Today in Digital Marketing - Really Guys, This Totally Won’t Happen Again.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, September 14th. Today, how you compare to other social media managers. Amazon's small but important changes to search. Instagram bows to the pressure for a followers-only Reels feed. And guys, they mean it this time. Microsoft totally won't mess up their AI this time. Like, for sure. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Checking in with the overworked, misunderstood, patronized, and underpaid social media managers, or at least that's how they describe themselves in a Hootsuite survey released this week of 3,800 of their peers. First, Hootsuite says the statistical average social media manager is a white woman aged between 29 and 43 years old, college educated with a degree in marketing or journalism, has no actual formal education in social media, but has about five years of practical experience and gets three weeks of paid vacation every year. As for their biggest hardship, two-thirds of social media managers polled say they're overworked, too many responsibilities for one person. 56% said their bosses do not understand social media. About half don't have the time or budget to do their jobs

Starting point is 00:01:19 well, and nearly half say they think they should be getting paid more. All that said, though, more than three quarters said they're happy in their role. And those people whose entire job is dedicated to social media are the happiest of that group. In terms of salary, social media people in agencies averaged the highest pay around 83k a year in US dollars. Freelancers behind that at 72k. And in-house social media people were just a hair under that 72k mark. We have a link to the full report in today's newsletter, which is free to join. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Amazon is launching new features to help consumers find products on mobile. First, an upgrade to their existing visual search engine.

Starting point is 00:02:11 This lets people take a photo and then the app will return a list of similar products. Now consumers can add text to these searches to help narrow things down. For instance, if you need a spare part for your robot vacuum, you would take a photo of that part and then add the vacuum model name so that it gave you the right part. Also, Amazon's AR feature, which lets you see what a rug or a chair or a desk will look like in your space, is getting an important upgrade. Now, it will work for things on counters and tables, like desk lights or coffee makers.

Starting point is 00:02:45 It will also be able to move things from one surface to another virtually. They're also adding Find on Amazon. This is a better integration with smartphones. Consumers will be able to send the Amazon app a link to a web page that they're on through the phone's share sheet. And the app will parse that page and show them any products on that page that are also available for sale on Amazon. A couple of smaller changes launching too. They are rolling out the sales trend data more widely. You may have seen this in testing.

Starting point is 00:03:12 It's usually near the top. It says stuff like 2K plus bought this in the past month. The app will also catch searches for products you've bought in the past and jump it to the top of your results along with the date of your last purchase. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, quote, while the individual updates on their own may be minor, combined, the new tools have the ability to impact consumer behavior and shift more searches directly to Amazon. Before, shoppers may have otherwise used another search engine for product discovery to accomplish similar tasks. These changes, as a result, could then impact Google's ad revenue as well, as Amazon has already been playing catch up to the Google meta duopoly on digital ad spend, unquote.

Starting point is 00:04:01 LinkedIn is working on an AI-based search feature for people trying to find good quality leads. It's basically an engine that decodes your natural language search. So you could type something like, find me marketing decision makers at Nike on the U.S. East Coast with whom I have a second degree connection. They're also working on something they call Account IQ, which will summarize key information about potential contacts. It's presented as a sort of dashboard that pulls in recent company news, financial reports, recent hires, and a few other items. I say working on because despite their flashy announcement this week, like so much in this space, it's actually only in testing with a handful of users for the time being. LinkedIn is also offering its 10 most popular LinkedIn learning courses on generative AI for free until December 15th. Instagram is adding a following feed for Reels. This will let you see only Reels from accounts that you actually follow.

Starting point is 00:05:00 This is a welcome improvement. Until now, there was a single feed which forced so-called recommended reels into the session. This does seem to be a trend these days with many platforms adopting a for you feed, which was more discover oriented and a following feed to see just the accounts you really care about. These following feeds are far from perfect, though. For one thing, some apps hide the feed from users. On Instagram, and threads for that matter, there is a way to see only posts from accounts you're following, but you have to know to tap the app logo at the top of the screen to find it. There's no visible

