Facebook wants to send your email marketing for you
Email marketing is one of the three pillars of digital marketing and now Facebook wants to take control of yours.
A new feature from the network will allow you to send marketing emails via your Facebook page. Page admins will be able to upload contacts and send emails directly from Facebook.
They will be asked to verify that they have permission to send marketing emails to the contacts they upload.
I can see this becoming popular with businesses who don’t have the budget for an email marketing tool or who are put off signing up for one as they’d have to learn a new tool.
It could also be an easy way to integrate lead forms with email marketing which has often required a third party tool in the past.
However, I would be concerned about giving Facebook so much of my business particularly when they have a record of abusing privacy and taking down Facebook pages for no reason.
Much like using Facebook as a website you run the risk of loosing everything is there is a Facebook glitch.
Instagram tests ‘Plans’ sticker
Last week Instagram launched ‘Rooms’ allowing you to create group video chats. This week they’ve given us a way to schedule and promote those rooms.
The ‘Plans’ sticker has been rolled out to some users. With it you can set a time, date and link to an online meeting.
This could be a brilliant way to connect with more of your audience, get to know them better and get feedback.
Are Google search results coming to YouTube?
Google are testing adding webpage results to YouTube search.
We are used to seeing video results in our Google searches but this is different. People only go to YouTube to watch videos and although they are trying to push ‘posts’ and ‘story’ products video is still at the core of YouTube.
That’s probably why users have been reacting so badly (according to Reddit) to seeing webpage results in their YouTube search.
I think many people like to forget that Google owns YouTube and this infringement of search results is a reminder they may not want.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-tests-showing-web-pages-in-youtube-search-results/370938/
Pinterest brings shop tab to lens search results
If you are an e-commerce business you need to be on Pinterest. This week they released yet another tool designed to get more people buying on the platform.
Lens is the tool that you can use to photograph something and search for it on Pinterest. Results will now include a shop tab making it easy for Pinners to buy directly from e-commerce sites
Pair this with the recent Shopify integration that makes it easy to upload your whole product catalog and Pinterest looks like a must have tool for small business.
According to Pinterest fashion and decor are the most searched categories in lens search with sales of shirts & tops, dresses, shoes, jackets, vases, mirrors, rugs, pants and throw pillows topping the purchase list.
Twitter Scheduling rolled out on desktop
Finally businesses and other users will be able to schedule tweets directly from the web app. No more going to a third party tool to schedule.
First spotted a few weeks ago it looks like this has rolled out to all tweeters over the last few days.
There are two tools integrated into scheduling.
- Compose and save tweets for later. Now when you exit the tweet composition window you’ll have the option to save your tweet.
- Access draft tweets and schedule from the tweet window. It’s a simple interface making scheduling dead easy. You can also view your scheduled tweets from the scheduling window.
This is a game changer for small businesses who manage just one account and don’t want to sign up to another tool to schedule.
LinkedIn Finally Gives Us Video Retargeting
LinkedIn videos have been hot for a while and this week LinkedIn finally gave us a tool to advertise to the people who watch those posted on our company pages.
Video viewer audiences will consist of people who watch 75% of your videos. This will be a strong audience for you to target with lead get or sales posts.
You’ll also be able to retarget people who filled in ‘lead forms’ on the network.
These new targeting options will make LinkedIn ads seem more manageable to Facebook ads mangers and could give us a stronger audience to sell to.
Easy Alt Text on Twitter
Alt-text describes images that you add to websites and social media. It helps screen readers understand what your image is about and it sometimes appear if internet access doesn’t allow the image to display.
This week Twitter made it easier to add alt text to your images. Previously the alt text option was hidden in the image editing interface. It now appears on top of the image prompting you to add it.
In a time where we want to work fast it’s worth spending that extra 30 seconds adding alt text to your images so that you aren’t excluding a valuable section of your audience. I wonder how third party tools will handle this update.
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