Full Transcription

[Introduction] – 0:00 

Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 80 of the TWIMshow. 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 25, 2021, and also happy Halloween to everyone! With that let’s get started. 

[Update1 – LinkedIn Business Highlights from Microsoft’s FY22 Q1 Earnings] – 0:19

Today, first of all, we’re going to cover the earnings report for Microsoft, AKA LinkedIn. As you may know, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, and Microsoft just announced the Q1 FY 2022 earnings. 

Now if you’re confused, Sajid, we’re still in 2021, this is the last week of October. What the hell are you talking about by saying Q1 FY 2022. All I will say is that here in the US certain businesses or some businesses have chosen to… How they report their start and end of their quarters and how they track financial results. IRS allows you to do that. And obviously Microsoft, their year begins, in 2022 began like in the three months prior to October. So let me see this, their three months that I think they started in July, right? Q1 started, Q1 FY22 started in July, so July, August, September that’s three months and they just reported their earnings in October, ’cause it usually takes about. Two to three weeks to kind of crunch up all the numbers and shared that with you.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s dig deeper into the results. Obviously, we’re not going to cover Microsoft’s earning ’cause Microsoft is a software company and then they own LinkedIn as a subsidiary, but they did publish the numbers for LinkedIn and they were. They said which is in Q1 FY22, which is a period in July, August, September. In these three months, let’s pay revenue was up 42% year over year, so if they were to, when that basically means that if when they compared their earnings from July, August September of 21 versus July, August, September of 2020. The earnings have gone up by 42%. That’s a big earnings. Now keep in mind LinkedIn is not really just an, like a social media. It’s not only just like they have ads, but their main I think. In my opinion there strong bread and butter is a subscription business ’cause you know they sell subscriptions. Like for example their premium users like I’m one of the premium users right? I pay like 200 and some dollars a year to get access to premium features. And then obviously the RECRUITING’S solution. Then there is which recruiters uses to find people. Then also there are people like their tools like Sales Navigator. They definitely make a big chunk of money over from there, but they’re also actually innovating and adding new stuff to the product. And obviously with that their ad revenue has been going up. 

OK, the other thing I want to highlight from their earnings report is that they have, they have notice and end record engagement. About 800 million members turn into LinkedIn to connect, learn, grow, and get hired. It’s big right. Their hiring Platforms increased over 160% year over year and this quarter they did launch new ways to help job seeker discover roles that align with how they want to work, so this is actually great.

[Update2 – LinkedIn Updates Pages to Quickly Attract Top Talent With New Tools] – 3:42

And these are segues very nicely into the next update for this week, which is LinkedIn has announced a slew of changes to how they do things, but one thing I want to kind of share in this podcast with you all is that. They’ve updated the LinkedIn pages to quickly attract top talents with new tools. So what they’re saying is that because of the pandemic, you know people are realizing that they have different ways that they want to work. Some people like to be remote, some people hybrids, and people want to be on place, and some companies are also kind of dictating. And this has created a lot of confusion. And you know, sometimes if you’re looking for a job, you may not even know what this company’s viewpoint is in when it comes to working during the times now as well as in the future. Are there on site, remote, hybrid, whatnot. With that LinkedIn has invested and rolled out this feature that allows an organization to convey whether they’re working remote, hybrid on site, on your LinkedIn page header an additional space to clarify your evolving policies and vaccines, pay adjustments and more. Now hang on a second. What do you mean by pay adjustments, Sajid? Well, certain companies such as Mr. Google has said hey? If you are based in San Francisco and you decide that, can you want to work remote and then you suddenly decide hey, I’m going to move from San Francisco to say, other part of the US where the cost of living is a lot cheaper. Well, Google is going to adjust your salary because Google is going to. Google says that you know you are salary is tied to where your cost of living of where you are based. There are two sides to this story. I don’t want to dive deeper into it, but I will definitely tell you is, I see merits to both sides because I have in a corporate world when they announce when they do hiring and they basically create you know positions package they take cost of living as one of the input factor to say how much they will offer you. ‘Cause I remember this when I was hiring and managing people at HP right when I was at HP is like I would say, OK this is a software engineer position. If we’re hiring in New York because cost of living in New York is higher. So if the candidate is based in New York, we’re going to pay this much. If the candidates based in say, Florida Miami it’s going to be this much. If the candidate based in Vegas, this is going to be. So we had all this data and based on where the candidate was. We would like, you know, we would offer that now. The base was the same, it’s just the cost of a, cost of living adjusts that whole thing. But anyway, I went way deeper than I should have on this podcast, but I wanted you to understand, why this is how some companies are saying this because after all. It’s unfair to other people in the company, right? Anyways.

