This week’s most important Marketing News

YOUTUBE BECOMES MORE SHOPPABLE WITH A SHOPIFY INTEGRATION AND MORE

There’ll be a new “shopping destination” in the Explore tab of YouTube that’ll highlight shippable content. Creators that meet YouTube’s qualifications can now connect their Shopify store to their channel to easily display products and set up real-time inventory syncing. They also now have access to YouTube’s live shopping features.

FACEBOOK HAS A NEW FEEDS TAB

FB’s new tab is a bit of an old idea. In the Feeds section you’ll find posts only from groups, people, and pages that you follow (shocking). Whereas, the Home tab will now focus on recommended posts (as in content from sources you don’t follow, but that FB thinks you’ll like). It’ll also look more like TikTok (the home tab) by largely featuring video content.

The change in the Home tab’s emphasis could make FB a better marketing channel than before (because it’ll be easier for your page’s content to be discovered). UNLESS, people don’t like the content they’re served on their Home tab and get annoyed and stop using FB even more than they already have. So, we’ll see.

NOW YOU CAN TURN YOUR ORGANIC REEL INTO AN AD ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram has allowed you to “boost a post” for a while, which lets you pay and have your post promoted like an ad. Now, this same possibility is available for your Reels.

INSTAGRAM’S MAPS ARE UPDATED AND SEARCHABLE

Before, Instagram’s maps only showed posts with a location tag. But now business (that have Instagram accounts) appear on the map. Plus, people can “search this area,” they can apply filters for “restaurants” and other categories, and they can search the map using any search term like “empanada” or “Marcy’s Jewelry.”

This means businesses could be found much easier in the app’s map than before.

YOU CAN NOW SELL IN INSTAGRAM DMS

Within Instagram DMs, customers can now ask you questions about your products, fulfill a payment request you send, and track their order.

NETFLIX HAS PUSHED BACK THEIR EXPECTED LAUNCH OF AN AD-SUPPORTED TIER

Remember how Netflix decided to set up a subscription option that’s cheap but funded by ads. They originally said they might get that ad-supported tier set up by Q4 of this year. But now they’re aiming for beginning of 2023 (which is next year, in case your brain slipped into a small fog).

TWITTER RELEASED AN UNMENTIONING FEATURE

This will let you untag your account from a Tweet. When you use the feature, the link to your account will be broken in the Tweet and your account can’t be mentioned in that conversation again.

NOW YOU CAN VERIFY YOUR DOMAIN IN SEARCH CONSOLE USING A DNS CNAME RECORD

If that doesn’t make much sense to you, then ignore that update.

USEFUL LINKS

Wonder Tools is a newsletter to help you find useful things—-things like apps and sites. It’s free. It’s well-written. But most importantly, it’s useful.

The Flow State is another cool newsletter (what can I say, I read a lot of newsletters). They share a 2-hour playlist each weekday morning to help you channel a good focus for your work.

BE TRUE TO THE BRAND

Inês Fonseca has worked for some of the biggest brands like Legos, Mcdonald’s, and Subway, and is currently working at Diageo as Head of Marketing. She gave her advice on fostering a brand relationship in honesty at TedxISCTE, and here were our favorite pieces.

Brands are humans

Inês said, “After working in marketing, I’ve come to realize that brands are no different than people. Brands are not meant to be managed, but to be deeply understood, felt, and known. Brands have glories, failures on their backs, brands have dreams and a path ahead.” To develop a relationship with the brand, like a relationship with people, it’s important to strengthen your relationship with the brand by learning about the past, present, and future of the brand. Inês suggests a path to learn about the brand.

Some tips to strengthen your brand’s relationship:

⏳ Knowing your brand’s past will allow you to know the essence of your brand

🥸 Learn how the brand has changed over the years

🤓 Look at the current course the brand is heading

Looking at the past will inspire you in how to move forward with the brand. This perspective has helped Inês grow her relationship with the brand and evolve it without changing its essence.

Be Honest

To build a brand, it’s essential to be honest with yourself and the brand. She said, “Absolutely nothing sits beyond honesty.” Many times, we focus on how other companies are marketing, and we feel like we have to jump on the trend. She cautions that many brands fail when they try to do campaigns or market themselves as something different than their true self. If you truly know the brand, you shouldn’t jump on the bandwagon but stay true to who you are.

Inês shared that with six pieces of legos, there are 915 million ways to build something. Get creative and see what you can do to make the brand stand out. There are many ways to do things, and it’s up to us to use our resources in a way that allows us to build something in 915 million different ways.

INTERESTING STUFF

👁 Somewhere out there is a contact lens with AR capabilities that a real human has put in their eye and tested

🚗 Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals – The Guardian

🥸 Weird stuff went down this week with reviews and rule breaking.

This week’s most important Marketing News

BE TRUE TO THE BRAND

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