Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 00:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 82 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 November 8th, 2021.
Also, so just you know, I’m still on the road, actually vacationing here in South Florida, which basically means that I do not have access to my recording equipment, so I am doing this using/ recording this podcast using my AirPods, and that basically means that audio quality is low, and not gonna be as good as it has been. However, I feel that you know I need to get this podcast out so I am getting it done.
Also, I’m recording this day late. It’s Monday morning here and again because I was traveling on the road yesterday all day and by the time I reached Florida it was too late, exhausted, tired and I just couldn’t make myself to go ahead and do this recording, with kids, and the family, and things like that.
[Update 1 – Twitter Adds New Option to Let Non-Twitter Users Tune into Spaces] – 00:58
OK, with that, let’s move on. Today, First off we have an update from Twitter. With Twitter and this new option to let non-Twitter tune in to Spaces. Believe it or not, I’m excited about this update. I was actually attending a Twitter Spaces Conversation last Friday and you know obviously at that time I had to use the Twitter app but this was the first time I was watching/listening to Twitter Spaces conversation. Again, it’s similar to Clubhouse however what I really liked that it had, you know, audio, text, caption, or close captioning as it was happening. I really enjoyed this conversation. Again, there is not much difference between Twitter spaces and Clubhouse, however, given that Twitter is allowing non-Twitter users to listen from the web it’s really really good and it will only help amplify Twitter’s reaches in the non-Twitter world. However, I think that you know, given how these platforms are copying each other right through the clubhouse is going to go ahead and do copy this feature very quickly. OK.
[Update 2 – The Microsoft Audience Network Now Prohibits Four Types of Ads] – 02:05
With that, next update. And next update is Microsoft Audience Network now prohibits four types of ads, so one of these types of ads are? Number one is Lawsuit advertising and invitations to participate in a lawsuit, end of life products and services such as but not limited to Cremation Services, funeral flowers, urns, coffins, and obituaries. The third group is Health supplements and vitamins, however, enforcement for supplement and vitamin ads that are currently running on the network will not begin until January 2022. And lastly, gambling, which is already prohibited on the Microsoft Audience Network but will now also be prohibited on native advertising served on Microsoft-owned and operated properties. So what does this mean? This means that basically up until now, these are these four categories that are already prohibited in Google and Facebook but in Microsoft had given you a leeway in Microsoft coming back and you know to basically clamping down. So if you hadn’t taken advantage of this. If you’re in any of these four industries and you’re taking advantage of these opportunities, then that’s good for you. But if you have not, you missed out. You know it’s back to square one and now maybe you need to look at other greener pastures. Other platforms with these are not prohibited and you kind of, again, I’m not saying be shady but you know you just have an angle to get your message out. Get your business going and I am sure newer platforms are going to come out like, I mean, so TikTok come out, Clubhouse is coming up, so I’m sure at one point they are going to have audio ads and things like that. OK. Of course you have YouTube, and you can do with the videos and again, that’s a different story for another day.
[Update 3 – Facebook Launches ‘Creative App Platform’ & Expands Stories Functionality] – 03:38
Next up. We have, third update we have is Facebook has announced or Facebook has launched a ‘Creative App Platform’ to expand schools functionality. Wait, what is this ‘Creative App Platform’ about? So now when we create stories, obviously. Take a picture or a video but after we do that. Before we do that, we have to say, oh, this is the picture I want to do and then we have to go ahead and edit it in an app and then go do all the things. And sometimes that kind of slows things down. So Facebook is taking a page out of this Snapchat mini and what they’re doing is the same for that whenever you’re in the moment and you take a photo with the stories app would be able to do whatever, you know, modify the video or edit the pictures and things like that. So instead of using your phone’s camera to take the video, or the picture and then modifying it and then going to Stories. Facebook wants you to use ‘Stories’ Obviously, this ‘Creative App Platform’ this just rolled out. And they’re going to be more and more people or more and more app developers submitting applications. So tomorrow you might see something like a zoom filter. Again, I’m just saying like different options that are going to come in and so basically this Facebook wants to be this super app where you start with the picture and we do other things with it and then publish it up right away. So that’s the gist of this overall. Again, nothing clear from Facebook, but Facebook is trying to kinda, you know, encourage people to use their app and things like that. So right now I can see that Facebook is dabbling down on stories whereas Instagram is dabbling down on Reels.
