Have you been watching our weekly ‘3 in 3’ videos? Of course you have, they’re brilliant! We thought you might like a recap though – in amongst the bantz and the tuneless jazzy vocal interludes, there’s some vital insights into digital marketing news.
Episode 10, with Jess, Nichola, and Colleen (watch here)
Essential Christmas shopping stats
Half of UK consumers plan to do all their Christmas shopping online this year. Colleen thinks it’s a clear sign that consumers now trust online retail, but there’s still something sentimental and traditional about going doing your Christmas shopping.
Nichola agrees – not all retailers are online, after all.
Clubhouse is adding pinned links to Rooms
Clubhouse has added a ‘pinned links’ feature, allowing Room moderators an opportunity to redirect their visitors to related content elsewhere on the web. This is going to allow them to compete with Twitter’s ‘Spaces’ feature, and will hopefully incentivise creators to continue broadcasting on Clubhouse.
Google’s new version of Page Speed Insights
Google have revamped their Page Speed Insights, and given their Core Web Vitals page a thorough going-over, in an attempt to provide a less bewildering experience for non-developers. As Colleen says, usually Google updates fill us with dread, but this one’s ok.
Jess’s fringe
Even the best fringes have days when they won’t be told what to do by anyone.
Episode 11, with Darren, Jess, and Lucy (watch here)
Instagram is testing a ‘take a break’ feature
Instagram’s latest feature is a built-in break timer, which users can set to remind them at 10, 20, or 30-minute intervals to stop scrolling and do something else, like read a book.
Darren welcomes the feature as a step in the right direction, but wonders if it’s a token gesture. Lucy expresses sadness that we all need telling when to take a break, but admits to finding herself endlessly scrolling through content that’s not even interesting to her.
She also wonders if Instagram might monetise the feature as an advertising opportunity – ‘time to go read a book, why not try…’
Youtube are hiding the ‘dislike’ count under videos
In an attempt to combat cyber-bullying, Youtube will no longer show users how many people have clicked the thumbs-down ‘dislike’ button on a video.
Darren points out that the comments are often more harmful than the dislikes. Jess agrees, saying people are probably even more likely to resort to leaving a negative comment, in the absence of the dislike count.
Lucy wonders if the feature could be reframed in a more positive way – perhaps as a ‘disagree’, rather than a ‘dislike’?
John Mueller has announced that bolding your text on your site can help your SEO
Everyone’s quite interested in how this is going to affect SEO. Jess warns that overdoing it will have the same effect as if you’d bolded none of it. Darren agrees, saying that italics, H1 and H2 tags already provide those SEO opportunities.
He suggests that it might be worth testing this approach with bolding on old sites, rather than new ones, because new sites experience a lot more fluctuation generally, and it’ll be harder to tell whether the bolding is the cause of any changes.
Lucy attempts to hitch a ride
Or is it sign language? Is she being held hostage? No-one’s quite sure.
Episode 12, with Beth, Jess, and Nichola (watch here)
Google: hard to call a site authoritative after 30 articles
Google’s John Mueller has announced that websites wishing to be considered authoritative will need to ensure they’ve got at least 30 pages of relevant content. Smaller sites will be indexed by Google less often, and those that don’t post consistently will find themselves waiting longer still for indexing, even if they restart regular posting after a break.
Nichola advises two strategies. Firstly, consistently adding blogs as part of a planned content strategy. Secondly, updating and refreshing older content is a good way to signal to search engines that your site is worth reindexing regularly.
Beth adds that this also provides opportunities to adjust keyword placement, or add new keywords.
Instagram will let you delete single images from Carousels
Everyone’s happy about this one, big relief for content managers everywhere. We can finally lose those annoying black squares, or quickly edit a carousel without having to create the whole damn thing from scratch.
As Nichola says, Instagram are on a roll at the moment, what with the link stickers, the ‘rage shake’, the take a break feature – good to see.
Snapchat now lets users scan food items
This new feature is intended to help you learn about your food, listing the ingredients of a photographed dish, along with recipe and serving suggestions, and even estimated nutritional values.
This adds even more functionality to Snapchat’s scan feature, which is used by more than 170 million every month (around 34% of Snapchat users). Nichola’s a scan fan, particularly for identifying songs on the fly.
Beth rightly points out that being able to scan your food for nutritional value has its uses, but might not be in everyone’s best interest – people with food-related issues might need to be cautious in how they use this new function.
