Today in Digital Marketing - Reels Are Killing Everything Good in Our World

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Meta kills off what others are investing heavily into... Agencies are posting more on social media, but is it paying off? Twitter's new Location feature could drive you more foot traffic. Why you need to stop whitelisting things. And a TikTok competitor in hot water.Go Premium! No ads, story links in show notes, deep-dive weekend editions, better quality, live event replays, audio chapters, earlier release time, exclusive marketing discounts, and more! Check out https://todayindigital.com/premiumfeedFor information on advertising, our social media, contact info, and everything else, please go to https://todayindigital.com/shownotes➡ Join our Slack at todayindigital.com/slackOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, meta kills off what others are investing heavily into. Agencies are posting more on social media, but is it paying off? Twitter's new location feature could drive you more foot traffic. Why you need to stop whitelisting things. And a TikTok competitor in hot water. It's Thursday, August 4th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. In the wake of the emergence of short-form video, Facebook live shopping has become the latest

casualty as Meta tries to keep up with TikTok. Meta has announced that Facebook live shopping will be coming to an end on October 1st of this year. After that, brands will no longer be able to host any new or scheduled live shopping events on the platform. The company says you will still be able to use Facebook Live to broadcast live events for your brand, but you won't be able to create product playlists or tag products in your videos. Of all things to shut down, this one I think is peculiar. I think most marketing and commerce experts say one of the big growth opportunities in the coming years will be in the live shopping space. Competing platforms like Pinterest and hell, even Twitter have been experimenting with it. But Meta's current arch enemy TikTok actually appears to side with Zuckerberg on this, at least for now. A month ago, the app shelved its plans to roll out live

shopping in the US and Europe. This is, of course, a sign that Meta is doubling down on short-form video and doubling down hard. Quoting the company, Brands are still able to host live shopping events on Instagram, at least for now. New research from Digiday has found that agencies are posting more on social media on behalf of their clients every day. But is there any value in posting daily? The survey found Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all saw an increase in agency pros posting on the platforms daily for clients over the past year compared to last year. Although agencies are posting more on social media, the survey also revealed that there was no significant difference this year in how effective these social platforms are in driving

revenue for agencies' clients. Almost no change was seen in the percentage of agency pros who said Facebook and Twitter are valuable for driving revenue for their clients compared with last year. In comparison, Instagram and YouTube saw a slightly greater difference but still not significant enough to warrant posting every day. On top of that, agency professionals indicated that platforms have actually lost value in brand building in 2022. Compared to last year, fewer respondents said Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are valuable for brand building. Despite respondents indicating social platforms are less valuable this year, Digiday asks, so why are agencies spending more time posting on social again?

If you have a physical location, Twitter's new Location Spotlight now lets customers know where your business or brand is located. The platform announced today that Location Spotlight is available to all professional accounts. Businesses with physical locations can now display their address, hours of operation, and other contact information at the top of their profile so customers can reach them by phone, text, email, or DMs. With Google Maps integration, Location Spotlight can also let you add a map of the area to your profile, which customers can click for directions. And there's more. Twitter said it will be rolling out several new updates for professionals, including a professional home, which will be a centralized resource platform to track performance, discover product offerings and so on. A new taking care of business workshop series. This will be designed to help those who are just getting started with Twitter marketing. The workshops there will cover how to set up your professional account, how to activate an appropriate spotlight for your business and what content drives engagement.

And finally, some new courses on Twitter Flight School. A variety of topics aimed at small and medium-sized businesses will be covered in 10 new a la carte on-demand courses. Is it time to ditch the phrase whitelisting? Marketing Brew has a great piece up today about how several influencer marketers believe it's time to retire the non-inclusive term and opt for a word that's more indicative of what it actually means. If you're unfamiliar with the term, in the context of creators, whitelisting is when an influencer lets a brand run ads from their account, meaning the influencer's handle is used for the ad. Some companies have already abandoned the term. Instagram renamed it to Allow Listing and did so back in 2020, both internally and in its communications with brands. Twitter also recently ditched the phrase and now also uses the term Allow Lististing in the influencer marketing space, you could use allow listing.

