Online Marketing News: Retail Holiday Social, Instagram Live & Online Shopping Accelerates

holiday-retail-customer-expectations

holiday-retail-customer-expectations

Retailers Will Get 30% More Social Messages This Holiday Season [Report]
What do customers expect from brands this holiday season? 38.8% are looking to brands to spread holiday cheer, followed by 19.5% who are looking for updates on promotions. In addition to looking to brands to help them make purchasing decisions, about 33% of survey respondents said they’re likely to post about a gift on social media. The takeaway? It’s time to spread that holiday cheer on social — before and after the holiday. Sprout Social

Instagram Launches Live Video on Instagram Stories: Here’s All You Need to Know
As part of the now seemingly ‘official’ war between Facebook and Snapchat, Facebook owned Instagram has released live video on Instagram stories. That’s not all — Instagram also announced the release of disappearing photos and videos from groups and friends. Buffer

Online And Mobile Shopping See Seasonal Acceleration
The holiday season this year will be a big one for online retailers, according to a recent round of predictions. Shoppers are planning their online purchases in advance, and in great numbers — 77% of shoppers plan to avoid physical stores this holiday season. Online retailers, take heed: Release your online holiday promotions early, and make sure your team is prepared. MediaPost

Moz beefs up Moz Local with new features, distribution and automation
Moz local users will be thrilled with this week’s news. Moz has announced some awesome new features of their Local suite, including Google My Business automated sync, listing alerts, reputation monitoring/management, expanded distribution via NavAds and improved SEO metrics. Search Engine Land

LinkedIn Rolls Out Audience Insights
LinkedIn (client) has announced the launch of audience insights on their mobile app, while desktop audience insights are following close behind. SocialTimes reports: “Tapping on the “Me” on users’ content in the LinkedIn mobile app will bring up real-time insights on who has read their posts, what companies they work for, their job titles, their locations and how they discovered users’ content.” SocialTimes

facebook-pages-get-5-billion-messages-per-month

Reap the Benefits of the Most Wonderful Time of the Year All Year Long [Infographic]
The holiday season, as we all know, is the most wonderful time of the year for marketers and consumers alike. Then, along comes January to spoil the fun. But it doesn’t have to. This infographic shows how to keep that holiday cheer — and results — going all year long. Marketo

Facebook launches a unified inbox for businesses on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram
In response to one of their most frequent requests — to combine inboxes to make it easier for brands to reply quickly — Facebook has combined inboxes for Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram to help brands more effectively and efficiently manage their direct messaging. TechCrunch

Mobile Apps Capture Consumer Attention 37 Minutes a Day – Up 20% From the Beginning of 2016
A recent report from Opera Mediaworks found that mobile app use duration is on the rise, even since the beginning of this year. This time is reportedly taken from other viewing activities, like TV programming. This report is packed full of app engagement related information. Opera Mediaworks

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

We’ll be back next week with more online marketing news. Have something to share? Tweet to @toprank or @Tiffani_Allen, or leave a note in the comments.

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Online Marketing News: ‘Tis Pinterest Season, Self-Serve InMail and Nutella Spreads Happiness

pinterest-holiday-shopping-marketing

pinterest-holiday-shopping-marketing

Holiday Marketing Campaigns: ‘Tis the Season for Pinterest [Infographic]
MarketingProfs reports: “People on Pinterest tend to spend twice as much as the general public, and 67% of them will be using Pinterest to plan for holiday purchases.” Learn more from this holiday spirited infographic from Pinterest. MarketingProfs

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail goes self-serve
LinkedIn (client) has opened up their Sponsored InMail ad solution to be run through LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Previously, this solution was only available to marketers with an account representative to execute these campaigns. Marketers can now self-service Sponsored InMail, targeting users by location, industry, title, and more. ClickZ

How Nutella’s First Branded Content Series Will Spread Happiness
Nutella is spreading the happiness in their new documentary series ‘Spread the Happy,’ featuring ‘real people and real stories.’ AdWeek reports: “The release of the series is timed to the holiday season. There are four episodes total with a new one released each week on the brand’s YouTube channel.” Is this a new face for content marketing? Time will tell. AdWeek

