Google to pay French publishers for content, but what about Australia?
As marketers we produce content for free to grow an audience, to grow trust, and to sell. But it’s different for news sources. They pay journalists to write news stories and we pay to read them.
Or that’s the way it used to be before the internet.
Now we expect to get news for free online. But ads haven’t been enough to retain quality journalism. Newspapers are dying and the sites that survive either paywall their content or reduce quality.
Australia is trying to force Google & Facebook to pay for linking to news stories. Similar (but different) initiatives are popping up in other countries.
This week Google agreed to pay French publishers for content shared in their new ‘News Showcase’.
This includes Google paying on behalf of the reader for any content published behind paywalls, allowing users access to content they wouldn’t be able to see unless they made a payment.
Showcase isn’t part of regular search yet, it’s currently only available on the Google news app but it is due to be rolled out to search eventually.
The battle with Australia continues.
The biggest sticking point I can see is that Australia wants advance notice of algorithmic changes, which I guess is like asking Coca Cola for their secret recipe.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-google-paying-french-publishers-fighting-australia/393565/
Twitter buys newsletter tool Revue
What if you could monetise your content? What if you could gather a group of dedicated subscribers who wanted to hear what you have to say?
Small content creators could soon monetise their written content on Twitter using Revue
This newsletter tool that has just been acquired by Twitter, will allow users to create newsletters that users will have to subscribe to. You can create a free newsletter or charge a subscription fee.
Should businesses monetise their content like this? It could result in a stronger community of people who engage with the business and it could make it easier to convert those people into customers.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/making-twitter-a-better-home-for-writers.html
Facebook news in UK
Paying for news and content is the new trend.
Facebook’s news service just went live in the UK.
This will contain paid for stories from well known UK based news sites. That’s right, Facebook is going to pay journalists to write news for them.
Instagram launches a business dashboard
Facebook and Instagram are woeful for sending us to different places to do different things. Instagram is trying to make it easier.
Professional dashboard is one place to see all the information you need for your business.
It combines stats, ads, branded content and an education centre. There’s nothing new here, it’s just putting everything in one place.
You’ll find it via a hot link at the top of your profile page. It’s handy to have a one stop shop and will make it easier to manage your account.
https://business.instagram.com/blog/announcing-instagram-professional-dashboard/
TikTok Creator Portal
The problem with TikTok is that it’s hard to create. Particularly if you’re not a natural creator.
But to get seen you have to create, posting stock videos just won’t float with the platform. TikTok also wants you to create because if you get the hang of it you’re bound to want to make ads. And the more content on the site, the more space for ads.
This week TikTok launched Creator Portal full of tutorials on how to use TikTok and how to create TikTok style content. This will be useful for businesses that not only want to Crete TikTok content but also Reels for Instagram and I imagine shorts on YouTube.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/TikTok-makes-creating-easy-with-Creator-Portal/
LinkedIn reply controls
You post on LinkedIn, you get a notification, someone left a comment. But it’s not helpful, it’s off topic and at worst it’s a Troll.
LinkedIn is following Twitter’s lead and giving users the option to choose who can leave a comment a post.
The options are ‘anyone’, ‘connections only’ or ‘no one’.
This should help keep conversations on track and it also proves the value of having a strong network. I’d like to see more options added to this so that, just like on Twitter you could have interview threads or panel discussions.
Facebook account issues dashboard
Have you had your ad account disabled recently? If not I bet you know someone who has. With so many accounts and ads being wrongly marked as rule breakers by Facebook machines it’s good that we have one place to monitor this activity.
Facebook Account Issues Dashboard will show business manager users if there are issues with any ads, ad accounts and pages that they manage.
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