Here's issue #31 of Digital Marketing Weekly :-)
Each week, DMW gives you a quick summary of the biggest and most important news that impacts your business, in the fast moving worlds of Video Marketing, SEO and Social Media!
This week we’ll be revealing why:
- Facebook Wants You To Cancel Your Netflix Subscription
- Twitter Adds Direct Message Cards To Help Advertisers
- Google Warns Against Syndicated Link Building
So get this week's important news by watching the 5-minute video here right now.
Prefer to read instead of watching the video?
Alternatively, if you'd prefer to read a text summary of this week's breaking news (or dive in deeper to any of the items mentioned in the video), we've put together a text version below...
youtu.be
Video Vault
Facebook Wants You To Cancel Your Netflix Subscription
Rumors have surfaced this week that Facebook is gearing up to launch a brand-new video platform, after reports that the social media giant had signed content deals with popular news and entertainment creators. Vox Media, BuzzFeed, ATTN, and Group Nine Media are some the big name creators Facebook is reportedly engaging to create short and long-form videos for its platform.
YouTube still dominates the video market, with more than 1 billion hours of video watched every day, which is about ten times what Facebook can claim.
According to the sources that leaked the information, Facebook is planning two types of video content.
The first are scripted shows with episodes lasting 20 to 30 minutes, which Facebook will own. The second are shorter scripted and unscripted shows with episodes lasting about 5 to 10 minutes, which Facebook won’t own.
Facebook will pay up to $250,000 for each of the longer scripted episodes.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story as it develops, so be sure to watch future episodes of DMW for additional updates...
cnbc.com
Savvy SEO
Google Warns Against Syndicated Link Building
Google has issued a fresh warning to anyone using automated syndication tools to generate backlinks. Google commented that they aren’t against article syndication. However, they are against syndication if the primary purpose is to gain backlinks.
Here are some of the things Google says may trigger a penalty:
- Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in your articles
- Having the articles published across many different websites; alternatively, having a large number of articles on a few large sites
- Using or hiring article writers that aren’t knowledgeable about the topics they’re writing on
- Using the same or similar content across these articles; alternatively, duplicating the full content of articles found on your own site
According to SearchEngineLand.com, there are now two safe ways for those distributing content to stay out of trouble:
- Use nofollow on specific links - Nofollow prevents individual links from passing along ranking credit.
- The canonical tag on the page itself - The Canonical tag effectively tells Google not to let any of the links on the page pass credit.
Thanks for taking the time to check out this week's issue of Digital Marketing Weekly!
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P.S. If you missed last week's issue, you can check it out here.
Social Media Spotlight
Twitter Adds Direct Message Cards To Help Advertisers
Last week we revealed that Bing was launching new bots to help users interact with businesses in the search results. This week we’re continuing with the bot trend, as Twitter is testing a new feature they hope will kick-start conversations between bots and potential customers.
Twitter is rolling out Direct Message (DM) Cards that attach a menu of buttons to a Promoted Tweet. Users can select to start a DM thread on a particular topic with the advertiser’s bot or humans that manage the brand’s private messages.
The idea behind Direct Message Cards is to push a private conversation past the awkward small-talk stage. Users can pick from up to 4 conversation-starters that are set by the advertiser.
Patrón Tequila is one of the brands currently testing the new feature.
In one of their tests, Patrón Tequila shows different contexts in which someone might want a cocktail. Users can then pick one, and the brand’s bot will ask them some questions about the occasion and recommend a drink for them.
Direct Message Cards are currently only available to paid advertisers. If you're a marketer that wants to try out the direct message cards, ask your Twitter sales rep for access.
marketingland.com