#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

In 16 mins, get up to speed on the must know Digital Marketing Updates from the week of July 18-22, 2022.

Show Notes

1. LinkedIn Business Manager is Now In Public Beta - The LinkedIn Business Manager was announced in June and finally the public beta was announced this week. Unlike invite-only betas, our public beta is open to all marketers who want to use Business Manager.

The new business manager dashboard allows advertisers who manage multiple ad accounts to grant access to ad accounts and pages, create and edit campaigns, manage pages, and create reports.

Matched audiences allow you to retarget your website visitors, and upload lists of accounts or emails to target within LinkedIn. Through the new Business Manager, you can share those matched audiences across all accounts.

You can create a Business Manager account here. When you move your current ad accounts under the Business Manager umbrella, all settings including current campaigns and billing remain the same.


2. Twitter Posts Lower Revenue Despite Adding 9 Mil Users - Twitter added 9 million new daily active users in Q2’2022, taking it to 238 million total mDAU. Most of the new growth has come from international markets, with Twitter only adding 2 million new users in the US. In terms of its ‘rest of the World’ stats, Twitter hasn’t provided a breakdown of where its newest 7 million users have come from, but Japan and India remain its second and third largest user bases, after the US.

In terms of revenue, Twitter brought in $1.18 billion in Q2, a decrease of 1% year-over-year.


3. Snapchat Added 15 Million New Users - Snap Inc. has posted its Q2 2022 numbers, which show a steady increase in usage, but slower growth on the revenue side. First off, on users – Snapchat added 15 million more users in Q2, taking it up to 347 million daily actives. Though Snapchat has seen significant growth in India, there was virtually no growth in the North American market.

Average revenue per user remains relatively low in other markets, especially in the ‘Rest of the World’ category, where Snap added the majority of its new users.


4. Meta Launches Small Business Studios Project - Meta has launched a new Small Business Studios project, which will provide both online and in-person training elements to help small businesses make the most of their marketing efforts across both Facebook and Instagram.
  • Build Your Brand workshop: An online workshop providing creative inspiration and branding guidance to small businesses using Facebook and Instagram. This workshop champions a customer mindset and dives in on business branding, how to build copy and creative when creating a post and then deciding what to post.
  • Reels School: A course designed for small businesses to simplify Reels creation while expanding their audience reach and helping achieve business goals.
  • Photography virtual workshop: Since building great creative can feel daunting, this training pairs small businesses with an expert to teach owners how to make great, low-cost and low-lift images that are made for mobile.

In addition to this, you can also sign-up to get a one-on-one business support session with someone from Meta’s Small Business Team, which could provide some valuable insight into how to maximize your Facebook and Instagram presences.

It’s also one of the only ways that you might be able to speak to a real person within Meta, which could see it flooded with non-brand-building queries. Either way, you can register for the initiative here.

You can learn more about Meta’s Small Business Studio programs and content here.


5. Facebook Changing The News Feed - One of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people don’t miss friends’ posts. So today we’re launching a Feeds tab where you can see posts from your friends, groups, Pages and more separately in chronological order. The app will still open to a personalized feed on the Home tab, where our discovery engine will recommend the content we think you’ll care most about. But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience further.

Facebook’s main UI will now be split into a ‘Home’ feed, which will primarily focus on recommended content to keep you entertained, while you’ll also have a new ‘Feeds’ tab, where you’ll be able to view the latest posts in different categories, including ‘Favorites’, ‘Friends’, ‘Groups’, etc.

The move shifts the Facebook experience more into line with TikTok, which calls itself an ‘entertainment app’, not a social network.


6. Instagram Adds In-Chat Payment Feature - Now you can make purchases and track orders directly in chats with small businesses on Instagram in the US. The new process will enable businesses to request payment within a message thread, with users then able to transfer funds, right then and there, streamlining purchase. 

Users will be able to use Meta Pay (the payment system formerly known as ‘Facebook Pay’) to complete their purchase, with businesses then able to maintain connection on updates and details as the order is processed. It’s essentially the same as payment transfers between friends, which have been available in Messenger since 2017. Now, businesses will also be able to tap into that same capacity.


7. Discovering Local Business On Instagram - Instagram’s location maps are now searchable, making it easier to discover places and businesses in your geographic area. Previously, the map experience on Instagram was limited to discovering posts tagged with nearby locations.

This update to Instagram maps makes it possible to find popular establishments near you and filter businesses by categories.

Finding businesses on the Instagram map is as simple as searching for the name of a city and dragging the map around. When you find a location you’re interested in, you can save it for future reference or follow the Instagram account to keep it top of mind.

