LinkedIn has added the ability to include LinkedIn Page (your organization’s page) info and media to Service Pages, according to an email shared by Matt Navarra.
Image: LinkedIn.
Services Pages (shown above) appear in LinkedIn’s Service Marketplace, a Fiverr and Upwork competitor where SEO and PPC freelancers can market their services.
Why we care. One of the biggest challenges to finding a suitable freelancer is vetting them. These new features enable freelancers to show more of their credibility in their Service Pages, which can help them book projects.
Display your LinkedIn Page details on your Service Page. This enables freelancers that work at an SMB to highlight that connection, potentially bringing more visibility for the organization while vouching for their own expertise.
“[This feature] is specifically focused on small operators,” Andrew Hutchinson wrote for SocialMediaToday, adding, “The page linking feature is only available for single-admin LinkedIn Company Pages, and is available via the desktop version of the site only at this stage.”
Add media to spotlight your portfolio. “Use this section to give prospective clients a preview of what you can do by highlighting your favorite projects or press related to your services,” LinkedIn wrote in the email. Freelancers can use this to showcase their thought leadership, case studies and more.
The Feed will now be the place where users scroll to see the latest updates from family, friends, groups, brand pages and, of course, ads. Exactly the same as it was yesterday, except today it has a different name.
Facebook didn’t announce any changes to the Feed algorithm. So this one seems to be a simple cosmetic change. Facebook introduced the News Feed in 2006.
The death of “News.” So why drop news? Back in October, Facebook the company became Meta, so this could be part of the company reexamining all of its products and making sure they have the correct name.
But, more likely, this is just an attempt for the social network to distance itself from the word “news.” Facebook came under massive pressure with the rise of “alternative” news and misinformation being spread via its platform. Social media is the primary way many people get news, and Facebook’s reach is an astonishing 2.9 billion users. Facebook is a regular source of news for 36% of Americans, according to Pew Research Center.
Perhaps this is how Facebook will attempt to say, “we’re not a news source.” After all, now they don’t have a News Feed. It’s just a Feed, you see. But you can be sure the Feed will continue to be full of news stories that will spark arguments among friends and families for years to come. They may as well have renamed the Feed to the Argument Zone if they were looking for an accurate name.
Why we care. Because names matter. Whenever the Facebook Feed comes up in conversations with your clients, bosses, or peers, you don’t want to be referring to the Feed by its old name. It’s like how people still use the term Google AdWords, even though AdWords was rebranded as Google Ads in 2018.
Marketers can’t argue the effectiveness of social marketing or the need to cultivate a social presence to connect with their audience. The struggle is keeping pace with the constant changes of the social landscape and its relation to your brand’s health. This is more important than ever in light of the past 22 months of the pandemic.
Join experts from NetBase Quid as they share insights from their State of Social 2022 report, including the biggest trends in social media that are shifting brand priorities and where the golden opportunities are for brands to connect meaningfully with targeted audiences.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, not gonna lie. My bet was on OASIS, but I suppose Meta is just as close.
If you’re a Ready Player One fan, you know The OASIS was a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) where people go to escape reality and “live” online. It’s what I thought of when Facebook announced last week that it was planning on rebranding to highlight its role as a “metaverse.”
“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world,” said the announcement. One of the recent indications we were headed this way was their introduction of Horizon Workrooms where you can meet in-person, online via your avatar.
How well people accept things like Horizon Workrooms and Meta’s new direction is still up for discussion, but, spoiler alert, Ready Player One ends with everyone deciding to leave The OASIS and go live their real lives in the real world.
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
Facebook is Meta
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the tech company is renaming itself to “Meta” to encompass its expanding technology and role in what it calls, “the metaverse.” The company owns multiple technologies and apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus VR. In July, Zuckerberg told The Verge that over the next several years, Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
Why we care. The rebrand comes right as whistleblower revelations have Facebook under fire for its practices, morals, and social impact. It also begs the question if the metaverse will become a new frontier for advertising (especially as the Oculus has been testing ads in VR). But also, as marketers, we can’t look away from a branding fail and “Meta” just feels like one.
YouTube ads are the breakout star of Google’s Q3 earnings report
Another quarter’s earnings report shows that Google is among the winners when it comes to the shifting pandemic landscape. Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. Google attributed the continued increases to its big push for commerce in Q3 (and before) in the earnings call. Along with the investment in commerce, Google is offering even more options for advertisers who are seeing a return to in-person shopping, especially as the holiday season nears.
YouTube is the breakout star. “YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising,” reported John Glenday for The Drum. This is the result of YouTube’s CTV (connected TV) advertising increases and its competitive product Shorts, which competes with the likes of TikTok and Snap. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps.
Why we care. “Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler explained on the call that while shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing ‘strong growth in local shopping queries’ at the same time,” said Sean Hollister for The Verge. Advertisers can expect to see the continued shift in local and omnichannel search marketing strategies, so if you’re not preparing yet, it’s something to consider for your 2022 strategy.