[Update 4 – Instagram Adds New Text-to-Speech and Voice Effect Options in Reels] – 05:19
With that, let’s go to the next update. And this the good segue. So, Instagram did add two new options to Reels. Again, this is a feature that Instagram has copied from TikTok. Why are we not surprised? Instagram is just copying same with Facebook and they’re just basically a catch-up mode which remains to be seen. How Facebook, can Company Meta is when I really going to be able to innovate, or they’re just gonna copy features from other people so that they can keep up. So what are those two features? One is ‘Text-to-Speech’ and the other one is ‘Voice Effect’. So ‘Text-to-Speech’ is again is a very popular feature on Instagram where sometimes if you have text and you can have the computer voice choose between male and female. To read back instead of adding your own voice over which I think you know, in a situation like this where I am recording this podcast in a very noisy room because I’m actually sitting here trying to get my car windshield replaced. There are car passing by, there is a TV behind me and obviously, people talking here, it’s a shop. You know a lot of noise happening. Obviously, in the airport and the Krisp helps. So ‘Text-to-Speech’ might be helpful there and that gives the other one is a ‘Voice Effect’ option in Reels, again this is a feature that is copied from TikTok where you can now change your recorded voice to make it sound like you have been sucking on Helium or your robot or a giant among various others. Which could be interesting in a way to change up your voice. I mean, you know I’m gonna give this a try for our podcast, for our channel, so again, if you’re not following MKTANDGROW that’s MKT short for market AND GROW on Instagram or Twitter, go ahead and follow us so you’re going to see some of these things as I’m trying off. Ok.
[Update 5 – Shopify, Google & Pinterest Shares What’s Trending This Holiday Season] – 07:03
Next up. We have reports from Shopify, Google and Pinterest on saying, you know what’s popular in shopping trend that people are searching for, and all these things. Why are they doing this? Obviously, they’re trying to come up with data on what they’re seeing, so to help users make decisions, that’s one thing. You know user, as if you’re going to make a purchase and guide, you can kinda see what’s in demand and you can kind of, I guess, budget for things, that’s one. Number 2 for small business angle since this podcast is geared for small business is what I would say that this is working for meeting a marketing campaign. Who do you want to target what do you want to target? What’s in-demand, create ad campaigns that if you’re not selling this product, then you probably want to create like an anti-product campaign. Or if you have the product, you could say, the hottest 10, top ideas, create SEO contents, create blog post, things like that. So that’s very, very helpful and of course, you still have those products, you might know what to stock up this holiday season. That’s it. So you’re going to find the list to those links of the research or the you know publications, online shopping guides on what’s trending this holiday season on our show notes page. Check it out again. It’s too much to cover because you know it’s from Google, Shopify and Pinterest.
[Update 6 – Google: Legal Interstitials / Banners Does Not Affect SEO] – 08:21
OK with that, let’s go to the next one. Google has basically announced that Google legal interstitials/ banner does not affect SEO. So what is this legal Interstitials / Banners? Well, these are like these pop-up messages says, do you agree you consent to the cookie collection or you know European law, GDPR privacy. Things like that. Those pop-ups that come up. Now Google realizes that in certain countries in certain verticals this is a must-do. And where this is all playing on like for example in last episode we covered you know that Google is going to ding you if have paid experience to the page experience algorithm, right? So Google is not coming and said, well, we understand that popups going to be the necessary evil, so we’re not going to ding you on your SEO because of those pop-up. So we’re going to them like any other pop-up that shows up. We’re going to ding you from that. Overall, what you want to do is you want to make sure you are. Page experience is as good as it can be, reducing the number of popups, this is an SEO thing. However, Google is basically for the page experience. One thing with Google does is, like you know, it says that. How long does it take to, you know, from the page to load the content to kind of the text gets to appear on the screen. And #2 is they/are there any, if there are any forms, how long does it first input there. Cause that’s what Google matters. The third thing that Google wants to check is, you know, if you’re scrolling does the pop up that comes after like 5 second, for 5-10-12 seconds later and it just pops up if you one of those things like a pop up that says sign up for a newsletter which is super annoying. Especially in mobile, and as I realized it on a lot of digital marketing blog sites and news sites do that. ’cause I know this because I use all of this to publish this podcast and there annoying they’re going to get dinged. OK, that’s all you need to know from there.
