Today in Digital Marketing - Meet the Influencer Behind the $2B Livestream Sale

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today,

Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, in the battle between Instagram and TikTok, has Zuckerberg taken the lead? Also, all that work you did for Core Web Vitals, did it even matter? TikTok has some new ways to share content. LinkedIn offers you a side hustle and how one influencer sold nearly $2 billion in product in a single day. It's Wednesday, October 27th, 2021. Happy World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

Starting point is 00:00:51 I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, Episode 492. Perhaps TikTok is not the golden child after all. The marketing blog Kreetopi conducted a study comparing Instagram Reels with TikTok video ads recently and the results might surprise you. They ran the same ad campaigns on the two

Starting point is 00:01:14 platforms between September 14th and October 5th with the same ad spend on each and the results Reels on Instagram outperformed TikTok and not by a little. In terms of reach, Reels had a reach of 389,000 as opposed to TikTok, which didn't even scrape 200,000. It was at 199,000. Reels impressions were almost triple TikTok's. Also, the Reels ad generated slightly more clicks, 36, than the TikTok ad at 28.

Starting point is 00:01:46 TikTok CPMs were $4.38, but Reels was just $1.67. It is worth mentioning that age could be a contributing factor to Instagram success. Statista estimates that 31% of U.S. Instagram users are between 25 and 34 years old, while 25% of TikTok users are between 10 and 19, with only 22% in their 20s. This study targeted the 25 to 44-year-old age group. As a result, Reels could have attracted more users for this study than TikTok. Also, quoting from the study, on TikTok, you cannot create an ad that's separate

Starting point is 00:02:25 from your posts. This means that after you connect your TikTok business account to Ads Manager, you can choose your ad only from the videos you use as TikTok posts. The ad will also have the same caption as your post, so you won't be able to personalize it. That being said, when you post on TikTok, be mindful of your caption because you may use it for a future ad as well. When doing the setup for Instagram Reels, you need to choose manual placement and then select Instagram Reels

Starting point is 00:02:54 so that your ad will show up as a Reels ad, unquote. Google told us early and told us often, get ready for core Web Vitals. It was to be a new ranking factor that could decide how high up the Google search results you get. Core Web Vitals was actually three metrics. How fast the biggest element on the page loads, how soon a user can interact with the page, and how much the page's layout jumps around.

Starting point is 00:03:23 So many digital marketers dutifully downloaded white papers, plugins, and set to work on improving their score. Then, about two months before the rollout, Google said, I mean, don't worry too hard about it. You shouldn't see any drastic changes to your ranking. It's been a few months now since Core Web Vitals has been part of this algo. Was our work worth it? In a fantastically detailed piece today

Starting point is 00:03:46 at Search Engine Journal, we get the answer, and that answer is, eh, not really. Quoting the piece, few SEOs have seen significant ranking changes, but that's only part of the story. I don't know anyone who has been impacted, even those that had a really bad score, major improvements, and no change, UK-based freelance SEO consultant Andy Drinkwater said on Twitter, speaking specifically in regards to impacts on the search rankings.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Drinkwater's experience seems common. Numerous other SEOs have also shared that the investment in improving CWV has yet to yield returns in these search engine result pages, unquote. Google rolled out other parts of its ranking algorithm around the same time, though, two spam updates, a core update in July, so it's important to consider those too. And changes you make to your site don't just affect Google, of course, they affect how real people experience your site. Quoting Search Engine Journal again, rankings are only one metric, and they do not necessarily reflect the full effect of improved UX for your business. Other metrics like conversion rate may benefit as you improve your site for users.

Starting point is 00:04:54 I have seen massive impacts on the conversion and cost savings fronts, but not on organic, said one freelance SEO and PPC consultant, unquote. It's not just anecdotal data, by the way. SEMrush has a preliminary story out saying it, quote, hasn't spotted any significant changes in rankings, unquote. That is at odds with a Systrix study released only two weeks after Core Web Vitals took hold, quote, Core Web Vitals has a measurable influence on the Google rankings. We saw that pages that meet all of Google's requirements rank one percentage point better than the average. Pages that failed at least one of the CWB metrics, on the other hand, ranked significantly worse. That's 3.7% worse on District's Visibility Index, unquote. So I don't know, 3.7% is not what I would use the term