More Than One-Half of Consumers Prefer Social Customer Service (Report)
According to a recent report, 54% of consumers prefer to access customer service through social media or SMS messaging. This is a continuation of the trend of social-first customer service. As we’ve seen, social connections bring about brand advocacy, with 46.7% of consumers saying that personal responses from brands strengthen their brand loyalty. Social Times

Instagram Stories get better with new features
While Instagram stories were once rumored to be a duplication of Snapchat’s stories, they’ve found a surprising way to differentiate their service. Instagram stories are now allowing links for verified accounts, mentions and Boomerang — their unique video loop. Marketing Land

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Google, Facebook Move to Punish Fake News Sites With Ad Rules
Bloomberg reports: “On Monday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it’s implementing a new policy that pulls its popular advertising tool from websites that run ‘misrepresentative content’ although it stopped short of banning fake news from its pages. Facebook clarified existing rules that it won’t integrate or display ads in apps or sites that are illegal, misleading or deceptive.” Bloomberg Technology

Google expands AMP, as it presents a friendly face to publishers
Google is expanding AMP — Accelerated Mobile Pages — to include AMP for Ads, extending to native and video ads. Google is reportedly doing this as it’s a tough time for publishers, and the company wants to help secure their financial future through the open web. Data released seems to back up that assertion, as most of the publishers they surveyed, 80% or more, have higher visibility and click through rates. Digiday

Facebook Reports More Measurement Glitches
Ad Age reports that on Wednesday, Facebook “said in a new blog post that it had given marketers and publishers faulty numbers in a few other spots, inflating how many people visited their Pages and how long they spent reading Instant Articles.” Coming out after the platforms’s recent bout with faulty email metrics, this is causing some concern among social advertisers. Ad Age

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

We’ll be back soon with more online marketing news! Have something to share? Leave your thoughts in the comments or Tweet to @toprank.

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Online Marketing News: Unwrapping Shoppers, Growing Ad Revenue & Millennial Loyalty

holiday-shoppers-2016-infographic

holiday-shoppers-2016-infographic

Unwrapping the 2016 Holiday Shopper [Infographic]
The holiday season is undeniably important for eCommerce brands — especially this year with a 17% YOY revenue increase. But how do holiday shoppers go about their research and purchasing? This infographic shows how users are browsing and shopping for their holiday purchases. Signal

Digital Ad Revenues Grow 19% Year-Over-Year in First Half of 2016, Hitting Landmark High of $32.7 Billion
IAB reports: “digital advertising revenues in the United States for the first half of 2016 have reached an all-time high, scaling to $32.7 billion […] This represents a 19 percent increase over last year’s then record-setting half-year revenues of $27.5 billion.” This and many more insights can be found in their full report. IAB

Facebook Releases New Report on Brand Loyalty and Millennials
A recent Facebook survey of over 14k adults showed that 77% of people are considered brand loyal. 37% of those brand loyal Millennials make repeat purchases and consider themselves brand loyal, while 40% make repeat purchases but don’t necessarily consider themselves brand loyal. Social Media Today

Creative Sparks That Hit the Content Mark: 9 Lessons From 75 Brands
Sometimes, to learn the best kept secrets of expert content marketers, we must study their work. This new eBook from Content Marketing Institute studied content from 75 brands to help identify the path to content marketing success. The kinds of media studied varied from blogs and magazines to social media platforms and multichannel experiences. Content Marketing Institute

Google Webmaster Blog: Mobile-first Indexing
Since so many Google users are using mobile to search, yet Google is still using the desktop version of a site or page’s content to determine search relevance, the folks at Google have begun experimenting with mobile-first indexing to help make mobile results more relevant for searchers. Google Webmaster Blog

facebook-users-net-worth-revenue

The Most Shared Brand Blog Posts: Length, Language, and Title Trends
MarketingProfs reports: “Relatively long and fairly complex—though not overly difficult—blog posts by brands garner the most social shares, according to recent research from TrackMaven […] Blog posts that are fairly long, between 1,200 and 1,400 words, receive the most social shares (428) per post, on average, the analysis found.” MarketingProfs

Facebook Shares Snapchat Attack Plan, Including a New Camera
Facebook is planning to build cameras right into their existing apps, according to a recent statement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. For example, in messenger, the camera would be more readily available, and include additional filters for users to overlay on their images. Ad Age

Google Says it is Now OK to Put Content Behind Tabs
Google has determined that it will now give content that’s hidden behind tabs — in an effort to improve user experience — full weight in terms of organic search. This means that crawlers are no longer ignoring ‘hidden’ content as they had previously. Search Engine Journal

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I’ll be back next week with more marketing news stories. Have something to share? Leave a note in the comments or Tweet to @toprank.

