IINSTAGRAM
Yes, Instagram Reels still exists
We haven’t talked about Instagram’s TikTok clone, Reels, for a week or two. Is it because we forgot it even existed? Not really – but Instagram is still doing its best to hook users, and the company put together a comprehensive update yesterday that makes the platform a more solid alternative.
Here’s what’s coming to Reels:
- Instagram’s giving you a longer leash. One of the big differences between TikTok and Reels is that while TikTok allows for videos up to one minute long, Reels only allows 15-second videos. That changed yesterday, as Instagram announced that 30-second videos are now allowed on Reels.
- Editing clips just got easier. Instagram is adding options to extend, trim, and delete clips easier than ever before – which should make the process easier from start to finish for creators and marketers.
The Crew’s take: Though Reels videos can now be up to 30 seconds long, Instagram’s not caving in to the full minute length that TikTok allows. This could be in an attempt to stop TikTok videos from simply being reposted on Reels for additional engagement – which, so far, has been a popular tactic.
TIKTOK
TikTok is cracking down on certain types of ads
In an effort to support body positivity, TikTok is beginning to limit some of the types of ads that are available on its platform. Along with the announcement to restrict ads, TikTok also laid out a few key partnerships that they’ve made to support positive body images:
- Ads for weight loss supplements and dieting are no longer allowed. In addition, ads that may promote a negative body image are subject to approval and can be taken down if TikTok deems it necessary.
- If you can, stay away from weight loss and food-related topics. No matter what your product is, ads that promote a negative relationship with food are likely to get inspected and taken down.
- TikTok is partnering with the National Eating Disorder Association. The partnership is part of their overall effort to reduce unhealthy eating habits.
This probably won’t affect many marketers, but non-dieting related ads could still get taken down if TikTok decides that they’re promoting negativity towards food or unhealthy body images. Be careful out there!
SPONSORED BY THE CREW
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If you have a product you want to put in front of 16k marketers, we can help you out.
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You might be interested in some numbers. Did we read your mind?
We’ve put together an updated sponsorship kit that everyone can check out here.
You can learn about our reach, our engagement, see some past examples, a breakdown for the types of marketers who read our newsletter and, of course, the pricing.
Interested? Reply to this email! We’d love to get a conversation started.
SEO
Last-minute optimizations for a strong Black Friday
There are only a few weeks left before Black Friday.
But, there’s still time to maximize your search visibility.
These last-minute strategies shared by George Nguyen on Search Engine Land can help you get as many clicks as possible for the Black Friday.
Let’s go straight into them.
+ Product listing: Both Google and Bing allow you to create free listings on their shopping platforms. That’s a good chance to showcase your products in front of millions of visitors hungry to find a Black Friday deal.
+ Add structured data to signal relevance and inform shoppers:
- Use Product Schema to let Google know that you should rank for phrases like “buy x”.
- Popular Products carousels: These can sometimes showcase for mobile searchers, especially when searching for apparel and fashion products. You can get your products into this carousel by marking them up with Product Schema or submitting a product feed in Google Merchant Center.
+ Refresh and reposition your evergreen content:
- Don’t create campaign pages for the holiday and then retire them right after. Instead, create content that works year-round (like gift guides), and allow this content to gain links and work around the clock year-round.
- Accommodate the holiday consumer: During the holiday, buying decisions are not made by the same people. Let’s look at video games. During the normal year, gamers are usually buying games for themselves – but during holidays, the stats reveal that videogames are a popular gift. Therefore, segment your content and redefine your queries accordingly.
+ Create category and product pages for holiday shoppers: Extending your holiday shopping-focused optimization to product and category pages will increase the chance of being found by shoppers looking for deals.
+ Things that can hurt your visibility: Despite the tasks to be implemented, there are also tasks that you should avoid and routinary checks:
- Postpone site migrations or large projects: Some large projects can come with errors and unexpected events. It’s better to execute on these projects after the holidays.
- Check for errors that might affect conversions: “make sure there aren’t any important pages blocked by robots.txt from being crawled or indexed, broken category or product URLs or slow-loading pages,” says George.
- Analyze the user experience: Make sure that your pages are working well and all the important content is indexed.
These are some interesting points to prepare for the hottest quarter of the year.
And with 2020 being unpredictable as hell, let’s get prepared early.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
TWITTER: Ready to start communicating with audio? It’s being reported that Twitter is testing – and getting ready to launch – voice DMs.
SPOTIFY: If you’ve got a podcast on Spotify, this new update to add interactive polls to your podcast could help boost audience engagement.
PINTEREST: Yesterday the company announced the release of Story Pins.
GOOGLE: Local businesses continue to get more ways to connect with their customers online, as outlined in this recent update from Google.
BRAIN TEASER
Think hard enough, and you’ll get this one: When asked how old she was, Giselli replied, “In two years I will be twice as old as I was five years ago.” How old is she?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
This Twitter account shows off the “best” of LinkedIn content
And by best, we mean the absolute worst, most cringeworthy content to grace LinkedIn (and probably the internet, because we’d confidently estimate that at least half of the internet’s cringeworthy content comes from LinkedIn posts).
If you’re still holding out hope that someday, you’ll come across a post on LinkedIn that’s useful and not ridiculously out-of-touch and self-serving… Well, this Twitter account will squash that hope.
The account describes itself as “highlighting the heroes and influencers brave enough to share their stories in an effort to inspire others.”
Everything from probably-fake stories about kids with way-too-good vocabulary to self-serving success monologues are featured, and we’d be lying if we said we didn’t just spend fifteen minutes scrolling.
On a serious note, there is some great content that’s created on LinkedIn – and some of you reading this are probably responsible for that content.
But, the platform is generally known for its ridiculous content, so why not have a laugh with us?