Google reduces the unique product identifiers enforcement on free product listings
In September, Google said if a product listing was missing required attributes such as GTIN [gtin], MPN [mpn], and brand [brand], the product was immediately disapproved and no longer shown in free listings. Now, starting in November 2021, “with the introduction of limited performance enforcements, products that are missing such attributes will remain eligible to serve but their performance may be limited,” the company said.
Why we care. If you are taking advantage of the free Google Merchant Center and you are not using UPIs on your products in those feeds, you previously may have seen those products being rejected and disapproved. Now, instead, those product listings will likely continue to be served but their performance in Google Search may be limited.
Businesses and individuals get Instagram Stories link sticker just in time for holiday shopping season
Source: Instagram blog
“Instagram’s link stickers, which let you include hyperlinks in Stories in the form of stickers, will now be available to everyone on the platform, the Facebook-owned social media network has announced,” wrote Jon Porter for The Verge. Instagram began testing the sticker option as a replacement to the “Swipe Up” linking in Instagram Stories around August. Plus, the features were only available to verified accounts or those that met a 10,000 follower threshold.
Why we care. Instagram users have long been lobbying for this functionality as the platform says it supports small businesses, but previously did not allow them to link their products, stores, and services through Stories. The feature is now available to everyone just in time for the holiday shopping season. If your business has a decent following on Instagram, make sure to incorporate it as part of your social strategy to help move those loyal communities down the funnel toward a purchase.
PPC Shorts: Feedback, video campaigns, luxury shopping trends, and Zapier integrations
Microsoft previews new first-party feedback system. You can submit new feedback, vote and comment on existing feedback, and track responses from the Microsoft engineering teams.
Google Ads Video reach campaigns are now available globally.Video reach campaigns give you the option to use automation to serve the best combination of skippable and bumper ads to maximize your reach and efficiency.
Holiday online shopping trends for luxury goods.Research shows that 78% of luxury shoppers on Microsoft Advertising properties use their mobile phone as a second screen device when watching TV – so search is at their fingertips
Link your Zapier account in the Google Ads UI. Google Ads announced an integration with Zapier, an automation solution, that helps you work with your first-party data across tools like lead form extensions, offline conversion imports, and Customer Match.
What We’re Reading: The secret to people management? Less managing, more peopling
Oftentimes when we’re good at our jobs, the next level up in promotion is “manager.” You go from doing the tasks to managing others who are doing the tasks. And while some people excel in these roles, for others, people management takes intentional work. In this piece for Atlassian, Pranav Shahi gives 10 strategies for becoming a successful people manager:
Teams work well when you invite them to shape a decision, not when you make a decision for them.
Hold others accountable.
Prioritize people over tasks aka listen to hear not to respond.
Help your team understand why any project didn’t make it to production.
Say no when you have to, but make sure to share the why behind the no.
Everything “I” is “we” now.
Being natural can help you be vulnerable, which is an important leadership trait.
Hire for what a candidate can become.
People are going to quit. Accept it early.
Embrace failure. It’s a learning opportunity.
“To scale and become a high performing team, you not only need caring and sharing, you need daring. And all dares come with a huge chance of failure. Get comfortable with that,” recommends Shahi.
Instagram has made the link sticker available to all users this week. The feature lets you link out to third-party sites, stories, products, and more via the Stories option in the app.
Source: Instagram blog
Previously only available to select accounts. Instagram began testing the sticker option as a replacement to “Swipe Up” linking in Instagram Stories around August. Plus, the features were only available to verified accounts or those that met a 10,000 follower threshold. Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, has been emphasizing how the platform is crucial for small, local, and retail businesses — especially as a rallying cry against Apple’s App Tracking Transparency initiative.
However, the social media managers for these types of businesses have always advocated that making the Swipe Up link option, and now the sticker link option, available to everyone and not just select users, would be one of the best ways to support SMBs and commerce businesses.
the fact that you need 10k followers on instagram to get the swipe up feature on your stories really sucks for us small business owners
The Stories link feature opening up to everyone is a huge opportunity for SMBs, retail, social justice orgs, and more. Instagram says that those misusing the Stories link feature to share misinformation or harmful websites will lose access.
How to start using link stickers. To add a link sticker to your Stories:
Capture or upload content to your story
Select the sticker tool from the top navigation bar
Tap the “Link” sticker to add your desired link and tap “Done”
Place the sticker on your story — like our other stickers — and tap on the sticker to see color variations
“We’re also working on ways to customize the sticker so it’s clear what someone will see when they tap your link,” according to the announcement.
Why we care. Instagram users have long been lobbying for this functionality as the platform says it supports small businesses, but previously did not allow them to link their products, stores, and services through Stories. The feature is now available to everyone just in time for the holiday shopping season. If your business has a decent following on Instagram, make sure to incorporate it as part of your social strategy to help move those loyal communities down the funnel toward a purchase.
Microsoft will shut down its localized version of LinkedIn in China by the end of the year, the company announced Thursday.
“A significantly more challenging operating environment.” The company cited a difficult operating environment, enhanced compliance requirements and a lack of success with the social aspects of its platform as reasons for shutting down LinkedIn in China.
“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” the company said, “We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we’ve made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform, later this year.”
