Today in Digital Marketing - Why My Zoom Background is of Iceland

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, with TikTok poised to announce its buyer Be protected. Be Zen. to advertising in some countries, and a clever digital campaign from a beer company that's centered on the Zoom video meeting app. It's Tuesday, September 1st, 2020. Happy Wisdom Day, Estonia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Everyone, it seems, wants to be Amazon or Shopify. All the social media channels are bulking up their direct e-commerce capabilities. Facebook shop, Instagram shop, Pinterest's buyable pins. Everyone wants to have the purchase happen in their app or on their site. Yes, this reduces the friction to buy, but also means in most cases you'll be giving up a small cut of sales. We'll add one more to the

Starting point is 00:01:22 list. TikTok, the company announcing today that some influencers will soon be able to sell their own merch directly in the app. We're talking about t-shirts, face masks, iPhone covers, you know, items with the logos or the catchphrases of the creator. It's being done through Teespring, which a lot of creators already use. The difference here is that rather than having fans jump off the TikTok app to go over to Teespring's website to buy, that purchase will happen right inside the app. They're still trying to figure out how visually this will appear over their video, but TikTok says their goal is to create a full shop functionality inside their app. There are 7,000 creators on the beta list ready to try this out when the test goes live. By the way, rumors are that TikTok will announce the buyer of part of its service very soon,

Starting point is 00:02:08 maybe even as soon as today, so you may already know who it is by the time you listen to this. As I recorded it, reports were that whoever ends up buying it will be buying the part that operates in the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Pinterest, too, is bulking up its e-commerce capabilities with some new features they hope will draw more attention to product pins. Specifically, they're testing adding a popular label and a bestseller label that would overlay on top of the pin image. Also, if there's a sale, it will show the sale price next to the original price, and they're also trying to add product ratings to the pins, those ratings to come from the websites of retailers. This is just a test, though, so you may see them on your own products, you may not.

Starting point is 00:02:54 It's up if you manage your brand's website, and that site runs on WordPress. Today, they released version 5.5.1. This is a bug fix to their newest version that broke millions of brand websites. The release itself didn't actually break them, but that version removed some code that many, many themes and plugins relied on to operate. So with that code gone, those things broke, which in many cases took down the whole site. So that bit of code is back in now, but they warn they'll be pulling it again in March. So make sure you update your themes and plugins.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Google is now showing attributes of businesses in more places for Google My Business profiles. When you search for a business in the search engine or in Google Maps, you're probably familiar with the little listing that each business gets. That's their Google My Business profile. And for some time, managers of those profiles have been able to add so-called attribute labels, little stickers essentially that highlight information about the company, such as women-led or black-owned or LGBT-friendly. Those labels have been visible on mobile for some time, but now apparently they are showing up on desktop as well. By the way, you may or may not have access to these labels as they seem to be dependent on the category your business is in, which often makes sense. I mean, shopping centers get to turn on free Wi-Fi and public bathrooms, things that, say, an ad agency wouldn't need to signal.

Starting point is 00:04:22 So those options aren't there. But for many businesses, some of these more generic ones aren't there either. In the case of our agency, we only get two options, online appointments or women-led. Attributes that could apply, like black-owned, or attributes that in our case do apply, like LGBT-friendly, we can't choose because those options just aren't there. Anyway, these labels do get prime real estate when your brand is introduced to people on Google, so it is worth logging into your Google My Business profile, seeing which ones you have, and turning on the ones that fit.

Starting point is 00:04:58 Three smaller items for which I'm too lazy to edit in the lightning round theme. First, clever digital ad campaign from Coors Light. They're giving away a vacation to someone anywhere in the world. And you select where you want to go if you win. But the way you do it isn't to type the country name into a form. It's to upload a screenshot of yourself using that location in a Zoom virtual background. The campaign was created by DDB. It's part of the brand's Made to Chill campaign.

Starting point is 00:05:30 This extended push started yesterday and is rolling out across broadcast, digital, and paid social. Second, Facebook says it will change its terms and conditions on October 1st. That change, they're adding just one sentence. That sentence? can remove or restrict access to your content, services, or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook, unquote. And Google will be adding a new surcharge to its advertising. If you run ads in the UK, Turkey, or Austria, you'll be paying extra. This all because those countries are adding a sales tax, which Google just passes straight along to us.

Starting point is 00:06:08 Yay. In the UK, it's 2%. Turkey and Austria, 5%. This starts November 1st. And finally, I wanted to give a free plug to one of the tools that we use to get this show out. It's called podcastpage.io. And it provides a really customizable front end to your podcast. When you choose a hosting provider for your podcast, you're stuck with whatever front end customizations it allows. I chose Anchor because it seemed pretty stable and it was free.

Starting point is 00:06:39 They had a pretty decent front end that made it easy for people to subscribe to their podcast app of choice. And then they got bought by Spotify. And suddenly, that subscribe real estate was consumed by a big listen on Spotify button, with the other platforms relegated to a tiny line of icons. I hated it. Then I actually found podcastpage.io. They don't host the podcast, mind you. They just pick the information of episodes in your podcast off of the source RSS feed. But here's what I love about them is you can customize the front end however you like.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Change the text of the subscribe button, add transcripts, reformat the metadata, and a ton more. It's $8 a month for a single podcast. They did not pay for this. I just wanted to give them a shout out because it's a great idea. We're really enjoying it.

Starting point is 00:07:25 That's it for today. I'm Todd to give them a shout out because it's a great idea. We're really enjoying it. That's it for today. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow. I feel like I've been gone backwards. No, I did it already. But here I am again and I'm ready to move past it. Ready to move fast. Ready to reinvent it.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Decide what I'm really after. In it for a minute. Now I feel like a master. Still I got room to grow. Miles to grow. Got hours to grow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Why My Zoom Background is of Iceland

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