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Online Marketing News: Shareable Infographics, Instagram Buyable Tags & YouTube End Screens

shareable-marketing-infographics

shareable-marketing-infographics

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics Using PowerPoint or Keynote
Infographics work to capture the attention of your audience and convey information in a digestible way. It can be tough to find the resources to creat them. But, what if creating infographics yourself was suddenly easier? This infographic will show you how. HubSpot

Instagram Is Letting Brands Test Taggable, Buyable Products in Photos
Instagram is letting select brands — like Kate Spade — test organic posts with taggable, buyable products in their photos. Brands can tag products for sale within their organic posts that will link interested viewers directly to their website to purchase. This, according to Instagram, is a play to make the user’s purchase experience frictionless. AdWeek

Keep ‘Em Watching with End Screens
YouTube launched ‘End Screens’ — a mobile friendly tool that lets video producers engage with their audience in a more targeted way at the end of their videos. The tool allows for hard-to-miss thumbnails to pop up after a video that prompt viewers to engage with other video content from that channel, subscribe to the channel and more. YouTube Creator Blog

Snaplytics launches Snapchat analytics
Marketing Land reports: “A Danish startup is now offering a new analytics service for Snapchat’s disappearing videos and photos that it says is ‘the only software-as-a-service analytics [exclusively] for Snapchat.'” The dashboard lets users see metrics like open rates, views, screen shots taken, and more. Marketing Land

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Google Ran Secret Video Ad Experiments and Here’s What It Found
Advertising Age reports: “The average completion rate for the average video ad on mobile devices is 22%, according to Google. On desktop, it’s 28%. The best-performing video in the test, one in which fast pacing was the dominant factor, achieved a 33% “view-through” rate on mobile., Google said.” Advertising Age

Manufacturing Marketers See Content Marketing Breakthrough [Research]
Last year, fewer than 20% of manufacturing marketers said their company was effective at content marketing or had a well-documented content marketing strategy. This year, 95% of manufacturing marketers report improvement in their content marketing, with 82% attributing that success to better content creation. Content Marketing Institute

The Top 20 Content Marketing Influencers of 2016
Ever wonder whom to look to for content marketing advice? This handy list provides 20 names of folks in the content marketing realm that are worth your attention. The list toutes big names like Joe Pulizzi, Ann Handley, Jeff Bullas and our very own Lee Odden. MarketingProfs

IAB: Search Ads Generate $16.3 Billion In First-Half 2016
Forrester research shows: “Mobile revenue rose 89% from the $8.2 billion reported during the first half of 2015 to $15.5 billion during the first half in 2016 of which mobile search contributed $7.4 billion.” Desktop and Mobile search ad revenue combined comprised 50% of the total. MediaPost

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I’ll be back next week with more online marketing news. Need a fix now? Follow @toprank for the latest industry news and insights.

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Online Marketing News: The Art of Stealing, Twitter Closes Vine & Helpful Chat Bots

content-marketing-art-of-stealing-infographic

content-marketing-art-of-stealing-infographic

How to Improve Blog Writing Through the Art of ‘Stealing’ [Infographic]
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or at least that’s the rumor. So, how can you (legally and ethically) ‘steal’ the high-performance content mojo from a fellow writer to help improve your work? This infographic explains how. MarketingProfs

Important News about Vine
Twitter announced on Thursday that they’ll be discontinuing their Vine app. The platform, which just announced a round of layoffs last week, says they’ll be ‘doing this the right way’ by keeping the website online so users can continue to access their content. Vine on Medium

4 chatbots to help you analyze ad campaigns right in Slack, Facebook Messenger & Google Sheets
The life of a digital marketer is always on the move — from platform and algorithm changes to juggling multiple campaigns at once. The good news? There are now chat bots inside frequently used apps like Slack, Google Sheets and Facebook Messenger that can give you the insights you need, right when you need them. Marketing Land