InJobs to launch in China. As it sunsets LinkedIn, Microsoft plans to launch InJobs, a new, standalone jobs application for China, later this year as well. Unlike LinkedIn, InJobs will not have a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles.
Why we care. Sunsetting LinkedIn in China is likely to hinder B2B businesses that have a partner there or rely on the platform for communication with potential partners. Additionally, LinkedIn advertisers will no longer have access to users in China. However, it is likely that InJobs will offer some of these capabilities.
With regards to the social media industry, LinkedIn is the last domino to fall as all other major U.S.-based social media platforms — like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Pinterest and Reddit, to name a few — are blocked in China. Interestingly, the hottest social media network in the world at the moment, TikTok, is based in China and actively censors content.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, and what is content?
I’ve been chatting with someone on the marketing ops side of marketing a few times a month just to get an idea of how they think the upcoming cookieless world will affect things on their end. She was telling me about tagging and attribution in the many CRMs that she helps clients with and the conversation drifted to what happens in “the middle.”
Her work encompasses the beginning (planning campaigns and tagging) and the end (collecting attribution data and making decisions based on it). But she didn’t have a lot of insight into the middle. Her assumption was that all SEO and PPC were essentially just “content.”
We walked through the technical basics of SEO and PPC and she asked, “So does anyone not need content?” And it got me thinking about the definition of content. We just assume it means pages or posts on our sites, but content can also encompass Google My Business and social media posts, ad creative and landing pages, infographics and videos, and more. Content is what makes the web work. It goes beyond both SEO and PPC but is also at the core of what they are.
P.S. Love my musings? Join me for more at my SMX Next keynote. If you don’t, then you should still join for other people’s expert knowledge. 🙂
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
Another Google algorithm update likely happened this weekend
“Many of the tracking tools are showing levels that we have not seen since a Google core update. Moz reported 101 degree weather, Advanced Web Ranking was at the top of its chart,… and the other tools are also super hot,” said Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable.
The SEO community has only seen some chatter, however, but it was a big deal to some marketers: “USA traffic [is] still way off, down about 30% from the first two weeks of Sept and still dropping. USA has dropped so much that my UK traffic is now 2/3 of USA, for a population 6+X larger,” said one SEO. “Big movements across all topics and countries. The volatility is similar to a core update. It’s the update they started rolling out yesterday,” said another.
Why we care. If you saw big dips in USA traffic last week or over the weekend, it might be attributed to what’s going on algorithm-wise. Let your clients and stakeholders know what happened before they come to you asking about metrics anomalies.
Facebook and Instagram outages could affect your social advertising metrics
Facebook and Instagram were down for over two hours yesterday. The outrage resulted in quite a few funny tweets, as Twitter was one of the only social media platforms still up at the time. The error message suggested a Domain Name System (DNS) error. Those who used Facebook as a login verification for other apps also could not log in to those third-party systems. The outage isn’t the first for Facebook. The app and websites were down in March and July this year, too.
Why we care. Make sure to mark the outage in your Analytics if you rely heavily on leads or traffic from social. The outage will have a heavy impact on both paid and organic social media campaigns, but fortunately only for a short period of one day.
Search Shorts: Keyword data trends in keyword planner, responsive video ad scripts, deep links with content and PR, and the socialization of GMB
Google is showing trending keyword data within Google keyword planner. “This is a small experiment. We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google Ads spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Hat tip to Arbab Usmani for sending us a screenshot.
Support for Responsive Video Ads in scripts. Reminder: Last week Google Ads launched support for responsive video ads in Google Ads scripts. If you were using the TrueView for action campaign type, you must update your code to use the new video ad type.
How to use content and PR to build deep links. Deep links can drastically improve organic performance in the long term, but they are hard to get and we can’t influence where publishers link to. Screaming Frog has a guide to work around those issues, though.
Google local search trends: Socialization. Google’s local platform — comprising Google My Business, Google Maps, and the local component of Google Search — has become, under our noses, a massive social network. Google has achieved this status not through traditional methods of connecting users to each other, but by allowing and encouraging users to share their experiences, questions, and opinions about local businesses in a variety of forms and at a massive scale.
What We’re Reading: The podcast ad glossary: A whole slew of new jargon for advertisers
Sure you may know what a pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ad is in podcast advertising, but how about inventory source targeting or a baked-in ad? Podcasting is experiencing a serious boom, and with that comes all the different ways advertisers can reach those very targeted audiences of listeners.
SXM Media recently published a guide to podcast advertising lingo to clarify the new jargon that’s come along since podcasts have really taken off (especially in the ad world).
So a baked-in ad is “part of the actual podcast recording, meaning they live with that episode forever.” This is the opposite of a dynamically inserted ad which gives podcasters “the ability to insert ads, either client-provided, announcer-read, or host-read, at the time of download. This ensures that all ads are relevant to the time of year (we wouldn’t want any holiday ads in the peak of summer) and to the listener themselves.”
Oh, and inventory source targeting is “the ability to target the inventory of your favorite publishers at-scale, like Stitcher or Pandora.” Make sure to check out the guide to stay up to date on the latest podcabulary — there will be a pop quiz later.
(@artbylitzy)