Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 32 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
ICYMI Tuesday: The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Key to TikTok Success
+ Create session-based GA4 audiences
Contents
I. Beware of ‘Algospeak’ on Your Channels
II. Facebook Allows Third-Party Reels Posting
III. News Industry Most Affected by Latest Google Update
IV. TikTok’s Telling #BookTok Partnership
V. New Facebook Features for Creators
VI. Also From FB: How To Get Your Content Seen
I. Beware of ‘Algospeak’ on Your Channels
Forbes has an interesting (and not too lengthy) piece about “algospeak,” and AI’s difficulties detecting it.
Social media users are increasingly using codewords, emojis and deliberate typos—so-called “algospeak”—to avoid detection by apps’ moderation AI when posting content that is sensitive or might break their rules.
🛠 Why does this matter? I don’t want to be an alarmist. I do, however, think it’s important to be aware of these codewords that can infiltrate social media platforms, especially if your personal or company account is involved.
More specifically, you wouldn’t want users using your comment section for a heinous, encrypted discussion about exploiting children or causing others harm in a different way.
As the article mentions, upcoming U.S. midterm elections could be a strong target of conspiracy theorists, misinformation spreaders and criminals. For news organizations, it’s especially important to protect the credibility of your platform, whether that be a website, an app or social media.
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II. Facebook Allows Third-Party Reels Posting
We realize that many creators and brands rely on third-party tools when creating Facebook Reels and we want to enable simplicity and ease of sharing video content from their tool or app of choice through the ‘share to reels’ feature.
🛠 Why does this matter? Social media sharing tools like Buffer and Sprout Social, for example, will now be able to build a Reel-sharing feature into their platforms.
If you use a third-party platform to share social media content, this makes your work a little easier, as you won’t have to go directly to Facebook to post a Reel.
Meta previously introduced an Instagram Reels API in June.
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III. News Industry Most Affected by Latest Google Update
Google’s latest core update, which we discussed last week, is expected to finish in the coming days. It’s affects, however, have already been felt. Particularly in the news industry.
While SERP volatility remains at the upper limits of “normal”, there was a noticeable spike the day after the September core update was released, according to the Semrush Sensor. (The preceding helpful content update ran from Aug. 25 – Sept. 9.)
But that’s nothing compared to the high volatility the news industry has been experiencing the last 30 days. In fact, Sept. 22 was the most volatile day of the month so far. (This is probably due to the product reviews update, which began Sept. 20.)
The next-highest category was sports, at 7.1.
RankRanger also reported increased volatility the day after the core update was released, and again Thursday.
Note: The charts I shared are based on mobile searches. Both tools have separate charts for desktop, though the results are roughly similar.
🛠 Why does this matter? What these charts measure is how much change there is in SERP rankings. High volatility isn’t necessarily good or bad on its own.
For example, high volatility can be a good thing if a lot of your content suddenly climbs the search rankings. Of course, it can be equally bad if lots of high-ranking content falls off the first page.
The important thing is to be aware of dramatic fluctuations, and check your internal data accordingly. That is, look at your performance report in Google Search Console, and check out your organic search traffic in Google Analytics 4 (or whatever tool you use).
If you see a significant dropoff, it’s time to dig deeper and find out why Google (and/or other search engines) have placed less value on your content.
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