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.

It felt like January lasted for more than 5 weeks, and yet all of a sudden March is now just around the corner. Meanwhile, the wheels keep turning in the wonderful world of Digital Marketing.

We had an interesting, cautionary tale from Canada this week, where AirCanada fell foul of a rogue AI chatbot (and then by just not doing The Right Thing). 

Meanwhile, LinkedIn is doubling down on trying to drive B2C advertisers to the platform, and I came across some interesting thinking around how Google deals with the amount of nonsense content out there.

What happens when your AI goes off script?

Very interesting case in Canada this week, with AirCanada falling foul of a ruling whereby they had to honour a refund to a bereaved passenger – the catch being, the refund policy didn’t technically exist. Instead, it was generated by their AI chatbot.

Quite apart from the point that we now live in a world where machines appear to have a stronger moral code than us humans (maybe the impending AI-pocalypse is a good thing?), it makes for an interesting case study in adequately training your AI tools to the same, if not a greater extent, than you would do the employees that they are replacing.

Also, if your AI tool stuffs up and it will only cost you relative peanuts to make it right, maybe do that instead. The negative PR and resource/time AirCanada is now devoting to addressing this surely outweighs the cost of just doing the right thing. But this isn’t a PR newsletter…

How does Google rank mediocre content?

There’s no shortage of marketing opinions out there (hi), but sometimes you get some really interesting takes that make you stop and take a second. This week I came across one on Search Engine Land seeking to address the question of What should Google rank in Search when all the content sucks?

There’s a few things at play here. Firstly, the hypothesis is largely spot on – time and time again I have googled a simple question, and waded through keyword-stuffed filler intros before I’ve actually got to the crux of the matter. Second, as the article notes, this isn’t an AI thing – humans have been perfectly capable of writing generic, unintuitive content for years now.

And thirdly, so what does this mean for you? Well, Google has hinted that changes are coming. This, combined with the fact that we all know landing pages need to get to the point and drive impact, poses a great opportunity to actually read the content you’re pulling together, and ask yourself that same question – so what? What is this adding to the person finding it? You’ll find that answering that question can still render content SERP-friendly (depending on how you structure it) AND you can future-proof yourself for the changes that are apparently coming.

LinkedIn highlighting B2C opportunities

The use of LinkedIn as a consumer-facing channel has been discussed for a while, and is something I’ve worked on for a few clients. The general thinking from my experience is that it can serve as a powerful tool to reach specific audiences, but it can also be a very expensive way to build awareness. It’s generally best to try it and see what, if anything, works for you.

However, LinkedIn is clearly making a push to try and bring new advertisers to the platform. They recently ran a Meet the Member survey, the results of which indicate that LinkedIn users are likely to be wealthier, own larger assets, and like spending on high-end products. Which… well, if you didn’t know that (or at least assume that), then you might want to go and brush up on your social networks. 

But in any case, I do think it’s worth trying if you’re looking to shift units of a high value B2C product – but for anything with a minimal CPA, I’d steer clear.

Further Reading

The New York Times explores the growing impact of Instagram as a ‘news’ source, despite the fact the platform itself is trying to de-emphasise political content ($£)

Meta is continuing to double down on Threads, with experiments to cross post from Facebook.

Reddit has signed a deal, reportedly worth $60m per year, with an unnamed AI Company. The deal means that the AI firm can incorporate Reddit user responses into its model, enabling the system to provide more ‘human’ answers. One to watch.

Finally, a recent opinion piece on Slate explores whether recent developments (such as Joe Biden joining) are signalling the imminent decline of TikTok.

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.