Today in Digital Marketing - No-One Else Was In The Room Where Tweets Happened

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, March 28th. Today, Amazon drops the return bomb on customers, Twitter removes any hope of organic reach, is Utah's new law marketers' midnight nightmare, a huge player kills off its metaverse plans, and Google is the latest to introduce the paid blue checkmark. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today, digital marketing. There was a time when we marketers and social media managers griped about how organic reach doesn't exist anymore. It's not true. Technically, you can still post on your brand's Facebook page without spending a penny and reach some people, not many, and certainly not the vast majority of your followers. But your reach wasn't literally zero if you chose to not pay. Soon, though, organic reach will be completely eliminated at Twitter unless you pay.

Starting point is 00:00:54 Elon Musk yesterday said that starting April 15th, if you have not paid for the blue checkmark, your content will not show up on Twitter's For You timeline. Like, at all. And the price to be seen by an unknown, and truth be told, probably shrinking number of Twitter users? $1,000 US a month. That's the price of verified organizations, the brand version of the blue checkmark. Musk says the move is to fight off bots taking over, but in the same announcement said that bots are welcome. If they too pay to be verified and, you know, don't impersonate humans.

Starting point is 00:01:29 Also being taken away if you choose to not pay for the blue check mark, the ability to vote in Twitter polls. Musk has fashioned himself as a free speech warrior and said he bought Twitter because he thought celebrities and politicians had more of a voice on the platform than regular people and he would stop it.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Except, according to a new report from Platformer, not only has he not stopped the amplification of large accounts, Twitter actually now has a secret VIP list whose content is getting boosted over everyone else. Internal documents show that the platform has maintained a list of 35 celebrities and public figures whose accounts it offers increased visibility. The list includes LeBron James, Joe Biden, YouTube star Mr. Beast, and yes, Elon Musk. In other crazy Twitter news today, tweet replies no longer show who users are replying to. Now, when looking at replies, rather than seeing the username of who the person is responding to, you'll see the replies under the tweet, just like before, but without any connection to the original tweet. Some users have speculated this might be a bug. Media attempts to contact Twitter have once again been met with an autoresponder bot that emails back a poop emoji.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Meta is testing two new ad tools for retailers. First, Manager Partner AdsLite. This lets merchants partner with retail media networks through their CPG partners to provide new options for ad personalization. Retailers can then use their own CRM data to improve targeting via a media network or partner. Socialmediatoday.com notes that it's really meant for bigger retail brands, but could provide a useful way to improve targeting amid Apple's iOS 14 restrictions on audience data, particularly for stores that stock larger brands. And local inventory ads.

Starting point is 00:03:25 This lets businesses dynamically target users near their stores with product availability and pricing, which of course would depend on the tracking enabled on consumer devices, but could be another way to reach local audiences. Here's an interesting strategy for combating product returns. Tell customers not to buy it. Amazon has started adding a frequently returned tag to listings as a warning to consumers, which recommends checking product details and customer reviews before purchasing.

Starting point is 00:03:58 The move comes as returns have become a costly problem for the e-commerce industry. Amazon's return policy generally lets customers return items 30 days after purchase. While its policy helped make free returns a norm for online retailers, the report notes it's also resulted in mounting costs for sellers. According to sellers, customers who purchase from them on Amazon are more likely to return items than those who shop through other channels. This is likely due to its easy checkout process and prime shipping. As a result, sellers are dealing with mounting costs of processing returns and unfulfillable inventory. As the biggest e-commerce company in the world grapples with an economic slowdown, the new return tag could also serve as a warning to

Starting point is 00:04:42 third-party sellers to identify the reasons for their high return rates and reduce the number of items that customers send back. Utah has become the first American state to enact laws regulating children's use of social media, although the impact is likely to be somewhat limited for marketers. Two bills were recently signed into law and are set to take effect next year. The first requires social media platforms to verify a user's age,

Starting point is 00:05:11 imposes social media curfews on children between 10.30 at night and 6.30 in the morning, and mandates parental access to their accounts. Some analysts say that the curfew could, in theory, raise CPMs and cause inflation for ads between those times, though whatever effect is likely to be small. What's not so small? Social platforms will be prohibited from collecting children's data, and you will be prohibited from displaying targeted ads to them. The second law requires social media companies to ensure their platforms don't cause addiction among minors who can sue platforms if they feel harmed. As a result of the law's age-gating provision, Adweek notes that residents of all ages will also experience inconveniences and privacy concerns. Websites may require adults to prove their age before they can use them, which companies may feel

Starting point is 00:06:00 obligated to create and maintain new databases about adults and minors. Meanwhile, other American states, like Connecticut, New Jersey, and Texas, are considering similar legislation. 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. One last story before we head to the lightning round. Meta continues its push to sliding into DMs for social sharing.

Starting point is 00:06:46 The company is testing a new feature on Instagram called Save Posts with Friends that lets users create a private discussion based on a post via a collaborative collection that anyone in the chat can contribute to. Rather than sharing a link or sharing content with just one person, this offers users another way to engage with your brand's content, potentially expanding your audience reach. All right, let's do it. Google Ads is testing verification badges now. The tech giant is experimenting with displaying blue badge icons and labels on some search ads for brands and advertisers who have been verified by the company. Disney has axed its Metaverse division as part of a layoff plan. Sources say all 50 members of the team have lost their jobs. As a result, Disney's Metaverse strategy has been abandoned,

Starting point is 00:07:37 according to people familiar with the matter. Zoom introduced new AI-powered features yesterday, including AI-powered meeting summaries, prompt-based email responses, including AI-powered meeting summaries, prompt-based email responses, and whiteboard generation. They also added a meeting scheduler that integrates with email and calendar apps, as well as a virtual co-working space called Huddles. And Google has killed off most of Fitbit's social features, including adventures, challenges, and player-earned trophies and badges. The company is also removing the open group social networking feature.

Starting point is 00:08:08 Several users have confirmed that the features are now indeed gone. So we are using ChatGPT in the production of the show now, not for much, just tiny bits. But one of the things that it does is we give it a list of all of our stories we have planned for that day, the lineup. And we tell it to write the billboards, those are the things that get tweeted out on Twitter, and the little here's what's coming up on the show stuff that goes

Starting point is 00:08:36 out on our Slack channel. And let me tell you, there is an art to writing these prompts. You can't just say rewrite the headlines, because it'll... What it ends up giving you is stuff very earnest. So this is our prompt now. It's a little long. Rewrite the headlines from the list of articles below so that they have fewer than eight words. Write with an objective tone as a journalist would and avoid using sales language like innovative and revolutionizes. Do not use a bulleted list. I kept putting it in a bulleted list. It was a problem for us

Starting point is 00:09:03 formatting. Add emojis at the start of each line. Put a hashtag in front of company or brand names. Use sentence case. It does about three out of four of those. For some reason, it just is not doing the hashtags anymore. It's kind of hit or miss. Anyway, interesting to play with. See you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:09:24 The new supermarket checkout terminals have microprocessors inside them. They're now called point-of-sale terminals. Each one is a computer in its own right, and they have the power to do a whole lot of new things the mechanical cash registers couldn't do. Besides totaling the bill, this terminal can check up on the validity of a credit card. All the cashier has to do is punch in the card number and the terminal makes its own automatic telephone call. Well, baby, my baby, my baby's alive. La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la, la.

Today in Digital Marketing - No-One Else Was In The Room Where Tweets Happened

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