Today in Digital Marketing - "The Truth Is Most of Your Followers Won’t See What You Share..."

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:52 Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a deep dive into the Instagram algorithms. More shakeups at Facebook could mean more instability for its ads platform. WooCommerce can now push products directly to Google's shopping platform. It's time to start planning for your holiday campaigns.

Starting point is 00:01:15 And the U.S. war against TikTok is apparently over. It's Wednesday, June 9th, 2021. Happy Alans Autonomy Day, Finland. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Honestly, could the software engineers just knock it off with all the machine learning for just a little bit? Today, we learned that Google's engineers are so drunk on the machine learning that they are going to let it make changes to your Google ads. Changes Google itself says may, in fact, be completely inaccurate.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Here's what's happening. Google seems to have updated a help document with some new text recently. That text, which they even highlighted in red, now reads, Important. If you have not added locations to your account, Google Ads may automatically match your business to known locations based on various account properties, such as landing pages, and add the information to your account in order to create these extensions. However, to ensure the highest

Starting point is 00:02:16 level of accuracy, we recommend that you add location information manually, unquote. So yeah, they're basically going to guess your business's address and drop it onto your ad with or without your permission. If that machine learning was accurate, this wouldn't be a problem. In fact, we may want it to do that. But machine learning is not accurate, despite the obsession that the ad platforms have with it. It might pick up the address of your corporate office instead of your store and drop that address onto your ad. Or it could pick up a special warehouse address you only use for returns. Look, I'm all for automation and AI helping us digital marketers out, but we should be able to say whether we want that intervention or not.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Anyway, just a warning to make sure you've added your location information manually. Otherwise, who knows where Google will send your customers. The truth is, most of your followers won't see what you share. Those tidbits of truth were buried at the bottom of a post published yesterday by Instagram, intended to shed more light on their algorithms. Now Instagram says the reason most of your followers won't see your brand's content is, quote, because most look at less than half their feed, unquote. And while that's certainly a factor, it ignores the primary reason,

Starting point is 00:03:33 because Instagram wants to encourage us to buy ads to guarantee reach. So let's break down how the app handles content in their algorithm according to this post. This is written from the perspective of the user, not a brand, and I will be quoting liberally from their post herein. Quote, the feed and stories. We take all the information we have about what was posted, the people who made those posts, and your preferences. We call those signals, and there are thousands of them.

Starting point is 00:04:00 They include everything from what time the post was shared, to whether you're using a phone or the web, to how often you like videos. The most important signals across feed and stories, roughly in order of importance, are, one, information about the post. These are signals both about how popular a post is, think how many people have liked it,

Starting point is 00:04:24 and more mundane information about the content itself, like when it was posted, how long it is if it's a video, and what location, if any, was attached to it. Two, information about the person who posted. This helps us get a sense for how interesting the person might be to you and includes signals like how many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks. Three, your activity.

Starting point is 00:04:48 Remember, we're talking about users here, not you as in the brand. This helps us understand what you might be interested in and include signals such as how many posts you've liked. And four, your history of interacting with an account. This gives us a sense of how interested you are generally in seeing posts from a particular account. An example is whether or not you comment on each other's posts. From there, we make a set of predictions. These are educated guesses at how likely you are to interact with a post in different ways. There are roughly a dozen of these.

Starting point is 00:05:15 In Feed, the five interactions we look most closely are how likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post, comment it, like it, save it, and tap on the profile photo. The more likely you are to take an action, and the more heavily we weigh that action, the higher up you'll see the post. That's feed and stories. Now the new kid on the block, the Reels algorithm.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Again, quoting from Instagram here. Much like Explore, the majority of what you see is from accounts you don't follow. So we go through a very similar process where we first source Reels we think you might like, then order them based on how interesting we think they are to you. With Reels though, we're specifically focused on what might entertain you. We survey people and ask whether they find a particular reel entertaining or funny and learn from the feedback to get better at working out what will entertain people, with an eye toward smaller creators. The most important predictions we make are how likely you

Starting point is 00:06:16 are to watch a reel all the way through, like it, say it was entertaining or funny, and go to the audio page, a proxy for whether or not you might be inspired to make your own reel. That was interesting, I thought. The most important signals, roughly in order of importance, are 1. Your activity. We look at things like which reels you've liked, commented, and engaged with recently.

