[Ep99] – Announcements From Pinterest’s Annual Summit – Pinterest Presents

[Introduction] – 00:00

Welcome to episode 99 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 world from the week of march 7 2022. OK.

[Update 1 – SEOPress WordPress Plugin Now Supports IndexNow] – 00:14

So first off, we have an update on the SEO front. As I would say, if you have been listening to our show, you’ll know in the past, I’ve covered this thing called IndexNow that allows you to kind of send your updates to your web page, blogs directly to Bing and Yandex. So right now and by the way, we also covered that. Google is testing it out. Google hasn’t formally announced support for IndexNow, but they are Beta testing it to see if they will support it or not. Now, one of the WordPress, which again, by the way, WordPress is one of those most widely used platforms for blogging, for websites, things like that other than Wix and all, Squarespace and everything else. So WordPress plugin maker SEO Press has now extended support for Index now. Having said that, and usually I would not talk about this, but I think I need to talk and not overly getting political about it. If you remember, the IndexNow also supports the Yandex now, Yandex is actually Russian search engine. Given what’s happening in Ukraine, where Russia has invaded Ukraine for whatever reason, let’s not go there. And Yandex is kind of cut off from the internet. And whatnot happening where I’m going with this is that maybe this is not the right time to use IndexNow because the only two places where actually it goes is Bing and Yandex. Google hasn’t even formally announced support for it. And with all the stuff that’s happening, it may not actually Google may not even take participant in it. So what I’m going and what I’m talking about is that folks remember before IndexNow there was a plugin from Bing, Microsoft Bing, where you could send submissions directly to Bing. Maybe you want to use that for now and not really jump on to the IndexNow bandwidth. I know I have talked about IndexNow in the past and I’ve said how we have moved to IndexNow. And actually I’m backtracking and we’re moving back into the Bing plugin just because of what’s happening. And I know, Yandex is not really something on our radar. Okay with that, let’s talk about Instagram.

[Update 2 – Instagram Launches “Creator Lab” Portal for Creators by Creators] – 02:24

And this is something I kind of like again, this is something it’s unusual for me to say about Instagram and Facebook if you have been following us. But Instagram has launched this thing called Creator Lab portal. This is for creators by creators. And what they’re doing is they’ve taken actually page out of the TikTok playbook where TikTok also has this for Tik Tok creators and basically all these well-known creators that are coming in and they’re giving you tips and things like how do you create videos, why? And all those things. I’ve watched some of those educational videos, and I think I found them useful, even though I thought I knew everything. It’s always good to learn from other people who have been successful. So check it out. The link is on our Show Notes page. You definitely want to check it out to kind of get some ideas and inspiration on why and how you should create video, finding your voice, things like that. This is something that’s good that Instagram has done, I think I wish they had done it sooner. Okay.

[Update 3 – Instagram Rolls Out “Enhanced” Tags] – 03:25

Next up, Instagram has rolled out an enhanced Tags. Now, what are enhanced Tags? Enhance Tags are Tags that you will allow you to tag people, which is already something that exists. But now you could tag people based on what they have done for your picture. So one great example is say you took a picture of you in front of whatever in front of your house, okay. And your makeup was done by certain person. Your videography was done by certain photo was taken by someone else. Your dress was from someone else. In the past, you just tagged them and say, boom, boom, boom, person 1, person 2, person 3. Now you could actually categorize them and they say, oh well, make up by so and so, things like that. So you’re giving credit where it’s credit due. It’s just basically and that’s why they call it enhance Tags versus just tagging. What enhance Tags will allow you to do is give credit to people. And people are getting oh! Now people can say, oh, yeah, makeup was done by that. Imagine if you had a photo where they’re like 5 different people have contributed and you just tagged them. You wouldn’t really know who contributed what unless someone would do check in and really do that legwork. Now with enhanced tag, it makes it easier. I kind of like that. And I think where this is all going into is Instagram is probably going to use this data and create some sort of product or feature in the future, because I know it’s all metadata. It’s grouping things. At least I would do that if I was the product manager. Right now, I have this data. Let’s kinda pivot it, let’s create a category that says all photographers in Virginia are in this category. And then Instagram would be able to pivot the data and show it to me. And that way it’s going to create more engagement in the platform, and people are going to be more excited to be showing things on the platform. I hope they’re doing that because that will really put Instagram in a different space than everything else. But we’ll see what happens. Okay. Next up, we have Facebook.

