Google hits redo on its search redesign, LinkedIn announces a match made in employee advocacy heaven, and Facebook makes a Super Bowl debut.
Your weekly digital marketing matchbox to kindle creative content.
January 31, 2020
If At First You Don’t Succeed …
Follow Google’s lead and try, try again. The search giant announced it will experiment with new designs after its latest search redesign (from earlier this month) was met with some serious objection from brands and legislators. Critics say the new look blurs the line between paid and organic results by making the labels on ads, which sit at the top of the results page, less obvious. This iteration definitely appears to give Google Ads an advantage, with brands using paid search reporting a 15% increase in clicks on their ads since the change. But whether your brand is a paid pro or an organic expert, don’t get too comfortable with the current state of search. Google’s giving the current design another go — and reminding us that in the realm of paid search and SEO, nothing is constant and brands should always remain flexible.
Like Peanut Butter and Jelly
Some things are just better together. And this week, LinkedIn announced a new perfectly paired duo is stepping on the scene: LinkedIn Elevate and LinkedIn Pages. The content curation, sharing, and analytics features of Elevate (a standalone app for managing and measuring employee advocacy on the platform) will be added to business Pages by December 2020, free of charge. Employees are 14x more likely to share their company’s posts than other content and receive more engagement on posts than those shared by Pages — meaning these tools could give a big boost to brands’ reach. Employees and advocacy? That’s a combo we can all get behind.
Reinvent, Re-energize, Research
We’ve all been there: hours of sifting through pages of “social media stats” search results, looking for unique data points to use in a blog, ebook, or webinar. But marketers everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief because, after months of beta testing, Google announced its new Dataset Search tool is now available to all users. The best part? With nearly 25 million datasets indexed so far, the tool gives marketers a new resource to find supporting data and insights for content. And datasets are available for virtually any topic, like education, social media, weather, and (of course) dogs. So, whether you’re beefing up a blog post, qualifying a claim from a subject matter expert, or whipping up a white paper, this tool is for anyone in need of in-depth, quantitative research to reinforce your content’s credibility.
WHAT LIT US UP THIS WEEK
First Down for Facebook
Ahh, yes, the Super Bowl. Football fanatics' and commercial connoisseurs' favorite time of year. With each passing NFL championship game, the competition for most attention-grabbing ad (and the Vince Lombardi Trophy, of course) grows fiercer. And this year is no exception. We can expect to see familiar faces like Budweiser and Pepsi wow audiences in their usual manner, but watch out for the new kids on the block. Big-name brands like Walmart and Little Caesars are making their Super Bowl debuts with flare — sporting celebrity appearances, whimsical movie references, and creative concepts. Also making its Super Bowl debut this year is Facebook.
The social network already released two teasers for “More Together” (a campaign that it hopes will make FB Groups its MVP), along with an ad that aired during the Grammys. And while it may seem like just another Super Bowl campaign, this ad spend is a major move for the social platform as it attempts to escape its drama-filled and less-than trustworthy reputation, and improve the quality of interactions on the platform by enabling constructive conversations through shared interests. It goes to show that no matter how much hot water a brand may get into, there’s always a chance to break away from past mistakes and get creative with ways to move forward and promote positivity through community (even if you can’t afford a Super Bowl commercial).
