Today in Digital Marketing - Step 1: Strap VR Headsets to Cows. Step 2: Profit.

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a Facebook labor dispute Be protected. Be Zen. features. And on the Premium Podcast, with more stories, no ads, and expert deep dive episodes, why for digital agencies, the great resignation is only beginning. It's Tuesday, January 11th, 2022. Happy Sir Johnny McDonald's Canada. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 537. Let's know the secret that Facebook isn't exactly the speediest when it comes to policy reviews, helping with your account, approving auto-denied ad campaigns.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Well, it might be about to get worse. Some Facebook contractors are now threatening to stop working completely. What's going on? They say they haven't been paid. According to The Verge, employees at a Facebook outsourcing Accenture site in Austin are still without their holiday paychecks, and they are threatening a work stoppage if the problem isn't fixed. The site's employees handle moderation, customer service, and other tasks for Facebook and WhatsApp. The report says that a group of workers posted a letter to the CEOs of Facebook and Accenture

Starting point is 00:01:46 on an internal message board. Some employees have received a lump sum of payments as the company is continuing to resolve the problem that was apparently caused by switching payroll providers. But one moderator at Accenture said that as of last night, more than 50 people still had not been paid. It's unclear if any work stoppages have already taken place, but if you are experiencing a lack of moderation

Starting point is 00:02:10 or longer wait times for customer service on Facebook, this could be why. So that's Facebook delays. How's Google doing? Also a little off. If you've been waiting for a response from Google for months regarding a manual action, the company's public search liaison confirmed on Twitter, yes, there is a backlog in processing manual action review requests.

Starting point is 00:02:34 This actually got all found out after an angry tweet from a news publisher got some traction. The publisher had received a manual action for unnatural linking around the same time as the December 2020 core update. But the manual action, Google says, didn't actually impact their rankings. So Google went on Twitter to clarify the situation. Here is what they said. The manual action was not a punishment for what you write about. It was solely for unnatural linking and again had no impact on your ranking. We apologize for the delay in processing the reconsideration. We've had a backlog and now have cleared the action. This could be a big

Starting point is 00:03:14 upgrade for social media marketers. Instagram is testing a new feature that allows users to rearrange their Instagram profile grid, formatting previously posted images into any order they like, no matter when it was posted. It would allow brands to showcase their best posts at the top of the grid and make their profile more aesthetically pleasing. The concept is sort of similar to TikTok's pinned feature, which lets users pin up to three videos to the top of their profile. However, in this Instagram case, users would have even more control over their profiles with this option. For those in the testing group, the new edit grid feature will be available under your profile settings. Instagram's always had this peculiar little cultural thing where brands and influencers were very careful to make that grid look perfect.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Some third-party tools even went so far as to build grid preview tools if you're that much of a control freak. Well, it seems soon that control will be a lot easier. Microsoft Advertising has added some new tools to help you improve your shopping campaigns. Companies announced the following updates. Enhancements to the Products tab, so you'll be able to get some metrics around performance, the usual clicks, impressions, average CPC, average CPM, and so on. Also conversion data there, including ROAS, revenue, and so forth.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Number two, the removal of customer match spend requirements. And this is kind of nice, actually. Used to be you had to spend a minimum amount before you were eligible to use the customer match targeting, which is their email matching service. When this update rolls out, that minimum will not exist. Three, similar audiences is now available in open beta, and this is a way for you to engage with qualified prospective customers who are similar to those on your remarketing lists. And finally, Microsoft audience Ads is expanding to more advertisers around the world. All these updates will be rolled out to customers throughout this month.

Starting point is 00:05:14 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. Not really a story about your role as a digital marketer, but more as a regular human being who

Starting point is 00:05:43 uses Twitter. And some of the new tools that are coming may help the platform feel a little less hateful. They're working on having keywords that you've muted and accounts that you've muted or blocked stay out of a few more places. For instance, events. As of now, events that you've blocked or muted won't appear in your Explore tab, the company says. It also means they will stop showing up in the What's Happening sidebar and event-based notifications. Quoting Social Media Today,

Starting point is 00:06:11 Twitter's limited blocking tools have long been an issue, with users reporting frustration that topics they don't want to see continue to show up, even after they've blocked virtually every permutation of the related terms. Twitter has had issues with the systems in the past, which have let some of these block terms through. But the bigger problem is that muting and keyword blocking doesn't apply to all elements, which is a loophole that Twitter is now working to fix, beginning with events, but soon extending to explore spaces and more. Unquote. And I am thrilled with this. How about a view of active spaces, none of which have anything to do with NFTs? Throw that into Twitter blue,

Starting point is 00:06:50 and I will pay handsomely for it. And finally, cows in Turkey are being trapped in the metaverse. Why are animals using Zuckerberg's latest obsession? The reason's actually pretty grim. It is an attempt to improve milk production. Yes, a rancher in Turkey has been strapping VR headsets to cows to give them the illusion that they are immersed in a world of greener, sunnier pastures. But here's the thing.

Starting point is 00:07:26 It's actually working. Apparently cows are producing more milk in VR. Milk output has gone from an average of 22 liters to 27 liters a day per cyber cow. Yes, this is basically the plot of the Matrix. But for the first time in, I don't know, five years, six, seven years, I have changed our company's website. We have an agency, of course, as the bulk of the work that we do. This podcast is just a side hustle.

Starting point is 00:07:54 And we started as kind of an overall social media agency. But over time, we learned that our expertise and what we're better at than anyone else is engagement and moderation. So we're the secret voice behind a lot of brands. But our website still for years looked like we kind of did everything even though we really didn't. So today, finally, the change. Yes, you can go look at it. It's engageq.com. Be gentle. I did all the work myself. We're not a web development shop and I'm cheap. So I did the work myself, but I like it. I think it's better. Don't forget about the premium feed. More stories in each episode, no ads. It comes out earlier than the free feed. And a couple of times a month, you get exclusive access to deep dive episodes

Starting point is 00:08:33 with industry experts. This past weekend, we did Facebook ads. Later in the month, we're going to be doing local SEO. The link is today in digital.com slash premium feed, or just tap the link in the show notes. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Step 1: Strap VR Headsets to Cows. Step 2: Profit.

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