Full Transcription

[Introduction]

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode 72 of This Week In Marketing. This is 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 August 30, 2021.

[Update 1 – LinkedIn Removing Stories on September 30]

Today, first of all, we are going to start off with a little bit of, you know, sad news, which is to say, you know, first, it was Twitter who abandoned stories, fleets. Now it seems like LinkedIn has announced that they are also removing stories. Again, if you’ve been following our show, you know I have always talked about this in my past episodes where I’ve said, you know, all these platforms seem to have been copying features from one from the other. It was just a matter of time. Who’s gonna copy from whom and everything. Right. I’ve always talked about it, and I when LinkedIn also announced stories, I kind of was dissing them. And you know, come to Fast forward or August 30, 2021, LinkedIn announced said, we’re gonna kill stories now. It’s been a year or almost a year. Does this mean stories are dead? I don’t think so. Because it seems like Instagram is going strong. TikTok stories are catching up. But what LinkedIn? Fail to understand and want all the platforms should realize is does this feature makes sense for my platform? Does this feature make sense for my user base my community? That’s the key thing that they’re missing. It’s not me too. It’s not about me too, it’s about does discuss. LinkedIn is a professional. Platform, right. And stories never really caught on there. Other things that are very good for LinkedIn that is cool. They should actually focus on that. And one of the things that they’ve announced is that you know, they’re gonna focus a little bit more on videos and we’ll see how that comes up. They haven’t announced any more of those, but I think that’s a platform that’s direction that LinkedIn should go to. OK. With that next go to the next update, which is Twitter,

[Update 2 – Finally, Twitter Launches $uper Follows]

We talk we talked about Twitter killing Twitter, killing stories aka fleets or fleets aka stories. And with that, Twitter has even finally launched a super following. This was something we covered earlier this year when Twitter announced that they’re gonna monetize the platform, they’re gonna grow double their user base in the next couple of years and so forth. So what super follows is, in case you’ve missed it, is that through super follows you cannot monthly revenue. Take your relationship to the next level with your you know with our followers and customers what you offer in charge. Of course, there is a fee and it is not something available to everyone to select. Select Twitter users in the US, but what’s great is that kind of talked about it before as well is that this is actually giving Twitter users. The full platform, previously Twitter users, Facebook users are myself, and if we have to take a payment and with a kid build a community, we go to Patreon, right? We charge them over there for access to a Facebook group. So if Facebook were to do that, that would actually catch on like a wildfire. And a Facebook is scratching their head and. Zuckerberg and he’s, you know. Scratching their head and I’m scratching my head. If you see my video where you know like how do we make money? Well, you know, guys just give us a way to charge for groups, right? That way I don’t have to charge through stripe and pay someone else. I can just pay you the money. You take a card. Whatever. It’s 10 percent. 15% manage it for me. And that just gives me a seamless experience. I have no idea why Facebook doesn’t think that, but anyway great for Twitter, for following on. I’m pretty sure Facebook is gonna catch on just a little bit slow. Next up I have updates from Twitter.

[Update 3 – ‘TikTok World’ – Get the Scoop on Unreleased Features]

uh, well, Twitter world is coming up. What is Twitter world? It’s something new. This they’re doing it for the first time. This is what Facebook does called F8. Salesforce does something called I think Dev4 something like that. Snapchat does a partner submit. Google does their thing. It’s just Apple does WW, WW worldwide. Worldwide developers Conference WWDC. So it’s just a way for Twitter to aggregate or bring the community together, showcase what’s happening, what they’re working on, what’s up to come, give them a sneak preview, talk about Q&A sessions and get everyone in that community are excited and all together and move forward in a common vision. For the next 11 to 12 months, I feel like, you know, this is something good for cause they are maturing, they’re taking things seriously. I don’t think even Facebook did. I started if it pretty late for that matter, you know, , the fact that, you know, they’re learning and they’re evolving and they’re doing things proactively ahead of time. It really gives me a lot of hope and this is a platform to stay, by the way we opened up a Twitter TikTok channel. We posted like four videos, we got a bunch of views and you know the early things. So it’s very encouraging and we are going to publish more and more on TikTok. So if you’re not on Tiktok followers there, give us some love. Show us some support and you know growing something it’s not easy. So we could definitely use all the help that we can get with that. Let’s go to the next one.