Starting point is 00:06:35 2. Your history of interacting with the account who posted. Like in Explore, it's likely the video was made by someone you've never heard of, but if you have interacted with them, that gives us a sense of how interested you might be in what they shared. Three, information about the reel. These are signals about the content within the video, such as the audio track, video understanding based on pixels,

Starting point is 00:06:57 we'll come back to that in a second, and whole frames, as well as popularity. And four, information about the account that posted. Unquote. So a few takeaways for our work as digital marketers that I can see. First, did you notice that it was talking, especially in feed, about how you will get more reach on your account if the account and the viewer of the account are talking to each other? So that means reply to every comment that people leave.

Starting point is 00:07:23 Also, as with everything, social engagement, of course, is critical. The more you can get to people to comment on that post or at the very least like it, the more those people will see your brand's content. Also, it was interesting to see them specifically mention a location on feed posts. We've always been able to put a location on posts. Most third-party tools support it. Though they didn't say specifically, it sounds like they're giving a boost to content near people. This is what TikTok does, by the way. So if you're a restaurant serving a downtown area, making sure you're tagging your location

Starting point is 00:07:52 will certainly help. I also thought it was interesting how much importance they placed on entertainment for reels. Like, I don't think TikTok's algorithm is so heavily weighted towards entertaining. And certainly that's a factor, but I don't know but I feel like TikTok rewards helpful and learning videos more. And finally, that part about the video understanding based on pixels. I got 50 bucks that says that means if they spot the TikTok watermark, you're getting less reach. In fact, they've all but said that.

Starting point is 00:08:20 You can read the full breakdown on their website at about.instagram.com slash blog. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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. The Verge today reported that Carolyn Everson, the Facebook executive who was responsible for its global sales team and relationship with advertisers, has quit. Apparently rather abruptly.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Her boss emailed the company today with the news. That boss, David Fisher, is himself leaving the company later this year. Quoting Alex Heath from The Verge, Everson had been with Facebook for more than a decade, was well-liked internally, and was a key spokesperson during stressful times like the advertiser boycott last year. She was seen as a contender for the new chief business officer role that recently went to Marn Levine.

Starting point is 00:10:09 So how's your Black Friday Christmas holiday planning going? I know, it's only June. But there are some marketers who are working on those campaigns now. And if you are one of those, Snapchat is ready for you. This week it released its new Holiday Resource Hub for marketers, containing insights into key trends and behaviors that might be helpful for your planning. It's also got some specific notes about Snapchat's AR tools and how you can incorporate them into your campaigns.

Starting point is 00:10:33 And if you're thinking about that, this may not be too early at all, since the design and implementation of those filters can take some time. Among their other tips, with consumer optimism rising, test themes of joy and positivity. Start your campaigns in October. More than half of the users on their platform start shopping before mid-November. And don't forget to aim for creative that people will share that helps your reach and your account's algorithm. Google has launched its direct integration with WooCommerce, the online store for WordPress.

Starting point is 00:11:09 The integration is a plug-in, it's free to use, and will get your listings that you've got in WooCommerce onto Google's search and shopping platforms. You'll pick and choose which products to send to Google, create free listings on shopping, send them to Ad Manager, look at performance metrics, all without leaving your WooCommerce dashboard. Google says more than 1 billion shopping sessions now happen every day across Google. Finally, it's over. Kind of. The U.S. government's protracted temper tantrum over TikTok, which let's face it, was probably really former U.S. President Donald Trump's temper tantrum, appears to be over. Current President Joe Biden has revoked Trump's actions targeting TikTok and WeChat. Instead, Biden directed the U.S. Commerce Department to take a look at any app with ties to, quote, jurisdiction of foreign adversaries, unquote, that may pose national security risks. Trump had tried to force the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations. There were also attempts to outright ban TikTok and WeChat in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:12:11 Those attempts were halted by federal courts. TikTok once again was the single most downloaded app around the world last month. And finally, Pinterest is the latest platform to add a pronouns field to their profiles. That should be available soon. They join Instagram and LinkedIn in having a pronouns field. A reminder about our first ever Twitter space. It will be this Friday at 3 p.m. that 6 p.m. Eastern and 11 at night in London. The topic will be what iOS 14.5 is doing to all of our ad campaigns.

Starting point is 00:12:50 I'll have some special guest experts with me. The only way to find it is to follow my Twitter account, which is at Todd Maffin. There's a link in today's episode notes. Again, that's this Friday at 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern, 11 p.m. London time. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow. Doctor says my blood pressure's down p.m. Eastern, 11 p.m. London time. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - "The Truth Is Most of Your Followers Won’t See What You Share..."

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