Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 0:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 79 of the TWIM show. 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 October 18, 2021.
[Update1/ Pinterest Announces New Features – ‘Watch’ Tab and ‘Takes’] – 0:13
Now today we’re going to first begin with Pinterest. First of all, there are rumors about Pinterest that PayPal has approached Pinterest and they’re thinking of buying Pinterest out. Well, it makes sense for PayPal because you know this will really help PayPal compete with Shopify. But however, that is still not an official news. That’s just an unofficial new, so we’re not going to dive too much into it. But if that were to happen, then Shopify will have a worthy competitor.
With that, let’s drive into the Pinterest announcement. So Pinterest just had their Creators Event, last, this week, or actually was it last week? I think this week. So anyway, they officially announced a new thing called ‘Watch’ which is basically something similar to TikTok, TikTok feature, or Instagram Reels. So basically when you go into now Pinterest app, you will have the ‘Browse’ which is where you know the Feed that shows up, and then there’s the ‘Watch’ tab where you are going to see all these Pinterest videos and you can like scroll through it and consume the content.
And the other thing that Pinterest has announced it’s called ‘Takes’ which is basically similar to what you would see in remix for Instagram or in TikTok duets, right. There’s nothing new into it, but it’s just. It is what it is, right? I thought I the other thing I didn’t cover, but I just want to quickly mention is Instagram. Pinterest also has this thing called ‘Stickers’ similar to Instagram stories, right?
So like I’ve always covered again and again this day and age. All these platforms. They’re just busy copying one another and that’s about it because they want to keep their user base entertained and happy.
[Update2/ Instagram Adds More Demographics Insights About Your Audience] – 2:03
With that, let’s move onto Instagram. This is a great segue. So Instagram has. updated their insights and added in demographic information about your audience. Of course, you need to have a professional account, but the new metrics that Instagram is adding are: accounts engaged, engaged audience, reached audience. So these are actually I think I like it. Like you know, again, this is where you get to go in and spend time. And you’re going to see what’s really happening with your account, right?
[Update3/ Instagram Collabs – A New Way To Co-Author Feed Posts And Reels] – 2:35
The next update from Instagram is that Instagram has added this new feature called ‘Collabs. I’ve seen this, in fact, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, I think I’m pronouncing his last name, right, actually published reels, or was it a video? I’m not sure which one, but basically what this ‘Collab’ tab does is allows you to tag someone else and basically it will say my name is Sajid. So basically Sajid and marketANDgrow, and you can actually see more of this in our account because now I have my own personal account and I have our marketANDgrow account. So I’m going to basically, whenever I post something, I’m gonna basically cross-tag each other and allow you to do that. ’cause in the past you know. The option wasn’t really there, so again, keep in mind this is, you know, something available to everyone regardless of the audience size it is. Collab is actually available to everyone regardless of their audience size. It’s a very straightforward way to signal a professional partnership, or in my case I have two accounts. One is my personal account, one is my. Business accounts I’m going to just combine them the two.
Thank you Instagram! Finally, you know you’re doing something good will make makes me happy. ’cause I’ve bashed you alot in this in my podcast in the past.
[Update4/ Instagram Now Allows Us to Upload Photos And Videos From Desktop] – 3:57
Talking about bashing and this is another update from Instagram that I really have to go get behind. And you know, really, give Instagram team the kudos with this update is all about is that Instagram now allows you to upload photos and videos from your desktop.
My God such a relief to have this. In the past, posting on Instagram was a chore, ’cause even if I create an image on Canva, I will transfer to my iPhone and then upload it. And I was like man that sucks. It takes up time. You know it ’cause it causes these speed bumps. It causes friction. It slows me down. Now I can go from the desktop browser. And boom, viola! I can still do it. Again, you know it’s still not there for Reels, but I’m hoping Reels, and Stories would be added in the future and as a way you know it just makes work a lot easier.