[Update 4 – Learn How to Build Your Audience on Pinterest]

Next one is Pinterest has released a guide on how to build your audience on Pinterest. This is a series of stuff I read, the first one, which was, you know, how can you build your pin audience? I liked it and they give out like, you know, a bunch of new tapes of the five that I think it’s worth mentioning over here. Is fresh cut post fresh content weekly use. Trends to inform your strategy, text overlayer to your peins topic tag before you publish and feeling all your board details. Now the first four are very self explanatory and these are things that we could actually take from Pinterest and apply to other platforms however. Uh, I it’s very challenging to find out trends from Instagram, but we all definitely already publish, you know, content on Instagram weekly. We are thinking about publishing hours, the same content to Pinterest and we’ll see what happens. Excuse me. Overall, if you are a marketer, if you’re in eCom and you are struggling to get audience, I think being trust might be a good platform for you.

[Update 5 – ’10 Days of Live Shopping’ Event on Instagram]

Next up, talking about Facebook, Instagram has launched this thing called 10 days of Live Shopping. It’s an event. It’s basically a QVC real time QVC with an opportunity to engage with your shoppers, right? I looked at started on September 1st, which is Tuesday and it’s gonna go on for 10 days. They’re working with big. Friends, I think this is a way for Facebook to test out like you know. Does this thing make sense for us, right? But you know, one thing really bothers me. Offitt doing it like 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM on a weekday. Now folks, I do not know who their audience is and what the hell they are thinking. The reason QVC did so well, in my opinion, I was. I used to see a lot of QVC, you know, ads and QVC stuff at late night like, well, QVC had a separate channel by itself. But QVC in general. Like there was late night shopping after 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM eleven, I think after 11:00 PM or midnight it would be all like shopping sales online during people who would stay applied late night. They would buy, they would do things. With Facebook online real time, it’s brands like Sephora and Selena Gomez, yeah, I mean, you know, Selena’s fans are gonna kind of TuneIn because it’s Selena, and they’re gonna try to, you know, see what she’s talking about, things like that. But imagine if Selena has 100,000 followers. I’m just making up this number. Half of them maybe in class. Half of them may be in at work for them to tune in and actually focus on it, even if they’re at a desk. It’s just very high. Think. The choice of timing kind of, you know, annoys me. I should think they should have done like 9:00 PM, eight pm, 7:00 PM a little later in the evening. And that would have been nice. Think they would have got a better result. It’s my opinion, but I am. I’m gonna stand by it. But other than that, you know, if you really want to check it out or click the link on our show page and you were gonna. Be taken to that page. Next up,

[Update 6 – ‘Preferred Shop’ Labels Coming to Facebook]

