Today in Digital Marketing - Loops, Not Lawyers

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, February 7th. Today, new tools from Facebook may make managing your brand page easier. Pinterest revenue is up, its user base is way up, so why did its stock crash? How bricks and mortar stores are forcing consumers to cough up their phone number, TikTok's no music test is a complete bomb, and why your brand's legitimate Google reviews may have been taken down. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead on Today in Digital Marketing. Meta is giving social marketers some new tools to combat trolls in the comments section. Facebook Today introducing more comment moderation tools and controls.

Starting point is 00:00:38 Now brands and creators will be able to search comments by keywords on their posts, including emojis, commenter names, dates, and so on. Users will also be able to take bulk actions like liking or hiding posts in bulk. These new tools will be available in the Comments Manager section in Facebook's Professional Dashboard. The company is also launching new statistics in Moderation Assists Activity Log, which moderates new comments on creators' posts using criteria they set in advance. With the update, creators will have access

Starting point is 00:01:09 to certain moderation stats, like the number of comments hidden in the last 30 days. You'll also be able to view what criteria are met for hiding comments with the inline comment preview and criteria tag in that activity log. Pinterest now has 450 million active users. The company posted its Q4 report yesterday, adding 5 million more active users during its fourth quarter. The socialmediatoday.com noted that's a good sign for the platform, which lost users in

Starting point is 00:01:42 early 2021. Now, Pinterest is steadily building back up again as it continues to push products around shopping behaviors, including video content. According to the report, Pinterest's Idea Pins feature, that's its Stories-like option, has performed well on this front. The format has helped boost the platform's appeal to younger audiences, with the company reporting that Gen Z was the fastest-growing demographic on the platform, increasing by double digits year-over-year. Pinterest said that nearly half of all new videos pinned in Q4 were by Gen Z users. The company also said that that generation's

Starting point is 00:02:17 sessions grew much faster year-over-year than sessions from older demographics. In terms of revenue, Pinterest reported a 4% year-over-year increase to $877 million. Their stock was down yesterday on the results, but that was more about missing what analysts had expected than anything else. While the company's revenue is steadily rising, its revenue from regions outside the US and Canada

Starting point is 00:02:38 are still lower. How do you get shoppers to cough up their mobile numbers? Lock away the products they're trying to buy. For years, retail locations have tried a variety of ways to keep theft rates down. One common method among high-priced items is to lock them in a case. But that may be pushing away customers who don't want to wait for store employees to unlock them. The tech company Indyme says customers will only wait an average of two minutes to get assistance with locked away items, and nearly a third won't

Starting point is 00:03:09 even bother and will just turn to Amazon to get it instead. That's where Indyme's new Freedom Case comes in. It's a locked case too, but in this case, lets customers unlock it themselves once they cough up their phone number or other personal information like an image of their face. Currently, the Freedom Case is being tested at major retailers like Lowe's, Kroger, Safeway, and Family Dollar. Once they enter their cell number, they get a PIN code to open up the Freedom Case, or they can still ask a store associate for assistance. The tech is also equipped with an AI-powered camera that monitors normal shopping behaviors and will automatically call for staff if something seems amiss. According to the company,

Starting point is 00:03:51 customer information is never used for any other purpose other than unlocking the case, which, you know, I'll just say what we're all thinking here. Sure, it's not. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover Sure it's not. breaches and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. 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

Starting point is 00:04:52 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. A month-long test conducted in Australia by TikTok seems to have proven that people can't live without music in their videos. The Guardian reporting today that the test has resulted in many of its Australian users having sound completely removed from their videos, not just the music. One creator told The Guardian that about 60% of her back catalog has become unwatchable for a significant part of her audience.

Starting point is 00:05:28 As a result, some Australian TikTokers are considering dumping the app entirely. The report noted that several large TikTokers have been approached by other short-form video competitors and offered lucrative deals for exclusive content. Some now say this test may have been the final straw and may indeed make the switch. And that will bring us to the lightning round. TikTok is dominating YouTube now when it comes to kids and teens app usage. According to a new study, kids in 2022 saw their average daily use of TikTok climb to 107 minutes, average per day. That is 60% longer than the time they spent watching content on YouTube, which was 67 minutes. Hootsuite has released a new workbook for marketers, and by workbook, I mean coloring book.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Apparently, this is meant to help you with writer's block. You'll find fill-in-the-blank illustrations based on memes and other visuals that social marketers can color between screen time, I guess. There's also advice from the company's social media team, like how to work with creators, how to go viral, and how to connect with Gen Z. Google says that its latest attempt to filter out local reviews went too far. In a statement, the company said, in the last few weeks, our protections took down more than expected policy-abiding reviews from a set of local guides, unquote. They say they plan to restore any affected reviews over the coming weeks. And finally, music is to TikTok, of course, as Home Depot is to dads.

Starting point is 00:07:00 And the home improvement chain continues to benefit from a TikTok trend that kind of randomly came their way. Back in 2019, a college student uploaded a TikTok of him dancing in his dorm room to the Home Depot theme. Now, if you haven't heard their theme, it's kind of a banger. Years ago, the brand may have sent a cease and desist letter to that guy. That was, after all, the way we kind of handled that stuff. But no, upon seeing that post go viral, Home Depot's social media manager uploaded their theme song to SoundCloud and other platforms so people could use it. And use it they did. Home Depot themselves then jumped in and hired a musician and influencer to recreate the theme using only items found in the store. That video remains the most watched video on Home Depot's TikTok channel, and it continues to be one of the most popular songs on TikTok, yes,

Starting point is 00:08:16 even four years later. Go search for the Home Depot beat on TikTok and you'll get hundreds, thousands of videos of the song playing in the background as people, specifically dads, complete tasks from installing new products in the home to getting their families ready for travel. Remember the mantra of the influencer generation, friends first, lawyers last. You know, social media managers put so much thought into the content that they post, the timing, matching the right content to the right social platform, the words, trying to be clever. We were reminded at our agency today that sometimes clever isn't always the best solution. We don't do organic content or ads. We are just strictly an engagement and moderation agency.

Starting point is 00:09:02 But one of our clients put out a post on social media. Literally all it said is, who do you think's going to win the Super Bowl? And, um, you're not going to like this. Record engagement. I'm telling you, sometimes we overthink our job. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:09:20 See you tomorrow. I can take my eyes off you. How can you See you tomorrow. 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.

Today in Digital Marketing - Loops, Not Lawyers

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.