Today in Digital Marketing - Zuckerberg... You Still With Me, Bro?

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

In the alternate universe we’re all living in now, one marketer has found that using an insane amount of text in Facebook ads actually drives better results now… Hootsuite is having a very bad day… Reddit adds some nice protections for brands that are a little risk-sensitive… Please welcome the newest member of the vertical Stories club… and LinkedIn adds some surprisingly useful upgrades. Not subscribed yet? Get direct subscribe links at TodayInDigital.com HELP SPREAD THE WORD: • Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publish • Review Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST: • Our Slack community: TodayInDigital.com/slack • Produced by: engageQ.com • Advertising: TodayInDigital.com/ads • Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email • Transcripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com • Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio) TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA: • Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffin • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffin • Tod’s agency: engageQ.com • TikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffin • Twitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin Source links and full transcripts at TodayInDigital.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur 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, in the alternate universe we are all living in now, Be protected. Be Zen. welcome the newest member of the Vertical Stories Club, and LinkedIn adds some surprisingly useful upgrades. It's Thursday, September 24th, 2020. Happy Holy Cross Day, Bolivia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. It has been a rough day in the executive offices of Hootsuite. Last night on Twitter, someone claiming to be an employee leaked the news that Hootsuite had bid for and accepted a three-year contract with the American Immigration Enforcement Department. That department, known as ICE, has been accused of everything from separating children from parents to subjecting its female detainees to have forced hysterectomies. The tweet said, quote, over 100 employees have been extremely vocal in their opposition to this deal.

That we are eagerly accepting money from an organization that has allegedly a documented history of locking children in cages, tearing families apart and destroying lives is devastating. Even more heartbreaking is that multiple members of our Mexico City support team have relayed their personal experiences being targeted and harassed by ICE, and our leadership team chose to push this deal through anyway. This makes it abundantly clear that Hootsuite puts profits above people, and for the record, I'm a damn good product trainer with consistently high CSAT scores quarter after quarter. If I get fired for speaking out about this, it will be purely retaliatory in nature, unquote. Ouch. That was last night. This morning, around 8.30 Pacific time, Hootsuite published this somewhat oddly worded tweet. We typically do not make public facing statements about specific customers or contracts. However, due to the attention around this particular case, we can confirm that Hootsuite has decided not to do business with ICE.

That led to an even greater shitstorm. One person replying, due to the attention? Not the well-reasoned arguments from your employees? Not because of the actual horror ICE inflicts on people? Not because of the employees you have that are targeted and harassed by ICE? The attention? Unquote. And so, less than two hours later, a wordier version of Hootsuite's statement is tweeted out, this time under the new CEO's name, confirming that, yes, even though they formed an internal staff committee to consider all points of view,

they still decided to proceed. The statement said, We have heard the lived experiences from our people and the hurt they are feeling. The decision has created a divided company, and this is not the kind of company I came to lead. As a result, we have decided to not proceed with the deal with ICE, unquote. Either way you look at it, it is certainly a major misstep from their new CEO, who was appointed only a couple of months ago when the founding CEO decided to step away from day-to-day duties. It's a little too early to say what the fallout of this will be, but considering that Hootsuite is a certified B Corp, where they promise to generally do good things, some digital marketing managers may be reconsidering their use of the Hootsuite platform.

If your agency or marketing department uses Airtable or Notion or any of the web database apps out there, there's a new one to consider. And if your office is a Google shop, this might be a compelling option. It's called Tables. It's by Google. Well, actually, it's by Area 120, which is Google's in-house incubator for things they're trying out. More on that in a moment. But it's essentially an Airtable competitor. It's got bots to do things like schedule recurring email reminders when tasks are overdue or message a chat room when someone fills out a lead form or move tasks to someone once the status is updated. You know, the workflow apps. It's available only in the US for now. It is free and there is a paid tier with more stuff at $10 a month. It all sounds great except for one thing.

It's by Area 120. Don't forget that Google has a habit of dumping enormous resources into projects and then just dropping them like a hot potato. Remember Google Wave? Back 11 years ago, they introduced what was going to be a revolutionary way to do email. It was so compelling that the developers at the conference where they introduced it even gave them hoots and hollers. That's Stephanie. Stephanie replies.

Stephanie does inline replies. And so on and so on. Not even three years later, it was killed off. So, as you can imagine, people are a little gun-shy. One reviewer at Product Hunt saying, I look forward to building a dependency upon this and having it be abandoned.

On Tuesday, I reported on Facebook's decision to stop penalizing ads where their images had a lot of text in them. Used to be, if your image had more than 20% text, it just wouldn't run. Then text in them, used to be, if your image had more than 20% text, just wouldn't run. Then they loosened it up to say, well, it'll run, but we're going to knock back your reach. So it was good news for us digital marketers this week. And the first thing that Facebook ads consultant John Loomer did was to test it.

He created an ad where the image had, like, just a ridiculous amount of text in it. It was all huge letters, all text. He gave it a $500 CBO budget with a custom conversions objective across three different ad sets. And how's it doing? Quoting John's blog post this morning. First, the campaign is definitely delivering. I'm having no issue whatsoever. The results are also better than other campaigns, but that's also related to the virality of the post. CPM is on the higher end, but it's not the highest. It's only been about 24 hours, so it's still learning, and the price has dropped since it started, unquote.

He did note that he got a bunch of negative feedback. One guy commenting that the ad was trash. John gave that a love reaction. And he added, quote, Indeed. John Loomer's website is johnloomer.com. That's J-O-N-L-O-O-M-E-R.com. And I highly recommend his Power Haters Club. It keeps us up to date on everything related to Facebook ads. It's been one of our best investments.