Next up we have Facebook and Facebook is talking about preferred levels. What they say is is basically for this upcoming holiday season, Facebook is saying hey, depending on, you know how your ratings are, we’re gonna give you a level that’s called your Facebook preferred shop and through which, you know, you would probably surface higher. People are going to get. More assurances that you are a good business. Facebook has blessed you and off you go. Well, and this is similar to what Facebook did into back in 2015 when you know pages that responded quickly to. Text messages or messages. They were got us some similar tag right now. Here is the problem with that thing #1. Anyone can go and piss me on my Facebook page, right? And give me a poor rating, specially my competitors, my haters. What am I gonna do with Mr Facebook? I know you thinking about all Lala land. I sometimes feel like you know Mark Zuckerberg being in San Francisco in the California area and their executives, they I think they’re all smoking weed day in, day out. And they’re so up high there in the land. They have no clue what the hell is happening at the ground level. I think they’re up in the Ivory Castle. Ivory tower, right? And they don’t know what the situation is down at the ground level, because if that’s they would have realized, you know, that’s a concept that looks. Amazing in a perfect world, but in the real world, what I’ve seen is I’ve seen competitors and haters coming into my face. Not my people’s Facebook page and giving them, you know, artificially negative numbers 012 and, you know, eventually the score goes down. And Facebook basically bans them when they add account or basically hits them bad. With their ad cost. At the same shit is going to happen over here. Excuse my language. But you know, Facebook thinks it’s a perfect world or the thing that numbers game in a numbers game. You know, eventually the good is going to rise up because all the bad things are going to fall off. But you do not know how bad it can be when there’s a coordinated effort against your business to pull you down. But with that, IM going to leave it there. If you are interested in getting the preferred level, go play that game for me. I don’t even believe that you should be having a shop. You can have a shop on Facebook, but you shouldn’t spend time on that because you are on rented land. I’d rather have you go to Shopify or WooCommerce or have WordPress and build your own land over there. Don’t. Build anything on rented land. It’s like you going and renting an apartment and then you’re making changes to your apartment and improving it because you know what? Tomorrow your landlord may come in and say, you know, I’m sorry, winning the place back. We’re moving in. Thank you. Bye, bye. And you’ll be like whatever I just renovated the bathroom. I’ll just change the appliance in the kitchen. What do I do? The language is too bad. We didn’t ask you to do it. You did it. Thank you. Bye. Bye. So that’s what was gonna happen if you build your platforms on Facebook or any other rented land. Next up,

[Update 7 – Google Introduces New Product Listing and Discovery Options for Merchants]

 Google introduces new Product listings and discovery options for merchants. I’m not sure if you’re really catching the theme. It seems like it’s about 110 or so days left for Christmas. All this platforms are gearing up and getting ready to get as many eyeballs as many merchants on their platform and as much traffic as they can. For the upcoming holiday season, shopping OK with that? Obviously we all know social media is powerful when it comes to brand awareness and connection tool playing a significant role in discovery and product connection. However, Google remains the key platform, product searches and research like this is particularly relevant. Now, as consumers look for local shopping options because. Delivery times can be wonky. People wanna go by right now and be assured that they are going to get the product OK. So with that Google and by the way, Google has also shown that she know such as like you know. Things near me, the near me term. Whatever in front. OK. Weather is toys near me and research things like that and it queries that near me has. Gas has gone up by 200%, so with that, Google is now adding new shipping and return annotations in Google search and shopping results and it And it’s free for everyone to paid and free listings. OK, so now we know when shoppers go search something they can say free delivery by December 24th get it by December 24th or get X days free shipping, things like that. That should actually. Google is hoping that’s gonna entice people to buy more through Google than say, go anywhere else. So that’s number one. And they’re also saying, you know, you can actually now create your YouTube videos and then you could use them towards your discovery ad campaigns. Overall, this is a great news for people who are playing the Google game. And I think we all should be playing the Google game because if you’re not, you’re living like 50% of your money on the table. I don’t know about you, but for me, I love tapping into my 100% for market. OK with that, please make sure you are doing the due diligence. If you have planning for this Christmas season, if holiday shopping, you want to take care of, take advantage of this release or new update.

[Update 8 – YouTube Premium Hits 50 Million]

