Today in Digital Marketing - The End of the Swipe Up

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Instagram swipes left on the swipe up. What tighter brand integration with influencers looks like in the retail sector? Will agencies ever recover from the staffing crisis? And the case of the rewritten title tags continues. It's Monday, August 23rd, 2021. Happy Cuban Sandwich Day! I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 452. Instagram is dropping the swipe up.

Starting point is 00:01:02 The call-to-action gesture used widely on Instagram Stories will no longer be available starting August 30th. Instead, Instagram says you'll need a sticker for that. Specifically, the link sticker, which does the same thing, sends the user off to another website. Presumably, the change is to give that CTA more customization options. Instagram has been testing link stickers for a couple of months now, but they've only been available for accounts which were either verified or had at least 10,000 followers. Today, the company confirmed that that restriction will still apply to link stickers for now, though they are considering opening it up to a wider audience. Is it an internship? A job? An influencer marketing gig?

Starting point is 00:01:43 Yes, it's sort of all those. Nordstrom has announced it'll be accepting applications for people aged 14 to 22 to join its new ambassador program. As part of the program, the company says the young people will get mentored in retail, fashion, and digital styling. This is not the mentorship you're thinking of. This will all be done via virtual meetings. And what do they want in exchange for that? Free content. Quoting Marketing Dive, The retailer said it would give participants the chance

Starting point is 00:02:13 to produce original social media content across the Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack channels in collaboration with its brand creative and social teams. Program participants won't be compensated for their time. But ambassadors who promote products on their social feeds will earn a 5% commission for each item they sell, unquote. So, a little disingenuous perhaps, but they're certainly not alone.

Starting point is 00:02:38 This kind of hybrid ambassador marketing, where emerging content creators are integrated into brand strategy, is picking up steam in the retail sector. Macy's expanded its StyleCrew ambassador program to encompass more than employees last year. West is pairing design professionals, which they call tastemakers, with social media influencers, referred to as insiders.

Starting point is 00:03:03 And Express launched items that were exclusive to its ambassador program participants. They do have a fancy name for them. They call them style editors. Sell an item and get, well, a small commission. This past March, Nordstrom debuted its shoppable live stream platform. Speaking of commerce-enabled live streams,

Starting point is 00:03:28 a strange announcement from the Chinese government. As you probably know, live streaming is huge in China. Like, really huge. $60 billion in sales projected this year. But now, the Chinese government says influencers who are selling on live streams must speak Mandarin. No exceptions.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Not just that, but the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said they also need to dress in an inoffensive manner. Quote, when the host streams live, his or her clothing and image should not violate public order or good morals. Their appearance should also reflect the characteristics of the products or services they are marketing, unquote. To its credit, the new rules also include requiring that merchants let viewers post honest reviews of both the host and the products, and the influencers must remain objective and truthful about the products they're promoting. After the announcement, shares in Alibaba, which owns China's most popular live streaming commerce platform,

Starting point is 00:04:29 fell by more than 5%. That's the lowest it's been since it listed in November 2019. It's a gloomy outlook for marketing agencies in the coming year and mostly due to the gig economy and artificial intelligence. That's the conclusion of a new Business Insider paper, which reminds us of last year's Forrester report forecasting the industry will shed more than 50,000 jobs over the next two years. Marketing Dive has a great piece up today about it called Can Agencies Adapt as the Future of Work Takes Shape? Quoting from their piece, challenges that the marketing landscape faced before 2020, from channel proliferation to tech disruption, accelerated as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted daily life,

