This Month In The World Of Marketing

This Month In The World Of Marketing

00:00:00 - Introduction 00:00:24 - Marketing News Overview
00:01:01 - SEO and AI Updates
00:03:09 - Google's Third-Party Cookies Update
00:05:13 - Google Merchant Center Redesign
00:07:06 - Google Business Profiles: Changes in Messaging and Call Reporting
00:10:14 - Potential Paid Features in Google Business Profiles
00:11:17 - Google Ads Revenue Update
00:13:23 - Google Short Links Deadline and AI Sponsorship
00:14:46 - TikTok’s New Hour-Long Video Feature
00:17:07 - Instagram’s Multiple Audio Tracks in Reels
00:19:36 - Evolution of Video Creation and Editing on Phones
00:21:49 - WordPress Security Update 6.1
00:29:48 - Next Week’s Topic: Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Outdated?

[00:00:00] Hello there, it is the time again for GeekSpeak. And of course this week I am going to be playing the role of Pip. Because we have a pet emergency and so she is dealing with that right now. You may hear some pet noises in the background. Don't be alarmed. And yeah that's to be expected for this this moment.

[00:00:24] My name is Bailin Lewis with Seymour Digital Media. And this week we are talking about the, what has happened in the world of marketing. Yes. And I'm Reena Little from Littleworks Indie Media, and we're also missing Greg this week. He is recovering from, he's recovering and he will be back probably in the next couple of weeks.

[00:00:44] We'll see. See how that goes. He is fine by the way, all fine. And you can connect with him in the Facebook group if you're interested in doing so, okay. So Phelan, we've got quite a bit of stuff to go through. I think I don't know if you want to start or if you'd like me to start or how you want to do it.

[00:01:01] Usually Pip tells us these things. Yeah. Our fearless leader. Yeah. So I think I'll start off with a couple of just SEO things just because there's some big change that's been happening in the there's supposedly a core update that's on its way. People are, so that's usual for every three months, they generally do a big core update to, fix what's been going on with search online.

[00:01:30] People are expecting this one to be, fairly innocuous. Mostly it's of course going to be dealing with AI stuff because that also came out if someone found that as a. Subsection of the leak was that there's a whole rating system that they were going to use for their generative search and so that was a big one where they're labeling your content as like it's s a b d e and so they didn't apparently the leak didn't go into much detail what those characters like how they identify those characters But it just was that they do identify those characters about your website and it has to do with ai You and how they're going to use it in the future for doing searches.

[00:02:16] so do you think we're going to have some more news about whether AI is fine or how to use it for websites? Because I know that whole subject is a little bit is a little bit misunderstood and there are a lot of different, a lot of different viewpoints on it. Do you think they'll be giving us any more information?

[00:02:40] So I, it's a good question. The, biggest issue right now that they have is that they're like, they can't determine what's been written by person, what's been written by generative AI. Even if you just get notes from it, but so figuring out those parts as like shades of degree, the biggest one that I'm going to put my marker down on is that it will, the amount of money that they've invested into AI, it will burn out.

[00:03:09] And with its figure to be within a year and what's what is going to burn out, so I don't know what it is AI systems like the actual code and like actual computing power that runs AI, is quite intensive and it's been apparently much more intensive than they originally anticipated. Yeah, so the amount of server time that it takes it just doesn't whatever they're charging us it's just not the value to Okay, that's gonna put a little wrench in the whole thing interesting it is on the flip side twitch still runs and it like people run calculations on how much twitch costs to run an hour and It the fundamentals don't make sense there either.

[00:03:57] So I could be just proven wrong by some sort of expedience in the system, but like I would put a little bit of, my view is that I put a little break on it because it's, there's just like a lot of when people run the numbers don't look good. So speaking of that, one other big technical shift to the internet that got stymied this week is, if you like that transition, it's, the Google has backed away from doing third party cookies.

[00:04:33] They were originally going to get rid of them and they were going to have a cookie less future, which I thought was insane and was never going to work because it's just you have a very simple solution and why are you giving this up to it's like reinventing the wheel.

[00:04:50] Like you don't need to do that. You don't need to do this. And So they I guess they've just, cause originally they were going to put us all in a big pool and it was like a consent pool that then based on that, you would then get access, but it didn't make any sense. And so of course they're now backing away because it's basically reinventing the internet and it turns out that's harder than you would think.