Starting point is 00:05:44 significantly worse for, but regardless of which numbers you believe, the consistent theme here is that whatever ranking changes that may have occurred with that change has been fairly minor. Instagram has announced that all accounts, finally, will be able to add links in Stories with a link sticker. Previously, this feature was only available to verified accounts and accounts with a certain number of followers. Recently, Instagram Stories ditched the swipe up link in favor of link stickers. According to Instagram, the decision was made based on feedback from the community about how link sharing can benefit creators of all sizes to grow at the same rate as larger accounts. Quoting Instagram, we've heard from the rest of our community that they also want to share things that matter with their friends and family. Whatever you're into, from

Starting point is 00:06:32 cooking to volunteering or shopping, now you have a space to share in stories regardless of your account size, unquote. 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. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. The new Share to TikTok features enriches the content available on TikTok, diversifies the type of videos users can discover, and offers more editing choices for people to explore in addition to TikTok's built-in creative tools. Building on the existing ways that people can create and share content on TikTok, the expansion of the feature to include web, desktop, and console-based developers will further enhance the creative process and give people multiple avenues to create new original high quality content, unquote.

Starting point is 00:07:48 Additionally, the company announced a number of third party apps that will integrate with TikTok, including Clipchamp, Combo, Capwing and Mobcrush. Poshmark, a brand built on secondhand products, has announced a new program called Brand Closet that allows big brands to sell directly to its 80 million users. Poshmark's social selling features are specifically designed for its community of millennials and Gen Zs that big brands will now have access to, quoting the company. The Brand Closet program offers access to the following features and benefits to help brands thrive.

Starting point is 00:08:27 First, social merchandising. Drops soon feature to drive engagement and conversion. My shopper's tool to drive sales through one-on-one clienteling. Posh stories to showcase new arrivals and inspire shoppers. And listing videos to bring merchandise to life and more. Also, brand awareness and customer loyalty opportunities, official closet placement on brand page, targeted push and email campaigns to drive repeat engagement,

Starting point is 00:08:55 and branded posh parties to encourage brand discovery. And turnkey commerce and logistics solutions, enterprise-grade inventory management tools to support high-volume selling, integrated shipping, third-party logistics integration support, The revenue of Poshmark increased by more than 30% in the first half of 2021, but its operating profit turned negative with a loss of $23.6 million compared to a profit of $10.2 million in the first half of 2020. As a result of Poshmark's move, it positions itself as a friend to brands rather than a competitor. LinkedIn hopes to capitalize on the trend of remote work and has joined companies like Fiverr and Upwork that have created employment opportunities for freelancers with its new service marketplace. Users of LinkedIn will be able to market themselves for potential short-term freelance work. In addition, LinkedIn comes with other updates, new filters for permanent job searches like working remote, hybrid, or on-site.

Starting point is 00:10:04 These preferences can also be added to your open-to-work indicator. And you can verify your company's vaccination requirements. Service Marketplace will come into effect today. It is simple for users to set up, they say. First, go to your LinkedIn page, find Service Marketplace. That's the button you're looking for at the top that says Service Marketplace. And flag your freelance interests. LinkedIn has decided to do this at a time where candidates are not necessarily looking for permanent roles, but more temporary freelance roles. For the time being, LinkedIn will offer the service marketplace for free and will include 250 job categories with plans to expand to 500. So, live streaming commerce is still in its infancy, you say. Influencers aren't

Starting point is 00:10:51 really a thing yet, you say. Consider this. The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's annual shopping festival kicked off Monday with sales of $1.9 billion, all of which came from a single person, a top livestream influencer, widely known as the Lipstick Brother. Despite an economic slowdown, Chinese consumers spent big on the first day. Numbers compiled by an e-commerce data specialist show that this fellow, who earned his nickname by trying on makeup products, pre-sold $12 billion of the Chinese currency in items ranging from lotions to Apple AirPods. No, I'm not going to try to pronounce that currency. The rise of this fellow's popularity coincides with the recent ban

Starting point is 00:11:36 on effeminate men in Chinese TV and a call for broadcasters to promote a revolutionary culture, proving that your shade could be worth two billion dollars. Not much to say here, so I will talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Meet the Influencer Behind the $2B Livestream Sale

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