Today in Digital Marketing - The One With the Boings In It

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Google's latest move means you probably need to install their business app on your phone. TikTok and Instagram both test some pretty significant changes to their platforms. Has someone cracked open Spotify's exclusive podcast feeds? And the dumpster fire that is the Facebook ads platform burns even hotter today, Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020. Happy World Computer Literacy Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:30 If your business has a profile on Google, that's the Google My Business platform, and really pretty much every business does, you should be aware that they are adding the ability for users to message your business directly from the Maps and Search screens. These will be very prominent message buttons, very visible. So what this means for you, download their app

Starting point is 00:00:51 and familiarize yourself with the Google My Business backend on the web so that you'll know where to find those messages. Also, these buttons will only show up on the profiles of verified businesses, and you do want these buttons there since a lot of those people will have very specific questions that could win or lose you business. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there's no third-party platform that supports these Google My Business direct messages. I might be wrong.

Starting point is 00:01:17 Please correct me if there is an API for these that platforms are using. And while we're here, unless the reason is that there's just not an API at all, why aren't the third-party platforms supporting messaging from Google My Business? platforms are using. And while we're here, unless the reason is that there's just not an API at all, why aren't the third-party platforms supporting messaging from Google My Business? There's an API for reviews. Is there not one for messages? Quoting socialmediatoday.com, if you haven't claimed your Google My Business profile yet, you really should. With so much search traffic being driven by Google, it's important to ensure that you control what you can of your presence within search and maps. That'll become even more pressing in 2021 when people start looking to travel again and near me searches ramp up. Reports out there today that TikTok is testing longer

Starting point is 00:02:01 video limits. Currently, the limit is 60 seconds, but some people in an apparent test group are seeing three-minute-long limits. This wouldn't be the first time they've upped their limits. TikTok originally capped out at 15 seconds, so people started stringing a series of 15-second videos together to make a full video, something that still happens a lot on Snapchat. There's a lot of potential for brands

Starting point is 00:02:23 with a three-minute limit, more room for, I don't know, unboxing videos or interviews with your staff or coverage of an activation you've done or tutorials. There are naysayers, of course. There is any type of platform makes a big change like this. Remember Twitter? People thought the platform would die when they doubled the 140-character limit and, you know, Twitter's still around doing just fine. As for TikTok, the company has not confirmed the test, but screenshots are floating around and the move does make sense. LinkedIn is adding more beef to its platform, a new tool called Sales Insights, which will provide

Starting point is 00:02:59 a real-time overview of key business opportunities based on your market category. They say the goal is to give their members more visibility into the size and nature of specific departments, functions, and accounts so that you can more accurately plan your sales strategy and point your sales teams to the right accounts. As well, it shows who among your employees is connected to people at your target companies so you can tell them to get you an introduction, I guess? I'm not convinced this is a good thing, mind you. Hey, Karen, I know you're just an intern, but looks like your ex-boss's secretary is connected to the VP's nephew-in-law. Can you make us an introduction? Quoting socialmediatoday.com,

Starting point is 00:03:40 if LinkedIn can harness these insights in effective ways, it could become an even more significant element in various business processes. LinkedIn has been very protective of its data access over the years, but now, at 722 million members, it's looking to find more ways to help business partners glean more information. Unquote. We don't usually get a lot of numbers out of Reddit, but for the first time ever,

Starting point is 00:04:05 the platform reported its daily active user count, 52 million. 52 million daily active users in October. That is a 44% year-over-year increase, which is quite the jump, but still quite far from the rest. Facebook is at 1.8 billion daily actives, for instance. You can't write Reddit off, though. That growth rate is impressive. And the limited media buying that we have done at our agency has yielded some pretty good results. It's still building out its ad platform, so some things aren't there. Breakdowns are not particularly

Starting point is 00:04:34 strong. If I recall, conversion tracking could use some help. But if you're looking for cheap clicks and eyeballs, Reddit's pretty good there. Their ad revenue reached more than $100 million last year, and analysts expect 2020 to end up at least 70% higher. Instagram now lets you bring up to three different guests on at the same time on an Instagram live stream. Until now, it only let you have one guest. Don't go looking for it in your app, though, unless you're in India, which is the

Starting point is 00:05:05 only place this appears to be active. It looks like they're using India as a testing ground for a global rollout, which they do from time to time. Instagram's chief, Adam Masuri, said back in March that they wanted to work on this. Why India? Two reasons, actually. First, Indians love Instagram Live, apparently. Views have grown by over 60% throughout 2020. Also, if you recall, the Indian government banned TikTok in the country back in June. So Instagram's obviously trying to take advantage of that gap. At the time of the ban, TikTok apparently had more than 200 million users in India alone. Well, I give this website about a week before it gets shut down by a cease and desist. You know how Spotify has bought up a bunch of podcasts and made them exclusive to their platform?

Starting point is 00:05:53 They spent $100 million on Joe Rogan, $340 million on the Gimlet network of shows. And while Gimlet shows aren't all exclusive, Joe Rogan's is now as of this week. Except if you know the address of this guy's secret website. It's called Spotify feed. You copy and paste the Spotify URL of the exclusive show into it, and it will spit out a perfectly good public RSS feed that you can take to your podcast app of choice. Yes, I said Spotify feed complete with the Spotify logo. So, yeah, it probably won't be around too long. There is a link to it in the transcript of today's show. A few bugs out there affecting platforms you might use. First, and I know this will shock you, but Facebook's ads platform

Starting point is 00:06:42 continues to disappoint. I'm seeing reports today of everything from pixels saying no events are being served, to the inability to put custom audiences into your ad sets, ads that were turned on suddenly turned off on their own, people getting that you're doing too many things so we've disabled your account for a bit error. Even my own Facebook business account demanded that I change to a different business manager and popped up a window that I guess was supposed to list all the options, but was literally blank. No options, no button, but apparently I was supposed to still interact with it. Good times.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Hootsuite is also having problems today with their Amplify product. Specifically, it sounds like welcome emails are broken and adding and removing users is broken. Making changes to your Amplify profile might be glitched too. They know about it. They are working on it. Sprout Social this morning also reported problems replying to Facebook private messages. They too are working on that. One nice addition to Sprout's platform, the photo size limit in the asset library has increased. You can now add photos up to 20 megabytes in the library. And Twitter has added the ability to use physical security keys as a two-factor authentication method.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Still enjoying doing the live stream? You can watch me in the booth. There's a camera in the voicing booth. There's a camera in my office where we do the mix. I can walk you through how it all works. It's always nice to kind of, you know, these days when we're all working from home, it's kind of lonely. It's always nice to kind of, you know, these days when we're all working from home, it's kind of lonely.

Starting point is 00:08:05 It's sort of nice to have people there. So you can find me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash podmaffin. There's a link in the episode notes if you want to look at that. Also on this podcast's YouTube channel and also on my Twitter feed, all three at the same time. All right, that's it for today. Talk to you tomorrow. Everybody, everybody wanna know Where we go, where we go It's a secret, it's a secret

Starting point is 00:08:26 I don't care, I don't care, I don't care Everybody, everybody wanna know Where we go, where we go I'm on my way, I'm on my way I'm on my way to you

Today in Digital Marketing - The One With the Boings In It

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