[Update3 – PayPal Confirms: ‘Not Pursuing an Acquisition of Pinterest at This Time’] – 6:42

With that, let’s go to the next update, which is something you know we covered last week, where you know there was a talk or a rumor that you know PayPal is thinking of buying Pinterest. And obviously, Pinterest Stocks went up, then PayPal came out and basically did a news release that says, hey, we’re confirming we are not interested in buying Pinterest. With that Pinterest stock price went down this week and everyone forgot about it after the next day. OK, I just wanted to come back and share the update with you all since I will cover letting that rumor we wanted to also kind of come back and clarify as well. 

[Update4 – Instagram Makes Links in Stories Available to All Accounts] – 7:16

With that an update on Instagram which is AKA what the meta? The business or should I say update from Meta AKA the Business formerly known as Instagram. While they’re saying Instagram is now making links in stories available to all accounts. Now hang on a second. What do you mean by that Sajid? Well, if you remember correctly, or if you remember a few months ago, Instagram announced taking their, removing the swipe up features for Instagram stories where previously you could swipe when you post the stories, you could swipe up, you could, you could put a link and people could click on that link and take you to an URL or page or something like that. That was the only way you could share URLs and drive people traffic to your website through Instagram. Well, the other one was to, like you know, tell people to click on the link in the bio and do that. And Instagram got rid of that swipe features. And then they said, well, we’re going to roll out this new thing called URL feature where on your story you will put this URL sticker and then when people click on it, obviously it’s going to the URL, but it was not available to everyone. It was only available to people with big accounts. Now Instagram is saying you know what. Hang on a second. We’re going to make it available to everyone now. Instagram did note that new accounts as well as accounts that repeatedly shared content that violates their community guideline will not have access to the link sticker. OK, so just want you to know that. Just because you have the link sticker do not start going abusing it. Now what do they mean by new account? Well, as it is with Instagram or anything with Facebook, it’s always unclear ’cause they want to have the thing ’cause you know. Hey, it’s a new account, but what it is and they never define it OK?

[Update5 – Facebook Launches Virtual Training Sessions for Female Business Owners] – 9:00

With that, let’s move on to something, an update from Facebook. Facebook launches a virtual training session for female business owners. They’re saying you know well, woman on business face closure rates of 18% in the US compared to their male counterparts at 13%. So Facebook feels really deeply bad about it. And they want to do something about it, right? So they went ahead and they created this video series to help women businesses on effective financial management, business leadership as well as tips and tricks on leverage digital marketing tools to maximize sales leading into holidays. Mr Facebook, or Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you so much but my only one thing is you know what? Maybe you need to start looking at how not to ban legitimate accounts or how not to ban legitimate Facebook accounts. That would be wonderful. That would be a great place to start. But anyway. As for these videos, if you want to check it out, the link is on our show notes page. They run about 10 minutes and you know each and you might find it helpful, but again, you know there’s plenty, plethora of information out there. I do not know if you really should trust anything. Spend time with Facebook’s content to kind of learn something about financial management in 10 minutes. What can you learn? OK, but that’s just me. 

[Update6 – Facebook Manages To Have A Successful Q3] – 10:17

Now, back to something interesting, which is Facebook manages to have successful Q3. What that basically means that Facebook has announced their Q3 2021 revenue and the numbers were pretty good. Like you know they showed a steady growth in users. Where, while the revenue remained about the same, it hasn’t really changed a whole lot, but when it compared to Q2 2021, in fact, Q3 2021 was slightly lower by a few $1,000,000 lower than Q2 2021, but other than that the big number was still the same. Their daily active users is about 2 billion, which is a B with a B. Be with a billion and. And they have added 22 new million users right to the platform, so that’s a massive growth. They’re seeing a big number of users coming from Asia Pacific region numbers for Europe, US and Canada remains to be, remains flat. So what this basically means is like they are feeling the pressure from TikTok and other channels, ’cause this has always been a concern for Facebook for sometime not always has been a concern for Facebook for some time where the business is slowing down here in the US. But it’s picking up in Asia Pacific now. Keep in mind in India, TikTok is banned. So obviously the social media platform of choice is Facebook, so it’s kind of makes sense why you know Facebook is growing in Asia Pacific. AKA India and Indonesia and things like that. But that’s all about Facebook numbers, you know. Again, they are affected by the iOS 14 Application app tracking apples tracking and transparency feature setting but you know people and advertisers continue to spend money, just that they’re not getting as good of a result as they were getting in the past. 