[00:05:13] Yeah. That's interesting. That's good. I like that idea that they're backing away. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Any anything else for the Google News? Merchant Center is got it's redesigned. So Merchant Center next is what it's called. So anyone who's any e commerce is now going to have it.

[00:05:35] So I knew every new account that I'd send up for us are automatically switched over to the new account. Design and layout. But now it's being hauled out to every retailer that's on their platform. So what does that mean exactly? There's a couple of new features. It's mostly that it's like a, just looks different.

[00:05:55] So it's just it's, just visual reorganization. Does it make it more user friendly? Yeah, I would say I like the new design over the old one. It's, it reminds me very similar to the, New Google ads layout. So go in there, they've got a new layout and most of the things are in the right spot. There's a couple, there's some new features that are in the merchant center that I can't name them off the top of my head.

[00:06:24] It was more just Oh, that's there. Oh, cool. It wasn't like groundbreaking. I wasn't, I wasn't going to lose. Lose it over the new design and it's far less annoying than the new google ads design where they moved everything to just be A little bit off from where it used to be so you can't find anything.

[00:06:43] That's not just the immediate like campaigns and ad copy so I mean I still count it as is this the best use of google's resources right now is to do redesigns on These platforms probably not, that's what we got. And so that's a big one. There's also going off that with platforms, taking stuff away.

[00:07:06] There's going with Google business profiles is taking away messaging and call reporting. Yes. Yeah, that's I'm going to miss the call reporting. I think a little bit. I think that, yeah, that, that is absolutely a big one. Woffin like a misstep on Google's part. There's no reason not to do that. It's so useful for any like business to no.

[00:07:30] Hey, I missed a call from this phone number. Would you like to call them back? It's yeah, to me, I'm like, it's a business owner. I would love to know that information and there's, it, that, that must cost them nothing to store that information and then report it back. yeah. And same with the messaging. I actually know a few businesses that have removed all of their social media accounts, for particular, reasons.

[00:08:00] And then they were relying on Google business listing messaging. Like lots of people were actually sending, I could see, cause I'm an admin on their account, tons of people regularly messaging them to book appointments and to and to ask questions and to find out schedules and and they're moving that's going to, that's going to hit some people.

[00:08:23] Pretty hard, I think too. Not everybody. I don't really get messages from Google business listing. Most people email me from there, but, but I'm sure there must be instance, lots of instances where that's going to be a hangup for people. Yeah I've totally feel you. I have not ever, it's basically like an eight, a 90, 10 kind of split.

[00:08:49] 90 percent of my clients don't get any messages, but the 10 that do, they get a lot. Like it's weird. If you do, you get a lot of them. And if you don't like, yeah. And I get that they're probably thinking like in aggregate, but I would find that probably the intensity of the accounts that get those messages.

[00:09:06] should be, should have been a weight waiting factor for them to be like picking what they were going to do. And yeah, I've got a couple of clients that I know it, it will, they, they just get so many messages on Hey, it's such and such thing available. Do you sell blah, blah, blah just like stuff that is innocuous and probably leads to a sale.

[00:09:28] But for the most part, it's just like being in contact with your clients that it's just a quick one off. It just seems yeah, just a misstep, honestly, for Google to take away something that, compared to the amount of man hours it must have taken to redesign the Merchant Center, that would take a lot of effort to redesign that, and you're doing that, and you're rolling it out in stages, and you're testing it, and that compared to oh, we're just shutting down this recording.

[00:09:58] It just seems yeah, I'm

wondering I wonder if that's gonna become paid features. I feel like that might be when they, I know that they're developing business listing into a bigger thing and when they start to do that, that they may come, back as paid features. So we'll see what happens there.

[00:10:14] 'cause it seems those seem like really good features for business to have. And and I would say that it I totally agree that would be great. And if it's like the paid version and you get a 10 bucks a month. And you get the reporting and the messaging and all that like for a business that was getting that before 10 bucks is probably a rounding error for the amount of sales the amount of leads that you're getting off of That's coming.

[00:10:37] So I would say that to me feels like that would be the route I would go if I were them obviously i'm not google and they're you know I'm sure they have their own internal machinations on how these things get determined for sure anything else on Se or google No, those are the big ones on my end that were the yeah, the core update was a big one Oh, and also that apparently Google Ads The revenue off of Google Ads was surpassed expectations by 12 percent 12 percent Oh, that's pretty good.

[00:11:17] That's pretty good during the apparent the apparently the market is downturned a little bit. That's pretty good. That's encouraging actually Okay, so I have a couple of little tiny Google things in 2018 Google had announced that it's short links G o g l Is being sunset. And basically the deadline is August 25th, 2025.