[Update 7 – Google Publishes The List of Googlebot IP Addresses] – 10:28
The next update. The next update is Google publishes a list of Google IP addresses. Why do you care? Well, if you see if you have a list of IP Adds and this is the first time Google publishing this IP Addresses. So if you have a list of IP addresses, you know if Google Bot is coming or not to your site. There are 2 things you could do, you could actually use these IP addresses to see if anyone else. And kinda figure out if Googlebot is visiting or there are harmful Bot that are crawling, again and again, slowing your site down. You can actually filter them out and block them so you can use this list to kind of, you know, stop. Other harmful Bot such as say a Bot from the Chinese search engine and the Russian search engines, which again If you’re not doing business with them why do you want them slowing down your files? and kind of you know possible to mess up your Analytics data. Let me see what else can you do. corrupt general data, as well as slow your site down because your site has finite amount of resources whether it’s solar, powered things like that.. You don’t want that. And if you’re in this bot consume too much of your spaces, server resources, then of course your provider is not going to be happy and they can either ask you moved into a higher tier of support or moving to a different provider or different server at all. So with that what I’m saying is go ahead and check it out again. This is not for a small business owner to do by himself ’cause it’s quite resource intensive. I do plan to publish video on this sometime in the future, so that where you kind of know you can do it yourself. You’re a small business owner, you’re not a technical savvy to do that, but again, this requires a little bit of technical knowledge.
[Update 8 – Google Logo Structured Data Supports ImageObject Type] – 12:17
OK, next up is that Google logo now has structured data support ImageObject type. What is this? Well, let me explain this to you in a layman’s term. Have you ever searched sometimes searched for, say, a big company, large company and then you see the logo on the right-hand side of the Google search along with other similar companies of competitor companies. If you ever wonder how they got their logos up there and this is what you want to know.
OK. So a lot of small businesses do not know this, and they’re missing out, and the large companies they know this because of they have the resources, the people. And you know this is not really very hard. Again, I think I should do a video on this because it’s so easy, but the same time or many people miss out. So what you need to do is we need to create a schema object. Again this is the schema object that you humans do have seen that that is in your web page source code. Behind the scenes inbox like Google Bots can see it and read it and what it does is like in addition to providing the URL to your logo, you kind of not the image object type allows you to put some things like action that the logo and some texts and who it is, what the logo is about and things like that. And what it does, it helps you to basically show up more against someone who to search Market AND Grow our Market AND Grow company logos gonna show up on the right-hand side of a Google search on the desktop. It just makes it look more official. Again, this information is going to help you. It should be seen on Google organically in a better way than your competitors, so that’s all it’s going to do.
