Pinterest has *finally* rolled out it’s advertising platform to all U.S. based business accounts according to an announcement made last Tuesday. Businesses will be able to manage two types of campaigns:
- Pin Engagement (Boosting Pins). Evidently, this offering is similar to the post boosting you can manage on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which isn’t surprising because content engagement is a key metric social media marketers analyze within campaigns.
- Website Clicks (Traffic Generation). With a focus on helping brands monetize traffic from Pinterest, this type of campaign mirrors the website click/conversion based campaigns you can manage on Facebook and Twitter.
What does this mean for Pinterest users? (more…)
As an avid user of Twitter, I often find myself conflicted with regards to the current state of the popular social media platform. While it has entrenched itself in modern society as a vital source of groundbreaking news, discussions, and Kanye West rants, it has also dominated the headlines recently with analysts and users alike claiming that Twitter is dying. Unfortunately, fun as Twitter can be for users such as myself, there are a number of unappealing factors that turn people off (including brands):
- The plague of automation and bots. The most annoying aspect of trying to build an audience on Twitter is the heavy amount of automation you’ll encounter when you start to become more active. Some examples include the random retweets your top content will receive from fake profiles, the annoying “customized” DMs you get for following people back, the “thanks for following” shout-outs that are automated, and more. Additionally, Twitter is full of bot accounts that add no value whatsoever to the social media environment.
- Too much noise. Depending on how many accounts you are actively following, your Twitter timeline can either be full of interesting content or littered with nonsense. For the average user, it’s most likely the latter if you have ever dedicated time to building up your follower counts by following other users within your niche. The beauty of Twitter is being able to see a steady stream of content in real-time, but unfortunately, that aspect can also become its own worst enemy when users abuse the platform. Publishing tons of updates just for the sake of gaining followers is a misguided strategy. If you want to gain traction on Twitter, automating hundreds of tweets each hours isn’t the way to go because you will just start annoying legitimate users that will mute you in the end (the bots will love you, though).
- Current advertising costs scare brands. The average CPM and cost-per-engagement rates tend to be higher than that of Facebook when it comes to promoting content, pushing traffic to a website, or generating leads. For a social media company that is looking to boost its revenues and prove to investors that it can stay relevant long-term, it’s confusing as to why the pricing is still a little expensive on Twitter. Now, this wouldn’t be such an issue if the audience brands targeted was full of active, legitimate people. However, as mentioned before, the platform is full of bots. As a result, you end up paying a lot more to generate impressions in front of an audience that can consist of anywhere from 20-50% of illegitimate users – essentially accounts used to automate content distribution, annoy you, and more.
A lot has happened over the past seven days. For the sake of brevity, we’ve compiled a breakdown below.
Google Removes Right Hand Side Ads In Search Results
For the longest time, advertisers bidding on keywords via Google’s AdWords platform competed to have their ads show on top of organic results or to the right of them. However, it seems like Google’s latest update is causing a seismic shift with regards to search engine marketing strategies as they are no longer displaying ads to the right of search results. Instead, Google has now increased the amount of ads that show above organic results from three to four, with the remaining spots for ads shown below the top 10 listings. See the example of the new layout below:
Social media enthusiasts and whiskey connoisseurs in particular will enjoy the infographic embedded within this post below. While the social media landscape hasn’t evolved much since the last time I mixed alcohol and marketing together, new players such as Snapchat have emerged, whereas sites such as Google+ are clinging on to relevance. Sorry Google…you just make it so easy to mock your social networking experiment when you continue to disassociate it from your own services.
Note that only a subset of social media sites have been included below. Of course, emerging live streaming applications such as Meerkat and Periscope are conspicuously missing, but that’s because live streaming on mobile devices is still relatively new. Additionally, Facebook is slowing rolling out live streaming capabilities to a limited amount of iOS users and it may only be a matter of time before those features are extended to all iOS and Android. However, it seems like Facebook is employing a cautious approach to making this a standard feature, which may prompt regular social media enthusiasts to utilize other applications. Once Facebook makes the live streaming global, it will most likely claw away at the competition and steal users due to the simplicity of not having to download another application to live stream content, which would be yet another thorn in Twitter’s side (for those of you that do not know, Periscope was acquired by Twitter before it was launched to the public).
