Today in Digital Marketing - Reasons Your Brand Should Stop Blogging

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, should your brand have a blog? Some compelling arguments for not blogging every week. Plus, what will the Australia media buying world look like if Google makes good on its threat to leave the country? Buffer's mobile app gets some nice upgrades, and TikTok video production for digital marketers who've never made a TikTok video before. It's Friday, January 22, 2021. Happy Multicultural State Day, Bolivia.

Starting point is 00:00:27 I'm Todd Maftin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So here's the meeting we've all had. It's Monday, marketing meeting, and the boss has just finished reading some blog post about how good user-generated content is for social media. And she says, let's start a UGC contest. I'll leave it to you to figure out the details. And she walks out. And you sit there in silence thinking, God, I don't know, pet photos? Essay contest? It's hard to come up with user-generated content ideas. But Kraft Heinz Canada came up with a great idea, which they are rolling out across the country this week.

Starting point is 00:01:07 Quoting Marketing Dive, the campaign asks people to submit drawings of ketchup for a chance to see their artwork on a custom bottle label. The campaign was inspired by a global experiment in which dozens of anonymous people were assigned to draw ketchup. Most of them drew the Heinz bottle from memory. They're using the draw ketchup hashtag and a link to a microsite

Starting point is 00:01:29 where amateur artists can submit their own drawings of ketchup through January 31st. 250 winning artists will receive a custom box and bottle with their drawing on the label. And if, in that Monday marketing meeting, your boss isn't talking about UGC, but is talking about how your brand really should be on TikTok, you know, the cool kids are there. Well, there is a new resource to help you get started. The company today launching its new creator portal, which contains tutorials on the basics, some guidance on connecting with an audience and some best practices on how to make your videos really stand out. This is actually quite helpful because if you've never created a TikTok video, it's not like making an Instagram story. Culturally speaking, on TikTok, the

Starting point is 00:02:16 production values are higher, involving syncing clips to other videos or making text appear on the screen at specific times. It's not the easiest app to learn, so this is definitely welcome. There's also the official at creator portal account, which will post some of those tips. TikTok forecasts to reach more than 1.2 billion users this year. It's been well known that if you want a lot of traffic to your brand's website, having a blog will help. The common advice is you should blog lots, at least once or twice a week.

Starting point is 00:02:50 But really, should you? It's not a wise decision to have blogging for the sake of blogging as a strategy. Colin Nielsen is VP of local search for Sterling Sky, a local SEO agency in Canada. He spoke with me earlier today. We're talking about that situation where an agency approaches a client or a potential client and they say, hey, as part of our services we're going to deliver, you're going to get five blog posts per month or 10 blog posts per month.

Starting point is 00:03:16 And they just pick usually an arbitrary number and it's just bundled in with their services. And what we see and what our experience is, is that the time that you kind of would be spending creating those 10 blog posts per month is much better spent, you know, updating, continually updating and making like the core content, your core pages, your core service pages better on an ongoing basis. So you're suggesting they're not actually using blog posts, but using actual web pages and much, much fewer of them. What I like to think about when we first are deciding whether or not we should be doing blogging for a business, Carrie Hill, who's on our team, super smart.

Starting point is 00:03:58 She's got this quote where she says, blog posts are timely, website pages are timeless. So we do not like blog posts just to blog. It's a waste of time. If it's that valuable of content for your customers, turn it into an actual page that's part of your actual core silo structure of your website. line with what Google has been saying for years and years and years, which is, you know, little things like frequency and little things like trying to, you know, buy software that will jam keywords in exactly the right frequency is not as important as just answering a question better than any other web page on the internet. Yes, 100%. And I think a lot of business owners, you know, agencies as well, will think of blogging in terms of answering questions, like, we've got to create a blog to answer every single question and have a separate blog for it. But where we actually see those, the answering questioning component work really well is actually adding those to your core pages, your core service pages, mark them up with FAQ schema.

Starting point is 00:05:07 So you get the additional sort of visual aspects in the search results. And those are your pages that are like your money pages anyway. So why would you not want those pages to be the best pages on your site? Cullen's full blog post is definitely worth a read. I know, a little bit ironic,

Starting point is 00:05:21 pointing you to a blog post about, you know, not blogging, but it is a great read. You'll find a link to it in the transcript of today's episode and our full conversation, which covered everything from the impact of zero click on results to how to use the FAQ schema to push your competitors off page one and much, much more. That full interview is available to you now for free. You will find it in our Slack community in the exclusive content channel. Link in the description of today's episode or go to todayindigital.com slash slack. Digital marketers who work for Australian brands may soon need to reconsider their search

Starting point is 00:06:00 advertising strategy after Google threatened to pull out of the country. Yes, pull out, like not make Google search available there. It's all part of a pissing match between Google and the Australian government, the latter saying Google should pay news organizations royalties, since Google gets customers from people who want to read the news. It's not just Google. Lawmakers down under said they'd apply similar legislation to Facebook and other platforms. And precedent, it seems, is not on Google's side.

Starting point is 00:06:32 And Google itself is to blame for that. Just yesterday, the company signed a similar deal with media outlets in France. The Australian Prime Minister rebuked the search engine this week saying, Let me be clear, only Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. Google dominates the search space in the country with almost 90% market share. Speaking of Google, if you've been following this podcast for a while, you'll know that we've been reporting on the forthcoming change to Google's algorithm that will add a new factor for ranking consideration, core web vitals. This is actually three metrics

Starting point is 00:07:10 that measure how fast a web page loads, how soon a user can interact with it, and how much the layout jumps around. It won't necessarily be a huge factor, but it will be important. Well, now Google has made it easier for you to understand where your brand's website lands. The new version of its Chrome browser, version 88,

Starting point is 00:07:26 now lets you see your own core web vitals in the Developer Tools performance recording section. So be sure you've updated to version 88 of Chrome, turn on Developer Tools, and you can go check it out for yourself. The social platform Buffer has updated its mobile app, fixing an issue with Twitter hashtag completion. It also added support for Apple Pro Raw photos and now lets you tag users within Instagram images. It's also a new organization overview that lets you see an overview of your account, including upcoming posts for the day, recently sent posts, and a quick view of channel growth. And finally, in a rather shocking development,

Starting point is 00:08:09 Facebook is experiencing a bug. I know, who knew? This time it's their API appears to be glitched out and is no longer providing a number for the total fans of a Facebook page. So if you are using a third party analytics tool and wondering why it says your brand's Facebook page has no fans, now you know why they are working on it. So once again, the full interview with Colin Nielsen from sterlingsky.ca is available in our Slack community. It's free to join. Just go to todayindigital.com slash Slack or tap the link in today's episode. You will find the interview in the exclusive content channel. Also there, by the way,

Starting point is 00:08:51 deep dives into consumer behavior trends within Google My Business profiles, a complete breakdown of TikTok's organic content algorithm, and much more. That's todayindigital.com slash slack, or tap the link in today's episode. And that will do it for the week. Thank you. GageQ.com. Full transcripts to every episode are on our website, todayindigital.com. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful and safe weekend, friends. I will talk to you on Monday. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

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Starting point is 00:10:33 R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - Reasons Your Brand Should Stop Blogging

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