[Update7 – YouTube Explains Why They Recommend Old Videos] – 12:15

With that, let’s move on to the next update, which is YouTube. YouTube explains this week on why they recommend all videos. YouTube has this channel called Creators inside channel. Where each week someone from you to go in and answers viewers questions you can go in and watch the channel but you know you rely on this podcast to bring you the must-know topics and summaries from those Q&A sessions so one of them is this one. Someone asked. Hey, why do you recommend videos that are 10 to 12 years old? YouTube say, so Rachel from YouTube says you know You Tube system is designed to match viewers with videos that they are likely to enjoy, regardless of when that video was published. That means that even older videos which still see relatively high engagement will continue. Recommended in line with viewer interest. And I’ll tell you that’s actually true. I have been constantly been seeing videos that are like 8-9 ten 12 years old and I’ve watched them and they were absolutely gold mine. What this means for you Mr. Listener, Mr. Creator out there is that listen create evergreen content right. Do not, again do create some time-sensitive content like for example this podcast when we published on YouTube it’s going to be time-sensitive. And it is the nature of the business. But if I were to like, create say, a training video and upload it on YouTube on how to do XYZ, how to do Google ads in October 2021, well, it’s definitely going to be changed by January 2021, but I could also do and. Overreaching, here is how the Google ad system works, ’cause that will pretty much remain the same, and it will be effective for some time. So I think you get the point. Like, create evergreen content as well as time-specific, time-based content. Again, don’t just go focused too deep on what type of content and what content would be Evergreen. Just create what you think is going to help your community. 

[Update8 – Maximizing Discovery On YouTube: Specific Tags or More Broad Matching Topics?] – 14:10

With that, the next update, the next question was on the on. The video was hey, how can I maximize discovery on YouTube? Should I add specific tags or should I add more broad topic matching tags? Well with that Rachel says that you know video tags provide another way for creators to align their content with specific queries. ThoughYouTube specifically notes that tags are not a major algorithm consideration. And remember, YouTube did confirm Rachel from YouTube did confirm that they make changes to algorithms all the time. So what’s working today will not work tomorrow ’cause they’re tweaking it all the time, right? So, Rachel furthermore goes to say, tags are descriptive keywords that you can add to your video to help viewers find your content. Your videos, title, thumbnail, and distributions are more important pieces of metadata for your videos discovery. These main pieces of information help viewers decide which videos to watch, right? So Alves reiterates that an adviser’s creators to focus on the elements that viewers make decisions about when they’re choosing what to watch. So the title, thumbnail image, and description. Right, so you are better off focusing on what’s working for other similar videos related to the topic as well as, as opposed to optimizing tags and focusing too much time on tags, so hope that helps and kind of settles the. Helps you out settle confusion on what kind of tags to use right, and just focus on those three pieces of things. 

[Update9 – Do Share Your Videos Outside of YouTube, Even When YouTube May Not Be Able to Attribute All The Engagement Metrics] – 15:38

The next question that was asked was hey, should I share my videos outside of YouTube even when you know when you do? When I do that you to may not be able to attribute all language metrics and not be able to track how much of the video or what’s happening. So Alves says, you know what you should absolutely share your videos outside of YouTube, as that can only increase your chances of discovery based on viewer activity regardless of direct attribution. And if your videos are getting more traffic from external search sources like social media, it is likely increasing your potential to be discovered by more viewers. Another benefit is that. Those viewers now have the video in their watch history, so there is a higher likelihood that they may be recommended. One of your other videos in the future, so hope this helps. ’cause folks that is actually so true. So definitely what YouTube is signaling to you in a very nice indirect ways that do share your YouTube video link. Do not download your video and upload it back to Facebook, but Facebook is going to say hey, do not share your YouTube video link, download your video, upload your video right download your video from YouTube and upload it into Facebook native native native. I have no idea folks who to listen, but if you were to ask me, I would say do both right? Do both. Figure out what works for you because you definitely YouTube is a much better content discovery platform than Facebook. But you do want people who are coming into your Facebook page, channel page, or whatever it is to find that video as well stumble on the video if they’re researching on you how you do it, I will let you decide. 

