December 2021 Digital Marketing News Updates

Facebook News Updates

• Facebook Launches Shopping Features – The features allow for shopping and product recommendations in groups as well as opportunities for creators to host live shopping events. These features are designed to increase the ecommerce applications on the platform, and moving early if you have an ecommerce site could have advantages.

Instagram News Updates

• Create Participative Stories – Instagram launched a new Stories sticker that allows anyone to participate in a story. The new sticker is called “Add Yours” and it allows people to add threaded public responses to a story.
• Instagram Focuses on Video – Instagram has made it clear that they view video as the future and will be more prominently featured in the newsfeed. If video isn’t on your radar for content trends it should be. Reels are also currently displayed prominently in the Facebook app, showing Meta is committed to driving exposure to video creators on the platform.

LinkedIn Updates

• Creator Mode Gives Access to Live and Newsletters – If you have a LinkedIn creator account you’ll get access to even more features. It remains to be seen the reach potential that these tools have, however they provide new ways to get infront of your audience. You need a creator account to activate these features – you can easily switch your account over to unlock them.
• Linked in TEST Product Pages – The TEST is designed for businesses to share details about their products to drive conversations and recommendations. While only in test stage this could be a huge opportunity for B2B businesses to grow credibility.

Google News Updates

• Google Doesn’t Provide Timeline on Mobile First Indexing – Google has been talking about this for years – as mobile has become the primary place where people are searching. The change would make mobile rankings more important vs. desktop. For now, there isn’t a timeline, BUT since most searches and web visitors are mobile, it makes sense for businesses to focus on it.

Industry News Updates

• Twitter Study Shows 25% of Users Create 97% of Tweets – This shows that the platform heavily relies on a small portion of their users to create content. At the network struggles with relevance, this highlights the fact that many users aren’t actively engaged.
• Hubspot Shares 2022 Trends – The trends aren’t necessarily suprising, although it is helpful to see where the industry is headed and what marketers are thinking about for the year ahead. Not surprisingly we see influencer marketing, AR/VR and measurement on the list.
• TikTok Projected to Break 1.5 Billion Users Next Year – Speaking of trends….. TikTok continues to grow — these numbers would make it the third biggest social network behind Facebook and Instagram.
• B2B Buyers Engage Sales Reps Later in the Process – This means that the decision is closer to being made before a sales rep is involved. Buyers are doing self-search and are influenced by marketing touchpoints. This highlights the importance of content marketing, strong digital assets and a clear marketing strategy for B2B businesses.
• Google, Facebook, and Amazon make up 64% of Digital Ad Spend – Clearly the big players are dominating the industry. To break-through the noise, focus on winning big with the big guys or finding the unicorn opportunities. A unicorn opportunity is a smaller network with big potential that isn’t so cluttered yet.
• Most People Watch Mobile Video on Mute – This shows the importance of captioning. Most people are watching on mute so make sure your videos work with sound off. As a side note, over 1/3 of people watch TV with captions (I thought I was strange) showing that captioning is a part of media consumption – even with sound on.