62: [Ep62/21Jun21] – Google Simplifies YouTube Ad Creation Process & Other Digital Marketing Updates from the Week of Jun 21, 2021

[Introduction] – 00:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode 62 of This Week In Marketing. I’m your host Sajid Islam, and today I’ll be going over the notable news and updates in the digital marketing space from the week of June 21, 2021

[Update 1 – Facebook Launches Live Audio Rooms] – 00:42

OK, let’s start off with first of all, with Facebook, Facebook has launched a live audio rooms. It is not open to everyone, they’ve just rolled it out to public figures and select Facebook groups. But basically, the way the rooms are going to work is just how clubhouse works, right? You can start an audio room. That is, if you’re approved while they’re in Beta and the audience audience can participate. Of course, the audience can either be Android or iOS device, but you know for you as a creator of the audio room, you have to be an iOS app. There’s nothing more to that, except that, you know, Facebook roll it out. We knew this was gonna happen. You know, there are other platforms have been doing it. And the other thing Facebook also officially announced its Facebook broadcast. We already covered this in episode 61, which is last week. So we are not gonna cover that in this episode. But if you miss that announcement go ahead and check out episode 61. And I covered it. In great detail in terms of what Facebook podcast will do with that next? Moving on. The next update I have is from Facebook.

[Update 2 – 4 New E-commerce Features from Facebook] – 01:44

Facebook has basically announced 4 new e-commerce features that you should actually be aware of. The first one is Facebook shop. Now when you set up a Facebook shop eligible products, our products are eligible to appear in shop tabs. Instagram as well. It seems like more and more that Facebook and Instagram has just becoming an extension of each other, and you know, it’s just that brand name. It’s different. You know how sometimes you go, I just do not know. I mean, they’re like, so combined, like, you know, Facebook shop products showing up on Instagram, Instagram, post showing up on Facebook. It’s just crossed out. Might as well call it. One product, right? But anyway I’m moving on. The next thing that Facebook has announced, and it’s rolling out, the second thing is customer reviews and Instagram customer ratings and reviews will be expanded to shops on Instagram after the feature rolls out. It will also include photos and videos from the community in addition to regional views. My only feedback here is that folks braise yourself ’cause you’re gonna get a lot of haters coming in. And writing your negative rate feedbacks and then you’re gonna have a lot of spam and guess what? Facebook is going to use that review to Ding you and then you’re ad account is going to be banned or you’re gonna end up paying higher more on your ads. How I know that? Well I have been in Facebook groups. Can steal lambing. Facebook grows paid Facebook groups where I have Facebook marketeers, they talk about this thing all the time. What can you do? I would say if I were you, I would. I have. If I have other channels, I would just stick to those channels and not really coming to the Facebook closed ecosystem. But that’s just me. Next up, personalized shop ads shop ads will have the ability to send shoppers to where they’re most likely to purchase, make a purchase based on prior shopping activity. This is great assuming your Facebook ads account has not been banned. OK, if you ads account is not been banned, that’s great, but you know, like last week. And this week I’ve gained the groups that I’m part of where these are paid groups, by the way. And there are, you know, advertisers who spend millions of dollars a month, they were all complaining about Facebook’s algorithm or ad algorithm was all crappy, and they were all getting crap results. But my word. Sad word. OK, moving on the last part, Facebook announced. Is expanded. Use of augmented reality trial features. Now, if you’re not familiar with what augmented reality is, I will give you a quick update like a couple of months ago when I was in the market for buying eyeglasses. I went to Warby Parker, and I basically looked at there. I had the app I was looking at the glasses and I was holding the phone and it would tell me what the glass would look like on my face. But it’s just a way of trying things out without going to the shop. And then this is going to get. This is augmented reality, something that’s gonna catch on Snapchat is very big into it. And you know, Snapchat as. They have actually invested heavily into augmented reality. They’re betting on augmented reality, and it is going to happen. So Facebook is basically now bringing that augmented reality, then creating new ad units where people are gonna. I see. The reality ads as well as now they’re trying out in first, they’re trying out in beauty category, then they’re going to come into other verticals. Overall it’s a good thing Facebook is trying on just keep an eye out and you know when it rolls out fully, you may want to take advantage of it assuming you are still in the Facebook land, OK. There’s nothing wrong with it. If you’re in the Facebook plan, it’s just that. I’m not a big fan of just being on Facebook land. We do just for the record, we do push and publish our podcasts and updates on Instagram. So do we do it on Facebook? But that’s not the only channel we are active on. We do it because we have to do it, but I don’t soley rely on that, just ’cause. I know Facebook is untrusted partner Next up. Twitter