When it comes to social media marketing, the first platform that springs to mind is Facebook. With over 1 Billion daily active users, it has risen among the ranks in the digital sector to become the king of social media platforms. As a result, Facebook advertising has exploded over the past couple of years. Think about it: on a daily basis, how often do you open your Facebook app on your smartphone or tablet to read the latest news, post memes, or watch mouth-watering video’s from Buzzfeed’s Tasty account?
Logging into Facebook has become so ingrained in our lives that it has become a daily task to chat with friends, post content, or update user information. Several years ago, many thought Facebook would fall by the wayside just like MySpace; however, not only has Facebook continued to surge among all age groups, it has also developed successful streams of revenue that has it challenging Google as the leader in mobile display advertising. Below is just a sample of impressive statistics that exhibit Facebook’s dominance as a social media platform:
- Over 1 Billion daily active users, of which 894 are from mobile devices.
- Over 1.55 Billion monthly active users, of which 1.39 Billion access Facebook from mobile devices.
- Facebook generated $4.3 Billion in advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2015, representing an increase of $1.34 Billion compared to the previous year.
- Facebook’s desktop and mobile ads generate significantly higher click-through rates compared to traditional banner ads on the web.
- Facebook accounts for 50% of all social referrals and 64% of all revenue generated via social media sites.
“I love social media because it sells s***”
~ Gary Vaynerchuk
While that quote may be quite raw, it accurately sums up my feelings on the power of social media marketing. Ever since I was introduced to the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn years ago, I had the strong belief that social media would emerge as a powerful channel for customer acquisition in the current digital era. As for which channels I thought would dominate the scene by now….let’s just say I was bang on with Pinterest, but missed the mark with Google+ (hey, we all make mistakes – even Google). Now that another year has ended and 2016 has begun, it has become quite evident that the aforementioned platforms, and new ones that have emerged (such as Pinterest and Instagram), have become crucial to web marketing strategies for certain businesses. Is a portion of your marketing budget for 2016 dedicated to paid advertising campaigns on social media platforms? Is tweeting and community management even a part of your digital marketing mix in the new year? If the answer to either question is no, don’t fear – there is still time to adjust your strategy and utilize social media marketing to make an impact in the coming months. (more…)
It may be getting colder outside, but the season is ripe for social media marketers as consumers around the world are spending heavily online and inside retail stores. With the holidays quickly approaching, it’s time to make sure you have an effective strategy in place to advertise on the most popular social media platforms. Not sure where to start or feel overwhelmed by the amount of options out there? Don’t fret – we’ve prepared a handy guide for businesses to understand which social media platforms you should integrate within your digital strategy. Depending on your target audience, some of these may not be applicable. For example, if you’re managing an online store and want to push a heavy amount of sales before 2016 begins, then you should invest your resources into Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. However, if you’re in the business-to-business spectrum, you may find that LinkedIn lead generation campaigns can prove to be quite effective because companies are finalizing their budgets for next year. Conversely, if you’re selling products online, reaching out to people on LinkedIn will prove to be futile and won’t help your bottom line (you may also find your InMails marked as spam, which is never a good thing!).
Panda. Penguin. Hummingbird. Pigeon. What do these names of animals have to do with search engine optimization?
To the inexperienced marketing professional, it may sometimes sound like Google runs a zoo. However, these names refer to algorithm updates the search engine giant has rolled out over the past five years. These updates are developed in a constant effort to increase the relevancy of search queries you make to the results they list in SERPs (also known as “Search Engine Results Pages”). These changes to Google’s ranking algorithm and core engine also came about as a way to penalize what we in the industry call “black-hat” techniques. Back in the day, it was easy for webmasters and marketing gurus to circumvent Google’s guidelines, cheat the system, and achieve rankings quickly. However, search engine optimization has evolved quite a bit since then, with Google penalizing questionable tactics and relying more on relevancy, content, and trust factors to rank websites accordingly.
While Google regularly releases updates to its algorithm, there have been a few significant changes that all digital marketing professionals should fully comprehend before embarking on organic search and content marketing campaigns.
*Note: this post was updated January 5th, 2018 to reflect new algorithm updates:
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“Buy on Google” Messaging Coming to Mobile Product Listing Ads
Earlier this year, it was rumored that Google was working alongside major retailers on adding a “Buy on Google” button to product listing ads. However, it seems as if the new feature, which is called “Purchases On Google”, isn’t an actual button but rather an enhancement. Added to existing ad formats, it will make it easier for end users to transact via mobile devices. Ostensibly, this is an effort on Google’s part to compete with digital marketplace leaders such as Amazon, where mobile users can already complete purchases seamlessly.
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