Today in Digital Marketing - When 1/4 is Bigger Than 1/3

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, who cares if your boss thinks your content is high quality? Be protected. Be Zen. Tracking restrictions just got worse. And what is math, anyway? It's Monday, October 25th, 2021. Happy Day of Customs Workers, Russia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 490. Everything you know about Google is a lie.

Starting point is 00:01:00 In one of his weekly SEO hangouts, Google search engineer John Mueller offered a definition of what quality content really means to Google. And it's quite different from what is commonly understood. Content quality can positively or negatively impact the site rankings. And it can cause Google to not trust a site and not display rich results from it. While the SEO industry generally focuses on improving things relating to expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the algorithm known as EAT, the definition of content quality that Mueller shared goes beyond that. Here's a clip from that hangout. When it comes to the quality of the content, we don't mean like just the text of

Starting point is 00:01:42 your articles. It's really the quality of your overall website. And that includes everything from the layout to the design, like how you have things presented on your pages, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors, they kind of come into play there. So it's not the case that we would look at just purely the text of the article and ignore everything else around it and say, oh, this is high quality text. We really want to look at the website overall. And though he didn't specifically mention it, it has become clear that what Google really likes these days are comprehensive articles that are detailed, trustworthy, well cited with an author who's recognized to be expert, and which is the best answer to a question that exists on the internet. Nail that, and you'll find yourself close to the top every time. We talk a lot about algorithms here, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,

Starting point is 00:02:41 but won't anybody think of the lowly B2B marketer? We will. And so did Search Engine Journal, which today had a great piece detailing some of the latest of what we know about the LinkedIn content algorithm. Here's what they say is working these days, quoting from their piece. First, prioritize relevant content. LinkedIn's algorithm highly favors relevancy over recency. Users are shown content that's of interest to them even before more recent posts.

Starting point is 00:03:10 LinkedIn displays articles, videos, job listings, and more based on what the user is looking for or most likely to engage with. So, point two, promote user engagement. Engaging users with relevant content encourages them to continue using the platform. Your posts can reach a much wider audience, generating thousands of views, likes, and comments, despite your connection count. Three, LinkedIn ranking signals for more connections and views. Similar to Google, LinkedIn uses its own ranking signals to determine what content should be displayed, how frequently, and to what audience. Using these ranking signals could help your content reach more users, get you more jobs, and so on. Fourth, connections. It matters who you know.

Starting point is 00:03:52 As LinkedIn determines your interests, it depends on the degree, first, second, third, or fourth of your connections, and considers who you've interacted with on the platform. Also, content relevance. By looking at the types of hashtags, posts, pages, and profiles you engage with the most, LinkedIn is able to determine how relevant a user's content is to your interests. And engagement. LinkedIn's algorithm interprets likes, shares, comments, connection requests, and other engagement factors to determine the likelihood of you engaging with another piece of content. The piece goes on to talk about conducting keyword research. Yes, you should do it on LinkedIn too. Plus the usual advice about optimizing your profile,

Starting point is 00:04:29 engaging with posts to juice your own score. You will find their article at searchenginejournal.com. Look for the piece called How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works and Optimizing for It. Google has announced a new integration with BigCommerce that will make it easier for its 60,000 merchants to show up across Google. Quoting the company, BigCommerce merchants of all sizes will be able to easily list their products for free on Google, create ad campaigns, and review performance metrics directly in their BigCommerce store. This also means BigCommerce merchants can now integrate with Google's shopping features

Starting point is 00:05:07 across Search, Shopping, Image Search, and YouTube. The future of online shopping is open and free, and by teaming up with partners like BigCommerce, we are expanding the opportunities for a global audience of merchants and shoppers." By the way, when Google says free, they don't mean your ad campaigns are going to be free. They're talking about the free Google Shopping system that they offer, which has some value. If you are running an e-commerce site or you are at all interested in how Google Shopping works, these free things plus regular Google ad campaigns, go back in time two days and listen

