Tag: Adds

With the holiday shopping season about to hit, all the major social platforms will be rolling out new tools and features to help businesses maximize their seasonal promotions, and ideally, re-coup what they can after a massively interrupted year.

This week, Pinterest has outlined its latest tools to help businesses tap into the rising number of online shoppers, many of whom are now using Pinterest as a kind of virtual shopping mall for unique, artisan products.

First off, Pinterest is adding more ad slots to help businesses reach people when they’re searching for products to buy.

As explained by Pinterest: 

“As more people use Pinterest to shop and look for ideas and products from brands and retailers, we’re integrating ads into more shopping experiences across Pinterest to deliver relevant content where it’s welcomed by shoppers.”

Now, advertisers will be able to place ads in Pinterest Lens matches (as shown above), the ‘Shop’ tab within Pinterest search, and even shopping matches on Pins.

The new placement options are being rolled out over time, and will be first made available to businesses in the US and UK.

In addition to this, Pinterest is also looking to give Pin marketers more data on the path to conversion from each Pin, with new, in-depth insights on specific Pin performance.

“With new conversion insights, Pinterest Verified Merchants and Shopify retailers can easily see the impact of both their paid and organic Pinterest content on their site visits and checkouts, making their shopping efforts not just impactful, but also measurable.”

As you can see above, the new listings provide a more specific split between organic and promoted Pin metrics, with individual Pin listings that highlight the top performers. The format is similar to Facebook’s Page Insights listings, which should make it easier to understand for those already managing a Facebook Page.

Pinterest is also expanding the availability of its personalized shopping reccomendations, which it first launched in the US last year. 

The option will provide more ways for UK Pinners to find related products, and for brands to gain more exposure through related matches.

At this stage, the new features are only being launched in the US and UK, which Pinterest notes are two of its top markets.

For businesses in these nations, the new options will provide new ways to maximize exposure for their products on the platform – and with Pinterest usage increasing more than any other social network during the pandemic (outside of TikTok), it’s worth taking a look, and considering why more people are turning to the platform for online shopping, and whether it might be a good fit for your brand.

You can read more about Pinterest’s latest updates here.

LinkedIn has added some new measures designed to better protect users from inappropriate comments and content, while it’s also updated its Professional Community Policies to better reflect member expectations of professionalism and respect in communications across the platform.

First off, on individual content warnings and actions – from this week, LinkedIn members who have had their content removed due to rule violations will now get new notifications on their posts informing them of such, while those who make any such report will also get more info on what happens next in the process.

As you can see in these examples, when you make a report about content on LinkedIn, you’ll now see this new page which outlines the next steps, while those who have had a post removed will be alerted via a new informational prompt.

Up till now, LinkedIn hasn’t provided any real transparency on this process, and while you won’t get a full rundown of what actions have or have not been taken as a result of each report, the new prompts will provide more context on how LinkedIn actions such.

The new warnings are being rolled out to LinkedIn users in the US, France and Canada from today, with more regions to follow in the coming weeks. 

In addition to this, LinkedIn’s adding new prompts to its post composer in order to encourage civil interactions, while it’s also adding new warnings to messages that may include harassing content, enabling users to easily report such for review.

This is part of LinkedIn’s broader crackdown on inappropriate messages – last month, LinkedIn also shared how it has updated its automatic detection systems to better detect such messages based on past incidences of harassment within its connection streams.

Romance scams, inappropriate advances and targeted harassment were the three most common issues identified in LinkedIn’s investigations into such, and its new systems can now detect these types of messages more accurately, and better protect users from even having to see them.

These new report prompts are built on the same system, making it easier for users to quickly report LinkedIn creeps and alert the platform to such behavior. 

In addition to these new tools, LinkedIn has also updated its Professional Community Policies “to make it even more clear that hateful, harassing, inflammatory or racist content has absolutely no place on our platform”.

The new guidelines are built around four key principles:

• Be safe – We require everyone to be civil and respectful in every single interaction. Especially in our world today, hate, discrimination, racism, harassment, including unwanted romantic advances, or bullying have no place on LinkedIn.
• Be trustworthy – We require members to use their true identity, provide accurate information about themselves or their organization, and only share information that is real and authentic. We do not allow fake profiles, fake jobs, or misinformation.  
• Be professional – We require content to be professionally relevant and on topic, such as sharing and gaining expertise, hiring or how to get hired, or learning or teaching a new skill. Explicit, shocking or inflammatory content is not allowed. 
• Respect others’ rights and follow the law – Adhere to privacy, copyright, and other applicable laws when you’re using LinkedIn.