Lastly, for this week we have this announcement from YouTube ahead of music said hey, you know what? We just crossed a 50 million subscriber mark for YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers. Now, you could say, hey, why the hell are you covering these news in this week in marketing and you. Here you go. I got let me unpack this for you a little bit. It’s because. What this signals is that the number and then they’ve reached this 50 million in in, in six years almost 6 Six years was under 6, so let’s just say six years for for our, you know, podcast sake. 50 million in six years is amazing number. What this basically means for you, me and market here is two things. Number one is that that basically a large number of people are actually moving into premium, which means inventory AKA that drives our add cost is going to be reduced overtime, right. ’cause at the end of the day, we marketeers, we play, we pay for inventory to show our add in front of people who might be our future customer. So that’s why I’m covering. This is like, you know, while this is a great, amazing achievement for the YouTube team. At the same time Meaza market here, I’m wondering, well, you know, You Tube 50 million users is not a whole. Add ’cause. That means if 50 million users are subtracted from the. YouTube ecosystem who we cannot show ads anymore. Now the question is what percentage of that fifty million is from the US or Europe versus rest of the world? And I would bet. There is like 60% chunk from EU ’cause US is predominantly the market that don’t want to see ad and if that’s the case, well, they haven’t published that number. But I’m assuming 60% or 70% of big chunk big portion of the 50 million is from the US which means that they don’t share. Daily active and monthly active user in the US, but if there was, you could subtract that and you could figure out YouTube inventory is actually the status of YouTube ad inventory. But I would say it’s. It’s not depleting, but it’s coming down, but at the same time they’re adding TV’s. But you know, you really don’t want to show ads to big screens like TV’s because people are laying down on their couch in their bed, watching YouTube. And you don’t wanna show them out ’cause. They’re not gonna pick up their phone. Stop watching that movie and click on your ad. That never happens. But it’s a good tool to do brand building, you know, to show your highlight, showcase your brand and things like that. So that’s the reason why I’m covering this in our show is that folks, it’s a great number, but keep it at the back of your mind that YouTube is cheap today. It will not it, we may not be cheap tomorrow or next year or the year after that so. Opportunity. Take it. Take advantage of it while you can. If you’re not on YouTube, advertise on YouTube.

[Closing]

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

Thank you for tuning in this week, it was a pleasure to serve you all. Hit the subscribe button so that you remember to sign on next week. Same place, same time for another round of This Week In Marketing.

1. LinkedIn Removing Stories on September 30 – First, it was Twitter’s to abandon its social stories project ‘Fleets’ last month, and now LinkedIn is now also moving away from its LinkedIn Stories experiment. Does that mean that people have had enough of the Stories format in general? Likely not. Instagram Stories remains hugely popular, and Stories on Snapchat still appear to be gaining traction. Instagram Stories remains hugely popular, and Stories on Snapchat still appear to be gaining traction. As explained by LinkedIn:

“We introduced Stories last year as a fun and casual way to share quick video updates. We’ve learned a ton. Now, we’re taking those learnings to evolve the Stories format into a reimagined video experience across LinkedIn that’s even richer and more conversational. We want to embrace mixed media and creative tools of Stories in a consistent way across our platform while working to integrate it more tightly with your professional identity.”

Among its key learnings from its year-and-a-bit old Stories project, LinkedIn says user response has shown that:

  • Users want their Stories-like content to live on beyond the 24-hour window, and be available on their profile
  • Users want more creative tools to make engaging videos across the platform

As a result, LinkedIn will incorporate these two elements into its next video project, which it will now develop in replacement of the Stories product. So, another Stories option down, and one less consideration in your strategic planning.

 

2. Finally, Twitter Launches $uper Follows – Following someone is cool but have you tried Super Following? Subscribe to your favorite creators on Twitter for access to a whole new world of Tweets. ICYMI, Super Follows can help you:

💰 Earn monthly revenue

⬆️ Take your relationship to the next level

⭐ Customize what you offer and charge

 

3. ‘TikTok World’ – Get the Scoop on Unreleased Features – So what’s next for the platform? Can TikTok continue to innovate and evolve in line with user expectations and become real, significant, ongoing competition for the big players in the space?

We’ll get more of an idea of this on Sept 28, when TikTok hosts its first-ever ‘TikTok World’ showcase event. The event will give us a preview of what’s next for TikTok, though the full program schedule details have not been released yet.

It sounds similar to Facebook’s F8 and Snapchat’s Partner Summit events, where each platform presents an overview of their various projects and insights on what they’re working on bringing to market.

 

4. Learn How to Build Your Audience on Pinterest – Are you looking for ways to maximize your Pinterest strategy or tips on getting started with Pins to boost your overall marketing efforts? In that case, you should check out the latest content series from Pinterest. It aims to provide expert insights from both experienced Pin creators and internal staff on how you can use the platform to best effect.