[Update 9 – How To Enable Key Moments Snippets In Google Search] – 14:00
Next update we have is Google share some guide on how to enable key moment snippet in Google Search. What is that? You see sometimes search on Google right and they just say how do I edit my video in Canva. Sometimes you will see a video show up and it has like you know. That video I’m not talking about YouTube or in the video search, I’m talking about in Google search. It’ll show you a video and when you click at that video it will take you right at that point where it shows that key moment when the guy or the girl is actually editing the video in Canva. Google actually comes out with a guide that says how are people getting it done And, you know, all the requirements for it’s very, very neat. It’s easy once you get a hang of it. There are two ways to get it done. One is automatic which is Google doing it for you and the other one is manual. Now a couple of things you want to know. Google is going to give. preference to the manual.So you should do it manually, obviously, we will have a higher chance of showing up and #2 is if you’re doing it automatically, it will let the lower chance. That’s one. Number two is you before you show up on key moment search you need to be careful that your video is alone on a page. If it’s embedded with text. Other stuff on the page, then the video will not get picked up, so this is an FYI for us. The way we are embedding the TWIMshow, which is this podcast video with text on the same page and work for us, for me is to basically split it out. So the video itself is on one page and the text being on our page and of course on if you are in YouTube, this happens automatically automatic chapters. It’s already getting picked up, but if it’s a third-party platform such as Misty, Vimeo or something like that, just make sure that you are, you know, provider supports this kind of stuff. OK again, I feel like a video like this on how to get it done is due because it’s not very complex, but it just requires you to kind of show you how to get it done. And once you get it done, it’s gonna be like Oh my God, this is so easy. Why did I not do it before?
[Update 10 – Google Keyword Planner Tool Has 3 New Columns] – 16:08
OK, Next up. I forgot. I think this is 10th update of this week is Google Keyword Planner has added three new columns and those three columns are year-over-year change, three-month change, and three-month trending type. What’s gonna happen? If you are into Google ads campaign? Keyword Planner is very valuable tool. It allows us to kind of figure out, you know, are we gonna bid on this keyword, is there enough volume, what’s happening and historical data, year-over-year change, three-month change really helps us to plan better campaigns and increase our ads spend/decrease our ads spend, bid properly, things like that. So it’s a very valuable tool, again. Go check it out. If you’re unable to do it, I guess maybe we should watch for training. What do you think OK?
[Update 11 – YouTube Removes Dislike Counts] – 16:53
Update number 11, and the last update of this week is that YouTube remove dislikes Counts. It’s not removing the dislike button completely is just going to remove the Dislike count. So number of people we gonna see number people like the videos and number of people dislike the video is not going to be there because YouTube. Saying well we’ve done the experiments where you can see that there is a Dislike army brigade or a dislike brigade, and they come in and they mass dislike a video. And obviously, you know if sends a wrong signal to our algorithm or people get dissuaded because they’re getting attacked. Soon that I remove that publicly, you can still dislike that video. It’s just that you will not see how many people have disliked. I feel like even that’s pure bullshit and here is why. Facebook remove the dislike button from Facebook likes for long time ago because there’s all this is harmful right for whatever. And I’m calling this bullshit is because you cannot just go out on your own and go ahead and you know, dislike a video. You have to have a Google account. Now if there are Google accounts and they’re Bot accounts, you know what you need to do is you can, Google can always figure out they can write an algorithm that can filter out if this guy was saying negative things to this channel’s videos right and you can eventually write out and figure it out in an algorithmic But where? Google has algorithms that does find key moments in a video, find fraud detection, all those things and you think you cannot do this? It’s pure machine language. But in the center I think what Google is trying to do is if you see. Add video that I will number dislike crowds or one of it for genuine reasons. You’ll probably not watch it. Now you have to watch that video to you know, figure out if these videos for you or not. Again, I think you know just doesn’t do this service. Overall, initial small business create or small creator I know to how hurtful and painful it is for me to see someone dislikes my video where I put in so much hard work and there is a lot of people that doing bait and switch. They’re like really gaming the system, so it’s a double-edged sword why I said and I don’t buy go, YouTubes, YouTubes’ reason but it is what it is. You know these are the platforms that make the rules. We live by the rules or you know we just have to figure out a way to live and deal with it, OK?
[Closing] – 19:23
Alrighty, 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. Twitter Adds New Option to Let Non-Twitter Users Tune into Spaces (00:58) – Twitter continues to build out its audio Spaces offering, this time with the addition of a new way to expand your Spaces audience, even among people who don’t have a Twitter profile. As Twitter explains, now, when you share a link to a Spaces broadcast, non-Twitter users will also be able to tune in, which will give you more ways to showcase your audio broadcasts to a wider audience, both inside and outside the app.
