Author: tom

TikTok has driven the headlines this week – you’ll likely have heard that it could be banned in the US. I’ve taken a quick look at this, as well as Meta’s bid to increase verified subscription sign-ups and how you can use AI to improve your day-to-day workflow.

TikTok facing prospect of ban in US

The big news this week has been the bill mentioned in last week’s newsletter meaning that ByteDance may have to sell off TikTok in the US, or face a ban. 

Now, there is much debate about whether or not this will happen, however the reality is that it would be enormously complex to implement any such ban. Given those complexities plus the enormous potential of the US as a revenue driver for TikTok, I wouldn’t be surprised if some form of agreement is reached.

Nevertheless, there’s a few takeaways for any digital marketer from this. Firstly, don’t put all of your focus into one platform – you cannot legislate for legislators interfering and potentially banning platforms or forcing huge changes (GDPR and iOS14 among others have meant huge pivots in paid social strategies, for example). 

Secondly, and this is more for the global brands out there, but while for years the emphasis was on centralising social media accounts, it could be worth considering splitting out geographies – if only to ensure you don’t get caught out by market bans. This would be a drastic step out of nowhere, but on TikTok is surely a must-do now.

Meta looking at ways to increase verified subscription sign ups

There’s been a steady increase in conversation around social platforms and premium or verified subscriptions over the past couple of years, with X Premium a huge driver of that towards the end of 2023.

Now it looks like Meta is testing the waters on this, sending out a survey to verified users to see what they would be willing to pay for. It already has a service, but word is that it isn’t exactly flourishing. 

There’s a few interesting potential features here though – faster ad reviews and better access to customer support are certainly things I’ve wished for previously, and wouldn’t be at all surprised to see brands paying for.

On a slightly related note, and more in relation to consumer use; LinkedIn has seen a positive trajectory by most measures over the last 4-5 years, and it looks like Premium Subscribers are no exception – it recorded a 25% YoY increase in 2023.

How can I use AI to improve my website content?

Search Engine Journal posted a nice piece this week on how, despite Google deprioritising AI content, you can still use it to improve your overall rankings. 

Spoiler alert: you don’t just get the AI to do everything, but you do get it to do plenty of the heavy lifting. There’s probably not a lot here for people who are now regularly using Generative AI tools in their day-to-day workflow, but possibly some interesting thought starters for those who aren’t.

Further Reading

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet – particularly if it has anything to do with Twitter/X, which this week has been shown to be releasing misleading data relating to growth while third-parties report otherwise.

An interesting one in terms of Gen AI and search – Google has restricted Gemini from being able to answer questions relating to upcoming in-market elections. Likely more a preventative measure than an instructive one, but interesting nonetheless.

Microsoft is expanding access to its Copilot tool, which allows easier advertising solutions via AI content and asset generation. Still early days and only available to a few, but one to watch.

And that’s it for another week – if you found this interesting then I would really appreciate if you shared this with your friends and peers. 

If you’re feeling particularly generous, then I won’t stop you from  buying me a coffee. Have a great weekend and see you next week!

It’s been a rollercoaster week for digital marketers. Outages for Meta channels, LinkedIn and YouTube have no doubt made for many stressful email chains and calls to support reps – everyone involved has definitely earned a restful weekend.

Meanwhile, we did see an announcement from Google which released a new core search update designed to reduce low-quality, “spammy” content. 

Elsewhere I found an interesting take on how Generative AI-powered search is likely to lead to a drop in organic traffic for SMBs, as well as a report which might help you win the argument that vanity social media metrics do not equate high levels of website engagement.

Google releases new core search update

Google announced this week that its making updates to its core search algorithm, with a view to “tackling spammy, low-quality content in search”.

The aim is to achieve this by refining ranking systems to identify unhelpful or badly created pages, particularly those created at scale using AI, or those generated to match specific long-tail search queries.

The goal is to reduce low-quality content in search results by 40%, and essentially is a sign of Google doubling down on generic, mass-produced and unhelpful content. 

Regular readers will know this is not a new thing; the main takeaway for marketing managers is that properly thought though and well-written content should trump generic, lazily produced pages. But you already knew that, right?

AI & the decline of Organic search

I came across an interesting piece in Moz this week about the effect of AI on organic search traffic and wider marketing strategies. The hypothesis, backed up by (admittedly not exactly statistically significant) research by Gartner, is that small businesses might notice a drop in organic search traffic of as much as 50%.

As such, it’s important to consider your wider marketing strategy, and ensure that you aren’t overly reliant on organic search as a traffic channel – while in the end it might not be as much as 50%, it does feel likely that Gen AI-powered search will favour the very top-ranking organic sites, leaving those outside the top couple of positions in a very vulnerable state.

No correlation between social engagement and readership

A report was released this week by Memo which demonstrated there was no correlation between social media engagement and article readership – if anything, negatively received articles drove greater engagement than positive ones.