The first post in the series provides pointers on how you can build your Pin audience. As explained by Pinterest:

“On Pinterest, you get more than a passive follow. People are looking for authentic connections with creators they trust. They’re hoping to discover and follow creators who share their passions. Here, you can build an active community that values and engages with your content.” 

Pinterest provides five key tips for connecting with users:

  • Create fresh content weekly
  • Use trends to inform your strategy
  • Add text overlay to your Pins 
  • Topic tag before you publish 
  • Fill in all of your board details 

5. ’10 Days of Live Shopping’ Event on Instagram – On 9/1, Instagram’s launched a new ’10 Days of Live Shopping’ event, featuring a range of celebrities streaming product launches. It is an excellent experiment to assess the capacity of live-stream shopping for connecting with Instagram’s audience.

As explained by Instagram:

“Fashion, beauty, music, and lifestyle are coming together like never before with Instagram’s 10+ Days of Live Shopping. People can tune in starting September 1st for intimate events with Selena Gomez, Kacey Musgraves, Lil Yachty, and more surprise guests. The events give you access to fresh releases, offers, and exclusive merch only on Instagram. “

 
6. ‘Preferred Shop’ Labels Coming to Facebook – Facebook has provided some new tips for those using Facebook and Instagram Shops on standing out this holiday season. Facebook’s Holiday Shop tips include:

  • Ensure your catalog data is up to date and complete
  • Add shopping tags to your posts
  • Create custom, holiday-themed Collections

In addition, Facebook’s also flagged a new label for top-rated Shops that could help provide more assurance and drive more purchase traffic. Per Facebook:

“To help buyers make more confident purchases and easily identify shops on Facebook and Instagram, we are testing a new label that identifies shops offering consistent shopping experiences.”

Facebook itself added similar tags back in 2015 for Pages that responded to message queries on time.

The new Preferred Shop tags will serve a similar purpose. It aims to highlight businesses that consistently provide positive buyer experiences and meet customer demand.

Facebook’s testing the new label now and will provide more info on how you might be able to get your own ‘Preferred Shop’ label soon.

 

7. Google Introduces New Product Listing and Discovery Options for Merchants – Social media is powerful brand awareness and connection tool, playing a significant role in the discovery and product connection. But Google remains the key platform for product searches. This is particularly relevant right now, as consumers look for local shopping options and whether stores are open for them to buy in person. And now, Google has announced a range of new commerce tools for the upcoming holiday season, which all retailers need to be considering in their plans.

First off, Google has added new shipping and return annotations in Google Search and Shopping results, now available across free and paid listings. Per Google,

“Shoppers can now see when their orders will arrive, with shipping annotations like “Free delivery by Fri, Dec 24,” “Get it by Dec 24” and “Free X-day” for products that ship for free in five business days or less. And to give shoppers more confidence in their purchases, you can now indicate extended holiday return windows with return annotations like “Free 90 day returns” or “Free returns until Jan 31.”

Prompts like these could be all it takes to get your customer to take that extra interest and click-through to your site. And it could eventually boost your SEO and rank you higher in search queries.

Merchants can also turn their YouTube videos into virtual storefronts to showcase their products by connecting a product feed to video action campaigns to drive customers to your site.

In the coming weeks, advertisers will also be able to link a product feed to Discovery ads to show more relevant products in moments when customers are exploring their interests in Google’s feeds.”

Google also suggests that brands should ensure that their product and business information, via Google My Business, is up to date. Their catalog listings are connected through to each Google surface, helping to provide additional context.

You can read more about Google’s latest shopping and product listing additions here.

8. YouTube Premium Hits 50 Million – In his monthly newsletter, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen shared that it has been almost six years since they kicked off the subscription journey. This week they have crossed 50 million Music and Premium subscribers, including trialers. Listen to our podcast to learn about our analysis as well as the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for YouTube advertisers.

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