It’s that time again for my roundup of the latest digital marketing news that you need to know about. Digital marketing and social media are fast-moving areas anyway, but currently, there are lots of changes in light of our switched consumer habits and move to online marketing as a result of Covid-19.

Shopping on Facebook and Instagram

In a move that pushes social ecommerce even further, Facebook has introduced Shopping to help small businesses during the Covid-19 crisis. Businesses will be able to create free shop-fronts on their Facebook and Instagram channels.

Facebook takes a small fee when consumers buy via these social platforms and businesses can also buy ads for Shops. Items for sale will appear within the shop and users can save items for later or make a purchase either within the app or via the business website. Businesses can manage any queries via Messenger, Whatsapp or Insta. 

There are plans for browsing catalogues or buying directly from a chat window or tagging items in live streams and enabling purchase for this. Watch this space for more social shopping options.

Google Core Algorithm Update

A core algorithm update happened in May which has now reportedly finished. There seems to have been a win for social sites such as Pinterest, large retailers like Amazon as well as homemade selling platform, Etsy. The algorithm may have been skewed with the changes to online behaviour during Coronavirus. For instance, Etsy appears to be appearing high in the SERPS (search engine results pages) in relation to search terms “handmade”. Google will rank the searches by how satisfied users seem with their search results and perhaps during lockdown Etsy hit the mark for customers around these search terms.

What to do? Keep an eye on your stats (Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools) and monitor the situation. It is important to not make knee-jerk adjustments to your site after a core update. 

Read more about the update here.

Facebook messenger rooms go global

Facebook has announced that Messenger Rooms will be available globally to rival Zoom or Houseparty. This allows you to invite up to 50 people to a video chat with no time limits.  

Facebook’s new brand safety tools

Brand safety remains a big issue where businesses need reassurance that their ads will not be placed near unsavoury content or that which goes against brand guidelines. Facebook is expanding its brand safety tools to help advertisers control their ad placements. The guidelines include: allowing advertisers to decide which third-party publisher apps to run ads

  • on via Publisher whitelists for Audience Network
  • greater transparency in which pieces of content ads were embedded in
  • opt-outs from live streams of vetted publishers.

Find out more about managing the brand safety tools here. 

Linkedin: new ask the audience poll feature

Linkedin has added a new poll feature which allows you to ask questions to your connections, specific groups or the whole network. This will be a quick and easy way to engage your audience and find out more about their thoughts on specific topics or product development. The page or group admins must create between two and four options for the poll. 
This feature is being rolled out to all users soon. It is easy to set up a poll – find out more.

Linkedin moves into virtual events

With the increase in live online events during lockdown, it may not be surprising that Linkedin is offering a new service, Virtual Events, merging their Events and Linkedin Live features. 

The service will allow businesses to run their events to those who have signed up with event discussions saved on a specified page and a video tab to allow users to find out more post-event. 

Read more about it here.

Fancy audio tweeting?

With the increase in the popularity of podcasts, Twitter has been mocking up what audio tweets might look like. I tweeted about this the other day and people seemed keen. Would you fancy adding this to your Twitter repertoire?

Find out more here.

In other news

Facebook has bought GIPHY, the searchable database of gif images, for $400 million. GIPHY did not manage to make advertising money from the channel, therefore commentators suggest that Facebook made the move to access data on user behaviour on other channels. Read more here. 
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Facebook is also testing skippable mid-stream video ads. Adverts in the test allow users to skip in-steam video ads five seconds in. Find out more here. 

Over to you

I hope you’ve found these updates helpful and can apply some of them to your own marketing efforts. If you’re looking for help, training or advice for your social, SEO, or any area of your digital marketing, get in touch on:

  • 07747 807735
  • hello@carolynhair.com