Google Images makes shopping a cinch, Instagram lets you plan ahead,
print magazines get personal, and more!
August 9, 2019
I Bought It on Google Images
Pinterest’s MO: Providing people with relevant suggestions to make discovering and shopping for products easier. But now, search engine behemoth Google is giving Pinterest a run for its money by making shopping via Google Images even easier. When users click an image, a side panel now opens featuring the image, product details, price, and related images. And because the panel stays in place while users continue to scroll, the updated layout makes for easy side-by-side image comparisons. The update doesn’t necessarily add any new info to search results, but it does streamline e-commerce. Brands should keep an eye out to see if the changes affect SEO and make sure they continue to take a thorough approach when crafting product descriptions and image alt-text to take advantage of this new feature.
Golden (Insta) Hour
You don’t have to be a social media marketer to know that certain times are better than others to post and receive engagement on Instagram. But you can’t always sit by your phone waiting for that prime posting time — and thanks to an update to Facebook Creator Studio, you don’t have to. The app now includes an Instagram Scheduling tool that allows brands to edit pictures and IGTV videos, add captions, upload multi-photo posts, and publish or schedule for later. Some third-party providers have had the ability to schedule Instagram posts, but most don’t have the full range of capabilities that Creator Studio now provides, including post previews and IGTV scheduling. While scheduling for Stories isn’t yet available, this seemingly small tool is still a big win for social media marketers.
More Personalization Please
Hearst Magazines, one of the largest magazine publishers, is taking ad personalization offline and raising integrated marketing to a new level. By collecting first-party data from users’ online activity — like website browsing and shopping — Hearst Data Studio is working with brands to help them serve personalized ads to print magazine subscribers. It’s a unique use of online first-party data collection and should inspire brands to get creative with how they connect with their audience. Brands and publishers alike will be watching to see if this new twist on integrated personalization is headline making or gets tossed in the recycling bin.
SPARK OF THE WEEK
Backless Seats and Poorly Planned Tweets
This week’s social spark is designed to ignite thinking around your social crisis management strategies.
If you travel by plane often, it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point you’ll direct an angry (or incredulous) tweet toward an airline. And this week, two airlines were faced with the tough situation of passengers’ negative tweets going viral. Spirit was caught with a bat on one of its planes (eek!), and EasyJet was accused of sending passengers into the air without seat backs. While both brands received plenty of media coverage over the two incidents , they weren’t the attention-getting scenarios that could be considered a win.
Of course, EasyJet didn’t take off with a passenger sitting in a backless chair, but the circulating tweet (that now has more than 43K likes and nearly 23K retweets) had many believing it did. And while we give kudos to the airline for its quick crisis response, its word choice wasn’t ideal — causing EasyJet to then announce it would look into its own tweet, as it wasn’t in line with the brand’s typical approach to customer service. In an industry inundated with not-so-nice feedback (that’s often very public), brands have to be quick to manage crises. But as EasyJet unfortunately found out, speed must be accompanied with consistency and thoughtful responses — a lesson that goes for any industry, airline or not.