[00:11:45] So this is there's probably not very many people out here who have used those links, but if you've got them anywhere on your social or website or, anything that you're putting out they need to be switched because they will turn not 404 error messages. And we don't want that. Do we Phelan?

[00:12:05] No, no, one likes broken links. No one likes broken links. Especially not Google SEO, audits, they hate them. Okay. And Google has been named the official AI sponsor for the team USA at the Olympics. And obviously they've put some money into that and there, so you'll be hearing a lot about that if you are attending any of the events.

[00:12:34] Oh, and the one thing that I found, this is just a, random fact, it's not particularly helpful to marketers at all or businesses maybe, but it's something to consider 45 percent of the Amazon warehouse workers were injured on prime days. And I thought that was quite a remarkable stat that I saw online.

[00:12:55] Something to keep in mind. In mind when you're ordering on prime days, and I'm not sure what their health insurance is like over there, but hopefully it's decent. Oh yeah. Google's broad match is now set on by default in, I think that's an ad thing. The broad match? Yeah. So if you're not aware of that, then you might want to go in and check your campaigns or have somebody check your campaigns for you.

[00:13:23] Oh, and this is my favorite one of the month, the, so we all organize our comments on Facebook. And if you are on Meta Instagram and Facebook, if you are managing your conversations if you're doing social media management. And some of those things, some of those strategies include like pinning good comments at the top and hiding comments that are maybe not so positive and dealing with them offline.

[00:13:55] So it seems that they're going to get the AI, the meta AI machine to summarize the comments and. as the top comment or the one that you find at the highest point of your comments, which might be okay and might not be okay. As we understand that AI doesn't always get it right. So they might be adding in the negative comments as important if they come up Once or maybe twice.

[00:14:25] You don't know. So that's gonna be interesting to watch. So watch for that. If anyone has seen that already, I would love to see a screen cap. I have not seen it yet. Just drop that in a comment so that we can see it. That would be, I would really love that, especially if you're in the states, which is where things often get ruled out first.

[00:14:46] Yeah, so that might actually affect the vibe or the branding of your company in ways. TikTok has now allows hour long videos, which I was surprised to read in my notifications the other day. It was last week. It's okay, so we really are going and this really kills me. The idea that you start out with one thing, you've become known for one thing.

[00:15:11] People love you for the one thing, and then you got to take on all the other things, and then all of the platforms start to behave the same. So I don't know if everyone knows, but, TikTok added photos. I think it's called TikTok notes. That's another. Addition to the to the, to the app that I mentioned.

[00:15:34] I think I mentioned it last month and now they're adding hour long videos. So welcome to tick tock, Instagram and tick tock YouTube. And we'll see how that goes. There was a big kerfuffle about adding 10 minute videos and having them be the, or landscape orientation with nothing above and nothing below and how they're privileging that content.

[00:16:00] I did quite a few of those and I didn't see a huge push on that content from my client account. And And I didn't see any ads. I, it had been talked about that. Maybe TikTok was going to put ads in that black space. But I haven't seen any of that yet. So I'm not quite sure what they're doing.

[00:16:20] We'll see. And if you've put up an hour long video, let me know how it plays. I'm going to put up the first hour long video, I think next week on my account and see how that goes. And I'm really plowing through this. It's only 1116 and I've got one more point left so we can do, we can go back and unpack some of the stuff that I've brought up.

[00:16:41] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And Instagram is now letting users add multiple audio tracks to your reels. You can add up to 20 tracks in a single reel and once you add them, then you can turn them to include, to be included in the part that you want. So that's pretty interesting. I think that's going to change the vibe of Instagram a little bit and, it's going to certainly be different than TikTok.

[00:17:07] So I guess that means that you can put up one, one, video roll. With one track, one video roll with one track, one video, one with one track. For example, that was one way I can see it being used. If you're going to use some, do some kind of mashup, that might be interesting. I can't really see how else that would work.

[00:17:30] It seems that the audio files are. In sequence. They're not over top of each other. At first I thought it was over top of each other, but I don't see that as as being how they work again, I have not seen how the video, multiple video audios work because they haven't been rolled out on any of my accounts.

[00:17:50] So if you've seen it. Put your comments in below. I'd love to hear if you can overlap the audio. Cause that could actually be fun. If you're doing things like soundtracks, like sounds, not music, not multiple music, like one music, one sound like with, with those funny little boings and, gongs and stuff like that.