Starting point is 00:05:17 including where and when people work around the globe. As demands by employees for better work-life balance have grown louder, agencies are under intense pressure to take a more flexible approach to staffing. Along with facing a multi-front talent crisis, agencies will also increasingly be asked to handle more tasks with fewer workers as artificial intelligence and automation technologies take on more. Some creative and media agencies' tasks So what are agencies doing to try to tempt back people leaving to try their hand at freelancing? Signing bonuses, retention bonuses, increased parental leave, unlimited paid time off, mandatory time off, stipends for meals and travel, flexible Fridays, and so on. And you can expect that to be the norm. One agency in Marketing Dive's piece said when they implemented mandatory in-person office attendance again, staffers started leaving, quote, by the dozens.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Do you have business insurance? quote, by the dozens. And we return to the saga of the rewritten title tags. As you may recall from previous episodes, Google seems to have turned up the dial on changing those all-important web page titles, which are used as the main link text in the search engine. Google's always said they might rewrite them to make them a little more clear, but it's been pretty light-handed in the past on this. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was mostly little tweaks, like adding a business name at the end of a title. But lately, it seems they've been doing it more frequently and more aggressively, resulting in some pretty nonsensical titles.

Starting point is 00:07:28 At first, the industry thought it was a bug, but later Google engineers all but said, no, this is just what we always do. Now, it seems Google might be getting the message and says they plan to look into it and perhaps make some changes. One of those changes floated by a Google search rep, a way to report problematic title changes in Search Console. Search liaison Danny Sullivan tweeted, quote,

Starting point is 00:07:50 My thought is that we could perhaps allow a set number per site, maybe 5 to 10, along with an expiration period. That way people wouldn't make whole-scale long-term mistakes accidentally, but when we have some balance for when our automatic title selection might not be preferred, unquote. He also said, back when he worked as a journalist covering the search industry, he often thought that Google should introduce a tag parameter that basically told the search engine, no, no, really, use this title. I really mean it. Since working for Google, he says he's changed his mind.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Quote, and then you know what you discover actually working for a search engine how many people would seriously get that wrong data nerds rejoice we have new columns data columns for google ads just two weeks after a google rep asked what additional custom column metrics we'd all like to see, they dropped four new ones in there.

Starting point is 00:08:47 And they are search impression share, click impression share, display impression share, and all phone call metrics. Remember, these are for custom columns, so this is where you'll create your own metrics, but definitely a nice improvement. There were four small bits not directly related to digital marketing, but still sort of close to us. So let's head to the lightning round. Microsoft says it'll be increasing the price of its Microsoft 365 subscription plan. The increases range from an additional $1 to $5, depending on the plan. Business Basic goes from $5 a month to $6 a month per user, of course. Business Premium from $20 to $22.

Starting point is 00:09:29 This takes effect next March. No, wait, that's not the bell at all. It's the wrong button. Here's the bell. YouTube says its partner program, which lets people monetize their videos, now has 2 million creators in it. You may remember last week,

Starting point is 00:09:44 we covered Facebook's release of its Q2 newsfeed data. It showed that posts with links in them did terribly. They released that data mostly to show that their platform wasn't a source of COVID misinformation. Some reporters asked, sure, but what about Q1? Where's that data? This weekend, the New York Times reported that Facebook deliberately withheld that report because it showed the most viewed link in the first quarter was a news article saying that a doctor had died two weeks after getting a vaccine. Later on in the article, you read he actually had a stroke, and a Pfizer rep said it's important to note that serious adverse events, including deaths that are unrelated to the vaccine, are unfortunately likely to

Starting point is 00:10:25 occur at a similar rate as they would in the general population. And in further news that the world is going to hell, Pinterest today reported that they have seen a 21-fold increase in searches for the term mullet hairstyles So this is day three of my wife being gone for a week I have not actually ordered the Chinese food yet Here's what I have discovered though Apparently when she's away Remember, she's not away often This might be the longest time we spend apart

Starting point is 00:10:57 Apparently I talk to myself Like apparently I walk around the house and talk to myself One of my devices had to report this to me. I was not aware of it. The studio that I record in is right beside our garage, and we have a security camera in the garage. Security camera has a microphone in it.

Starting point is 00:11:15 And all day, Friday, it kept reporting that it heard talking in the garage. I couldn't figure out what talking is, and then I realized it was me. It was hearing me talking to myself. And I played it back. And sure enough, I was like yelling at people on CNN.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Well, not yelling, but you know. Oh boy. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - The End of the Swipe Up

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