Non-Twitter users can’t actually participate in the Spaces chat – they can’t be invited on as guests and they can’t react to the discussion. But it may provide more utility, with your shared Spaces links now having value beyond the app itself, which means that you can share them with all of your contacts and invite them to listen to your Spaces chats.
2. The Microsoft Audience Network Now Prohibits Four Types of Ads (02:05) – The Microsoft Audience Network now prohibits gambling, lawsuit, health supplement, and end-of-life ads The updated policy aligns the Microsoft Audience Network with other advertising platforms. Here is the list of categories that are no longer allowed on the Microsoft Audience Network as well as on native advertising served on Microsoft-owned and operated properties, like MSN and Outlook:
- Lawsuit advertising and invitations to participate in a lawsuit.
- End-of-life products and services, including but not limited to cremation services, funeral flowers, urns, coffins, and obituaries.
- Health supplements and vitamins (however enforcement for supplement and vitamin ads that are currently running on the network will not begin until January).
- Gambling (which is already prohibited on the Microsoft Audience Network but will now also be prohibited on native advertising served on Microsoft-owned and operated properties).
3. Facebook Launches ‘Creative App Platform’ & Expands Stories Functionality (03:38) – Facebook has announced a new ‘Creative App Platform’ for Facebook Stories, which will enable developers to create and promote Stories-related apps direct within the Stories ecosystem.
Through Facebook’s new platform, app developers participating in the program will be able to get their tools listed within the Stories composer flow, which will enable users to access more creative apps for their Stories, without having to go find them off-platform.
The concept is a lot like Snapchat’s ‘Minis’ offering, which enables developers to share micro-versions of their full apps within Snapchat. That expands on the creative potential of Snaps, by providing even more tools and add-on options that you can share, via your private Snaps, Stories, etc.
Facebook’s variation is focused on Stories specifically, and creative add-ons, as the name would suggest, with various developers signing up for the first phase.
4. Instagram Adds New Text-to-Speech and Voice Effect Options in Reels (05:19) – Instagram is once again adding more TikTok-inspired features into its app, with the addition of a new ‘Text to Speech’ option in Reels clips, which provides an artificial voice to read any text overlays you add to your clips, and new voice changer options to alter your vocal tones.
First off, text-to-speech will give Reels creators two voice options to choose from, with the auto voice, then reading out any text that you’ve added to your clip. To add the new text to speech option, once you’ve added text to your clip, you’ll need to tap on the text bubble at the bottom of the composer screen, then select ‘Text-to-speech’ from the three dots menu (which is very small, so good luck if you’ve got larger fingers).
Instagram’s also added new ‘Voice Effects’, which provides another option to add a different creative element to your Reels clips. You can now change your recorded voice to make it sound like you’ve been sucking on helium, or you’re a robot, or a giant, among various others, which could be an interesting way to change up your clips.
If Instagram is always copying, then it’s inevitably always a step behind, which means it’s never going to be the trend leader and the cool place to engage younger audiences. Users know that it’s simply copying TikTok, which really just further solidifies TikTok’s leadership. If Meta/Instagram really wants to win over these groups. It’ll need to come out with more new, original ideas for its tools – which, as we’ve seen over the past decade, Meta is not exactly great at.
5. Shopify, Google & Pinterest Shares What’s Trending This Holiday Season (07:03) – So what can you do with these guides? Well in addition to making decisions on what to buy for your loved ones this holiday season you can actually use this guide to plan for your marketing campaign and/or stock up on sought-after products. You can view the guides here:
6. Google: Legal Interstitials / Banners Does Not Affect SEO (08:21) – Google has clarified that legal interstitials are fine and you don’t really have to worry about any penalty or ding for those types of legal banners. even with the new rules coming to desktop pages (see episode 81). Google clearly understands that some sites require these intrusive interstitials for legal reasons and has to make an exception for it there.
