Top Digital Marketing News March 2018

The year 2018 is turning out to be quite eventful for us Marketers..especially everyone who is in the digital space! March hit us hard with Facebook — Cambridge Analytica debacle, but things mellowed with a bunch of new updates from Google, Twitter and other social media channels.

So grab a cup of coffee and let’s get started with the latest digital marketing stories with our monthly news round-up — PING.

Happy reading!

Search News Updates
1. Google empowering Women-led businesses worldwide

This women’s day Google did something special to recognize us women in business. Businesses can now identify as owned, led, or founded by women, by enabling the women-led attribute from their Google My Business dashboard.

Skilfinity is a women-led business

Attributes appear on a business’s Google listing on Maps and Search and give customers more details like “Has Wi-Fi”, “Outdoor seating” “Cozy” etc.

2. Google released their Brackets update

It’s no news that Google has been emphasizing about quality content for some time now. Keeping up with this mission, a new algorithm update called ‘Brackets’ was rolled out.

Industry experts confirm this is their refinement on the Google Fred, and it does seem to have influenced higher quality sites surfacing to the top and supporting their rich snippets as a result.

Now for the readers who do not know what rich snippets — Rich Snippets is the term used to describe structured data markup that site operators can add to their existing HTML, which in turn allow search engines to better understand what information is contained on each web page. However, the major search engines have taken this a step further and now use this markup to present richer search results, enabling users to more easily find the information they are looking for.

When Rich Snippets are employed, Google is now able to display a bit more information about the actual result, including whether this particular result is a review, a person, a product, business and more.

3. Google Adwords will now show ad version history

Google Adwords now allows its users to compare the previously edited versions of their ads and their performance in the new Adwords experience. This feature saves your time trying out which ad rotations you have previously tried, which have worked best, and for what reason. This data can be exported to a spreadsheet.

4. Restaurants can now upload menus to Google My Business

We missed this news in February and reckon is an important update for all restaurant owners — Earlier restaurants could only add a link to their menu on their Google My Business Page or use a third-party service to spread the information. Now restaurant owners can add a menu to their Google My Business Page. Keeping up with their decision to uplift mobile optimized businesses, the consumers can see the menu only when using a mobile device.

Social Media News Updates

LinkedIn
Now there will be auto-playing video ads on LinkedIn:

Earlier when marketers wanted to use video on LinkedIn, they could do so by uploading the videos to YouTube or Vimeo and share the link. After the recent change, videos will appear as standalone posts along with blogs, status updates and job postings.

Now, as we all know that LinkedIn is used for professional updates and connects, marketers can use these video ads to create brand awareness, which in turn can help them to get more businesses.

Twitter
Twitter seeks outside help for taking care of abuse and trolls:

To make the platform healthier, Twitter has called for submissions from outside experts. CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey said, “We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers.”

In the recent months, Twitter has updated its rules on prohibited content that encourages offensive content and it has deleted various accounts that encourage the same.

Snapchat
Snapchat is planning to provide stats to the brands on how many users visit their locations:

Snapchat might have lost its position after its new design release in February, Kylie Jenner and few other celebrity’s negative tweets but is sure taking steps to woo the brands again with its new feature which helps at location-based marketing.

It is making a feature available to all the brands wherein they can keep a track on the people who view an advertiser’s ad then go to their store. This is available for all the brands irrespective of the fact that they buy advertising or not.

Foot traffic stats provide marketers with a sense of which day’s traffic is highest, what hours of the day are most relevant that is agnostic of any campaign that they may be running at that moment. The stats include visitation metrics, including how many people visited a store and how many came back, as well as audience stats like users’ demographics and interests

Facebook
1. Facebook is now testing voice clips as status

We have been speaking and tweeting about how voice search is picking up and is here to stay. Facebook is reinforcing this by testing the option of putting voice clips as a status option.

