The Stack is a weekly podcast where we share and discuss the latest trends, news, and content from the world of marketing, sales, and tech. In each episode, Sean, Tim, and Ryan sit down to chat about the hard-hitting questions related to sales, marketing, and tech. You can subscribe on iTunes and Soundcloud.
In this episode, we share some major announcements coming directly from Google and Facebook and bring back the lightning round that we introduced for the first time last week.
We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
Social Media
1) Global Launch of Premieres, Polls, and Top Fans
Just yesterday, Facebook announced the global launch of a handful of tools for publishers and creators, including. Two of the most important of these are closely related to Facebook’s push for video:
Premieres: Premieres allows pages to publish pre-recorded videos as though they are live events, making it easier than ever to create content that generates discussion and interaction from your audience. This removes some of the pressure of creating a true Facebook Live video and also makes it easier to get more value out of your more professionally-produced content.
Video Polls: Facebook Live videos are about to get functionality that allows publishers to add polls directly into the video content, encouraging audience members to interact with the content and gather insights. Though currently limited to Live videos, the functionality will soon be rolled out to on-demand videos as well.
Key Takeaway:
- Facebook live lets you pre-record and offer it up as if it’s live
- No longer have to worry about messing up in the middle of your Facebook Live video.
- The new Polls feature could be a nice way to keep your viewers engaged and will also be a nice way to conduct market research along the way.
Google News
2) Make Money from your Actions, Create better user experiences
This week Google finally gave businesses a real reason to care about Google Home, Google Assistant, and developing a plan for utilizing these technologies. They created a way to make money with it. As they shared in their announcement:
“One of the common questions we get from developers is: how do I create a seamless path for users to complete purchases across all these types of devices? We also get asked by developers: how can I better personalize my experience for users on the Assistant with privacy in mind?”
Here are the highlights of the announcement:
- Google is making it easier for developers with support for digital goods and subscriptions.
- Assistant is getting a good makeover allowing developers to make visually rich integrations
- The company headspace now offers Android users an option to subscribe to their plans. You can get there by saying hey google “meditate with headspace”
- They are also simplifying account linking and user personalization with Google sign-in for assistant
- This will help a smooth transition and help with contextual marketing efforts by Google.
- Huge Google Assistant makeover making it necessary for awesome visual kick-ass visuals.
3) Google Say’s “No, No, No” to Link Building
In a Google Webmaster Central Help Forum thread, Google’s John Mueller chimed in on a conversation about building domain authority with links. In the forum, someone had asked if “making links” that point to a subdomain would lead to an increased authority for the root domain. This led to an initial reply of:
“If you are thinking about creating links to influence search rankings this would do more bad than good.”
As per Google: “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”
John Mueller than added:
“Just to add to Hardial’s comment — if *you’re* making quality links to your site, then that would be considered against our webmaster guidelines, and by that, those links would definitely not be considered “quality”.”
Key Takeaway:
- Some at Google seem increasingly uneasy with the idea that people are making focused efforts to secure links rather than waiting for them to naturally come.
- You should only attempt to secure links when you believe the addition of the link would truly benefit the visitors of that website and be sure to only invest in ethical “white hat” activities.
Lightning Round
- Get started with dynamic rendering
- Google confirms minor search ranking algorithm update
- Register to vote on Snapchat
- Snapchat introduces visual search
Listen or watch for new episodes each Friday, or check out the archives to watch past episodes on-demand. Like what you hear? Leave us a review or let us know in the comments!
