SOCIAL MEDIA
Video is huge on Facebook. Short-form video is getting huge on Instagram and YouTube
Yesterday, all of the major social media companies released their quarterly earnings. If these reports have taught us anything, it’s that video is huge and only getting bigger:
- Mark Zuckerberg said that video accounts for nearly half the time spent on Facebook.
- Reels is Instagram’s “largest contributor to engagement growth,” according to Zuckerberg.
- YouTube Shorts now has 15 billion daily views, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google really cares about this since TikTok has gradually surpassed YouTube in terms of watch time.
Why we care: We already know that video is huge. But when we think of short-form video, we mostly think of TikTok. With big platforms reporting significant traction for TikTok-lookalikes, it seems that short-form video is slowly becoming a major content format.
Maybe it’s time to start a short-form video platform… We could call it “Quibi”. Good idea?
We have 3 interesting Google Ads updates
Two are positive, and one is, shall we say, “neutral”.
- Google has released a programmatic tool that will allow you to see how much more reach you will get if you limit the number of times people can see your ads.
- Google Ads Scripts has just received a “new script experience.”
- As part of a phased rollout, Google will begin asking advertisers from the British Virgin Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Puerto Rico, Qatar, and Singapore to verify their identity.
Our favorite update: The second one. If you’ve been doing Google Ads and are tired of doing the same thing over and over, Ads Scripts are your kool aid.
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SEO
An underutilized strategy to gain backlinks
Guestographics.
According to Nadya Khoja, Venngage has used this strategy for years to gain backlinks and improve their SERP.
And she explains what they are and how to make them in this post.
Guestographics are simply guest infographics. They are the result of a collaboration with another brand. Their content will be enhanced by your infographic design.
Why should you create a guestographic?
You can easily build backlinks for certain types of pages, such as surveys, blog posts, or interviews.
But what about pages that require unique or specialized anchor text? Like a landing page?
It gets difficult. Even in this case, offering to design a guestographic can help you get more positive responses.
Why? Everyone loves visuals. They’re easy to skim. In the content-rich online space, visuals are more effective at engaging users.
According to these link-building statistics, original research and visuals are a killer combo in marketing.
6 steps to improve SEO with guestographics
1) Find the right content: A huge post with multiple subheaders is hard to condense in an infographic. Simple list articles tend to do better.
Head over to your favorite SEO tool and look for posts like “10 tips for”. Or be more specific: “10 tips for content marketing”.
2) Pick websites based on your personas: You must create guestographics starting from content that is relevant to your audience.
3) Make sure the content has relevant keywords to your website: To signal authority to Google, you should acquire backlinks from pages that contain keywords related to your brand.
4) Creating the guestographic pitch: Once you have a list of content pieces that would benefit from a guestographic, it’s time to reach out to content editors.
Here’s an example of a message you can send.
5) Design a memorable infographic: To make your job easier, get an outline of the content you’re going to link to. Try to get the following from the content editor:
- Primary headers
- Bullet points
- Preferred colors
- Brand colors and fonts
- Brand logo
- Call to action
6) Promote the content: The client’s site will promote the guestographic. But you should promote it as well. Share the client’s post on social media and every other platform you can. This is a chance to create another outreach campaign.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SEO: Affiliate marketers, we have some good news for you: Google won’t require you to mark your links with rel=”sponsored”.
E-COMMERCE: If you’ve been wondering how Shopify has been doing, here’s the short answer: Pretty darn good.
GOOGLE: Here’s how Google decides whether to show image, web, or video results to searchers.
ADVERTISING: The IAB appears to be fed up with Google, Nielsen, IBM, and other companies trying to replace cookies. The organization has launched an initiative to promote open standards and collaboration. Let’s see how collaborative big tech feels.
E-COMMERCE: Walmart wants to integrate its e-commerce technology with platforms such as Magento. They also want to make it easier for others to sell on Walmart, something we definitely don’t mind.
SEO: If you want to start a localized version of your English website, you’re (kinda) starting from scratch, according to Google.
TIKTOK: The company wants to turn famous commercials into TikToks. We don’t know if it will work, but we’re sure it will produce some cool results.
BRAIN TEASER
Which type of cheese is made backwards?
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.
The company that used to be Clubhouse
Before Clubhouse (the audio-first social network), there was Clubhouse (the project management app). Apparently, the project management app Clubhouse became so fed up with people mistaking them for the other Clubhouse that they decided to change their name.
The new name? Clue. So now you have a clear clue that they’re a different company.
The Twitter replies were hilarious. Someone suggested they change their name to “The OG (Clubhouse)”. Someone else thought the name “Different Clubhouse” would be a good option. Another person suggested that “Fleets” may be available.
We’re just curious as to why Clubhouse, er, Clue, waited so long to change their name.
One person said Clue had an advantage when there was no Clubhouse app for Android users. But were those the type of users Clue (ex-Clubhouse) even wanted?