A lot happened in digital marketing during the month of January. The Facebook community continues to react to the Facebook zero algorithm changes, Google rolled out a massive search console update and Instagram continued to beef up their stories format. I hope you enjoy the January 2018 social skim.

1. JANUARY 2018
Social skim questions & discussion

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January social skim
How this works.
Less presentation more conversation.
Ask questions.
How does this information apply?

3. Facebook.
January social skim
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January social skim
Facebook zero.
• The algorithm update is still a big deal.
• Some publishers are looking to push notifications to reach users.
• This past week, Facebook users were greeted with a card at the top of the news feed
notifying them Facebook is ³making some updates so you see more from [friends
and family]² and a link to a Help Center page that explains ³what kinds of posts [they]
will see in News Feed.² The post notes that the content users are seeing first in their
news feed is influenced by their connections and activity on Facebook. It also notes
that the number of comments, likes, and reactions on a post influences how high it
will appear in the news feed.
• There are also training videos available on the newsfeed changes.

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January social skim
Testing new concepts.
• Anew local news section
• Avideo chat service called portal,
• Awatch party feature for Facebook groups

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January social skim
More meta data power.
You can now edit your alt text for Facebook images. These
images were previously auto-generated by their object
recognition technology that automatically describes the
content of photos for blind and visually impaired users.
Facebook users can now override this alt text and enter their
own in the edit photo options during upload.

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January social skim
Royalty free music.
Facebook has signed licensing deals with SonyATV, HFA/
Rumblefish and Universal Music group. Both deals further
Facebook¹s investment into social music features like the
recently released Facebook Sound Collection.

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January social skim
New post type.
Facebook has added a new post type called “list”. This allows
users to post a numbered list with a title such as “My goals for
2018” and “Top cat memes of 2017”.

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January social skim
New ads reporting.
There are two new reporting features forAds Manager.
These include Date Comparison, which compares results
from two different date ranges in theAds Manager table, and
the ability to see creative performance across all of your ad
sets at once with Creative Reporting.

10. Instagram.
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January social skim

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January social skim
Updates to live and direct
messaging.
• Users can now send live videos in direct messages
• If you share a live broadcast that features any type of
content protected by copyright, your broadcast will be
ended. This update is tied to the Instagram Rights Manager
initiative that was reported last month.
• They introduced GIF stickers and the ability to upload
photos and videos of any size to their stories. Is it just me or
is GIPHY taking over the world?

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January social skim
Recommended posts.
They’ve officially rolled out recommended posts. These posts will
appear in your newsfeed and are based on posts that you like and
accounts that you follow.

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January social skim
Scheduling now available.
They’ve opened theirAPI businesses can now schedule posts
in advance if they are working with a Facebook or Instagram
marketing partner or using a third party social media
management software.

14. Additional social update.
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January social skim

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January social skim
Other updates.
Snapchat
• They are still trying to extend their reach by testing a
"Stories Everywhere" feature to distribute videos
outside of their app.
• To combat declining ad revenue, they are considering
adding a 3-second, un-skippable pre-roll ad unit.
• In response to the Facebook zero update, they've
added a new role within the company that oversees
day-to-day work with Discover publishers and
announced a first-time publisher summit to help them
be successful on the platform.
YouTube
• In light of offensive content, scandals, and community issues involving
YouTube this past year the platform announced a new approach to
monetization and partnerships in an effort to regain advertisers¹ and
creators¹ trust. These updates include a higher threshold for joining the
YouTube Partner Program beginning February 20, 2018
• They are simplifying how users connect with musical artists by bringing
all an artist’s subscribers (official and unofficial) under one channel. So
if you are following an “unofficial” Justin Timberlake channel, you will
soon be migrated over to his real channel and unofficial channels will
become inactive.

16. Search engine optimization.
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January social skim

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January social skim
Featured snippets.
Google published a comprehensive guide to featured
snippets. Featured snippets are selected rich results that
are featured on top of Google¹s organic results but
below PPC ads. They aim, to answer the user¹s
question right away (they are also known as “answer
boxes”.

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January social skim
Getting into localized social
media?
Google is testing a local service called “Bulletin” which they
describe as a “lightweight app for telling a story by capturing
photos, video clips, and text right from your phone, published
straight to the web.” They envision it as a way to contribute
hyper local stories to the community through search (possibly
similar to Next Door?).

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January social skim
Updates to the search console.
In January, Google rolled out an update to their search console. Search console is an online website and search performance
dashboard for webmaster. Some of the updates include: Search performance.
• Anew Search Performance report that includes more in-depth data, including clicks, impressions, CTRs, your average
ranking position, and your current position, and feeds you up to 16 months of back-dated data.
• Updated indexing coverage that automatically alerts you when there’s an indexing error, and can help you trace the root of
the problem, so you can solve it faster.
• Aseries of diagnostic tools to help you understand and resolve indexing issues. There is also a share button so that you can
quickly communicate index data to your team and a “validate fix” button you can use to verify that your corrective action was
effective.
• The ability to monitor yourAMP performance, including how your pages are displayed and any errors that come up.
• The ability to list your on-site job postings through the Google for Jobs feature (and of course, monitor their performance).

20. Ask me anything.