[Update10 – YouTube Ads Is The Breakout Star of Google’s Q3 Earnings Report] – 17:09

With that, let’s go to the last update of this week, which is YouTube ads is still the breakout star of Google 3. Quarter Q3 earnings report. What? Another quarter earnings report and this time from Google? Yes, folks, that’s right. You heard it right. So what happened was Alphabet, which is the parent company for Google, and Meta which is the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, right? Alphabet and meta. But anyway, this is the. Earnings report Q3 earnings report for Alphabet there they had a 41% year over year growth. Ad revenues are $51 billion. Yes, that’s a massive amount of dollar and YouTube advertising revenues reached. $7 billion, an increase of 43% from previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising. Tese are big numbers folks I don’t know about you, but this tells you a lot about how big Google is and how big YouTube has become and how much it’s growing. So if you are not advertising on YouTube, if you’re not advertising on Google, guess what? You’re missing an opportunity, and if you’re just still focusing on Facebook. Organic or social media? Whatever you’re doing, you’re missing out big time. Folks. Don’t tell me you have not been warned. OK?

[Closing] – 18:39

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. LinkedIn Business Highlights from Microsoft’s FY22 Q1 Earnings (0:19) – On Oct 26, 21, Microsoft announced Q1 FY22 Earnings. Included in the report on the financial performance were the following LinkedIn highlights:

  • In Q1 FY22, LinkedIn’s revenue was up 42% year-over-year (39% in constant currency).
  • They’re experiencing a Great Reshuffle across the global labor market as people are rethinking not only where and how they work, but why. With more people changing jobs than ever before, we saw record engagement as nearly 800 million members turned to LinkedIn to connect, learn, grow, and get hired.
  • Confirmed hires on the platform also increased more than 160% year over year, and this quarter they launched new ways to help job seekers discover roles that align with how they want to work.
  • In this rapidly evolving labor market, companies are increasingly turning to LinkedIn Learning to upskill and reskill their employees. They now have more than 15,000 enterprise customers and are expanding their opportunity in the creator economy, including offering new ways for LinkedIn Learning instructors to build their audiences and connect with learners live.
  • Businesses continue to choose LinkedIn as the trusted way to reach professionals, with their advertising revenue up 61% year over year.

You can also see LinkedIn’s quarterly product highlights, releases, and enhancements in the Q1 FY22 product list here. For more information, see the Q1 FY22 earnings release here.

 

2. LinkedIn Updates Pages to Quickly Attract Top Talent With New Tools (3:42) – According to the Glint’s Employee Well-Being Report, employees who are satisfied with their organization’s flexibility on work schedules or location are 3.4x more likely to balance work and personal obligations, 2.6x more likely to be happy working for their employer, and 2.1x more likely to recommend working for their employer.

And workplace policies matter when it comes to attracting top talent, and being ultra-transparent about those policies, from day one, can benefit your brand. To help, LinkedIn has invested in a feature that allows you to convey whether your organization is working remote, hybrid, or on-site in your LinkedIn Page header, and additional space to clarify your evolving policies on vaccines, pay adjustments, and more.

And remember, LinkedIn has added customizable competitor analytics to your LinkedIn Page Analytics Tab, in which you can add up to nine of your competitors to benchmark their LinkedIn Page performance. This feature also allows you to track and compare their follower growth and organic content performance with yours.

 

3. PayPal Confirms: ‘Not Pursuing an Acquisition of Pinterest at This Time’ (6:42) – A rather big rumor that was brewing across the internet has now been shut down, with PayPal declaring that it is currently not interested in buying Pinterest. They shared it via a news release post on their website.

 

4. Instagram Makes Links in Stories Available to All Accounts (7:16) – Instagram has announced that links are now being made available in Instagram Stories for all users, not just those with 10k followers or verified accounts. Now, all users will now be able to access the link sticker for Stories, which Instagram introduced as the primary link sharing option, instead of ‘Swipe up’ links, back in August.