Facebook confirmed the news to TechCrunch by saying, “We’re always working to help people share and connect with their friends and family on Facebook in ways that are authentic to them. Voice Clips gives people a new medium through which to express themselves.”

From the marketers’ point of view, we will have more options to communicate with our audience. Having more options is always better, however, Facebook has not clarified on its expansion rollout plan.

2. Facebook has ended its experiment on “Explore” news feed

October last year, Facebook to shift its emphasis from advertisers to users, introduced a new initiative to put Page content in a separate feed from content within a user’s personal network. This was called the “Explore Feed” by Facebook.

This split news feed rolled out in 6 countries but having 2 news feeds did not work well with the users. This initiative was ended on March 1, 2018.

3. Facebook is testing mass messages on Messenger

Back in November, Facebook internally developed “Messenger Broadcast,” a self-serve mass-messaging interface that lets businesses send marketing messages to users.

Facebook has now confirmed expanding this test of the messenger to send mass messages. Brands can now put together a message, add an image and then send it out to people who have already communicated with them. This option is available for businesses in U.S.A, Mexico and Thailand for free as of now, however, Facebook may start charging for the same eventually.

We at Skilfinity think this feature can be massively misused to spam user.

4. Facebook expands its job posting tool to 40 countries

With the aim of helping local businesses to find potential candidates, Facebook has now entered into LinkedIn’s territory by opening on-platform job listings to 40 additional countries; it was operational for businesses of North America last year.

5. Facebook has upped its already existing features to recover its user’s confidence

You all must have heard about — Cambridge Analytica — Facebook data-misappropriation controversy. Post the crisis, Facebook has made a number of changes securing user data.

a) The privacy control settings menu has been redesigned for mobiles so one can have a consolidated view in a single screen making it easier for users to see what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

b) FB is also adding a specific menu for privacy shortcuts. It will include options to manage ad preferences, turn on two-factor authentication and determine who can see information on a user’s Facebook profile.

c) Also, Facebook offers extra security features like App passwords, login approvals, login alerts/notifications, one-time passwords, trusted contacts and mobile security.

d) Facebook also will add a feature called “Access Your Information” so users can see what they’ve posted and reacted to, as well as things they’ve searched for. The feature will allow users to delete items they no longer want on their Facebook page.

Instagram
1. Instagram might add voice and video call features

Instagram may be looking to add voice and video call features in the near future. The hidden icons for “call” and “video call” were observed by TechCrunch in the Android Application Packages. Although Instagram has still not confirmed the news, it has been observed that Android Application Packages usually contain the upcoming features that developers plan to add at the later stage. If this feature is installed in the future, then it may impact Snapchat negatively.

2. Instagram expands Instagram shopping to more countries

Last year Instagram launched shoppable organic posts for businesses only in U.S. wherein people can add e-commerce link with their Instagram organic posts. Now, in this month, it has expanded its reach to 8 more countries, which include: the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Spain.

Now, businesses from these countries can tag a product in the app in the same way as they tag a person in a photo to make their organic posts shoppable.

3. Instagram has rolled out new hashtags and profile links to user’s accounts

This allows people to promote their other accounts, pledge allegiance to their favourite creator, shout out their significant other and brag about their personality. Users can add the hashtags and links to their profile bio through “Edit profile section” of their account settings. So, if you are running a business and have opened an account of your business on Instagram, you can let people know about it by adding the hashtag and profile link in your bio

YouTube
YouTube adds new live streaming options and tools: YouTube is taking live streaming to the next level. It has announced few updates for their live-stream offerings:

a) It is adding the scope of watching not only live replays but also live chats accompanying them.

b) YouTube is now bringing English automatic captions to live stream to make it available for more people.

c) Creators can now add a location tag to their mobile live streams and video uploads and share their favourite hot spots with viewers.

Take a moment to process all the information and be careful about what you store digitally 😉 — Someone definitely has a copy of your most personal information!

And that’s a wrap!