Today in Digital Marketing - Why Can’t Twitter Keep Things Alive?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, T-minus five days until your third-party social media tool is forced into big changes. Why is Burger King handing over control of its Instagram account to its competitors? Twitter is shutting things down left, right, and center. And LinkedIn has good news for those who administer their company's pages. It's Friday, December 11th, 2020. Happy National Tango Day, Argentina. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. All right, I reported on this earlier this month, but since

Starting point is 00:00:32 it's actually kicking in on Wednesday, I thought I would give you another reminder. Starting Wednesday, Facebook will be changing many of its APIs to come in line with European privacy legislation. This means the things that your third-party social media tool of choice does now may not do the same come late next week. So if you're dealing with any business or person inside any of the European Union member states, plus Norway, Iceland, Leichtenstein, I'm sorry, I'm a horrible person,

Starting point is 00:01:03 and the United Kingdom, there will be a number of changes. Here are the highlights. Facebook private message replies won't be able to include attachments when sent to European users. Everyone will just see the text unsupported attachment. Facebook won't pass along the photo of the user to your third-party tool, in other words, their profile photo, so you won't be able to see who you're chatting with. This is a big one. Instagram story replies from Europeans will no longer be counted in metrics and won't appear in your reporting tool. Ouch. If you use bots, your existing templates will still

Starting point is 00:01:37 be available in messages, but European users won't be able to take action on them if they're talking to your brand on the web. We're talking about the templates there. For some reason, those same templates will work just fine if they're on mobile. Weird. Same with URL buttons. They won't work in bot flows for Europeans using a web browser. Those people will still see the button. It just won't do anything. But like the templates, if they're on mobile, it'll all still work just fine. That fake I'm typing something indicator that bots use won't work for Europeans. Well, they won't see it anyway. There's some changes to the persistent menu option and a bunch of smaller changes. Sprout Social, for its part, has an excellent disclosure of all of this up on their

Starting point is 00:02:18 site. Check the transcript of today's episode for that link. And if you use a different third-party tool like Hootsuite or Buffer or Agorapulse or Sprinkler or whatever, you may want to check their website to see if they've provided any kind of update. Twitter doesn't have a great track record when it comes to its acquisitions. It bought Vine, couldn't get a revenue model working and shut it down. It wanted to buy the live stream platform Meerkat. Meerkat repositioned to become the mobile app Houseparty, which eventually got bought by the same company behind the Fortnite video game.

Starting point is 00:02:52 So Twitter bought Periscope, also a live streaming platform. Actually bought Periscope before the damn thing had even launched. And today comes word that Twitter is apparently going to shut Periscope down too. Some code found in the new version of Twitter's app links to a frequently asked question page about Periscope, and that link is wrapped in code called Shutdown Learn More. The link and this code isn't actually active yet, but it certainly looks like Periscope is on its way out. This is not a big deal for digital marketers like you and me. Honestly, if you're going to live stream for your brand,

Starting point is 00:03:26 you're probably doing it on Facebook or YouTube. A lot of Periscope live streams are actually just simulcasting live streams from other sources. Hell, that's what I do every day when I live stream the production of this very podcast. By the way, check the link in this episode's notes if you'd like to watch. Twitter has apparently been working on a new live streaming platform, so maybe Periscope is just redundant. Again, they're not the greatest with acquisitions. Case in point. Case in point, Twitter today announced it is buying Squad. And what you ask is Squad? It's a social video chat app, kind of like Messenger, but a little more young and fun,

Starting point is 00:04:04 and you can share your phone screen. And they've already announced that with the acquisition, they're going to shut the app down tomorrow. So this is an acqui-hire. They're moving Squad's developers in-house to, I guess we can assume, work on more of a group Messenger product because, you know, we all need more of those. The move is also notable for the fact that Squad had been widely thought of as being in Snapchat's pocket. They'd used Snap's development tools early on, and that code was deeply baked into their app. So maybe Twitter just wanted to clean that all out. But yay, more messaging apps.