Locations are not pre-populated or user-submitted, like on Google Maps. As a business, the only way to get found on the Instagram map is to have a professional account filled in with your contact information.

In practice, the new Instagram Maps experience is similar to discovering Google Business Profiles on Google Maps. The Instagram experience is more engaging in some ways, as you can see all kinds of visual content published by the business and interact with them directly. You can even see content shared by other customers, provided they add the appropriate location tag. The only thing lacking from the experience is customer reviews.


8. Instagram Converting All Videos Under 15 Mins To Reels - Instagram will automatically convert all video posts shorter than 15 minutes into Reels. This change applies to new videos only. Existing videos shorter than 15 minutes will remain as video posts. The Video and Reels tabs on your Instagram profile will join as one when this change rolls out in the coming weeks.


9. Latest IG Features: Templates, Boosts & More - New features for Reels include:
  • Enhanced remixes - Instagram is enhancing the remix feature for Reels, which allows you to react to videos from other users. Now, you’ll be able to remix public photos and record your reaction to them as a Reel. For the first time, you’ll be able to add your recording after the original clip instead of having both pieces of content appear simultaneously.
  • New templates - You can now create Reels using templates, which preload audio and clip placeholders so you can add your photos or video clips. A new Dual template lets you record video with your phone’s front and back camera at the same time.
  • The ability to boost Reels as ads - Businesses can now boost Reels within the Instagram app by turning them into ads. To boost a Reel, it must be 100% original content, less than 60 seconds long, and recorded in the 9:16 (vertical) aspect ratio. After publishing it, you can boost a Reel by viewing your content and tapping Boost Post. Boosting a Reel gives you access to engagement insights exclusive to advertisements. Boosted Reels appear in the Instagram main feed, Stories, the Reels tab, and the Explore page.

10. TikTok Adds Auto-Caption & Translation - TikTok’s auto captions will appear at the lower left hand side of the screen, adding important context to the viewing experience, especially in sound off environments.

TikTok’s also added new translations for captions and descriptions, which could help users around the world engage with more clips.

Finally, TikTok’s also adding translations for text-based stickers and overlays to provide even more context for non-native speakers.

Both of TikTok’s new translation tools will initially support English, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and Turkish, so there’s a range of translation options to consider, which could spark entirely new, global trends.

P.S: TikTok says that it’s in the early stages of rolling out these new tools, which are available on select videos at present.


11. Google Auto-Upgrading Smart Shopping Campaigns To Performance Max - Google has begun to roll out automatic updates converting Smart Shopping campaigns into Performance Max. Google will send a notification about 2-3 weeks before the updates take effect and provide a specific date when your campaigns will be converted. 

Google says when your campaigns are self-upgraded using the tool or automatically upgraded, learnings from your previous Smart Shopping campaigns carry over to your new Performance Max campaigns to maintain consistent performance. Your campaign settings will also automatically transfer.

If you don’t want to wait for Google and prefer to update your campaigns on your own, you can use the “one-click” upgrade tool.


12. Now You Can Add FAQ’s To Your Google Business Profile - Google has added a new feature to help businesses automated some of the responses to questions submitted through their Google Maps and Google Search business listings. This new feature is part of your Google Business Profile and can be managed under the FAQs section of the messaging section.


13. Hey Google!, Will I Rank Lower If I Am On A Shared Web-Hosting? - Google's John Mueller again said on Twitter "using a shared IP address is fine" for SEO and Google Search ranking purposes. "There is no SEO advantage to using a unique IP address," he added.


14. YouTube Partners With Shopify & Expands In-Stream Commerce Tools - YouTube has announced a partnership with Shopify which enables Shopify merchants to feature their products across their YouTube channels and content. Using the Google Channel app within your Shopify add-on tools, you’ll now be able to activate YouTube Shopping, and connect your YouTube account to easily display products from your Shopify inventory. Shopify merchants will be able to display their products on YouTube in three ways:
  • Live streams - Merchants can tag and pin products at key points during a livestream, and picture-in-picture playback means consumers can watch while they check out
  • Videos - Merchants can show a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand videos
  • Store tab - A new tab will be added to a merchant’s YouTube channel, featuring their entire selection of products
Merchants will need at least 1,000 subscribers to qualify for these options, while there are also requirements around appropriate content and channel strikes.

In addition to this, YouTube’s also added new tools within the ‘Shopping’ tab in YouTube Studio, in order to help creators manage how their products are tagged and appear across their channel. 

What is #TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing?

This Week in Marketing is a weekly roundup of all the notable latest developments that you need to know to stay on top of your Digital Marketing game.