[Update5/ Microsoft Partners With Shopify To Help Merchants Grow Business] – 4:47
From Instagram, now let’s moving on to Microsoft. So Microsoft partners with Shopify to help Shopify margins grow business. So this is similar to what we have covered in the past. A few weeks back, where Shopify and Google Public Partnership and Shopify Merchants can basically push their products into Google Shopping, start ads, things like that. This is a similar partnership, nothing much sexy in there, it’s just that you know, now Shopify merchants will be easily, will be able to easily reach shoppers on the Microsoft Search Network, and audience Microsoft audience network with just a few clicks. That’s all right.
[Update6/ Shopify & Spotify Integration Allows Artists To Sell Merch Easily] – 5:25
And the other thing that I want to talk about here while I’m on the topic of Shopify, is that Shopify and Spotify (Yes, the two FYs) have gone into a partnership, or have done an integration where basically the way it works is like artists, artists on Spotify can now actually bring in their, showcase their merchants. (not merchants) showcase their merchandise that is on the Shopify store directly when someone is listening to their song. So in the moment. So if you are an artist A, and I’m your fan and as I am listening to your song or to music on Spotify, I can see your merchandise show up and then be able to make the transactions right there without having to leave the app and basically make that in-moment purchase, this is actually a great thing for both the artist as well as Shopify, because Shopify is pretty good, robust when it comes to e-com shop management in the back. And again, I’m not really going to dive deeper into Shopify’s functionality, but I’m just saying. ’cause you know sometimes when you are listening some artist and we fall in love and we want to, “Oh man! I want to buy his or her you know, merchandise. I want to support him or her” So that can happen right away without having to like let me think do it later on and things like that.
[Update7/ BigCommerce Merchants Can Now List Their Products for Free on Google] – 6:55
Talking about from there talking about E-commerce. The other thing I want to talk about is big, Bigcommerce merchants can now list their products for free on Google. Hey, doesn’t this seem sound similar to what Microsoft just did in Shopify? Google did with Shopify few weeks ago. Yes, but if you are following our show, you have notice and I will. I’ll help you just to say the trend here now is to basically all these big platforms. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and all to basically get all these ecom product shops direct to consumers’ businesses on their platforms. And half that, how they say, have that inventory, right? Have that inventory available. This is a big I guess, I would say a big threat for Amazon, per se. If you are to ask me, but for other platforms so Google wants, like if Google, If I’m searching in Google. I should be able to have that inventory rather than having to not find it and then go to Amazon or go to Shopify. Shopify doesn’t want the same thing, Shopify wants everyone to be everything to be found on shopify.com or whatever that site is. And Microsoft does the same thing. So coming back again the big com, big commerce merchants, and Google integration is pretty much the same thing as we just covered with Shopify. I’m not going to go to deep into it, but I just wanted to let you know that you know this is possible. So if you have a client, or if you’re thinking of moving into big commerce, then you know you can just push your product into Google Shopping very easily, OK.
[Update8/ Google Rebrands & Launches ‘Google for Creators’ Platform] – 8:36
Next up is, Google rebrands and launches Google for creators platform. Ha. Just last week we talked about creators and we saw how you know Twitter is quoting creators. Instagram is quoting creators, Snapchat is quoting creators and it’s just like it’s like. On one hand, it’s e-commerce, the other hand is creators. It’s like they are the two things that are ruling this. You know, social media world and the battle is on to see who can get the most amount of creators on their side. Plus, who can get the most amount of product listed on their platform? That’s it folks.
Anyway, with that what Google’s, Google for creator is pretty much a very good resource to help you learn the essentials. Build your content strategy, engage and find fans and grow and make money.
Now, this is coming from Google itself, so you know definitely it’s worth checking it out to see what Google suggests you do that, but I will give you a caution that since it’s coming from Google, it will be Google biased. So take it with a grain of salt and make sure that you know you just don’t drink the Kool-aid and just jump right into, or work this is what Google says. Apply and see where it helps you with your business right? Especially if you’re a creator.
