Missed the important digital marketing news and updates from last week? We’ve got you covered with the WDA Digital Marketing Round-Up.
Google Tests Multiple Contextual Links in Featured Snippets: According to reports, it’s a small experiment they’re working on and they’re refining it right now. It works by not just including the link to the content publisher but also includes links from phrases that Google determines aren’t clear and need more explanation for the searcher.
New Crawl Stats Report Available in Search Console: The revamped crawl stats report provides webmasters with actionable data for crawling issues. Updates in the new report include the total number of requests, host status information, URL examples and a thorough summary for search properties with multiple hosts.
Instagram Improves Branded Content Ads: Instagram has made some changes to its branded content ads that were first introduced last year. With the change, advertisers now have the capability of creating posts on a user’s behalf. The ads are designed to look exactly like standard organic posts on the platform but have the addition of a tag that states it’s part of a paid partnership with the brand.
The updates streamline the branded content ad creation process for both advertisers and influencers. The other less notable updates include the ad format rolling out to Reels, testing in Live, story formats of the ads can now include @mentions, locations and hashtags, age restrictions, and the option for brands to promote branded posts by using product tags.
Instagram FAQ’s On Their Way: Instagram has recently been testing a new FAQ feature for business accounts. Similarly to Messenger, the new feature would enable businesses to offer quick, clickable question and answer options in their message window – allowing users to get answers to some of the most common questions, instantly.
Facebook Partners With Better Business Bureau (BBB): The partnership comes off the back of Facebook’s eCommerce functionality growing as well as issues relating to misleading ads, payment disputes and scams increasing. Here’s what Facebook had to say…
“We’ve partnered with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) on the “Shop Safe, Shop Smart” campaign. Starting today and throughout December, the “Shop Safe, Shop Smart” campaign from the BBB and Facebook will run ads and organic content on Facebook, Instagram and various social media channels to promote actionable tips on how to spot, avoid and report scams online.”
Twitter Verification Requests Returning: Twitter put the verification process on hold around three years ago but they now look set to bring it back! It should launch in early 2021 and with it, there will be several changes made to the process. Twitter is asking for public help with the first draft of their new policy that has identified the following account types that qualify for verification: Government, Companies, Brands and Non-Profit Organisations, News, Entertainment, Sports, Activists, Organisers and Other Influential individuals. Check out their new policy in detail: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts
YouTube Testing Automated Video Chapters: YouTube video chapters were rolled out earlier this year in May, giving creators the power to define video segments via specific time stamps. YouTube’s latest test sees these chapters inserted automatically with the help of machine learning. Here’s how YouTube explained it…
“We want to make it easier for people to navigate videos with video chapters, so we are experimenting with automatically adding video chapters (so creators don’t have to manually add timestamps). We’ll use machine learning to recognize text in order to auto generate video chapters. We’re testing this out with a small group of videos.”
Snapchat Spotlight Launched: Snapchat has launched a new feature on the app called Spotlight. Spotlight aims to capitalise on the success of TikTok and recreate the in-app experience by providing users with a short video clips feed, displaying clips from public and private accounts. Videos can be submitted to the Spotlight feed for consideration to be listed.
Our highlight for this week is Instagram’s FAQ’s test.
We hope they eventually roll this feature out as it’s similar to the automated FAQ responses available on Facebook Messenger. Having this option on Instagram will make is much easier for your potential customers to get their answers to your most common questions instantly, providing a better and more seamless user experience.
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