Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: April 2020, Week 4

Hello, fellow digital marketer. We hope you and your business are both doing fine during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To make sure you stay in the loop when it comes to the tidings within our niche, here’s a brand new edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. 

For those of you who are new to our weekly digest, this is a column where we sum up some of the most relevant industry-related pieces of news and events that took place over the last 7 days or so.

That said, let’s see what “April 2020: Week 4” edition brings:   

• Google Rolls Out a New (Free) Video-Maker Tool for Creating Short Promo Videos
• Google Introduces a New Video Series: Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks
• Facebook Changes Its COVID-19 Business Post Templates 
• Google Ads Reveals Details About the $340m Credit for SMBs
• TikTok Launches ‘Family Pairing’ – New Parental Controls 
• YouTube to Start Showing Content Creators What Time of Day Their Audience is Active Online

Alrighty then, let’s dive right in! 

 

Google Rolls Out a New (Free) Video-Maker Tool for Creating Short Promo Videos

The digital tech giant has decided to be a good sport yet again and aid businesses in their efforts to create an effective promo campaign. One of the most widely spread and used aspects of promoting a brand, service, and/or product is a promotional video, which is why Google has recently launched YouTube Video Builder. 

With YouTube Video Builder, businesses can now easily create short, promotional videos they can then use to try and reach their target audience via YouTube. 

YouTube Video Builder, that is still in its beta version, is meant for those marketers and businesses who are maybe not too savvy with creating high-quality video content from scratch. They can now do this with YouTube Video Builder. 

A short video explaining how to use it is available below:

Here’s what the team behind this tool stated in their official blog post about the new app:

“Because businesses of all sizes are strapped for time and resources and in-person video shoots are no longer practical in many countries, we are accelerating the next stage of Video Builder availability.” 

You can use Google’s YouTube Video Builder to create video content that is anywhere between 6 and 15 seconds in length, while you can use a variety of different layouts that allow you and your team to be creative.

 

Google Introduces a New Video Series: Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks

Google is now launching a brand new video series that should replace its in-person conferences. The team behind this project is bringing together some high-profile advocates who will – for the first time ever – collaborate in this type of setting. 

The Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks series will be featuring presentations from the following players: 

• Martin Splitt (Google Developer Advocate)
• Daniel Waisberg (Google Search Advocate)
• John Mueller (Google Search Advocate)
• John Brown (Publisher Policy Outreach Lead)

📢 Calling all…

🥋Webmasters
🔎SEOs
📚Publishers
💻Web Developers

We’re rolling out a new series, Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks, featuring short conference-style talks presented by the Google Search team!

Watch the trailer → https://t.co/aRtjlVVQEK pic.twitter.com/y2D3v8YwCw

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) April 15, 2020

As you have probably figured out yourself, each installment of the new Webmaster Conference Lightning Talks series will tackle certain issues in the form of a short discussion. 

More information about Google’s new video series available in this SEJ article. 

 

Google Ads Reveals Details About the $340m Credit for SMBs

At the end of March, Google Ads stated that they were planning to give away $340m ad credit to various SMBs, and now the company has given an update on this information in terms of who is eligible for this bonus. 

According to Google, all small or medium-sized businesses are eligible if they meet the following requirements:

The company must have spent money on Google Ads within 10 out of the last 12 months in 2019, including January and/or February of this year. 

This excludes all brand-new accounts and rewards those that have been active over the last 12 months. 

How Much Ad Credit May Businesses Get?

Though Google made clear that eligible advertisers would get 1 ad credit, it has not yet been clarified what that credit is worth exactly, but we know the value of the credit will vary and will be influenced by the user’s historic Ad spend levels, plus some other additional factors like the country, currency, etc.

More information available in this SEJ article. 

 

Facebook Changes Its COVID-19 Business Post Templates 

In an attempt to help businesses better communicate and understand the changes happening due to the current pandemic, Facebook is now providing a set of information templates. 

The need-to-know changes should be easier to communicate via the templates created specifically for the following types of messages: 

• Informing customers they can still place orders while the business is temporarily closed.
• Encouraging customers to shop online.
• Reaching out to the community for support.
• Sharing links to buy gift cards.
• Expressing gratitude to customers.

Some of the downloadable new templates look like this:

(Photo source: SEJ)

(Photo source: SEJ)

(Photo source: SEJ)

Here’s what the Facebook team behind this feature had to say about the new templates: 

“We know that many businesses are facing unexpected challenges right now including keeping in touch with customers, so we wanted to share a few things you can do to get ahead of these challenges and stay connected.”

These templates should bridge the potential information gap between businesses and their customers during the outbreak.

 

TikTok Launches ‘Family Pairing’ – New Parental Controls 

In an attempt to better protect minors who are actively using TikTok, the social media app is now rolling out a new parental control function called Family Pairing. 

Family Pairing provides parents with more options regarding the better management of their kids’ activity and time spent using TikTok. The new social media platform will protect minors from exposure to offensive content, as well as mitigate potential predators.

The team behind TikTok stated the following in their official announcement:

“Today, we are advancing our commitment to building for the safety of our users by introducing Family Pairing, which allows parents and teens to customize their safety settings based on individual needs. Family Pairing is part of our continued work toward providing parents better ability to guide their teen’s online experience while allowing time to educate about online safety and digital citizenship.”

The main 3 components of Family Pairing include: 

• Screen Time Management – Parents will have the option to limit the time their children spend on TikTok on a daily basis. 
• Restricted Mode – Parents will have an option to set restrictions on potentially inappropriate content, based on TikTok’s moderation tools.
• Direct Messages – Parents will be able to completely turn the messaging feature off, or manually restrict who is able to send messages to their kids’ TikTok profile. 

More information available in this Social Media Today article. 

 

YouTube to Start Showing Content Creators What Time of Day Their Audience is Active Online

Web’s biggest video content platform is updating and expanding the capabilities of its analytics system by introducing a new feature that will show YouTubers when their audience is most likely to be active online.

The upcoming YouTube analytics feature was addressed and previewed in the recent video uploaded on YouTube’s Creator Insider channel. The video provides a detailed explanation of how to navigate and use the new audience-related insight. 

Although YouTube suggests following the guidelines in the video, the team behind this new metric also points out that this data shouldn’t be the creator’s only metric to follow in terms of when to publish their content: 

“We’re not confident that you should be tailoring your upload schedule to this, or your publish schedule to this, using it in other ways can help you build that rhythm with your audience.”

The best way to optimize your content posting schedule is to test it yourself and see what works best for your channel. 

 

Wrapping Up

That would be all for this installment of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. See you next week, until then – feel free to check out our previous edition!

Stay home and stay safe.