[Update 3 – Twitter Accepting Applications for Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows] – 05:51

Twitter is accepting applications for ticketed spaces and super follows. Basically, this is something they announced back in February during the Analyst Day. We covered that heavily in our episode in the podcast episode, so if you haven’t checked, if you haven’t checked it out, I will save you the trouble of digging it up and checking it out and I’ll just quickly. Tell you what ticket spaces is ticketed spaces basically allows you know Twitter user or or Twitter creator to to be able to charge for exclusive access to audio space sessions with variable ticket price options. So basically what that means is say I have a big follower on Twitter. Which I don’t have, but if I did like a lot of people does like Elon Musk and you know other, you know, celebrities Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, then they could actually host a room and they say, hey, I’m doing a private QnA session. Come on in. And here’s the ticket prices. So it’s a good way for Twitter to keep people on their platform and. Not having to like, you know, have people or let’s just create an audio event and let’s move it elsewhere. It’s fragmented. It’s just making it very smooth. I like that. The other thing is super follows means users will be unable to end super. Follows is. Basically users will be unable to charge charge a monthly fee to give fans access to a range of additional content engagement features like newsletter exclusive live streams, product discounts, etc. Right now what we are doing is we are going to Patreon or we’re going to other sites and we’re saying you know. Hey, here’s my other patron account. Go there and you know, sign up and then you will get access to all this content. Twitter is just combining it all together and basically keeping it in the platform, which I think is a great idea. Of course, Twitter is gonna take a cut somewhere between 3 to 10%. It’s not been decided. But hey, that’s the cost of doing business, right. And ease of use. So I’m OK with it as long as Twitter delivers on their promise. Moving on,

 

[Update 4 – iOS Twitter Users Can Now Share Their Stories Directly to Instagram Stories] – 07:48

Twitter has also created a feature which I really love, which is the People in we can take our tweets and share it directly to Instagram stories. In the past, what I was doing or up until now, what I was doing was I would take a screenshot. I will then save it, go edit it, cut it out and then go to Instagram and upload it. It’s all going to be seamless. I love it. I love it, I love it. I I’m glad that Twitter is allowing us to do that. I wish other Facebook would do that as well with Instagram post anyways.

[Update 5 – Twitter Adds 15-Second Views as a New Objective for Ad Campaigns] – 08:24

The other thing Twitter added this week was a 15 second views as a. You know, ad objective or as a new objective for ad campaigns, video ad campaigns and this is basically targeting video users who are most likely to watch videos. I kind of like that in fact, this week, Snapchat came out of report, which it’s not covered in our show, but it’s there, it’s that they said the six second non skippable. Video ads are actually very impactful and dust create brand awareness, right? And that applies across to even to YouTube ’cause You Tube is also there is a non skippable ad format as well. So All in all what I’m saying is that video ads are something that you should definitely leverage whether you are in. Twitter, whether you are LinkedIn or whether you are on TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat doesn’t matter. But just go ahead and try it out. You’ll be glad you did.

[Update 6 – TikTok Jump Allows Creators to Add Third-Party Apps & Services] – 09:22

Talking about other platforms, we now have TikTok, TikTok has announced the launch of a new feature called Jumps, which will enable create us to link third to third party own mini programs and services from the video clips including recipes, quizzes and more. Right. Again, this is something very similar to what the snapshot recently did with an expansion of the developer tools and you know. It’s not available to all TikTok users, but it’s creating a developers program to create access to give jump access to its jobs creation program. All in all, I will tell you all this basically signals and what you should take away from. It is like TikTok is about 638 million users right now. Soon it’s expected to have about a billion users at the end of this year. Do you not talk? Is a platform that’s just growing leaps and bounds, and it’s something you should not ignore. If you’re not already on there, I know we are not on TikTok and I will tell you I keep on thinking about it and I keep on one of these days, I am gonna start the twin show slash marketing, grow channel on TikTok and we’re going to start claiming our presence there. And I say this only reason is we are a small business. We don’t we have only limited. Let me just capacity so I can relate to it. If you say you don’t have capacity, but you know it’s something we need to do it and we will get on to it one of these days and I will announce it on my podcast. With that, let’s move on to Google.

