Digital is constantly changing and July 2020 saw some noticeable updates. This post contains brief updates for all channels.
News
The CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon testified in Congress to convince the House Judiciary Committee that their business practices did not amount to anti-competitive monopolies. This hearing is part of a long-running antitrust investigation Congress has been running with over a million documents and hundreds of hours of interviews.
In their testimonies, the companies highlighted their patriotism and discuss the benefits they offer consumers and small businesses. All four claim that, contrary to popular belief, they do face competition.
You can watch the hearing here and see more updates here. Current next steps? Congress will publish a report with its conclusions and next steps.
“This hearing has made one fact clear to me: these companies as they exist today have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up, all need to be properly regulated and held accountable...We need to ensure the antitrust laws first written more than a century ago work in the digital age.” - David Cicilline, US Representative
Channel Updates: Organic & Performance Marketing
Google's John Mueller said on Twitter "links are definitely not the most important SEO factor." This comes shortly after he said to forget everything you have read in the past about link juice.
While this isn't an algorithm update, you'll find differing opinions of this in the SEO community. Content is still king, but many SEO experts still consider links to be on of the most important SEO ranking factors.
Twitter Forum on the importance of links in SEO can be read here.
Google My Business now has a new attribute for businesses owners to use to enhance their business listings. The new attribute is named "black-owned business." This goes with the veteran-led and women-led attributes launched back in 2018.
To get started, log in Google My Business and go to the "info" tab. Select the attributes relevant to your business. Your business listing will look like this:
This is part of Google's $300 million commitment to support underrepresented entrepreneurs, along with the new training programs that will be offered to Black business owners through Grow with Google Digital Coaches. Looking for ways to support Black-owned businesses yourself? Check out Website Planet's blogpost for 181 Black-owned businesses you can support online.
Google is introducing greater transparency to its advertising policies for users. Over the next few months, users will start to see a new feature: About this ad. This new feature will show users the verified name of the advertiser behind each ad and will initially be available for display ads purchased through Google Ads and Display & Video 360.
In addition to this tool, Google will also provide a new tool called Ads Transparency Spotlight, which is currently as an alpha extension from the Chrome Web Store. This extension will continue to evolve as Google received feedback from users.
The final update is the Privacy Sandbox update. Privacy Sandbox is the Chrome initiative for proposed alternative privacy-centric solutions for enabling advertising in ways that don’t rely on third-party cookies, device IDs or techniques like fingerprinting.
Safari and Mozilla already limit third-party cookies and Chrome is set to phase them out by 2022. These changes have significant implications for marketers. In a playbook published for marketers, Google suggests brands focus on building direct (i.e. first-party) relationships with users and learn to be flexible with targeting and measurement “when personalisation is limited.”
Google is testing a new format for headlines in the top spots above organic results. Headline 1 appears much larger, making headline 2 appear as a subtitle. Marketers will have to wait and see if this feature improves CTRs for ads in the top positions.
Responsive search ads enable Google's AI to piece together different pieces of your provided ad creative to create ads it thinks most likely to convert. This month, Google added additional features including location extensions, countdown customisers, new copy asset suggestions and reporting.Test the new features with your existing RSAs and monitor engagement pre and post usage.
In July, Snapchat released its first ever CitizenSnap report, which explains the way they operate their business, and provide support to their team, their community and their partners. Along with this report, Snapchat released a diversity report reflecting on their diversity and inclusion efforts.
"We will use our voice, our corporate personhood, to advocate for the investments we must make in the future of our country – to alleviate poverty, provide educational opportunity, build the necessary digital infrastructure, and confront our history of injustice. These efforts begin inside our business, with the things that we can most directly impact...We want to ensure that all members of our team, our community, and our partners feel understood and appreciated – celebrated – for who they are: each person equal in their differences." - Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat
Seems like it's impossible to escape the growing trends on TikTok -- from TikTok dances to DIY hair disasters. With concerns regarding privacy growing, TikTok may be in trouble. The New York Times reported that the United States government has opened a national security review of the Chinese company. Lawmakers raised concerns about TikTok’s growing influence in the United States, and there have been some reports of evidence showing that the app is sending data back to China. TikTok has released a statement regarding how it protects its users' privacy.
Facebook's new interactive feature is designed to be a joinable video call. Any invited users can join, even if they do not have a Facebook account. The live broadcast can be private or the room creator can broadcast the room to their profile, page or group and invite more viewers to watch.
Businesses can use this feature to create multi-person live videos that your audience can interact with in real-time.
This latest update from Facebook focuses on increasing security for users with two approaches:
App lock feature: allows the user to lock access to the Messenger app even if someone else has access to the phone itself. This feature allows users to "lock" their messenger app to prevent others from seeing their messages if someone borrows their phone to make a call. This is a great feature for all users, but is especially important to users managing communication for a business. This feature is currently only available on iOS devices, but will be made available to Android devices within the next few months.
Control over who contacts you on Messenger: Facebook is working on new controls so that users can determine who can message or call them directly, which messages are sent to the request folder and which users are unable to message them at all.
Many users utilise WhatApp to reach out to businesses for more information and, with more features on how to connect, WhatsApp is making it easier to connect with customers:
QR Code: Businesses can now feature QR codes on their site, in chat on product packaging or in-store. The QR code will allow users to immediately initiate a chat in WhatsApp with the business.
Share Business catalog or featured items: Businesses can now share their catalog or featured items as links on WhatsApp.
After the 2016 US election, there is a lot of concern regarding the intentional spread of misinformation and manipulation of users on Facebook. To combat this, Facebook has taken some steps to resolve this by rolling out new transparency tools and are now monitoring the platform for "inauthentic behavior."
Facebook shutdown numerous pages and accounts that violated its policies against all foreign interface and coordinated inauthentic behavior. These accounts originated in the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Brazil, and Ukraine.
Behavior that was flagged as inauthentic included the following:
Using a combination of established and fake accounts to manipulate user trust, promote their own content, and drive users off-platform to third-party political sites.
Former government officials in Ecuador and political consultants tried to hide their identities and mask as local independent news journals
Users in Florida linked to a hate group previously banned on Facebook tried to set up fake accounts to pose as state residents to evade enforcement and manage a network of pages while purchasing followers from Egypt and Pakistan.
This should be good news to businesses as Facebook is making moves to make the platform safer and enforce their policy guidelines.
Instagram Shop has been rolled out the US and will be rolled out globally within the next few weeks. Instagram Shop is an in-app shopping feature where users can discover products and brands they love on Instagram.
In the main navigation, users will be able to filter by brands they follow of by product categories. Users will either be able to purchase directly in the app, or will be navigated wot the vendor's website to complete their purchase.
Quora rolled out dark mode for Android and iOS apps. This new mode will allow users to conserve battery, as well as enjoy a better reading experience at night.
In July, Twitter experience a pretty big data breach where Twitter's most influential account logins details were hacked. You can read all about Twitter's update on the incident here.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn lays off 6% of workforce LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky announced in a company wide message that 960 employees would be let go. This layoff is due to the impacts of COVID-19, as Roslansky communicated that "LinkedIn is not immune to the effects of the global pandemic."
You can now display an audio of the correct pronunciation of your name that will be clickable next to your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn members can listen to it and make sure they're saying your name properly. This won't fix your barista mispronouncing your name, but it's a start!
Did you see any interesting updates in July 2020? Share them below in the comments!
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