[00:18:14] And then you could probably also have a voiceover for that. That might be interesting, but let me know if you've played with that. Love to hear, about it in the comments below. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think that would, you could also work that as if you do those like joke voice overdubs, You're like playing a clip from a movie, and then you play a clip from another movie, and then the video is just you doing the overdub of it.

[00:18:42] I think that could probably work as well, like in my mind, that would that would work well in the situation that you're actually creating. An original video, if you wanted to, and you're hoping that will go viral, that would work very well. If you're trying to go viral with sounds that you're dubbing from, that are already viral, then of course we would actually always stick to the original sound in, Yeah, that does make sense.

[00:19:15] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what these platforms as they're like, almost becoming D, DAWs, which are not something. Yeah, it's something I'm familiar with. It's those soundboards that they have in studios. It's called it's a digital version of that. So it's a digital, it's a digital audio workstation.

[00:19:36] And yeah, it's almost like becoming one of those where you're like mixing different things in together. Actually, that's quite interesting because I do know people who actually make entire videos on editing, Music videos and other types of videos on I like short videos on, on editing platforms, it would be fun to actually create a whole video, do all the editing from start to finish for a short video or music videos and like that, that included all of those interesting, weird, a little things right in Instagram, instead of having to do it

outside of Instagram and then uploading it.

[00:20:12] And then it becomes a separate video. editing platform in addition to a social media platform. Yeah, especially if you have like actual real like fine grain control over like You know to eq something so it's like it doesn't like jump in audio quality from one to the other It's like it's you know If you have more control over that it'd be cool because apparently capcut is quite proficient for doing that kind of Yes, like audio and visual editing that I knew some people that I follow for like audio engineering and they were impressed with how much you can do just like, and it's on your phone.

[00:20:48] So it's not like you have like infinite compute power and it still managed to do a pretty decent job, which is impressive for from like kind of a coding perspective of being able to give people all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I think there was, I had I had a contractor who worked with me, who created an entire video, music video from filming and editing and uploading on her phone in 2010 or 11 or sometime around that time we were working together, which was really quite remarkable at the time.

[00:21:23] And and It was really interesting to see that done and how much further we're able to go now. It's like you pretty much have a studio on your phone. Yeah, exactly. I just realized, I think we did not share this into the group, did we? We did? I'm looking for it right now. Don't mind me. Oh, you mean the stream?

[00:21:49] The live stream? Oh, that's okay. We can upload it afterwards. Yeah, and share it back in. I just wanted everyone else to, because they were wondering where it was, that they would be able to see. And I don't think I'm able to do this, because this is not my computer. I am very much out of my element in how everything is set up.

[00:22:08] So this is, yeah, they're yeah, I think that, I, will say it's just circling back to something you said earlier that I, it, I do find it annoying where all the social media apps basically are out of ideas. And so basically just like crip off of each other and Really try to like make something new or figure out something like all the problem or even like you get feature requests like there's got to be one like yeah it's gonna be hard to set this up, but like the that's why you make all this money is you can spend it on Creating something new so that we get even more enjoyment out of it And it's that's why we give you, you get all this money.

[00:22:55] And that's why these companies are worth so much is because they're supposed to be building new stuff. And it's frustrating that they're not even really trying other than just, yeah, like it's a copying off each other or just like buying out their competition. That's been the tomb.

[00:23:14] Two modes. Yeah. And it's interesting when you think about like how they're, how social media actually reorganize your your dopamine hits like you do go to YouTube for long videos and when you go to YouTube for long videos, that's what you're expecting and that's what you want. So therefore when you are hit with a longer video on tick tock And you're on Tik TOK to get that immediate dopamine hit all the time.

[00:23:40] Like it just doesn't, in my mind, it just doesn't work. And it hasn't worked because when I get the longer videos, they don't reel me in with their riveting information in the 10 minute videos. I just get the heck onto the next one. And I want to know those 10 minute videos. Are they getting how many complete watches are they actually getting?

[00:24:03] Yeah, for sure. And I and I would compare that against a YouTube, where the YouTube they've, they figured out a good play, which is you can make a clip out of your longer video, and so the two are interconnected, so you're just scrolling through, and okay, maybe they get you with the hook, okay, I want to watch the full 10 minute video to go, where this video led you as a little preview of what's going on, so that to me, that's a smart play, but that's because they, on YouTube, they The you are expecting again, expecting the longer form video.

