Today in Digital Marketing - The "Partner Permissions" Change Facebook Isn't Talking About

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

38 likes. That's the new target — but on which platform? I'll tell you. Also: The magic eight-ball doesn't have a good feeling about support queue times for Google Ads. How to fix a nasty Facebook permissions bug that's preventing some agencies and freelancers from working. And your invitation to our new weekly Zoom hangouts.Go Premium! No ads, more stories, and expert livestreams — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/adsShowcase your marketing tool for free! Apply at https://todayindigital.com/showcase  JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, and more) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, 38 likes. Be protected. Be Zen. preventing some agencies and freelancers from working, your invitation to our new weekly Zoom hangouts, and on the premium podcast with more stories, no ads, and expert live streams, a study of thousands of TikTok ads discovers what those that get the highest conversion rates have in common.

It's Friday, December 3rd, 2021. Happy International Day of Persons with Disabilities. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, Episode 519. If you work at an agency or are a freelancer handling your client's Facebook assets, you may have run up against a nasty change that is preventing some partners from being able to reply to comments on their clients' pages. Partners is a Facebook term for groups that work with a brand's assets,

usually a freelancer or agency. Previously, this was all done through Business Manager. Your client would give you, as the partner, certain privileges, and then the partner would manage the access of their own staff. And that is still the way it's done. But Facebook has changed the names and function of some of these settings. In a statement explaining the changes to its users, Facebook said, where do I have it? Right here somewhere. Oh, that's right.

They didn't say anything about this at all. They just sort of dumped it on us. First, the old way. Those settings had two groups, partial access, where you could turn on and off features like ads, messages, comment, replies, and full control, which essentially made that partner and everyone on the team that they assigned to that asset a co-admin. Now, though, for some pages, that admin screen looks different, but only on some pages. We have screenshotted examples in today's premium newsletter. Now, those two groups are task access and Facebook access.

Those are the new ones. And here's the problem. Even though the task access setting is the one that says it will let you reply to comments, here's what it actually says verbatim, review and respond to comments, remove unwanted content, and report activity, it's kind of a lie. Or at least a bug, maybe, that's preventing that from working. I should mention this new screen now says that these functions will work within Business Suite and Creator Studio.

It doesn't mention third-party tools, but even Facebook's own tools don't appear to let you comment if you have any of the task access toggles on. As you can probably guess, we know of this because it happened to us this week. With task access on our client side and our side, we were able to onboard the page to our third-party tools. And interestingly, we were also able to hide comments. We just couldn't reply to comments. So what is the solution? When both we and the client selected Facebook access instead of task access, that seemed to solve the problem. Again, it's misleading because the task access screen claims that's the option that will give you commenting privs, but in our experience, it doesn't. Also, as a side note, we filed support

requests with our main third-party tool, our backup tool, which is Agora Pulse and Facebook itself. Only Agora Pulse answered within 12 hours and they were pretty detailed with their reply. This is on par with my experience with Agorapulse, by the way. Top-notch support. Facebook, can you guess? Facebook took

two days to get back to us and their reply was to tell us to clear our cache. The other third-party tool took more than two days and just reset the token. Which is all to say, support matters. Google is rethinking its return to office plans once again, which could mean continued longer support wait times for digital marketers. With concerns over the rising number of COVID-19 cases and the uncertainty of the new Omicron variant, employees will continue

to work from home for the time being. The company had intended to keep in-office work voluntary until January the 10th and then continue with a hybrid work schedule. It's been nearly two years of remote work for Google employees. And how many of us in last year have been on some kind of support call and heard a baby crying or a dog barking or even being put on hold while your rep gets an Amazon delivery? New plans about Google's return to real life won't be unveiled until next year, with decisions about timelines being left up to local offices. Attention social media marketers, eMarketer and Mention have provided some useful data that can help with your Instagram content strategy. According to eMarketer, Instagram's growth will slow down over the next few years. Instagram's future apparently lies with

millennials and Gen Z. That audience predicted to grow the most over the next few years. Instagram's future apparently lies with millennials and Gen Z. That audience predicted to grow the most over the next five years. In particular, Gen Z with 33 million, and they're expecting that to go to 44 million on Instagram. But only that group. So far this year, by the way, 29% of Instagram users have purchased something via Instagram. 29%, that's a lot higher than I was expecting, to be honest.

And that number is expected to increase over the next few years, but only by one percentage point, say the forecasts. And what of engagement? So this all came from a mentioned study that collected data from more than 100 million posts. The company analyzed average followers, ideal caption length, which post types led to the most engagement, blah, blah, blah. Here's what the study found. When it comes to the average number of followers, ideal caption length, which post types led to the most engagement, blah, blah, blah. Here's what the study found. When it comes to the average number of followers,

home and auto pages dominate the business categories. Like, really dominate. If you look at the chart, that category is way, way ahead of second place, which is content and apps. And third place on Instagram? I don't think any of us saw this coming. Government agencies. Content-wise, if you're still not on board with the carousel or video bandwagon, it is time to make the leap. Carousel posts average 5 comments and 62 likes. Video posts get less than that. They average 4 comments and 56 likes. And image posts average only 3 comments and 38 likes. As for the all-important caption, the findings, write shorter captions.

People are posting longer captions on Instagram between 100 and 1,000 characters, but not getting as much engagement. 21 to 100 character posts had a significantly higher engagement rate. How many hashtags should you use? To get the best results, only use one. Or go full hashtag crazy and use 20. Apparently, there's not really any in between. And finally, the answer to one of the biggest unknowns for social media marketers, what time should you post? Around dinner time. According to the study, you should post early in the evening if you want to drive engagement.