Starting point is 00:05:40 to the episode over the weekend that we put out with Jill Sask and Gales, all about Google Ads. Lots of value there. So you are planning out the Q4 buying and maybe you're a little gun shy with all the Facebook stuff happening. Not cool enough to try out TikTok. How about Twitter? They love part of your media spend. If it's a platform you've thought about, Social Media Today has a helpful Twitter marketing checklist up on their site today. Quoting from the piece, first, research relevant hashtags and set up your tracking. Aside from helping maximize content discovery, hashtags can also help you and your team brainstorm more effective content and seasonal special offers. KeywordTool.io, Hashtagify, and TextOptimizers are all great resources to discover your best working holiday-related hashtags.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Links to those platforms are in today's premium newsletter. Find and connect to influencers. Lots of bloggers and Twitter influencers are looking for content and gift ideas for Christmas. So if you approach them with your freebie or ideas, they may be really thankful. BuzzSumo is a great tool to find niche influencers and start building meaningful connections with them. And three, track your results. The earlier you set up your events and goals,

Starting point is 00:06:53 the more data you'll be able to accumulate. You'll need all that data for an even more successful Twitter marketing campaign next year. Finteza, that's F-I-N-T-E-Z-A, is a web analytics suite that tracks your conversion funnels and how your Twitter traffic interacts with it to identify possible issues and distractions that could prevent your site users from making a purchase, unquote. It is true that some brands find Twitter quite helpful, but I have to say, in our experience here at my agency, expect to pay much higher CPCs and prepare to be underwhelmed with the platform's targeting options. attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit. No business or profession is risk-free. Without

Starting point is 00:07:46 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. In order to fix its whopping marketing failure from the 1980s, the fast food chain A&W has launched a new ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram. Forty years ago, A&W offered a bigger, one-third pound burger for the same price as McDonald's Quarter Pounder. One-third pound being bigger than a quarter pound, right? Well, I know that, and you know that, but... Apparently... Well, I'll let the new ad campaign take it from here. Turns out Americans are just terrible at math, like really bad.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Everybody thought that one third was smaller than one quarter because, you know, four is bigger than three. The whole thing went down in history as a huge marketing fail. And we've spent the last 40 years crunching the numbers. And we've done it. Introducing the A&W 3 Nights Burger. It's bigger. Genius. The promotion also features window clings, table tents, branded memes, and GIFs.

Starting point is 00:09:09 We have a link if you want to watch the new ad in today's premium newsletter. Which brings us to the lightning round. Earlier this month, reports circulated that PayPal was interested in buying Pinterest. Now it says, eh, it's no longer interested. Pinterest has a new chief content officer. Malik Dukard spent more than a decade in leadership roles at YouTube. Most recently, he was their VP of content partnerships. Pinterest also says it has earned the Media Ratings Council accreditation for both display pin impressions and display pin clicks,

Starting point is 00:09:40 giving us media buyers a little bit more confidence that their numbers are more accurate. Facebook has launched a series of online training courses for female business owners in recognition of Women's Small Business Month. The company, still unable to distinguish between clever and cringy, has called the series Hashtag She Means Business. And TikTok has created a new video series with tips to help marketers understand how the platform works and how to create better performing TikTok ad campaigns. Finally, has Apple turned its tracking blocking up a notch?

Starting point is 00:10:12 AppsFlyer, which has been tracking the impact of Apple's changes, says ever since Friday, it's noticed a big spike in conversion values coming back null. They expect whatever lever got pulled at Apple will mean all the conversion events in your campaigns focused on user value, like revenue and in-app engagement, will be, quote, significantly impacted. So I did a thing last week I'm very, very, very proud of, you know, all the security people say that the best security for your accounts is a hardware key. You know, something you physically plug into the computer as opposed to Google Authenticator, which has its own problems and two factor codes. You know, like the ones that get text messages to text messaged to you, which can be socially engineered. So I now have a YubiKey. Well, two of them.

Starting point is 00:11:02 I have a backup as well. And it seems to be working with Facebook pretty well, and actually really well. It's actually faster to log in. And Twitter, same thing. Sprout Social kind of barfed on it for some reason. Sprout Social doesn't use hardware keys. They don't have that ability. But for whatever reason, when I secured the Facebook account with it, Sprout Social barfed on it, and it took us three or four days to get our accounts fully back into gear, but better to be more secure. I say I am having one problem though. If anyone listens to this who works for like Google security or something, I cannot for the

Starting point is 00:11:34 life of me, add my key to Google's security backend. It claims that there's no security key added because it gives us as an option. And then when I go to add it, it says, well, you've already added this. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe if one of you are the VP of security at Google, you can tell me what I'm doing. All right, talk to you tomorrow. Got me acting up I need some of you You're my vapor up I'm addicted real heavy Something like a drug I think I feel better

Starting point is 00:12:09 When we cuddle up You're my body, man

Today in Digital Marketing - When 1/4 is Bigger Than 1/3

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