All Access Pass holders get a first live look at the digital marketing news updates each month! Want to have early access plus an interactive opportunity to get your questions answered about these updates? Start our free 5-day trial today!
Facebook News Updates
- Facebook Shops let Small Businesses Create a Shop Directly in Facebook – This is the easiest way to bring your business online and start selling where your customers are. Creating a Facebook shop takes the complexity out of Shopify or Woocommerce allowing businesses to quickly create shops on the site.
- Facebook Launches Small Business Tools – Helping bring awareness to small businesses with a hashtag and sticker to create shared stories and to find small businesses to support nearby.
- Sell Products through Lives with Live Shopping – This allows you to include clickable, shoppable links in your lives to drive people to purchase. You can essentially create your own shopping channel with videos that have click to buy options built right in.
- Facebook Improves Brand Safety Controls – Allowing brands to whitelist where their ads show, opt out of lives and control the videos their ads are seen in.
- Messenger Rooms Available Globally – To users groups and events to video chat with up to 50 people at once.
- Facebook bought Gify with plans to Integrate into Instagram – This should make it easier to create and share Gifs 😉
- Polls are back in Messenger – You can now do polls in Messenger (These used to exist but were removed last May. Now they are back.)
Instagram News Updates
- Instagram Shops let you Create a Shop on Instagram – In an effort to help small businesses sell online quicker and easier, Instagram shops allows businesses to create a shop directly in Instagram.
- Keep it Positive with Comment Management – Instagram has a number of new tools to support better comment management including blocking comments, pinning comments and choosing who can tag or mention you. The idea is to stop negativity and bullying on the platform.
- Instagram Supports Creators in Live – Including badges where fans can pay to support a creator and earn a “badge” that displays as well as introducing IGTV ads to monetize the platform.
LinkedIn News Updates
- LinkedIn has 690 Million Users – And sessions are up 26% this quarter (although that could be linked to record unemployment in the US). The powerhouse keeps growing users and engagements.
- LinkedIn Events + LinkedIn Live – You can now seamlessly create live virtual events on LinkedIn by combining Live with events.
- LinkedIn Launches Polls – Providing a new way to engage with your audience. This doesn’t appear to be fully rolled out yet, but look for it on your profile or page.
Pinterest News Updates
- Pinterest Features Improve Organization – Notes and Boards options make it easier to organize your content. You can add notes and even dates. In addition you can use board templates to create eye-catching content.
- Pinterest Enhances the Shopping Experience – Including shopping from almost anywhere as well as style sections. This makes it easier for people to shop in the platform.
- Pinterest Expands Partners – With all of the new Shoppable pins Pinterest has expanded their partners. See who they partner with for every aspect of the pinning experience.
Search News Updates
- May Algo Update – Google made a major update at the beginning of May (rolled out on the 4th) that significantly changed rankings for many sites. If you notice a change in your search traffic, this could easily be the cause.
- Google to Add Page Experience to Ranking – This means that the search engine will start looking at page experience metrics to determine page ranking. These are called Core Vitals. This could be a major change to site rankings, so now is the time to start evaluating your site. Google has provided significant guidance around what they look at so you can build a clear plan to create a good experience.
- Google My Business Listings can Add Gift Cards and Donations – These features can help small businesses drive revenue directly through their listing.
Podcasting Updates
- Anchor (by Spotify) turns Videos into Podcasts – This feature makes it easy to turn a video chat or live into an audio podcast, giving creators new ways to repurpose their content.
- Google Podcast Manager Gives More Analytics – Helping creators to understand their listeners.