This week has been a BIG one in the digital marketing space. LinkedIn has given its newsletters a glow-up plus added new collaboration features. Whilst Meta aims to improve transparency by giving us the option to have a cheeky peek at current collaborations, and gives us some hot tips to improve our lead gen ads. It’s all happening this week and the countdown to the silly season has begun (where has this year gone?!) Keep scrolling to see all of the hottest new updates.

LinkedIn Newsletters get a glow-up (YAY)

We’ve got some exciting news from LinkedIn. They’re giving their newsletter creation a fresh update, making it even easier for you to share your insights and knowledge. Now, you can manage multiple newsletters all in one place! 🚀 So if you’ve got different audiences or topics, this is really going to help you segment those out and get hyper-targeted with your audience. They’ve also given the article editor a glow-up, making it a smoother editing and publishing experience.

Some of the other updates include:

• Host multiple (up to 5) newsletters to expand and segment your audience
• Save your articles in progress as drafts to get final approval
• Schedule your articles to go live when your audience is most active
• Add an SEO title and description to boost your reach
• Auto-follows from newsletter subscriptions to grow your page

Wanna check ours out? Sign up here.

LinkedIn embraces brand partnerships

LinkedIn looks to be rolling out brand partnership tags in an effort to bring more transparency to the platform. This label should be used in cases where a creator is being compensated by a third party in any way for the post you’re creating. It looks to be available only for public posts at this stage. But we’re here for more ways for businesses to team up and get found by new audiences!

Meta drops Lead Gen tips like it’s hot

Looking for some hot tips to improve your Lead Generation game? Meta has dropped some gems to help you step up your game and convert more customers here. Including 3 types of ads that can help build long-term customer relationships. Not to brag but Lead Gen is our speciality (so if you’re stuck – book a chat here).

Meta updated Ads Library, giving brands more transparency

We are VERY impressed with this update, and we know you’ll love it too. Now available in one of our fave tools – the Ads Library (where you can spy on your competitor’s ads), you can also get a better insight into how competitors are partnering with influencers and creators across Facebook and Instagram (we can officially be a fly on the wall). It’s only super new, so we’re not sure how accurate the data is just yet, but we’re excited to see if it’s useful as it improves over time!

Check it out for yourself here.

TikTok is challenging Google with search ads

TikTok has unveiled a new feature that is absolutely going to challenge Google Search ads. It allows brands to purchase ads that will be displayed within the app’s search results. This new advertising option opens up a prime space for brands to capture users’ attention when they are actively searching for content on TikTok. We already knew that Gen Z is using TikTok over Google as a search platform, so this upgrade doesn’t come as a surprise to us.

Brands can bid on specific keywords, ensuring their ads appear prominently in relevant search queries. The ads will blend seamlessly with organic search results, providing a non-disruptive experience for users while still offering brand visibility. This move by TikTok looks to be taking a strategic step toward enhancing its revenue model and catering to businesses aiming to maximize their marketing efforts on the platform. With the potential to reach a vast and engaged audience, this feature could become a valuable tool for brands seeking to establish a strong presence on TikTok.

In other news, TikTok is also improving its data for Shopify merchants. Giving more performance measurement metrics and we are here for it!

Want to try TikTok Ads? Book a chat here.

YouTube dropped gems to help improve performance

In a recent interview with Shorts Product Lead Todd Sherman, common questions were addressed and we got some absolute gems to help improve YouTube Shorts performance. We’ve summarised them for you:

• A strong focus on thinking about your audience, not the algorithm when posting/creating content. The Shorts feed is completely different to the YouTube feed, so it’s important to think about audience behaviour when it comes to consuming content.
• He pointed out that the main difference is that YouTube feed is mainly consumed by finding videos of interest and then clicking on them to watch more. Whereas Shorts they’re discovering videos from scrolling directly from the feed – so you have a shorter period to grab attention.
• He mentioned that Shorts views aren’t counted when they appear on the viewer’s screen, but instead counted to be aligned with the viewer’s interest or intent of watching it. Apparently, they don’t actually release their calculations on how this works to prevent people from gaming the system.
• At this stage extending Shorts length isn’t a priority and 60 seconds is still the max length.
• They aren’t interested in customising Shorts thumbnails at this stage because of their user behaviour data telling them that most people don’t see them anyway.
• Hashtags also aren’t required on the platform (another platform phasing these out!) but they can be helpful when related to a specific real-time event if you want to be associated with it.
• While he didn’t give any indication whether posting more frequently improves your chances of getting better results, but he did say that posting lots of quality clips isn’t going to help your account (e.g. quality over quantity).
• Apparently deleting and re-uploading Shorts can flag a user as a spammer in its systems, so he doesn’t recommend doing that.
• Looking to the future he mentioned that they’re looking at integrating AI, but no look at what that could mean just yet!

Excited to see how the platform evolves, we know it has staying power!

Threads finally comes to the web

Meta announced that Threads has come to the web and is slowly rolling out now. It looks like we’ll be able to view, post and engage with Threads from your Desktop PC. But is it a little too late? We’ve got access to it and so far it’s looking a little basic, but if it saves us some time we’re here for it!

Find out if you can log in (using your Instagram deets) here.

TikTok releases a 2023 Holiday Marketing Guide

TikTok is bringing Christmas cheer early with its 2023 Holiday Marketing Guide, download yours here. Inside are goodies including how people are using the app, a calendar of key dates and a fantastic guide to help you plan out your marketing funnel over the busy period. Along with some Creative Tips for Success.

If you would LOVE a custom marketing plan to take some of the planning over the silly season (and to help you get some killer results), feel free to reach out and book a chat here.

So there you have it, a big week of digital updates and lots to think about. But as always, if it’s feeling overwhelming, just go back to basics. Think about what your audience wants from you, stick to what’s working and adjust where you need to.

XOXO

OMD SQUAD