Starting point is 00:05:35 indicator otherwise. It's a little better with this new Reels interface, as there is, at least for now, a small down arrow to show where the following feed is. Plus, following doesn't always mean all posts from accounts I follow. TikTok is the worst at this. Frequently, on your following feed, you'll get a message saying you've seen everything there is to see. But if you go into the settings, delete the cache, and restart the app, suddenly there's more there. To its credit, X's following feed does appear to be a more pure form of the experience. All this could be a net negative for marketers, though. Brands and influencers alike rely on the more traditional discovery feed as a way of being found. If people stick mainly to accounts and brands they already know about,

Starting point is 00:06:21 that could make it less likely they'll find your brand. Over at Threads, some new updates rolling out. First, you can now follow a specific thread in the app without having to follow the user. There's a new bell icon on individual threads, which you can tap and you'll get notified when someone posts something new to it. These notifications will expire after 24 hours. This appears to be in the app right now. On the web version, quote posts are a thing. This is sort of like an old school retweet where you can add your own thoughts above the tweet.

Starting point is 00:06:55 This has been in the mobile app since launch, but it is only now coming to threads on desktop. There's also an updated post activity display, which will let you look at each post's likes, reposts, and quotes. There's still a updated post activity display, which will let you look at each post's likes, reposts, and quotes. There's still a lot missing from threads that would make it a must-have in a marketer's arsenal. Notably, an API, which would let third-party tools like Sprout Social and Agora Pulse post directly to the platform. Then again, even if there was an API, it doesn't mean the platforms will necessarily adopt it.

Starting point is 00:07:24 Mastodon has had an API for years, and so far, only Buffer appears to use the integration. There's also not even hashtags yet on threads, so there is a ways to go yet. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Adobe is hiking the prices of its software. The cost for an annual plan to all its apps is going up by $60 US. The monthly version of that plan going up $5 per month. Spotify has launched Showcase,

Starting point is 00:07:52 a way for artists and music makers to promote their music on the platform's home feed. This is a paid placement. You can select a single song or an entire album, which will show up as a mobile banner. WordPress blogs can now be followed on federated platforms like Mastodon. It comes in the form of a plugin they acquired.

Starting point is 00:08:08 Not only can people on Mastodon follow the content of a WordPress blog, if they reply to that post on Mastodon, it will show up as a comment on the original blog post. And if you've ever wanted that eggplant emoji to have a devilish smile, Google has you covered. The company releasing Emoji Kitchen this week, which will let you mash up two emoji into one, like an angry cat or a peach wearing a dress. If you want to try it out, type Emoji Kitchen into Google search. And finally, the American

Starting point is 00:08:41 basketball player Brandon Hunter passed away unexpectedly at the age of 42 this week. Many media covered the death, and one of those was published on Microsoft's MSN News portal. Only it wasn't a reporter that wrote the story. MSN fired all the human journalists three years ago who had up until then been responsible for vetting all the content. No, it was an AI bot, of course, that wrote the article. And what a colossal steaming pile of horseshit it was. First, the headline was Brandon Hunter useless at 42. Apparently useless being its best guess for a synonym for the word dead. But it continues, quote, former NBA participant, Brandon Hunter,

Starting point is 00:09:27 who beforehand performed for the Boston Celtics, has handed away on the age of 42 as introduced by Ohio Males basketball coach Jeff Bowles on Tuesday. Hunter, initially extremely regarded

Starting point is 00:09:42 high school basketball participant in Cincinnati, achieved vital success as a head for the Bobcats. Throughout his NBA profession, he performed in 67 video games over two seasons and achieved a career high of 17 factors in a recreation in opposition to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2004. Unquote. Even worse, not only was there no disclosure that the article was written by AI, it implies it was written by a human, the byline crediting editor as the author of the piece.

Starting point is 00:10:23 It was only a few months ago when MSN published an AI-generated article promoting tourism in Canada's capital and suggested people visit the Ottawa Food Bank and even said they should go, quote, on an empty stomach, unquote. At the time, Microsoft claimed that article actually did get sent through a human for review. But in the future, they promise, really, guys, this totally won't happen again. Follow us on TikTok for daily summaries of the day's digital marketing stories. We are at Today in Digital over there. Or follow me for cat videos and shitposting.

Starting point is 00:11:14 I'm at Todd Maffin. That's T-O-D-M-A-F-F-I-N. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Really Guys, This Totally Won’t Happen Again.

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