Or there are some alternatives. Boosting, paid usage, ad collaboration, or branded partner ad listing. Well, here's how your brand could potentially get more organic reviews on TikTok. Bounty, an online service that lets TikTok creators earn money by reviewing brands' products, recently announced it raised $5 million in seed funding. Here's how it works. First, influencers sign up, of course, on the Bounty website. Then they actually have to buy an eligible product with their own money from one of the partnered brands.

Once that order is delivered, the creator receives a link via text to accept the bounty so they can get paid when they post their video review to TikTok. They then upload their video review with the brand tagged and hashtag bounty in the caption. Bounty will detect the post and notify the influencer that it is tracking views. Reviewers can earn up to $10 for every 1,000 views, and they keep 100% of their earnings. As for brands using the service, a bounty monthly fee is charged, which varies and starts at about $100 a month. The $5 million in funding will be used to onboard businesses from the company's waitlist of over 750 brands. 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. Triller, a TikTok rival app that we've covered here a few times, promised to pay $14 million to 300 black creators last year. However, the Washington Post today reports that the company's payments to several creators have been erratic at best or non-existent at worst. The black influencers were promised $4,000 per month with half-paid inequity, according to the Post. Now, dozens of those influencers are said to be struggling to get paid, leaving some in serious debt. Creators also allege that they're forced to keep up with Tr company's program has been reduced by nearly two-thirds from 300 creators to just over 100 creators.

As a result, several influencers are now, you guessed it, making TikToks, detailing their experiences with the platform. Many creators planned their bills around this, but due to Triller being late with payment almost 20 days after they were supposed to pay, some creators got evicted from their apartments. My friend lost a loved one during the program, but the Triller team told him he was still obligated to post even though he was grieving. Ouch. Triller has denied any issues with creators' pay. Its chief executive said the company has, met its financial commitments to the creators in this program and will continue to do so. Ticketmaster and TikTok are partnering to sell tickets on your

For You page. You may have seen this actually quite a bit in TikTok videos in the last 24 or 48 hours or so with these little Ticketmaster direct call to action links. With this new integration, comedians, musicians, sports teams, theater productions, and venues can add event links to their content for TikTokers to purchase tickets directly through the app. Here's how it works. First of all, creators will record a video, then tap Add Link. They will select the Ticketmaster option. Search for some upcoming events. Once an event is selected, choosing add to video displays the link above the

caption. Among the artists already participating, OneRepublic, Usher, the Backstreet Boys, and the WWE. I tried it with actually two comedians I think that I follow. And yeah, there were tickets available, but in true Ticketmaster continues to be evil form. The only tickets available were scalpers. I'm sorry, did I say scalpers? I meant resellers. If you're looking to upgrade your marketing skills, LinkedIn announced recently that its most popular courses of 2022 are free to take right now. Until the end of the month, LinkedIn Learning's top 20 courses are free to access. Courses range from communication to teamwork to technical courses. Things you may find relevant

to our space include interpersonal communication, essentials of team collaboration, and digital marketing foundations. I've said this before, but one kind of sneaky but perfectly legal way to get the entire LinkedIn Learning's database for free is through your public library. Many people don't know this. Get a regular public library card, log into your public library's website, look for the digital library or digital shelves or whatever they call it, and look for something called lynda.com. That's L-Y-N-D-A. This is what the LinkedIn library used to be before they acquired it. It was actually a site called lynda.com. And many public libraries still have free access to the entire catalog. So there you go.

The aging process got me again. I went for my progressive lenses. I got them finally yesterday, my progressive glasses. They're okay. They're better. They're an improvement. I'll say that much. That's for sure. But boy, it's going to take some while to get used to. Never fallen up a staircase before. So that was fun. Hey, many of you know about our newsletter. We have made some upgrades to it. So this comes out every single day. It is just like the

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You might think you know me But you ain't