[Update 4 – Q.R. codes for Facebook Groups, and An Option To Invite People via Email] – 05:25

Facebook again, this is something good. There are some updates in Facebook groups, basically a couple of basic things with Admin Assist. Now, you could turn on a feature where if someone is trying to share a link or share something that has been already fact checked by third party and Facebook thinks it’s misinformation or it’s incorrect, then Facebook will automatically delete that and will not allow you to post that thing. And it kind of helps. Imagine someone’s like pushing whatever. I don’t want to take off anything someone is saying. Someone is pushing like there is no war between Russia and Ukraine. Okay. And there is an article and they’re trying to put it in your Facebook group and you have a very large group, then you have to moderate 24/7 and some things can slip by. With this feature, if it has been already fact-checked and as soon as they post it, it will get deleted or it will not be able to post. So which is a good thing. The next thing also here they have is Facebook has announced for Facebook group is like, if someone has filled up all the answers to the questions you ask before joining a group. When you try to join a group, sometimes there are questions like, do you follow? Do you agree to abide by the rule? What’s your income? What’s your email address? If someone has answers all the questions, then they can automatically join. Now the challenge on the other end is like, imagine you’re collecting email address, right? And the email address goes Xyz@xyz.com or test@test.com. I do not know how smart this artificial intelligence will be that they will detect, oh, this is a fake email address. Because we humans, we can see an email address and we can figure out, yeah, that’s fake, man, that thing doesn’t fly. So we’ll see. But at least it’s a nice feature
that knowing that, oh, it’s there. Maybe you ask things and people will randomly give you things and go from there. We’ll see. The third update. That thing that they have done is before, in the past, you used to do mute people. Now instead of mute, you can call them suspend them, right? It’s not a big deal. It’s just that when they are suspended, they would not be able to react, engage in a group chat, publish, comment, anything like that. They’re just like this. They’re in jail, right? They should call it jailed, right? That would be better words than suspend. But anyway, that’s what Facebook did, suspend the fourth update that they have. And this is something I love. You can actually download the QR codes to your group. In the past, what I’ve done and for our own Facebook group, what I’ve done is I took the link to the Facebook group, I went to a third party website for QR code creation, put it in there and we downloaded and put it in our banner image and things like that. Now you could just go into the group admin, download the Qr code and start using it. So it just saves you trouble and helps you to kind of give it to people and without having to do this third step and I hope in the future Facebook adds tracking to see how many people scanned it, how many people clicked on it through this QR code. Because that’s the other benefit I get from a third party QR code site. The fifth one is now you can email people to join your group within Facebook group. Great job there! Like, you don’t have to go to MailChimp. I hope they have this thing where we can upload our email list and invite people to join. And maybe, you know what, if there is a feature that says people who I have invited can automatically join without having to go through all these things approval process that workflow is there? That would be amazing. And I hope Facebook is listening and Facebook does this because that would really put Facebook in a different ballgame. Okay. With that, that was all the updates for Facebook groups. Now let’s move on to Microsoft Advertising.

[Update 5 – Microsoft Advertising Launches Professional Service Ads For Service Providers] – 09:06

Microsoft Advertising has launched service ads for professional, professional service ads. It’s basically a way for professionals to highlight their services. Right now, this is for realtor mortgage brokers, insurance agents, things like that. You could do it if you’re an individual, if you are an independent service provider, or if you could do
it at a company level or a branch level. So it’s quite a flexibility. And I kind of tested this out before recording the show. And what happens is when you go to Bing.com and you search the insurance services, you see some text ads like you do normally. And then on the right hand side, you see those blocked service ads where you see the image, the details, and all those things. Again, those are things that are coming from the feed that you give to Microsoft. So the more specific you get into your feed, the better the ads are going to be. And by the way, this service ad does not compete with text ads. So there are two different algorithms, two different things. Microsoft is saying it’s not colliding. They’re two separate auction system. Now, next up is obviously this thing is in Beta. It’s not available to everyone. But with everything that’s happening, I’m pretty sure Microsoft is going to roll it out as a generally available thing. For now, if you want to join, you need to kind of go through your partner or you need to go through calling up their help desk. And there’s a number on their website. And you could like say, hey, give me service app. And when it’s released, generally available, we will cover that in our TWIMshow. Okay, with that,

[Update 6 – Google Launches Automated Vehicle Ads In The U.S.] – 10:42

let’s go into Google follows Microsoft for a change instead of Microsoft following Google. And Google has launched automated vehicle ads in the US. Well, what are automatic vehicle ads? In the past, Microsoft has done automobile ads. Now Google is calling it the vehicle ads. Basically, what can do is dealers and automobile manufacturers. Manufacturers do not sell their cars directly in the US, except for Tesla, but dealers can actually upload an inventory of their vehicles through a Google merchant center. Okay. And then their ads are going to be shown to people who are searching for vehicles. And then when people see that thing, they would be able to click on it and go directly to the dealers page. And dealers can basically create different kind of engagement where people clicked on it. People visited our showroom, people bought the things, things like that. Right. You can set conversions and you can put conversion value, things like that. So what this is all about, it’s about let me try to think, how is it, how should I put it? This is similar to you would have any product that would show up and shows up in Google Shopping. So Google is trying to basically do, I guess create more inventory, more different ways of creating a revenue. But it’s good. Now, you could like someone instead of look at it this way. If you are searching for a blue BMW X5 2021 and you searched that in the past, you would get all these text ads. Now you could actually look for results in the carousel and you could just pick the ones you like and then click on it. And you can do a lot of things. It does help people such as searchers on this end. And also it creates a lot more engaged, a lot more, how would I say better customers, better leads onto the dealer’s website. Right. So win win on both ends, by the way, I should let you know, not used. I would say automobile parts are not part of this. So if you have parts and things like that, you are selling, this should not be this is just strictly vehicle as a whole. Big-ticket items. Okay.Next up,