[Update9/YouTube Announces Live Shopping] – 9:57
With that. The next update we have is on YouTube and YouTube announces live shopping. Ha. Just last week we covered how Facebook is going to do live shopping, and you know Facebook has done that, but live shopping is something that’s keeping are taking off. In fact, I will tell you in one of the shows. In the past I have actually bashed live shopping, saying you know who in the right mind is going to sit down in the, during the weekday and watch live shopping, but I apparently the data that’s coming out of China is that live commerce is on track to become a 423 billion (with a B) market by the end of next year. Holy Moly guacamole! 423 billion market in China, and that explains why Instagram is into it, TikTok is into it, and now YouTube is jumping into it right? But I wanted you to know all these things because you know. If you have client, or if you’re thinking of, or you have an e-com, maybe this is something you can take advantage of it in the future. If not right now.
[Update10/YouTube Adds Auto-Chapters as a Search Element] – 10:55
The next update coming from YouTube is that YouTube adds ‘Auto-chapters’ as a search element. So what this means is that you know when, YouTube, obviously you have an option to turn on chapter, chapters on YouTube videos. And then when you turn it on and you know YouTube or Google search is going to basically can respond to a search query and take that search or directly into that chapter of your video, right?
So if someone searching for let’s just say. Keto diet using, I don’t know, coconut, maybe. I’m just making things up as I go along. So keto diet coconut and you have a video chat, video on keto diet. And then there’s a chapter called Keto Coconuts on keto diet then chances are it’s going to take that searcher is going to show that segment of the video and it’s going to searcher right into it. Now, keep in mind this is not a signal that you should start putting like, you know chapter names that are, you know, full of, you know big words and just kind of blow it up. Keep it real. Keep it subjective, and a bit helpful I’m sure, excuse me, I’m sure Google is going to basically figure out if you’re trying to like do keyword stuffing and then eventually penalize you, so stay away from it. Just be real and I’m sure Google is going to give you the… I’m blanking out. Google is going to give you the reward by directing some free traffic to your video and thereby increasing your view count.
[Update11/Snap: Q3 Earnings Snapshot] – 12:40
OK, last up we have earnings from Snapchat. This was, I believe. Snapchat released their earnings on Thursday after-hours. Yes, and they basically their stock took a hit because they miss their numbers, Q3 numbers. This was a full. And Snapchat is blaming it on Apple’s iOS privacy because they’re saying they took a hit ‘cause of Apple’s privacy. They’re still learning. They were planning to, their planning to make $1.1 billion. Instead, they made $1.07 billion in Q3, which is basically a short of short by about $72 million.
Nevertheless, it’s a big. It’s a big quarter. They did pretty good $72 million in the billion, and when they’re making $1 billion, you know I don’t think it’s a big maker or break things, but Wall Street definitely reacted very negatively, and their stock price went down by 23%.
However, this is not a show about stock prices, finances and investing. It is a show about marketing. I wanted to talk about the marketing angle, which is, you know they have now. Snapchat is reporting they have 306 million daily active users. That’s up from 293 million daily active users in Q2. So if you do the math, that’s about 13 million active daily active users that have been added into Snapchat platform. Snapchat platform continues to grow yes and they got they took a hit because of Apple’s privacy changes. Facebook also warned that they’re going to take a big hit, but you know, Snapchat’s saying and so all the other platforms and we’re going to figure it out. Like they were gonna find a way around it. ’cause then, of course, they will. ’cause it’s a billion-dollar business right multi-billion dollar business. They’re not going to give it in to Apple. They’re going to find things. In fact, Facebook came out this week with some workarounds to Apple’s privacy mechanism and how to create how to measure. And, you know, do attribution things like that. However, we are not. I’m purposely not covering that in our podcast. It’s just because it’s very technical and it’s going to be very challenging to explain it over a podcast. OK
[Closing] – 15:00
With that folks, that’s it for This Week In Marketing. Now you know everything to be in the know. If you’d like to read more, make sure you visit our show page where you would find the links to the articles. 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. Pinterest Announces New Features – ‘Watch’ Tab and ‘Takes’ (0:13) – Pinterest has officially announced its new, TikTok-like ‘Watch’ feed for Pin content, as well as a new ‘Takes’ response option for Idea Pins.