Starting point is 00:04:50 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. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca.

Starting point is 00:05:18 R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. If your marketing manager says she noticed a decline in web traffic from Instagram in the last couple of months, it was most likely because of a big change the app made in the weeks leading up to the U.S. election. The Recent tab was removed from hashtag searches in the U.S. The only option you had was the Top listing, which provided more time for Instagram's moderators to filter through trending content, trying to limit the spread of misinformation. This is a surprising, busy tab and can provide a decent amount of traffic, depending on what you're selling. Anyway, now that the American states have all certified their results, that tab is back now. A nice change for those of you who also

Starting point is 00:06:00 administer your brand's LinkedIn company page. there are now some new administrator roles. Well, more granular, I guess, instead of new. Quoting LinkedIn, LinkedIn pages offer page admin and paid media admin roles to allow for tiered levels of management for all activities related to your page. Page admin and page media admin roles can be granted to members, associated employees, and advertisers, unquote. Now, the paid media role itself isn't new, but what they've done is they've added a series of sub-roles. So, here is what you now have, first, in the overall page admin levels. Super admin, that's the kitchen sink. You can do everything, including deleting your brand's entire presence on LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Content admin, this person can create and manage posts. Curators, these people will be able to recommend content for employees to post and then they get access to insights. And analyst, exactly what you'd expect. They can look at analytics but not change anything. Over to the paid media sub roles. These are all new. There's a sponsored content poster. So these people can make sponsored content ads, but they'll have to do that through the ads manager, by the way. This role won't be able to boost organic posts from the company page. There's a new lead gen forms manager. That's kind of cool.

Starting point is 00:07:14 So all they'll be able to do is download the leads that an ad campaign got. I guess that's for agencies more than anything. And a pipeline builder, which will let them edit pipeline landing pages. Not all company pages have this right now. It's still rolling out, but it should get to you in the coming days. Facebook's corporate intranet product called Workplace is making a big change to its pricing model, and that change is no more free ride. We all knew this was coming, of course. They made it free early on to grab market share. And now, well, on February 10th, it will be paid only. I have to say,

Starting point is 00:07:51 I don't know a single person or a single company that uses Facebook Workplace. And why don't they? Let's not forget these are the same people who designed the UI for Creator Studio. Okay, we're done here. And finally, Burger King in France has turned its Instagram account over to competing restaurants. Quoting the company, there's more to life than the Whopper. There's Boca Mexa's tacos, Lumi's salads, La Pasta Tinto's pastas, Oceanoza's sushi. In short, there are specialties from thousands of restaurants

Starting point is 00:08:30 that deserve to be as famous as the Whopper. So, we decided to stop posting our burger pics and to make our Instagram account available to all of these restaurants. Until they can open again, they will be able to advertise here for free. It's also

Starting point is 00:08:47 clever how they're implementing this. They're asking restaurants to post their signature dish on Instagram with the hashtag Whopper and Friends, and then Burger King will look for those and post some of them on its own channel, showcasing the offers of competing restaurants to its 328,000 followers. Man, this week went fast. Did it go fast for you? The last, like, two or three weeks have been like this for me. I, you know, I work from home,

Starting point is 00:09:12 like I think we all do these days. Went upstairs, talked to my wife today. I genuinely thought that it was Wednesday morning. I don't know. It's weird. Anyway, that is it for this week. Our production assistant is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Interesting story about our theme, by the way. It actually has lyrics, something about alpacas and llamas and their mating rituals, but we don't play that for obvious reasons. Music licensing by Source Audio. This podcast is produced by our agency, EngageQ Digital. Find us at engageq.com. Full transcripts to every episode are on our website, todayindigital.com.

Starting point is 00:09:48 I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful and safe week, friends, and I will talk to you on Monday. 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 00:10:38 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - Why Can’t Twitter Keep Things Alive?

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