Taking The Pulse – EPISODE 2 – Our summary of the latest news on key digital marketing platforms, keeping you updated on the stuff that matters to your business #facebook #twitter #google #linkedin #socialmedia
Posted by The Digiterati on Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Facebook: steady metabolism
- New Branded Content policy on Facebook and what it REALLY means
Facebook Page admins around the globe were doing their nuts over the weekend when an ill-informed blog post on Facebook’s Branded Content policy went viral in virtually every Facebook marketing group. Marie has the scoop on what this really means over on our blog. TL;DR if you’re not a blue tick verified Page, here’s what to do:
- Facebook numbers update
Facebook announced first quarter results last week which, as usual, showed they’re growing like crazy. Here are the key numbers if you need any further convincing of the dominance of Facebook:- 1.65 billion active users on Facebook each month, up from 1.59 billion last quarter. Facebook continues to grow whilst other platforms really struggle. Read on for more about this.
- 900 million on Messenger, 400 million in Instagram.
- People on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram worldwide spend on average more than 50 minutes per day using them.
- Survey finds most SMB advertisers on Facebook spend less than $50 per month
This US survey of B2B and B2C marketers across multiple verticals demonstrates what we here at The Digiterati guessed already. Half of all SMBs don’t advertise on Facebook at all, and of those that do 61% spend less than $50 per month. It makes us question what these small businesses think they’re getting in return for all that effort they’re putting into organic posts on Facebook! Surely you know next to no-one sees organic posts and you need to use ads, right? - Study on ad creative busts the myths on image choice, sort of…
Over on our Facebook Page Carlton shared some views on this piece of research into ad image choice:
YouTube: skip a heart beat, but not our ads
- YouTube 6-second ‘bumper’ ads that you can’t skip
A new ad unit was unveiled by YouTube this week – the non-skippable 6 second bumper ad. These ads play before the main video content and are optimised for mobile devices in particular. We think these ads represent a great opportunity for brands who may have already created longer ads or plain-old video content which, with some very clever editing, could be whittled down to a bite-sized 6 second format. If you can shoe-horn your key message into 6 seconds it looks like a winning formula. More about this here.
Twitter: very. weak. pulse.
- Twitter’s Q1 results fail to impress
Poor Twitter isn’t doing so well of late. User growth is slowing to a crawl. Ad revenues are down significantly. And Twitter-owned Periscope’s early mover advantage in live-streaming video is being annihilated by Facebook Live. Heck, Facebook’s even trying to steal Twitter’s customer service crown with Messenger. Why does any of this matter to us marketers? Well if you want to be where the people’s attention is, it’s looking increasingly likely it won’t be Twitter. This is, of course, a generalisation and in certain markets and verticals – tech, media and sports spring to mind – it still has the full attention of plenty of hard-core users.
Periscope: they could probably use an endoscope
- Big update for iOS ‘scopers, but is it too little, too late?
Periscope failed to impress with their new release for iOS last week, launching the “Sketch” feature. This feature allows ‘scopers to draw on your screen while broadcasting a la Snapchat, and is a feature Facebook announced is coming to Facebook Live back in early April. But that’s not all – Periscope now also provide better analytics for broadcasters including finding the part of your broadcast with the greatest reach. We were early fans of Periscope and whilst the engagement is way better than FB Live (oh, but unfortunately also the sex bots) we think Periscope is now somewhat doomed. I mean, 1.65 billion users on Facebook – come on! But we’re not totally writing-off Periscope. Yet.
Google:
- Google Analytics goes secure
If you’re a GA user you probably received an email from Google last week advising you GA is now secure. Thoughts such as “Heck! Wasn’t it very secure before?” and “Did I get hacked?” may have run through your mind! No need for concern, it’s just their way of saying they now force all communication between your website and the GA platform via a secure (HTTPS) connection. Previously they didn’t. Carry on as normal, nothing to worry about, but if you really must here’s the info.
LinkedIn:
- Is LinkedIn the new Fivrr?
LinkedIn quietly launched a new service to rival sites like Fivrr and PeoplePerHour last week. Well, maybe not quite rival them but certainly heavily influenced by their business model. The service – called ProFinder – allows people to sell their services within LinkedIn on an hourly basis. Pretty obvious move really. More here.
Pinterest:
- Collections and international expansion
Steady-as-she-goes Pinterest announced the expansion of curated Collections from just USA to now include UK, France, Germany, Brazil and Japan. Apparently there are now more users outside the US than within the US. Total users stand at more than 100 million, a figure which was released in the Autumn.
Missed the previous Taking the Pulse?
Where the heck were you?! Don’t worry – go check out our last show here. And don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications of all new episodes in case you can’t catch it live on Facebook.