First off, on the new Watch feed, Pinterest is adding a scrolling, vertical feed of content to both align with the latest social content consumption trends and provide a new means to discover a broader range of Pin content.
Pinterest is also adding another interactive element in ‘Takes’. “A Take is an Idea Pin that is created in response to another Idea Pin. Takes appear as responses to the original Idea Pin and can also be seen in your home feed, from people you follow or on your profile.” Takes is also, of course, very similar to the way TikTok’s Duets feature is used to respond to an original clip.
2. Instagram Adds More Demographics Insights About Your Audience (2:03) – Instagram’s looking to provide more data for marketers with an update to its Insights element for business and creator profiles, which will give you more specific info on who’s engaging with your content – whether they follow your profile or not – as well as the total reach of your posts.
The new data points will help guide your posting decisions, and provide more opportunities to optimize your approach based on more specific data points.
The new metrics being added to Instagram insights are:
- Accounts engaged – This will show the total number of accounts that interacted with your content in a given time period
- Engaged audience – This data will provide demographic insights into the users that are engaging with your content, whether they follow your profile or not, including top cities, top countries, top age ranges, and gender
- Reached Audience – Similar to Engaged Audience, this will provide demographic information about the people you’ve reached with your posts in a given time period, including top cities, top countries, top age ranges, and gender
You can learn more about Instagram’s new Insights updates here.
3. Instagram Collabs – A New Way To Co-Author Feed Posts And Reels (2:35) – The Instagram Collab tag is only available for Reels and feed posts. This isn’t a new content creation tool. It’s not a new post format and it doesn’t give you any more editing or analytics. But it does make it easier to communicate with your audience.
Until now, there were two ways to show a partnership on Instagram:
Tag a brand or creator in your posts, just as if you were tagging a friend. There’s no way to differentiate personal and professional tags so this lacks transparency.
Use the branded content tag to show that a post was sponsored. Only some creators are eligible to use this tag.
The Collab label gives you a third option. Anyone you tagged as a collaborator will be shown as a co-author of the post. And they’ll instantly be able to reshare the post on their profile without having to use screenshots or a third-party regram app.
What’s more, any public account can use the Collab tag, regardless of their audience size. It’s a new, more straightforward way to signal a professional partnership.
So, to recap, the Collab tag…
- Makes it faster to share content.
- Gives full credit to all authors of a post.
- Makes conversions easier, as users can simply tap the name of a brand or creator on the post to visit their profile.
- Improves transparency for your followers.
4. Instagram Now Allows Us to Upload Photos And Videos From Desktop (3:57) – Finally, Instagram has announced that it’s adding ‘image and video’ posting functionality from the desktop version of the platform as of October 21st, providing a more centralized way for social media managers to maintain their IG presence.
The process, which will facilitate the posting of photos and videos of less than one minute in length, will not include Stories or Reels uploads at this stage. But it will make it a little bit easier for social media managers to stay across their various apps and posts, by providing a way to upload content for each platform from one place – so you won’t have to keep saving images in varying ways to then upload from your phone, etc.
5. Microsoft Partners With Shopify To Help Merchants Grow Business (4:47) – Because of this partnership, Shopify merchants in the United States and Canada can reach more customers using the updated Microsoft Channel app available in their Shopify store. Merchants can quickly connect through the Microsoft Channel using their Microsoft Advertising account or sign up for a new one in a few easy steps.
Shopify merchants will be able to easily reach shoppers on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network with just a few clicks. The onboarding is simple, allowing merchants to quickly connect with shopping offerings that showcase their products using free and paid listings.
6. Shopify & Spotify Integration Allows Artists To Sell Merch Easily (5:25) – Using Spotify, artists can introduce products to the place where listeners and fans are already engaging with their music most. By connecting their Spotify for Artists accounts with their Shopify online stores, artists can sync their product catalogs and seamlessly showcase products of their choice directly on their Spotify artist profiles, making it easy for fans to browse and purchase.