[Update 7 – Google May Suspend Merchant Sites that Show Invalid Product Availability] – 10:51

Google actually came up with this update this week with this is Google Merchant Center that adding a new policy called inaccurate availability and if they catch you they’re gonna warn you. And if it’s still, if you still don’t fix it, they’re gonna ban you. So what is inaccurate availability is, I will tell you. And I’ve been a victim of it also in the past where. You gotta Google you search for something and it shows. Oh, it’s in stock. You go start the buying process and everything and then towards the checker they says oops, we are out of stock. Right, So what? Google is saying if you’re showing users that our product is available on the product landing page, but when they Click to add it to cart it changes the availability as not available. That can lead to violating this policy and you may be. You may be banned. I like that. I hate that when that has happened to me and it has happened to me quite a few times. In fact, I think that has dissuaded me from making any purchase through Google Shopping. Just ’cause, you know, I know if I go to Amazon, it says in stock in stock means it’s in stock with Google. I have had a couple of those bad experiences so. Thank you Google for doing what’s really right. Appreciate it.

[Update 8 – YouTube is Adding Detailed Info for Policy Violations] – 12:06

Talking about Google, we are talking. Let’s move on to YouTube. YouTube actually announced something, a new test this week that I really, really love. It’s just saying, you know, sometimes when you upload a video and you get dinged for policy violation, whether it’s copyright or whatever and. You had left wondering. Scratching your head, especially if you have a video with like in a lot of music and a lot of different images and things from different areas, different other sources, you’re scratching it and I’m like it’s a 10 minute video. Where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong? Which one is the which one really? Triggered the policy violation, so you’ll be saying, you know, we’re gonna remove the guesswork and we’re going to basically provide a direct timestamp link to the section of your video which YouTube system has identified, potentially breaching its rules. While the alerts will also include specific details about the relevant Community guidelines and links to health resources. Basically saying, hey, you screwed up here it is that mini 20 or whatever two minute 29 second mark to this mark. This is the policy, this is what we flagged it. Can you go check it out here? It’s the community guideline that you missed versus Facebook is going to come and ban you delete your video and you’re like bullet off the platform. It’s like. What did they do wrong? Like we don’t know. You made a mistake. We’re not going to tell you. Made a mistake. That’s it. OK, so I like it. I hope this encourages you to create more YouTube videos because we’re going to talk about the youtubes reach in the next update, which is this week was

[Update 9 – YouTube Introduces New Tools & Resources for Small Biz Owners] – 13:37

YouTube’s small business week. Make it as part of Google’s international small business week. It was held on June 24th and as part of those week word. YouTube did is basically published a free step-by-step guide designed to help business owners launch a channel, stablish an online presence and reach new customers. Through this guide and the guide covers how to launch a channel, how to create videos live streaming on YouTube, getting started with YouTube ads. OK, these are all great copy and if it helps with we’re gonna do is we’re gonna put a link to that page guidebook on our show notes page. You can check it out. But one thing that came out of. This thing is like. Some numbers, 79% of small businesses with with a YouTube channel agree that publishing videos help with getting found by customers. That’s one, and currently there are over 2 billion with a B monthly users on YouTube watching a collective 1 billion hours of video a day. Yes. 2 billion monthly active users watching a collective of 1 billion hours of video each day. So that means if there are 30 days that are 30 billion hours of video every month, that’s a massive, staggering number that just tells you how much video is being consumed. And we are not on YouTube, we are missing our folks. That’s all it is, nothing else.

[Update 10 – Google Simplifies YouTube Ad Creation Process] – 15:11

Last update of this week is going to be as part of the small business week or as well as in. Let me go back and let me see what it was. I keep missing the as part of Google’s international small Business Week event. YouTube also came out and that’s basically says, hey, we’re going to simplify your ad creation process, right? So now on whenever you upload a video to your YouTube channel and you will have the option to launch a video campaign by adding a video, selecting the audiences that you want to reach, and designating a budget, right? This is YouTube. Taking a cue from Facebook post, remember how you could do a Facebook post boost. That you would put a post and it will immediately tell you post my post for five bucks on Facebook. You should not you and that kind of went away well YouTube is bringing it back and these days these platforms are all copying from one another. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. How good it will be will remain to be seen, right, because the reason why people didn’t like, you know, a lot of people use Facebook boost, not knowingly. And then they realize, you know what? It’s so limited that it really doesn’t have the reach that we really wanted to. It just gives us the superficial. News in the region. It doesn’t do anything and people kind of moved away from it. Maybe this is the same thing. I hope it’s not the same thing with YouTube, but it does open it up. On the other hand, you know Google is out to get money, make money, can get money, so they’re gonna make it easy for you to spend money knowing you’re unknowingly. Two things that will not work, so be forewarned. But it’s my duty to kind of share the updates with you, so that’s what I’m doing. I hope you found it helpful.

[Closing] – 16:47

With that folks. That’s it for this week in marketing. Now you know everything that you need to know if you’d like to read more, please make sure you visit our show page where you will find the links to these articles. Once again, this is your host Sajid Islam signing off until next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

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