That's JohnLumer.com. TikTok is putting some new advertising restrictions on weight loss ads. First, an outright ban of all ads that promote fasting apps or weight loss supplements. And for those not quite as egregious but still promote a harmful or negative body image, some new blocks, the main one being that only ages 18 and up can be targeted. You also won't be able to promote a negative body image or a negative relationship with food.

I know, I know you never would. TikTok does concede enforcement of these will probably require some human review. You listening, Zuckerberg? And they are adding 25,000 new staff in the U.S. in the coming months. Fun fact, that's 24,999 more ad reviewers than Facebook has. Reddit is expanding its ads network with three new inventory types. Limited inventory will be a small group of very safe subreddits and double-checked by some tech from Oracle.

Expanded inventory will include about 20% more subreddits, so more reach, but they say those will still meet Reddit's content standards. And then there's standard inventory, which wasn't described in much detail other than to say it's aiming to balance reach and brand protection. Quoting Marketing Dive, Reddit's key advantage among social platforms is contextual-based advertising that reaches groups of enthusiasts with the highest propensity to buy products or services related to their interests, unquote. All right, to translate this a little because this is a little bit of putting lipstick on a pig, what they're saying here is that unlike a platform like Facebook, where you buy people, All right, to translate this a little because this is a little bit of putting lipstick on a pig. What they're saying here is that unlike a platform like Facebook where you buy people based on their interests, demographics, and behaviors, with Reddit, you are buying communities, subreddits. This is much more akin to newspaper advertising. You want an ad?

Yeah, sure. You want it in the sports section or the art section. Even so, digital marketers have found success on Reddit, and this splitting of their offering into what are essentially risk tolerance buckets may find brand sensitive advertisers kicking the tires. Well, these stories about vertical stories keeps coming. Today, Pinterest joined the club with what they call a story pin. Not a lot to say about these, other than they are the same vertical format as all the others. Vertical Stories keeps coming. Today, Pinterest joined the club with what they call a Story Pin. Not a lot to say about these, other than they are the same vertical format as all the others. You can save them to boards, which means, of course, they'll be discoverable by Pinterest's recommendation engine.

What is different is that they don't disappear after 24 hours, unlike the Instagram and Snapchat variety. Story Pins are rolling out now to a handful of U.S. accounts. You should start to see them on their site this week. Pinterest also updated its analytics hub that lets creators track performance and measure the impact of their posts. Also in Stories news, LinkedIn this week will be rolling out its version. It'll be available first in the U.S. and Canada with more regions to come after. They're also updating the design of their site. Don't worry, it is not like the dog's breakfast that is the new Facebook design. It's pretty much the same LinkedIn,

just a little bit lighter, a little bit more open. You might actually like it. And they're adding integration with Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, and Zoom. And soon, you'll be able to edit or delete a message you've sent on the platform. All things we've actually asked for. Zuckerberg, you still with me, bro? Instagram's competitor to TikTok, which they call Reels, still is not gaining a lot of traction. So this afternoon, they rolled out some changes, most notably letting people record longer videos. TikTok can make 15 second or one minute videos. Reels launched with just the 15 second option. So they are expanding that, but not to one minute, only to 30 seconds. TechCrunch thinks it's because this would force users to create original content rather than doing what they've mostly been doing so far. And that's just re-uploading their TikTok videos to

Instagram. They're also extending the timer to 10 seconds and will add the ability to trim and delete clips, all things that, let's face it, should have been there at launch. And there's more missing, quoting TechCrunch. With TikTok's SoundSync, the app can automatically find music that synchronizes with your video clips if you don't want to take full control of the editing experience. On Reels, there's more manual editing involved in terms of locating the right music and matching it up with your edits, which you have to do yourself instead of leaving it up to the tech to do for you, unquote. So the trim and delete stuff is live in the app now. The 30 second limit

rolls out today and tomorrow, and the timer extension will follow in a few days. Finally, I was tipped off to a really good email newsletter, which may interest you if you want to keep up to speed on the ad tech in podcasting. So we're talking things like analytics and dynamic ad insertion. It's a spinoff from the similarly solid pod newsletter. And you can find the ad tech one. It's called Sounds Profitable at adtech.podnews.net. It is published every Monday. Full disclosure, this podcast is an advertiser on the parent newsletter.

And hey, the editor of that newsletter is in our Slack community if you want to pick his brains. So is Stephanie, founder of a podcast network, and Hunter, a social media growth specialist for a fitness brand, and Debbie, who manages international marketing for a platform that serves the education market. And Lubna, who works in digital marketing with small businesses in Morocco. All these people and more joined our Slack community just this morning. There are more than 150 digital marketers, social media coordinators, SEO pros, podcast producers, and internet media buyers all in there.

You should be in there too. I'm there all day long, by the way. I respond really quickly. I have no life. Please talk to me. It's even free. Go to todayindigital.com slash slack. That's todayindigital.com slash slack.

Or look for the link under the About This Podcast section in the show notes. Well, here is your second warning. I feel like I'm doing the publishing of the bands of marriage, but here's your second warning that I am moving the feed of this show this weekend. So if Monday comes and you don't see me in your queue by evening, then something broke and you will be able to get the new feed at todayindigital.com. I'm very excited. I bought a top-of-the-line new MacBook Pro. I've been watching the FedEx site, watching it make its journey from China to Korea to Alaska.

It's now in Richmond, which is just a float plane ride away from me. I'm going to have a gloriously geeky weekend. I'm Todd Maffin. More news from the world of digital marketing tomorrow. Talk to you then.