Google Trends can be a great source of insights to help guide your content strategy and understand which subjects are gaining momentum online. And now, Google is adding some new tricks to the Trends application, providing additional insights based on more specific search behaviors around each topic. [Source: Social Media Today]
Twitter is experimenting with a new feature that will show how many people are “talking about” individual, popular tweets. The metric shows up under some embedded tweets when they appear elsewhere on the web, and seems to replace both the retweet and replies totals with one, cumulative total. [Source: TechCrunch]
Facebook is internally testing a tool that businesses would be able to use to send message blasts to people who had conversed with their accounts on Messenger. [Source: Marketing Land]
A new WhatsApp update rolled out for iOS will let users play YouTube videos right within the instant messaging app. The update will also let users navigate to another chat while you are watching the video. [Source: The Economic Times]
Instagram is testing out a wide range of new features including a native Regram button, an archive Stories feature, a share to WhatsApp option, a beta version of its app, and more. [Source: 9to5Mac]
Snapchat business users are in for a treat with the recent changes made to Snapchat’s self-serve ad platform. With two new ad formats, the objective is to enhance the stickiness of the platform and derive maximum engagement for the users. [Source: Logicserve Digital]
Google announced it is launching a new Google Finance experience that brings many of the finance features directly into Google Search on desktop and mobile. With this launch, Google has dropped the portfolio, the ability to download your portfolio, and historical tables. [Source: Search Engine Land]
After Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, YouTube is now planning to roll out a Stories-like feature called Reels. The launch of Reels Beta was made on YouTube in its blog post titled as ‘Expanding community on YouTube’. The company says that Reels is a spin on Stories format but designed specifically for Creators. [Source: India Today]
Snapchat is rolling out new filters that can recognize what’s in your photos in order to suggest graphics, like borders or stickers, to accompany your posts. These filters are capable of recognizing images of objects like pets, sports, and food, as well as specific locations, like beaches or concerts. [Source: TechCrunch]
After announcing their direct message photo remix tools back in August, Instagram has confirmed that the new option is now being rolled out to all users. [Source: Social Media Today]
Expert Opinion:
- Build data- savvy teams for long term success
In today’s mobile-first world, it is crucial for everyone in an organization to understand analysis and interpretation of marketing data. Although a lot of marketers do not have enough analyst-related resources to accomplish data-related goals, if we look at most of the leading marketers, they seem to have figured out ways to enable everyone in their teams to be able to use and analyse the huge chunk of available data. Training the team members to be experts in data analysis not only helps strengthen the analysis purview but also helps figure out ways to effectively reach out to the customers at the right time in their journey.
Here are some ways you can make your team members data-savvy marketers and succeed in your marketing efforts.
– Knowledge and skills assessment
Get an understanding of the knowledge and skills of your team members and what they need to learn. Incorporate learning programs, training modules wherever required to speed up their analysis skills.
– Ensure your data is of great value
Make sure that the data you share is of high value and is presentable before giving your teams a peek at the same. The data should be simple, organized, understandable and usable. This also helps in setting clear and common standards that the team members need to follow.
– Provide easy access
Allow easy access to data without to help the teams understand the reports & recommendations and to provide an idea about how to use the same. This eventually helps in improving the overall performance of the organization.
– Reward the team members
It is important to recognize and reward the members who efficiently use data insights for the campaigns. This helps in building enthusiasm amongst the team and also provides you insights about the members who can take on the role of training other members.
– Provide technology support
When your team members understand the data analysis game, it is necessary to provide them the required technology that ca help them take relevant actions. This helps profoundly in optimizing user experience. As per a recent survey by Econsultancy and IBM, 33% of elite marketers say having the right technologies for data collection and analysis is most useful in understanding customers.
For brands that do not have a strong data-driven marketing strategy yet, it is high time to make use of the big data and empower your teams to be pros at data analysis. This is sure to help you reach the audience better and also grow your business in today’s highly competitive environment.
