ago by an employee who apparently left the organization in 2017 without handing off control of the page.

Starting point is 00:04:56 It's been dormant since. Over the last couple of years, we have made several attempts to reach the unknown page admin with no success. Efforts to engage Facebook support for help have been fruitless. Facebook representatives only ever offered that they could help us take down the page as a trademark violation. Earlier this week, Todd suggested I start with the chat option at business.facebook.com. I was sure my staff had tried it probably several times with no success. However, it worked for me in the shortest time possible. From the business help center, I selected get started, which took me to a page with six options.

Starting point is 00:05:31 I selected business pages. I scanned the three columns provided and didn't see what I was looking for. Then I noticed and clicked on chat with a representative. What happens next? Seems like a Facebook miracle. After three or four exchanges, a poorly programmed bot gave up helping me and connected me with a representative. Within minutes, one joined the chat. While I waited for his first text contribution, my phone rang. It was him. He phoned me. I explained the situation. He explained that we would follow the admin dispute

Starting point is 00:06:04 process for which he would send me an email to detail the process. He explained that we would follow the admin dispute process, for which he would send me an email to detail the process. The email arrived in my inbox a few minutes later, and another four to five minutes after that, the rep called me to confirm I'd received the email. Total time from initiating the chat session with the bot to receiving the email, 18 minutes. I was incredibly meticulous with the documentation I sent. I was concise and extremely

Starting point is 00:06:27 specific. In all, my package was four documents. One, my letter asserting that the information that followed was true and accurate, an explanation of the situation, the action I wanted taken, explanation of the accompanying documents, and a scanned copy of my passport. Two, a scanned copy of a signed corporate document filed with the government, which clearly identifies the organization. Three, a downloaded copy of the official government-registered list of corporate directors. It lacks a visible signature, though, hence my including item number two. And four, a signed letter from one of the directors listed in item three, authorizing me to act on the organization's behalf on this matter.

Starting point is 00:07:11 I sent the package five hours after receiving the instructions. Eight hours later, I received confirmation of receipt of the package. In a follow-up chat, I was advised the process could take up to 48 hours longer if there are any questions or concerns about the documents. 45 hours after sending the package, Facebook had added me as an admin to the page. It is now in our control. Unquote. So there you have it.

Starting point is 00:07:38 It does seem like these days all support options lead to the chatbot, but at least in this case, it seems to have worked. Let's hope you never have to use it. I'm sure you get these spam emails all the time offering to write a blog post and sprinkle your preferred keywords in there. Not only doesn't it work, it's also against Google's terms and conditions. Google search engineer John Mueller. Yes, if you're paying people to create content with links, then you're paying people for those links, right? And if you're paying for links, then that would be something that would be against our webmaster guidelines. So that's kind of the easy answer there. Of course, if you're kind of, if these links do not

Starting point is 00:08:23 pass PageRank, if they have the nofollow attached to it or relsponsored attached to it, then that can be fine. Like that's essentially a way of advertising your website. It doesn't pass any value to your website, but it still helps users to find your content and kind of indirectly helps to promote your content and your website. One of the other irritating things with those spam emails is they often don't just send one. They send the first, then a couple of days later, they send one saying, just checking in. Then another one later, did you get my first email? And then I don't want to be a pest. Let me know if you saw my email. They're not sending these themselves. Of course, they're using some kind of BS spam software for it.

Starting point is 00:09:06 I'm sorry, Sequence Outreach Marketing Software. You may recall that I've been trying a little project of my own. I have set up my own Sequence Outreach Marketing Software, and I turn it loose on any of these morons that has put me on theirs. My first email says, Not interested, please stop emailing me. Then the next day, Hey, did you get my email? I wanted to check in. Then, I. Then the next day, hey, did you get my email?

Starting point is 00:09:27 I wanted to check in. Then, I hope I'm not bothering you, but did you get my email? Literally a taste of their own bullshit. I have 16 days back-to-back lined up for these people. And here's what I've learned. These people lack all sense of irony. They started to reply now, saying, I don't know why you keep emailing me.

Starting point is 00:09:49 And would you please stop emailing me so often? I did get your email. It's hilarious, really, because they truly have not put two and two together, that they are getting exactly the same treatment they give others. Anyway, I might be going to hell for doing it, but at least I will enjoy the ride down. And finally, a small change to the Facebook brand page layout you should know about. They are planning to remove the Our Story section from your page. It was introduced about four years ago as a

Starting point is 00:10:20 way of showcasing what your brand's values are or your origin stories. To be accurate, they're not actually removing it. They're just moving it. But it'll be buried under an additional information link, so not nearly as visible as it is now. Chitra Pali in Canada says, I'm new to the world of digital commerce and have found your podcast to be very helpful, knowledgeable and enjoyable in learning and keeping abreast with all the changes in the field of digital commerce. Thank you, Chitra. If you'd like a shout out to just rate and review this podcast, there is a quick link in the top of this episode's notes that will take you right to the review page of your app.

Starting point is 00:11:01 It really does help us get the word out about this podcast. Thank you so much, and I will see you tomorrow. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - Jumping Through Facebook Support Hoops

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