Facebook Launches a Big Ad Campaign for Facebook Live, With User Videos at the Core
Facebook Live, for how powerful it is, is still relatively unknown by the Facebook user community at large. This week, Facebook launched an international campaign to gain awareness, featuring a combination of TV ads and digital billboard creative using footage of actual user videos. AdWeek

Blogging Report: How to Drive Results From Your Company’s Blog
“A new report reveals that when blogging for business, companies are producing more content with less impact. It also uncovers specific tactics marketers can use to combat content overload and outperform their competitors,” Reports TrackMaven. The average number of posts published by brands has increased by over 800% in the last five years, while shares have gone down. TrackMaven

85-of-marketers-have-a-successful-martech-strategy

PayPal Announces New Integration with Facebook Messenger
On Wednesday, PayPal announced an integration with Facebook which allows users to use PayPal as a payment option within messenger. This fits with Facebook’s recent push to become more competitive with the business market. Social Media Today

New Occurrences of SEO Spam Discovered: Hacked Subdirectories on WordPress Sites
Sucuri released a statement this week about new occurrences of SEO spam which are secretly installing subdirectories on WordPress sites. Search Engine Journal reports: “The idea behind this black hat scheme is to abuse the server resources and storage by installing spammy sites within a WordPress subdirectory.”  Search Engine Journal

Client-side ranking to more efficiently show people stories in feed
Facebook announced in a blog post last week, “we redesigned the architecture of News Feed to allow stories to be re-ranked on the client after being sent from the server. We avoid spinners and grey boxes by 1) requiring stories to have all necessary media available before rendering them in News Feed and 2) being able to optimize the content in News Feed for each session.” Facebook

What were your top online news stories this week?

We’ll be back next week with more online marketing news. Have something to share? I’d love to hear it! Drop a note in the comments or tweet your thoughts to @toprank.

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Online Marketing News: Google Has Changed, B2C Content Marketing and Video Ad Metrics

google-search-is-changing-in-2016

google-search-is-changing-in-2016

How Google Search Has Changed in 2016 [Infographic]
As we all know, Google is no stranger to change. Keeping track of those changes and their connotations is an actual full time job. For example, MarketingProfs reports “Google’s search engine is displaying fewer organic results on it first page this year than it was last year, and it’s increasingly presenting different experiences for desktop and smartphone users.” MarketingProfs

[New Research] B2C Marketers Need to Give Content Marketing Time
Following their successful release of their B2B content marketing benchmarks report, Content Marketing Institute has shifted their research focus to B2C. What did they find? 60% of B2C marketers consider their organization’s approach to content marketing to be much more or somewhat more successful than it was just a year ago. Content Marketing Institute

What Marketers Need to Know About How Today’s Top Social Platforms Measure Video
Recently Facebook revealed that the reported amount of time users spent watching a video could be inflated by up to 80%. This has cracked open a conversation about standards of industry measurement among video advertising platforms. Since these metrics vary by platform, it’s important that advertisers understand just how they’ll be charged. Read on for a full breakdown. AdWeek

Google Panda demotes or adjusts your rankings down — it does not devalue
Gary Illyes from Google explained that unlike Penguin 4.0, Google Panda actually adjusts the rankings down of ‘spammy’ sites. He told Search Engine Land: “… it is an adjustment. Basically, we figured that site is trying to game our systems, and unfortunately, successfully. So we will adjust the rank. We will push the site back just to make sure that it’s not working anymore.” Search Engine Land

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Google Focuses On Mobile-First Indexing, Adds News Fact-Check Tag
Google is finding yet another way to differentiate quality content for users. MediaPost reports: ” Google said it will add a Fact Check tag to articles it indexes that points readers toward articles validating or discrediting claims. The engine already flags content with tags such as In-Depth, Highly Cited, Local Source, and Opinion.” MediaPost

Pinterest Is Working on a New ‘Explore’ Section for Publishers, Brands
Pinterest is rumored to be testing what’s essentially a sponsored page for brands that allows for multi-media content, even video, to be published and promoted. Pinterest has been criticised in the past for a lack of innovation in their advertising platform, so this may be a first step toward becoming competitive with other ad platforms, like those of Snapchat and Instagram. Advertising Age