[00:24:34] So if they have a short term video, that's just like a quick hit. And then, Oh, I actually want to find out more about that video. To me, that's a better mindset and way to look at it. I will also say that I, also don't appreciate that all these platforms also are just like. Go streaming, like the going live, like between Instagram live, TikTok live, YouTube live, Twitch, there's so many platforms that are just like, there's no way all these platforms are getting enough, like for the amount of compute.

[00:25:05] Space that they're getting, that it's worth it for them to all be doing this. Yeah. It would be interesting to look up those numbers. I know Tik Tok lives are pretty important and Instagram lives are pretty important. Those have been built in, but I don't really spend that much time on YouTube.

[00:25:21] So I'm not entirely sure. I know they were doing it first, I think. And were they doing it first? You tell me you're more of a YouTube. Yeah. And I'm also a person that I actually know the history of Twitch as a company because I did follow, Y Combinator for a long time. And the founder of Y Combinator was the guy that started Twitch.

[00:25:41] I see. Yeah. So it was called Sam TV because it was, they were just going to live stream this guy's life called Sam. And then everyone realized that it's actually better if you just build a platform for other people because Sam was not very engaging. I can't stop laughing. He did. Okay. They got bought out by Amazon.

[00:26:01] They're doing okay. I don't have to Lose any sleep over it. But yeah, they did get the first one was actually Periscope for live tv. Yes. And that was bought by Twitter and then was sundown in 2018. Yeah, it was. And so that, that was the first one that was like the, you go live on Periscope.

[00:26:23] That was, yeah. I don't know if you know this about me, but I was on Periscope and we were live streaming an art project for one of our clients back in the day. And, public art project. And we were walking this art project all around the scene wall one day, and we had people join us in real life.

[00:26:44] And then I live streamed it on Periscope and we had people, it was, it seemed to be very big in Europe and we had tons of Europeans. Interacting with the artwork as we walked around the seawall. It was very cool. Yeah, that's cool. That's yeah, that's a nice blend of IRL with like digital media.

[00:27:03] Yeah. That's, pretty cool way to be tackling. Yeah. To go through with that. Yeah. And. I had a thought, man Oh no it's all good. It was more just like I had a thought and I could just hear them outside dealing with the dog. And so it was just, just a little distracted.

[00:27:28] Oh, I think that a PIP mentioned that we wanted to say that there was also going to be a WordPress update. No, as it just came to me. Oh, I see. Lemme look at the notes here. I don't think it got added to the notes. Pip just told it to me and I caught that it was, there's a big security update for 6.1.

[00:27:46] So everyone keep your eyes peeled for that. So security updates, just for the people that aren't developers out there, security updates are the ones that you really want to get on fast because they've identified a security issue. And that's a fix for that. With other updates, if it's just not just, but if it's a functionality based, usually we wait a number of days for all of the bugs to be worked out on other people's sites, and then we implement on their sites.

[00:28:16] Next on the next iteration. Security one do right away, please. Yeah. Yeah. Generally a rule of thumb is like the ones that the big number, so there's three numbers, so the first number is like me, it's a major update. So it's like a huge change. Those ones you want to implement slowly because who knows how it's going to interact with your plugins.

[00:28:39] Actually, Phalen, I think this is a really good topic to cover on one of our weekly topic days. Maybe we should add WordPress updates as a topic. Yeah there's definitely enough stuff out there, and especially what those numbers mean. But basically, long and the short of it, just to look brass tacks, is that the third number is usually very minor changes and they're usually like we're talking about security updates that they've identified a day one issue.

[00:29:08] So day one is the developers didn't even code this in. This was just like a vulnerability that existed that someone could exploit. So it was before it's not like you did an update and you didn't. Correct. Yes, it was. It was like before you even knew that this was could have been known to be an issue

and we found it.

[00:29:26] And so those are definitely important ones that you want to update because they're patching in and who knows how people can take advantage of it. And generally, once they've been patched, they're generally pretty good. So that brings us to the end of this segment and do we know what's happening next week?

[00:29:48] I believe we're getting a topic for let me see here. No, I think we Pipp and I talked about one that, yeah, it's Pipp and Rina is your digital marketing strategy outdated. So join us August 1st, we'll be back here live, or you can always come back on the replay wherever you're watching now. If you want to join us.

[00:30:16] In another space, we actually go live, generally speaking in the in the, cyberpunk marketing mixer, Facebook group. So join that group and to have access to us any day of the week. And thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Bye for now. Bye for now.