By Mark Eting
Bullseye Strategy Special Correspondent
We hope you had a wonderful July 4th/Independence Day long weekend. We were busy watching the news ticker to bring you the latest news from the world of Digital Marketing, and you’ll be glad we did. We have some real blockbusters, firecrackers, and bottle rockets to share with you. So, let’s light this candle!
Instagram Tests “All Stories” Page
Interest and engagement with Instagram’s Stories format continue to grow. Last year, half of Instagram’s users were interacting with Stories on a daily basis (doubling Snapchat’s entire user base). Team Instagram has taken notice.
Many people, including yours truly, are now seeing a double-row of Stories! Instead of only one row at the top of the home screen, there are now two rows with a button beneath it to “See All Stories.” This button launches a full-screen view of nothing but Stories.
While Instagram Stories have grown considerably in the last two years, Instagram admits that Stories ads monetize at a lower rate than ones in the News Feed. This addition may be an attempt to bring Stories a lot more eyeballs.
LinkedIn Rolls Out Three New Features
LinkedIn has rolled out three new tweaks to the platform over recent days, including new Follower analytics for company pages. You can now see the names and organizations of everyone following you, including when they started following your company page. This additional insight is also an opportunity for companies to take note of who’s following them to tailor their posting to their interests.
And to thwart spam and growth-hacking, they’re implementing a new system that limits the number of times a page manager can send out invitations to their connections. It works like this: Your page has 100 credits each month for inviting new followers. Each invite is one credit. If the person invited ends up follows the page, the credit is returned and is free to be used to invite someone new. And no, unused credits do not carry over to the next month, so don’t plan on credit-hoarding or selling them on the black market.
Lastly, if you were wondering how to pronounce the name of the person you were following on LinkedIn, wonder no more. You now have the option to add an audio recording of how to pronounce your name. FYI: it’s pronounced “ET-ting.”
Google Testing Thumbnails in Search Results
If you’d been feeling that Google was running out of original Google Juice (see prior Buzz Blogs for all the Snapchat-ish and Pinterest-like replicating), it seems Google is back with good, original ideas for their own platform.
They’re currently testing adding thumbnails to search results and in the Google Suggest drop down. It’s similar to how Google News displays thumbnail images.
Stay safe. Stay classy. Stay cool.
“Mark Eting” is the pen name of the Bullseye Strategy team. Check back with us next week for more news on what’s buzzing in the digital marketing industry.
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