The regulations are pretty much as you would expect, and largely in line with the previous guidelines for LinkedIn, though the specifications around harassment, discrimination and racism are more specifically spelled out, which is in line with LinkedIn’s renewed approach, under new CEO Ryan Rozlansky, on tackling inappropriate content on the platform. 

Part of that effort can be linked back to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which served as a wake-up call to all social platforms as to how they can, and need to be part of a broader societal shift in how such issues are addressed. But LinkedIn, now with more than 700 million members, is also seeing more on-platform engagement and activity – and with that, there also comes more inappropriate actions, which requires a more defined approach to address.

LinkedIn’s also likely to see a major uptick in activity as the economic conditions recover over time, so it’s important that LinkedIn does indeed take steps like this to better protect its increasingly active user base.

With the US Presidential Election only 40 days away, YouTube has this week announced some new prompts designed to maximize voter understanding of both candidates and the voting process, in order increase participation, and combat misinformation around the poll.

As you can see here, the new prompts will appear in searches for terms like ‘how to vote’ and ‘how to register to vote’, with alerts that direct users to Google’s official voting tools via a prominent ‘Learn More’ CTA button.

In addition to this, searches for 2020 presidential or federal Congressional candidates will also now display a similar information panel with details about that candidate above search results.

“We’re also providing two additional information panels on voter registration and how to vote, in English and Spanish.”

YouTube’s also adding new in-app reminders on how to register, how to vote and where to vote, while it’s also promoting information from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission about volunteering at the polls, so users can learn more about how to get involved and assist with community participation.

YouTube’s also launching two new YouTube Originals to further highlight election-related information:

• YouChoose 2020 – An interactive voting special which takes viewers through the key steps in the voting process using the YouTube meme of your choosing – “from a cooking tutorial that compares voting to following a recipe, to an auto repair video that breaks down the ‘nuts and bolts’ of voting”.
• Kid Correspondent – A four-part election special designed to help parents and families better understand and talk about civic engagement and the democratic process.

As always, YouTube will be a key source of news and information throughout the election period – in fact, data from Pew Research shows that some 38% of YouTube users regularly turn to the platform for news content, which only trails Facebook in terms of social media news sources.

That puts YouTube in a position of significant influence when distributing accurate information, and while the platform can also lead users down conspiracy rabbit holes, steps like these are important in ensuring that YouTube’s audience is getting the right information about the voting process within their viewing activity.

That’s even more important in 2020. With more people spending time at home due to the various impacts of the COVID-19 mitigation efforts, YouTube is seeing an increase in viewership, with the platform recently reporting that watch time of YouTube content on TV screens jumped 80% year over year. 

Combine this with the fact that more regional newspapers and news outlets have been forced to shut down due to the economic impacts of the pandemic, and that leaves an increasing number of people seeking out news content from alternate sources. Like Facebook and YouTube. 

As such, the role that all social platforms play in distributing accurate information will be ramped up this year, which is why it’s important that each includes links to official information, like these new prompts, in related user queries.    

Google is adding more ways for businesses to highlight how they’re catering to changing customer needs and behaviors as a result of COVID-19, with new options for listings on your Google My Business profile related to pick-up options, service changes and more.

Google has been adding more ways for businesses to display updated options and service offerings, like ‘curbside pick-up’ in ads, and changes to business hours as a result of COVID impacts. It’s now providing more tags that can be added to business listings.

“You can now highlight dining service attributes like “Dine-in” and “Takeout.” Soon you’ll be able to feature retail service attributes, like “In-store shopping” and “Curbside pickup.” 

‘Curbside pickup’ in this respect relates to organic listings, not ads, where, as noted, the option was already available.

And these could be increasingly important – according to Google, searches for “curbside pick up” have grown globally by more than 3,000% year over year, while searches for “takeout restaurants” have grown globally by over 5,000% in the same time period.

That, of course, makes perfect sense, but if you’re not listing these options on your Google My Business profile, you could be missing out on web traffic. 

To implement these changes, you need to log into Google My Business and update the relevant fields in your business profile options.

Google also says that searches containing “available near me” have grown by more than 2x across regions and categories – and catering to these more specific shopping options, Google’s also adding “Pickup later” tags for local inventory ads (second screenshot above).

The listings are designed to reduce in-store shopping time, and tap into these rising consumer behaviors. 

As reflected in the search data above, these are important updates, and it’s worth ensuring that your Google My Business profile reflects the latest info and updates in order to tap into evolving consumer behaviors. 

Really, these are logical progressions, and the more you can align your digital listings with audience need, the better off you’ll be, in terms of maximizing response.