Fueled by the Audience Network, Facebook advertisers saw higher Q3 spends & returns
Marketing Land reports: “A new report from social ad automation company Nanigans shows substantial growth in both YoY Facebook ad spend and on the overall Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). In Q3 2016, the average increase in ad spend was +249 percent YoY, while the average ROAS was also up 26 percent from 2015.” Marketing Land

SEO & SEM Ranks 9th on LinkedIn’s Top Skills List
LinkedIn (client) has released new data that reveals the top skills of 2016, with SEO and SEM ranking at number nine. While that’s a bit of a drop from their 2015 positions, those skills are still among the top ten. And while LinkedIn data shows that demand for marketing skills is decreasing due to more applicants with marketing skills being available, the data shows that marketing-related skills are very much in demand, but perhaps the face of marketing is changing. Search Engine Journal

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I’ll be back next week with more online marketing news! Have something to share? Tweet it to @toprank or leave me a note in the comments.

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Online Marketing News: Infographics in SEO Strategy, Google Pixel & The Value of UX

infographics-in-your-seo-strategy

infographics-in-your-seo-strategy

Why Infographics Should Be Part of Your SEO Strategy [Infographic]
It isn’t just readers who appreciate the value of a good infographic — search engines do, too. Infographics drive more engagement and social shares, signaling bots that content is relevant to the searcher and is a good answer for what they’re looking for. But how do you create a great infographic? Read on for 6 simple steps to make your own. HubSpot

Google Pixel marketing push is worth $3.2M in ads and much more
Google released Google Pixel, their new smartphone offering, to the market and has made quite a splash. Google has reportedly spent $3.2 million in their initial advertising push for TV ads, and experts in the field believe that’s just the metaphorical tip of the iceberg in terms of spending. Their Pixel product is rumored to be poised to connect with the iPhone, which begs the question, how will this affect marketing and design for mobile devices? TECHMalak

The Business Value of User Experience Design [Infographic]
A good user experience on mobile is key to ecommerce success – users are more likely to stay on site and convert when a site is optimized for mobile. MarketingProfs reports on a recent PointSource study: “67% of customers are more likely to purchase on mobile-friendly sites. Mobile users are 5X more likely to abandon a task if the site is not optimized for mobile.” MarketingProfs

Best Times to Post on Social Media [+ 75 Industry Breakdowns]
TrackMaven evaluated the best times to post on social media based interactions per post per 1,000 followers during each hour of the day and day of the week. They found that Thursday evenings on Facebook and Twitter are good times to post, Wednesday mornings are best for LinkedIn, Friday evenings are best for Instagram, and Pinterest posts tend to do best in the wee hours of Friday morning. TrackMaven

It Pays to Provide Customer Service via Twitter (Report)
“Customers who receive responses when they tweet businesses are willing to spend 3 percent to 20 percent more on average-priced items from those businesses in the future,” reports SocialTimes. Not only are those customers more likely to spend more, they’re more likely to advocate for a brand socially that provides customer service via Twitter. SocialTimes

80-of-marketing-leaders-have-a-social-program-in-place

Report: on average day, nearly 40 percent of searchers use only smartphones
Google recently released new “cross device” research that tells us a substantial amount of web users are searching via mobile. According to MarketingLand: “Users spend 170 minutes on their smartphones daily vs. 120 minutes on PCs and roughly 75 minutes on tablets (for those who own tablets).” MarketingLand

New IAB Standards Promise Major Ad Shakeup
“The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s new formats and standards for ad units will have a major, positive impact on user experience — helping to stem the tide of ad blocking” reports MediaPost. These standards were released on September 26th and will be available for public comment until the end of November. MediaPost

Snapchat courts Hollywood producers for new programming
Snapchat is actively recruiting hollywood producers to create shows for its Discover platform. This, following last week’s break from the title of ‘social media’ shows a change in the way media platforms are thinking about the content they create. Digiday

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I’ll be back next week with more digital marketing news. If you just can’t wait for more, follow @toprank on Twitter for your daily dose of industry happenings.

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