[Update 7 – Twitter Shops (Beta) Lets Brands List Up To 50 Products] – 12:52

Twitter has launched as a Beta – Twitter shop. Right now it’s a Beta program. So only a few Twitter handles are on this program. Some of them are @Verizon, @ArdenCove, @LatinxInPower, @GayPrideApp, and @AllIDoIsCookUS. Right. These are the few ones that they’ve launched and they were part of the announcement. I’ve checked them out. And now here’s my thought. Good move, Twitter, that you realize that you had people who were promoting products and now they were clicking on the link and going off to a third party site and Twitter is saying, you know what? We are going to be allow them to create shops and they can list their products. However, it’s not a full solution yet because I think they just cooked it up very quickly and they just rolled it out. And why I said that is here. If you look at some of the out of the get product, like out of the door handles, Verizon, Arden Cove. And I looked at the profile.First of all, Verizon is not a great partner to launch when you’re launching a product like this, right? Yeah. They have 1.6 million followers on Twitter. But how many people are going to buy like iPhone covers and things like that from Verizon? Same thing with Arden Cove, LatinX, GayPrideApp. I’m not against anything else, like diversity. I love diversity. I’m like from minority community myself. But what I’m saying is, look, guys, these other channels or other handles, they have 2000, 3000 followers. How many of their followers are going to actually buy things like that? Right. So it seems like the Twitter product management group, at the last minute they said, oh, shit, we’re launching this feature. We need a few people to partner up with to use them, as in our PR launch newsletter. So let’s go find out whoever we can. And they just picked up a few right away, whatever they found in front of them instead of finding something like this. And the other thing I will tell you is I wish Twitter would like eat their own dog food, which is maybe Twitter should open their own official merchandise channel. Right. Twitter shop where they sell Twitter. What is it called? Twitter T shirts, Twitter hoodies, things like that. Now, you could suggest they’re not in that business. Why they should do that. Well, this makes a very excellent case study, right, where they can say, hey, we launched Twitter shop. This is what’s happening. Things like that. It’s your own dog food, guys. It’s your own dog food. And you could also argue with Twitter doesn’t want to go into inventory management, things like that. Well, there are a lot of third party websites that does like on demand printing, shipping, things like that. Today. You could do that. You’re not doing this as a way to supplement your revenue, but you’re doing it as a case study that saying our own brand has succeeded this way. And Twitter, you are a billion dollar public company. I’m sure you can create a team there where your annual operating expenses like say half a million dollars. And you create this to create all these case studies and things like that and what you are doing to promote and help inspire other people, rather than bringing things like Verizon ArdenCove, LatinxInPower which is okay, but you don’t really have any in-depth information of what they’ve done, how they’ve done and what they’ve done to grow things like that. Just me saying that. But that’s all from the Twitter. And now, last update of this week,

[Update 8 – Announcements From Pinterest’s Annual Summit – Pinterest Presents] – 16:12

the announcement from Pinterest annual summit. And guys, you’re going to love it. Pinterest has announced they’re going to create a Pinterest shop. It’s pretty similar, right. I was curious, like who copied from whom? So I actually did that thing. While Twitter announced it on the 9 March. Pinterest summit was on the 10 March. And Pinterest obviously had this was something recorded. So I’m pretty sure I think Twitter played catch up to figure out that Pinterest is going to announce this. And they’re going to pretty much catch up so they quickly roll that Twitter shop. But anyway, Besides the point Twitter Pinterest shop is coming. It’s based on. It’s a test based algorithm. Depending on what you like, your feed is going to show those shops checking out is also within Pinterest which is great. It’s actually now competing directly with what’s the other shop platform, Shopify. Right. Pinterest has 400 million people who visit Pinterest. I cannot remember how many. 400 million a month, I believe. Yes, 400 million people visit Pinterest a month. I don’t go to Shopify unless I’m buying something from Shopify merchants so Shopify is already at a disadvantage. So check out is there Pinterest is going to have shopping API that’s going to make people easier to merchants, easier to post catalog. Something similar to what Bing has, something similar to what Google merchant has. This is also very good and Pinterest is going to have a trend tool that’s going to show you new capabilities, real-time search data drive, ten tribes, things like that to allow you to kind of plan things like that. All in all, suddenly Pinterest has become a shopping app. Good going, Pinterest. Oh, by the way folks, just so that you know, I am a Pinterest shareholder. I have been a shareholder since last year and I just am excited because now of Pinterest. Pinterest stock price in my opinion is going to take off. But anyway, I’m not here to give out stock and financial advice. I just am excited because this is something that Pinterest really needed. Now the only thing Pinterest does need to work on if they were not already worked on is Pinterest. Please change your UI, your Pinterest app UI. Last time I went I was confused. It was too busy and I didn’t know what the hell to do. I just like it. I was like

[Closing] – 18:33

Anyway, folks, that’s it for This Week In Marketing. Now you know everything you need to be in the know. Once again, this is your host Sajid Islam. And if you want to read more, make sure you visit our show page. You go to our website, it’s marketandgrow.com/twimshow and you will find everything over there. Take care. Bye bye.

 

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