The holidays are over, and marketers are looking at which of their efforts helped put them in the black and which held them back. Social is, without a doubt, part of that analysis. This season, however, brought the initial stages of something we didn’t have before: The Buy Button.
Read MoreCommerce on social channels is at a major tipping point. It’s going to succeed, or it’s going to fail. And we’ll know which soon enough. Commerce on social platforms is nothing new. Some brands launched storefronts on their Facebook pages years ago. For a variety of reasons, these never took off, and in today’s environment of Facebook tabs being deemphasized, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Now, we’re entering the new era of social commerce as platforms roll out native commerce solutions. Pinterest now has Buyable Pins, enabling anyone to buy a product they see on Pinterest directly on the platform. Instagram is improving its ads by adding options for users to ‘Buy Now,’ as well as take other actions. Google is introducing a buy button in search results, while adding a click-to-shop CTA to YouTube videos. Then we have both Facebook and Twitter testing buy buttons of their own.
Social commerce is the new video. Everyone’s doing it.
Read MoreIt was the week of Armageddons, and yes, there apparently can be more than one.
It started with Google’s mobilegeddon. That’s when it started factoring in mobile-friendliness in how it ranks websites in search results. Websites not optimized for mobile are now being negatively affected with lower rankings.
Not to be outdone, Facebook followed up with an Armageddon of its own with yet more updates to its News Feed algorithm. It shared that it would be emphasizing updates from Facebook friends over other content. It will also show friend interactions with brands and publishers less often, meaning Facebook is going to show more content from Facebook users’ friends and less from brand and publisher pages.
Changes like these keep marketers on their toes. They have to constantly follow what these tech behemoths are doing, so they’re ready to optimize their efforts to reach consumers effectively. That can be frustrating.
Read MoreGoogle will restart its program that indexes tweets and pulls them into search results sometime in the first half of 2015. This means users searching for different topics will see real-time tweets along with recommended webpages based on their queries within search results.
The agreement between these two online companies is big news for marketers. It makes marketing on Twitter and Google even greater opportunities.
Read MoreGhost town. Wast of time. Embarrassment. Google+ has been called many things, and most names are not too positive, especially after Google+ chief Vic Gundotra announced that he was leaving the company weeks ago. After all, without its leader and biggest advocate what will become of Google+?
Read MoreThe other day I was asked, “Why hasn’t Google+ really taken off? Is it going to make a comeback?”
Let’s take a step back. Google+ has taken off in a lot of big ways, and Google+ doesn’t need to make a comeback. Although, it clearly needs to better articulate what it can do for marketers and what its value proposition is for Internet users.
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