Instagram does note that new accounts, as well as accounts that repeatedly share content that violates its Community Guidelines, will not have access to the Link sticker. That provides it some safeguards in limiting misuse of the option – though the details of what qualifies as a ‘new’ account in this context have not been communicated.

 

5. Facebook Launches Virtual Training Sessions for Female Business Owners (9:00) – Facebook has launched a new series of virtual training sessions for female business owners, in celebration of Women’s Small Business Month, which provides tips and insights to help female entrepreneurs succeed in the post-COVID landscape.

“According to our recent Global State of Small Business Report, women-owned businesses face closure rates of 18% in the US compared to their male counterparts at 13%. But despite the obstacles, the resilience and tenacity of women-owned businesses remain high – which is why we want to take time to celebrate them during National Women’s Small Business Month.”

The videos, which you can view here, each run for around 10 minutes and include lessons on effective financial management, business leadership as well as tips and tricks on ways to leverage digital marketing tools to maximize sales leading into the holidays.

 

6. Facebook Manages To Have A Successful Q3 (10:17) – Facebook recently posted results for the company’s Q3 2021 revenue, displaying steady growth in users while revenue ($2.8B) remains about the same when compared with Q2, 21. This goes to show that despite the number of controversies they wade into, corporations find a way. The Q3 2021 report can be easily found on the platform’s investors section but we’ll break down some of the more important and relevant details here. Starting off with perhaps the most important metric of them all: userbase. Facebook added 22 million new daily active users (DAUs) to its platforms, leading to an overall massive number of 1.93 billion DAUs. With such a track record, all Facebook needs is another solid quarter, and Q4 will push the numbers over the 2 billion DAUs line.

The most active site of growth proved to be the Asia Pacific region, with numbers going from 788 million DAUs in Q2 2021 to 805 million this quarter. Europe, & the US, and Canada regions displayed the least amount of growth, with numbers going up by 1 million DAUs from Q2 to Q3 for both. This very much plays into the current perception that the West continues to be less and less enamored by the likes of Facebook, with platforms such as TikTok displaying more engagement and success

The only major hit that Facebook has taken across Q3 is that ad revenue still seems to struggle a little bit. Most of this, if not all of it, has to do with Apple’s Tracking and Transparency features, which were introduced to the iOS 14 all the way back in 2020. Tracking and Transparency features mean that third-party apps and advertisers cannot take any form of personal user data without explicit consent being provided by the users. This means that advertisers can no longer gauge information such as location data or browser history; the sort of information that makes targeted advertisements easier on these companies.

 

7. YouTube Explains Why They Recommend Old Videos (12:15) – In a new video on the Creator Insider channel, YouTube’s Rachel Alves, says that YouTube’s system is designed to match viewers with videos that they’re likely to enjoy, regardless of when that video was published. That means that even older videos, which still see relatively high engagement, will continue to be recommended in line with viewer interests.

 

8. Maximizing Discovery On YouTube: Specific Tags or More Broad Matching Topics? (14:10) – In a new video on the Creator Insider channel, YouTube’s Rachel Alves says that YouTube’s video tags provide another way for creators to align their content with specific queries, though YouTube specifically notes that tags are not a major algorithm consideration.

“Tags are descriptive keywords you can add to your video to help viewers find your content. Your video’s title, thumbnail, and description are more important pieces of metadata for your video’s discovery. These main pieces of information help viewers decide which videos to watch.”

Alves reiterates this, advising creators to focus on the elements that viewers make decisions about when they’re choosing what to watch – so the title, thumbnail image, and description. Alves says that creators would be better off focusing on what’s working for other, similar videos related to their topic, as opposed to optimizing tags.

 

9. Do Share Your Videos Outside of YouTube, Even When YouTube May Not Be Able to Attribute All The Engagement Metrics (15:38) – Creators should ‘absolutely’ share their videos outside of YouTube as that can only increase your chances of discovery based on viewer activity, regardless of direct attribution. “If your videos are getting more traffic from external sources, like social media, it’s likely increasing your potential to be discovered by more viewers. Another benefit is that those viewers now have that video in their watch history, so there’s a higher likelihood that they may be recommended one of your other videos in the future.”

 

10. YouTube Ads Is The Breakout Star of Google’s Q3 Earnings Report (17:09) – Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps.

While shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing ‘strong growth in local shopping queries’ at the same time.

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