With Shopify, artist-entrepreneurs have access to an all-in-one commerce platform to manage their brands across multiple touchpoints that not only include leading social and entertainment channels and marketplaces, but are now the most popular audio streaming services in the world.
7. BigCommerce Merchants Can Now List Their Products for Free on Google (6:55)- BigCommerce works with small, medium, and large merchants around the world. With this new integration, BigCommerce merchants of all sizes will be able to easily list their products for free on Google, create ad campaigns and review performance metrics directly in their BigCommerce store. This also means BigCommerce merchants can now integrate with Google’s shopping features across Search, Shopping, Image Search, and YouTube.
8. Google Rebrands & Launches ‘Google for Creators’ Platform (8:36) – The launch represents a brand update and strategic shift from ‘Google Web Creators’ to ‘Google for Creators.
Google for Creators offers marketers and publishers resources to develop a content strategy, monetize content, and build their web presence.
Julia Lee, Engineering Director, Search Ecosystem at Google, said that the rebranded Google for Creators is “a new home base for creators to learn, grow and get inspired.”
Google for Creators resources help marketers and content creators achieve four main objectives:
- Learn the essentials.
- Build your content strategy.
- Engage and find fans.
- Grow and make money.
The experience starts with a quiz on the homepage to help assess the visitor’s goals and surface the most relevant content. Guides are authored by a variety of expert content creators, social media influencers, successful digital marketers, and bestselling authors.
In addition to the guides on the website, you can find Google for Creators on Instagram and Twitter. There’s an email newsletter for those who want to hear from the program more often.
You’ll find upcoming events like Creator Conf, billed as the world’s largest event for creators, listed in the Creator Community section of the site, as well.
9. YouTube Announces Live Shopping (9:57) – YouTube has announced a new series of live-stream shopping events, as it looks to tap into the rise in shopper behavior leading into the holidays.
“The YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop will kick off on November 15th, with seven days of shoppable live streams. Fans tuning in will be able to score new products, unlock limited time offers, and get their product questions answered through live Q&A and polls with creators and other viewers.”
Live-stream shopping is a key opportunity, combining the immediacy and FOMO-factor of live broadcasts, with the compulsion of in-stream purchases. The process has been a big hit in China, where live-commerce is on track to become a $423 billion market by the end of next year. Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube are now all looking to link into the same, with the hopes that western consumers will also adopt the live shopping trend.
10. YouTube Adds Auto-Chapters as a Search Element (10:55) – YouTube began rolling out auto-chapters back in July, with its system detecting segments of videos in order to provide more specific matching for search queries.
When chapters are enabled, YouTube can highlight specific segments in response to searches, giving it more capacity to help users find the key elements that they’re looking for in each clip.
This could play a much bigger role in video discovery over time, with each element of each clip becoming searchable, providing more data on what, specifically, people are looking for, while also facilitating more discovery potential based on your content.
Given that it’s now going to be used in this way, it could be worth checking the segmentation of your own YouTube clips, and optimizing your chapter names based on relative keyword search and likely matching.
It’s worth also noting that not all videos are subject to auto-segmentation, and you can opt out (via your upload defaults in YouTube Studio) if you choose to as well.
You can find out more about YouTube video chapters here.
11. Snap: Q3 Earnings Snapshot (12:40) – In the earnings call, Snap said that it failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter by $72million. They reported $1.07 billion in Q3 revenue, missing Wall Street’s hopes that the company would bring in $1.1 billion.
The company notched 306 million daily active users, up from the 293 million it reported in Q2. That growth isn’t stratospheric, but it looks plenty healthy for a platform that risked falling out of relevance entirely not long ago.
Snapchat attributed the revenue miss to Apple’s big iOS privacy change, which put new restrictions in place for apps seeking to track user behavior beyond their own borders. On the call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel noted that the company was caught off guard by how disruptive the impact on advertiser tools proved to be. Without the wide view that many advertisers were accustomed to, they had to adapt to new, more restrained ways of measuring user behavior. “Those tools were essentially rendered blind,” Spiegel said.