This is the official tweet where they clarify this.
7. Google Publishes The List of Googlebot IP Addresses (10:28) – Google has published the full list of IP addresses it uses for crawling and accessing your website under the Googlebot user agents. Google said if you do not want to use reverse DNS other than those types of methods for verifying Googlebot, you “can identify Googlebot by IP address by matching the crawler’s IP address to the list of Googlebot IP addresses.”
If you believe someone is crawling your site, pretending to be Googlebot, and you want to verify that blocking this fake Googlebot crawler is not really Google, then you can use either the command line method or automated IP list method.
Knowing which bot is really Google and which is not can help you decide which rogue bots to block from your site. You can access the full list of Googlebot IP addresses over here, note that Google may update this list, so you should check the file probably daily. You can also access all other Google crawlers that match the crawler’s IP address against the complete list of Google IP addresses. Again, these IP addresses may change over time, so you should build into your mechanisms a way to update the IP addresses on your end.
8. Google Logo Structured Data Supports ImageObject Type (12:17) – Google logo schema now supports ImageObject type, in addition to the URL type, according to updated information on the help document. Google said this provides “new flexibility” to specify an organization logo using this schema markup. ImageObject type gives you the ability to add additional data to an image, such as width and height, or the author or a caption. Whereas the URL type did not give you these added values.
9. How To Enable Key Moments Snippets In Google Search (14:00) – Google explained how to use schema markup to enable key moments snippets for video content in search results. So what Are Video Key Moments? Key moments are a way for users to jump directly to the point within a video that’s most relevant to their query. In Google Search, key moments can appear alongside a video result as seen in the featured image for this article.
- A timestamp indicates where that moment starts.
- A label describes what happens at that moment.
- A thumbnail from that moment in the video.
When you click a key moment and land on the video page, that video will begin playing from the specific moment you selected.
However, key moments will only appear for results where a video is the main content on the page. They won’t appear for pages that mix videos with other content, like a news article or an eCommerce product page.
There are two ways to enable key moments:
- SeekToAction markup: Allows Google to identify key moments in your videos automatically.
- Clip markup: This allows you to identify key moments in your videos manually.
Note that Google will prioritize key moments that are identified manually. If you don’t want key moments at all you can opt out by using the NOSNIPPET tag. In order to support key moments, video page URLs must support a parameter that begins playback from a specific number of seconds into the video.
10. Google Keyword Planner Tool Has 3 New Columns (16:08) – Google is making more data available that you can use to make informed decisions about your search campaigns. The new columns are:
- YoY Change – The year-over-year change compares the monthly search volume of the latest month with the same month the previous year.
- Three-month change – The three-month change shows a three-month change in search trends by comparing the latest month’s data, with the data from two months prior. For example, if the latest month is July, the July data would be compared to May to show a change in search volume over three months.
- Three-month trending type – This shows you if the trend is going up or down or remaining flat for the keyword. I no longer see this but Google was testing this.
11. YouTube Removes Dislike Counts (16:53) – YouTube has announced that it’s making a change to the way dislikes are displayed on videos, with the dislike count to be made private, in order to limit misuse of the option. The change comes as a result of attacks on users, where the dislike option has been used to harm a video’s performance.
As explained by YouTube’s Creator Liaison Matt Koval:
“Groups of viewers are targeting a video’s dislike button to drive up the count, turning it into something like a game with a visible scoreboard, and it’s usually just because they don’t like the creator or what they stand for. That’s a big problem when half of YouTube’s mission is to give everyone a voice.”
As a result, YouTube ran an experiment earlier in the year where it made dislike counts private, in order to examine whether that might have an impact on coordinated dislike attacks. And it did.
“As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button, but because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior.”
YouTube says that it also heard from smaller creators and those just starting out that they are often the subject of these brigade attacks, which its examination found to be true.
As such, YouTube has made the decision to hide dislike counts across the board, with a view to limiting the damage and impact, and encouraging more participation from more users.
