In the biggest digital news of the last month, Google has launched a new portal specifically for small businesses, so even those unfamiliar with digital marketing can get started using Google products. In addition to this major launch, there are a number of other small updates across Google, Spotify, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Keep reading to find out more about some of June’s top digital and digital marketing headlines in this month’s round-up.
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To celebrate International Small Business Day, Google has launched a new website that will suggest its products that seem like the best fit for a specific business.
The Google for Small Business portal was announced late June at the Grow with Google Learning Center in New York City, where the company offers a variety of workshops and classes. During a break in the event, Kim Spalding, Google’s global product director for small business ads, told me that the website “gives everyone a place to start with Google products.”
To make it easier to say “surprised,” “good morning” or “buenas noches” with the perfect GIF, Google Images now has a “Share GIFs” section that lets you share GIFs directly into different apps, including Gmail, Hangouts, Android Messages and Whatsapp.
Google’s Martin Splitt and Jason Miller, a Senior Web Developer Programs Engineer at Google, got together to create a video on the challenges around using web frameworks and how that may impact your SEO efforts.
Already building out its podcast business with a slew of acquisitions, Spotify is now segmenting users based on podcasts they stream.
Up until now, Spotify has only broken down audiences based on their music streaming habits. Today, the company has introduced podcast listener targeting, which allows brands to reach Spotify Free users who listen to podcasts.
The new audience tool is available in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia.
An option available on almost all social media platforms, is now also available on LinkedIn. The platform says, “Tagging people in your photos encourages engagement with your images. Tagging people notifies those members that your photo might be relevant to them and these tagged photos become linked with the associated members’ profiles”. It also gives viewers an option to see the tagged member’s name and navigate to their profile.
Starting June 4, Instagram announced they will be introducing the ability for advertisers to promote creators’ organic branded content posts as feed ads. Branded content is an evolving ecosystem. As they’ve worked to build the right tools for both business and creators involved in branded content deals, one of the biggest requests from brands to date is the ability to incorporate branded content posts into their advertising strategies.
Today, 80% of people follow a business on Instagram, and Explore can help them find the next business or product they might love. Brands are an important part of the Instagram experience for people. Whether it’s shopping, catching up on stories or discovering the latest trends, we see people actively looking to connect with brands they like. That’s why, over the next few months, Instagram will be introducing ads in Explore feed.
After tapping on a photo or video in Explore, people may begin to see ads as part of their browsing experience just like in the main feed. As always, people have control over the ads they see.
“We’re always working to ensure that people’s time on Facebook is well spent. One way we do this is through ranking, which promotes meaningful conversations by showing people the posts and comments most relevant to them. Today we’re making an update to improve comment ranking on public posts, and we want to explain how this works and how Pages and people can control their own comment ranking settings.”
To improve relevance and quality, Facebook will start showing comments on public posts more prominently when:
Facebook has released its “Study from Facebook” app for Android only. Some adults 18+ in the U.S. and India will be recruited by ads on and off Facebook to willingly sign up to let Facebook collect extra data from them in exchange for a monthly payment. They’ll be warned that Facebook will gather which apps are on their phone, how much time they spend using those apps, the app activity names of features they use in other apps, plus their country, device and network type.
Facebook has shared plans for Calibra, a newly formed Facebook subsidiary whose goal is to provide financial services that will let people access and participate in the Libra network. The first product Calibra will introduce is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology. The wallet will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a standalone app — and is expected to launch in 2020.
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