Today in Digital Marketing - Social Influencer Campaigns Under Fire

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Why is Canada’s largest airline sending social media influencers out to vacation during stay-at-home orders? There’s a new Google algorithm and it may soon change where your brand lands in the search index. And all the fallout from yesterday’s chaos in America.➡ Review the show: https://RateThisPodcast.com/today➡ Join our free Slack community: TodayInDigital.com/slackHELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST:Source links and full transcripts: TodayInDigital.com Advertising: RedCircle.com/brands and TodayInDigital.com/adsClassified Ads: TodayInDigital.com/classifieds Leave a voicemail at TodayInDigital.com/voicemailTranscripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio)TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA:Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffinTod’s agency: engageQ.comTikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffinTwitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin (game livestreaming)Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://TodMaffin.com) and produced by engageQ digital (https://engageQ.com). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, why is Canada's largest airline sending social media influencers out to vacation during stay-at-home orders? There's a new Google algorithm and it may soon change where your brand lands in the search index. And the digital marketing fallout from yesterday's chaos in America. It's Thursday, January 7th, 2021. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So obviously big news in America as pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol.

There have been some repercussions on the social media side of things around that, which I will get to at the end of today's show. One other effect is it's more or less consumed the news cycle today. So many brands have put off any planned announcements. So the digital marketing news is a little thin today, but there are still a few items of note, so let's get to it. Canada's largest airline, Air Canada, is under fire for some recent social media influencer campaigns. Some Instagram influencers are going on trips to sunny

vacation spots apparently sponsored by the airline. This, of course, at a time when governments around the world, Canada's included, have asked people to stay home and not do any non-essential travel like, say, vacationing. It also comes at a time when a number of Canadian provincial politicians and cabinet ministers were demoted when it came out that they too took a holiday against their government's own advice. One of those was the person responsible for the vaccine rollout in Alberta.

Alberta, by the way, sometimes called Canada's Texas. For its part, Air Canada kind of weaseled its way out of just answering the question, did you hire these people or not? Telling the Globe and Mail newspaper, at present, we do not have any new

influencer engagements planned. Uh, okay. They did admit that they do use influencers as part of their marketing strategy. Google loves code names. There's Panda, Bert, Penguin, all parts of the Google search algorithm at one time or another. Well, we may now know what the next one might be called and how it might change where your brand lands in the results page. The company recently released research on some code they call Smith, S-M-I-T-H, code which Google says outperforms the current algo, which is named BERT.

Quoting searchenginejournal.com, in particular, what makes this new model better is that it is able to understand passages within documents in the same way BERT understands words and sentences, which enables the algorithm to understand longer documents, unquote. To be clear, of course, there's no single algorithm running Google's search engine, just like there's no single algo running the Facebook news feed or TikTok's For You page. There are dozens of them running to make it all work. What Google won't say is whether this new Smith algo is already in use. But assuming it either is already in play or will be soon,

how will that affect your brand's visibility in the index? None of that's clear, but if the benefits here is that it offers better comprehension of entire long-form documents, that could mean that it will prioritize longer content. We do know that Google prefers detailed answers to questions people are asking. Google had no official comment on the research paper. And so we turn back to the political developments in America and how it affects the digital marketing space. First, Marketing Dive said it noticed many brands hitting the brakes on marketing efforts after a mob incited by Donald Trump broke into the U.S.

Capitol building to protest his election loss. At least three major brands postponed announcements. Many more paused their organic content and ad campaigns. Most, I suspect, are still paused, just waiting for things to settle down. Quoting Marketing Dive, moving quickly to pull consumer facing campaigns and communications reinforces how brand safety continues to be a top item for companies looking to preserve a positive image and sidestep controversy. The role of the brand safety officer has become more common, and non-profit industry associations like the Brand Safety Institute have gained traction as societal volatility becomes the norm, unquote. And so, a quick roundup of how these social media platforms are responding.

Facebook removed Trump's video to rioters in which he both asks them to go home and also praises them, calling them, quote, very special. This morning, Facebook announced it will block Trump from posting on either Facebook or Instagram indefinitely. Well, sort of. Zuckerberg's actual statement was, indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks. That would coincide with Biden's assumption of the presidency. Twitter blocked him yesterday during the chaos, but has now removed that block after the Trump team deleted three specific tweets that Twitter found problematic.

YouTube today said posting false claims against the election will get you a strike against your account. First strike, can't post for a week. Second, you're off for two weeks. And third, you are booted off the platform entirely. Snapchat locked Trump's account. Not for anything he posted on his Snapchat channel, mind you. The CEO said they take action against, quote,

people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform, unquote. The U.S. State Department told its diplomats to stop posting on social media. They were also told to remove anything they had scheduled. CNN says diplomats are usually only told to pause social content after a terrorist attack. And there were even repercussions on the gaming platform Twitch, which removed one of its most popular emotes.

An emote is a custom emoji that people who subscribe to a gamer's channel can use in chat. The emoji that's been removed is known as PogChamp. It's the face of a real gamer named Ryan Gutierrez, who yesterday shared video of the fatal shooting, calling the woman who died a mega martyr. If you're not in the gaming space, this may not mean much, but trust me when I say that PogChamp is big.

People use it not only as an emoji in chat, but also in common language. All right, busy day here at the agency, so I'll let you go and see you tomorrow.