I would suspect that if you’re reading this, you aren’t surprised by this – indeed, it’s been widely noted that we’re moving towards a world of sharing articles in closed messaging groups, rather than with hundreds of contacts. In any case, it’s useful to be able to cite reports such as these to internal stakeholders who need persuading.

Further Reading

Social Insider have pulled together this list of ideas for LinkedIn content planning. None of it is revolutionary, but its always useful to have lists such as these to-hand for those days where you’re suffering a mental block.

Speaking of content inspiration – TikTok is launching a monthly trends digest that might offer some useful tips and ideas for your upcoming content planning. Also, US lawmakers are moving closer to forcing ByteDance to divest TikTok or risk a ban.

Meta reportedly lost $3 billion in earnings following outages that lasted the best part of a day earlier this week. Remarkably, both LinkedIn and YouTube also suffered outages this week.

That’s it! If you enjoyed this article, then please feel free to tell your friends, say hello or if you’re feeling particularly generous, to buy me a coffee.

Happy Leap Year!

After a busy 5-6 weeks in the world of digital marketing, it felt like there was a slight slow-down this week in terms of platform announcements and shenanigans. Nevertheless, there’s still plenty going on – this week I’ve taken a look at the introduction of new automated email rules from Google and Yahoo, and what this means for marketers. Otherwise, there’s more from LinkedIn on its algorithm, a year-on-year increase in both ad spend and CPC, and plenty of juicy stuff in the further reading section.

Google’s new email rulesGoogle and Yahoo have introduced new rules to try and limit the number of automated emails users receive. If your inbox is anything like mine, or 87% of people (according to Gong), then you receive dozens or possibly hundreds of irrelevant automated emails each and every day.Google and Yahoo are putting in place measures to curb this. Yahoo’s rules differ slightly, but Google’s new rules are:

Email authentication is now required using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (fine, your provider should have these as an option)Single-click unsubscribe is required so that all users can unsubscribe with one click (trickier, but still not difficult)Spam complaint rate limit must stay under 0.3%, or emails risk being sent to spam (this is tricky)

Essentially, if 0.3% of users deem your email to be unworthy of their inbox and worth grumbling about, then you’re likely to fall foul of these issues. Now, if your user-base doesn’t use Gmail or Yahoo, then you’ll probably think you’re in the clear – but frankly, you should be aiming to ensure that 100% of your users find your email to be useful, clear and relevant to their experience.You should ask yourself “do I really need to send this email to this whole list?” and “what value is this email adding to my user?.” We’re going back to the basics of user-centric marketing here – obviously your own business and marketing goals are important, but without thinking about what your user or customer needs, you’re likely to fall short of those.

LinkedIn trying to focus on quality over quantity

There is no shortage of posts on LinkedIn at the moment from people trying to sell themselves, products, or a 4.30am wake–up, celery-based morning routine. The platform is aware of this and I suspect that has received no shortage of feedback stating that much of the content on there is, frankly, nonsense.As such, this year the platform is looking to introduce algorithm changes that mean the best and most-engaged with posts are shared months after the original publication (I suspect with the flywheel of engagement demonstrating whether or not it’s still relevant). My fear here is that most of the nonsense posts will double down on saying anything and adding “what do you think?”, but the intention is right and I’m curious to see how it plays out.It should go without saying but if you continue to create content designed to add value to your user (hey, there’s a theme here), you’ll be fine.

Ad Spend, and CPC, Increased in 2023

One that I missed a few weeks back, but wanted to share – there was an interesting (but at 561 pages, not concise) report this week from a coalition of partners (DataReportal, We Are Social, Meltwater, Semrush and Similarweb among others) filled to the brim with great internet stats and knowledge. I encourage you peruse the report at your leisure, but for me the interesting thing was seeing hard data to back up trends I’ve noticed across a few clients – namely that ad spend is going up, but also that CPC is increasing. Logically this makes sense – more demand, more costly supply – but is nevertheless interesting to see.Away from this, the conclusions were that SEO remains key to ensure your customers can easily find you (something I don’t think any of us were doubting), and that as Search Engines continue to incorporate more social posts, that organic social marketing continues to grow in importance. As I say – we aren’t reinventing the wheel here, but there are some useful facts and stats that might help you back up anecdotal arguments.

Further Reading

News that there remains no news from the Universal/TikTok dispute that felt all-encompassing about three weeks ago.SubStack is getting more social, with the introduction of DMs meaning you’ll be able to engage with your favourite (or, ahem, otherwise) creators – and gives you an alternative to emailing me! At least there’s a logic here, unlike Strava’s bizarre introduction of instant messaging a few months back…Quite interesting to see that Adobe are making serious plays around Gen AI and creativity, this time in the audio space with Project Music which can generate audio using text prompts.Finally, something a bit juicer – a court filing alleges that The NY Times paid someone to hack OpenAI to plant evidence to enable it to bring its own lawsuit. Potentially messy and one to watch.

That’s it! If you enjoyed this article, then please feel free to tell your friends, say hello or if you’re feeling particularly generous, to buy me a coffee.