Premium Newsletter has all the pretty charts, of course. Here is your regular disclaimer, though. These studies always give out averages as results. Your account may indeed have radically different bests, and the only way to know that is to test. 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. File this one under It Must Be Friday. Check your Google product listings to make sure that you are not paying people to buy your products. A tweet today from Zach Stafford shows Google's auto-generated promotions using old codes with discounts greater than the product value. The tweet shows a screenshot showing a product for $20, but with a code, it becomes negative $27.95,

implying that your customers will be paid $27 to order it. Who's to blame? Shocker. Machine learning algorithms that are making changes to promos on their own because something something daddy knows best. Quoting Zach. Is it anybody else seeing promos in Google Merchant Center that are, quote, modified by Google? Chat support is basically saying this didn't happen. LOL, unquote.

So yeah, double check your promotions. Another oops from Google today. It's not just you if you're experiencing problems with Google Ads editor's ad image uploader. The company has confirmed a bug with the most recent version of the editor. They're working on fixing it. The issue seems to actually be with the bulk image upload.

Unfortunately, no solution at our deadline. There is no update on when the bug will be fixed. Speaking of Google Ads, they're testing a new experimental workflow in select accounts. Specifically, they're testing ditching campaign drafts. According to a tweet, marketers that have access to the new experiments page may see a notice in their Google Ads account. That notice says the new experiments page allows you to create experiment campaigns without creating a draft, automatically sync changes from your base campaign to your trial campaign,

and receive customized reporting based on experiment goals, unquote. And to reflect the change, the left side navigation has been changed from drafts and experiments to just experiments. Google has not provided an official rollout date for the update. As you're planning your content strategy for 2022, here's what you can expect aesthetically. The Marketing Insider has outlined the biggest trends that will be shaping color and packaging design choices in the new year. Quoting the article, you're going to want to think about cultivating calm and peace, light and airy hues, watercolor washes, muted pastel shades like eggshell and mint. Packaging wise, light, simple design, minimalist typefaces, and dainty illustrations. There's also a noticeable absence of bold, busy, or copy-heavy labels.

Also, retro is still in. Again, quoting the piece, 2022 is going to be an acid trip. Designers are using lots of psychedelic, bright, clashing colors and groovy typefaces, unquote. Is it just me, or does that completely contradict their previous finding that everything should be light and airy and pastel and okay, whatever? Back again, apparently 80s Memphis color palettes, quoting again from the piece, expect to see more experimental bold and contrasting color schemes and layering,

which will be a refreshing change from the minimalist mindset, unquote. Again, kind of contradictory. Anyway, for what it's worth, that's what the design nerds are thinking these days. Yes, it is International Day of People with Disabilities. I would be remiss if I didn't point you to my wife's TikTok account. She does a bunch of disability issue videos.

Her account on TikTok is Jocelyn Hacks, J-O-C-E-L-Y-N Hacks, H-A-C-K-S, in case that topic is of interest to you. Also, a new channel in our Slack community called Only the Best Content. Really solid advice for people that are starting out doing their first campaign with an influencer. That's the first thing in there. So if you're always, you know, too busy to join a slack and too busy to participate now you can jump in and just follow that one channel if you want to it will only have the best stuff from everyone in there it's called only the best content you can join at todayindigital.com join it is free to join until the end of the month so we are adding something new to the mix starting next week. Happy hour. Every Friday, if you're free and you want to hang out, we'll all jump on a Zoom together. No agenda.

Ask me questions. We can pick each other's brains. Kind of like a happy hour, but with some business talk from the hive mind. This will be for our premium members. So whether you subscribe to the daily newsletter or you're on our ad-free premium podcast feed, we will start this a week today. So premium newsletter people, check your inbox for an email from me titled You're Invited.

And premium podcast people, check your podcast app for a tiny special episode also called You're Invited. Don't forget, you can join the premium daily newsletter or subscribe to the ad-free and longer daily podcast

at todayindigital.com slash premium or tapping the link in the episode notes. I'm very excited. Lawnmower Simulator came out on Xbox. I've been waiting to play this. I don't have the new Xbox. I have the older version and Lawnmower Simulator is not available. Can you believe that? It actually needs like the higher end version of Xbox to play Lawnmower Simulator. I think because the physics tracks like every blade of grass and it's just too much for my low end Xbox apparently. But it came out on cloud, which means I can play it like over the internet. And I did last night. And I have to tell you,

it is really enjoyable. It is so satisfying. The entirety of the game is just you have a contract like a lawn care company and you go and you mow someone's line lawn you do it in real time so like it took me 25 minutes to mow this small lawn while i was listening to other podcasts and it was i'm a little embarrassed to say it was really really satisfying so that's going to be my weekend. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Scripting and promotional support by Steph Gunn.

Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. And our theme composer Mark Blevitz is that feeling you get when you remembered to put salt out on the driveway just in time for the first snowfall. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I'm about to mow down some flowers.

Bye! And now, Deep Thoughts by Digital Marketers. You think you've got problems? Talk to Susan in accounting. She's the one who has to tally up all the two cent and three cent Facebook ad refunds. Every day, a new refund. And you wonder why Susan's a bitch. You the apple in my pixel. Intelligent, far from artificial.

Flying up a cut, I'm on the ground. Game over, hoping there's a bonus round. Let's play some games. When ground. Game over. Hoping there's a bonus round. Let's play some games. When the game's over. Can I stay over? Let's play some games.