Welcome to Edition No. 3 of my weekly digital strategy newsletter, providing practical analysis of the latest in the world of content creation.
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Contents
I. Analysis: Let’s Get Reel
II. News: Google’s Latest Support for Local Publishers
III. Tips: What is anchor text?
Let’s Get Reel
On Nov. 1, 2017, Mark Zuckerberg made a grand proclamation on his company’s Q3 earnings call: “Over the next three years, the biggest trend in our products will be the growth of video.”
It was the first of 58 mentions of “video(s)” (by all participants combined) on that call. A little further along in his opening speech, Zuckerberg made this comment: “Video is exploding, and mobile video advertising is a big opportunity.”
At that time, he was referring most particularly to Live videos.
Fast forward to, well, right now, and there are a cries of a yet another Facebook – er, Meta – “pivot to video,” this time via Instagram.
Last week, Meta held its Q4 2021 earnings call. An excerpt from The Information’s “Creator Economy” newsletter by Mahira Dayal:
In the earnings call for the fourth quarter, executives mentioned Reels 34 times and analysts used it another six, according to a transcript of the call. Combined, the 40 instances amount to a mention of the short-form video app once every minute-and-a-half during the hour-long call.
Reels, of course, are Instagram’s version of TikTok’s staple feature.
This isn’t the first time we have been down Copycat Avenue.
In August 2016, Instagram announced a new feature that has arguably grown to become its most popular: Stories. The new product came as no surprise to avid Snapchat users. It was a near carbon-copy of the competitor app’s ephemeral status feature.
(Snapchat rebuffed a $3 billion offer from Facebook in 2013. Facebook, of course, bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012.)
About 97 percent of Meta’s revenue (nearly $33 billion in Q4) comes from ads, with mobile driving the majority of that number. So it stands to reason that Meta’s survival depends on its ability to reach users on its mobile products.
I recently created three new Instagram accounts. The first, Gerick News, is closely related to the topic of this newsletter. The second and third are meant to explore my passions for coffee and bread, respectively. (Someone tell Instagram to give me @breadley. That guy hasn’t posted in more than 6 years!)
I’m not telling you this as a plug for follows (though please follow!), but rather to demonstrate the power of Reels in the present moment.
On @Gerickoffee, I created a fairly simple reel of a barista friend making a pair of espresso drinks. As of this writing, it’s been seen more than 5,100 times and has 102 likes. This is for an account with a mere 56 followers. (Oh wow! Fifty-seven now thanks to you. OK, I’ll stop.)
On @GerickNews – more relevant for our purposes – the first-ever post was a remix Reel created pretty much just to share a tip in the first edition of this newsletter. It has been seen nearly 7,500 times and has 188 likes. Followers on that account? Only 16! And 12.5 percent of those followers are my wife and me.
Why am I telling you this? Because two brand-new accounts with a combined 72 followers have amassed almost 13,000 views on a pair of Reels.
I’m not saying that anything you throw against the wall will stick, but I am saying that, right now – and perhaps as long as TikTok continues its meteoric rise – Reels, when done well, are a great way to reach not only your immediate followers, but potentially thousands more.
From The Information:
“It’s the way that creators are going to be able to capture the attention of their fans and really be able to engage with them—and businesses are going to be able to do the same thing.” That’s how Marne Levine, chief business officer at Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, views its short-form video feature, Reels.
To conclude, let’s look at some practical tips for Reels and TikToks (and even Snaps, if you like):
Don’t simply cut video made for another platform and upload it. Create something original for Insta and TikTok, respectively
As with any piece of far-reaching content, quality is king. This is a universal and timeless tip for any platform. (See last week’s discourse on SEO.) Simply making a Reel/TT is no guarantee of success
Keep things interesting. We humans have the attention span of a hamster these days, all thanks to the devil’s device we carry around in our pockets or on one of those weird necklace things for people who apparently don’t have pockets. Aim for these characteristics:
Catch the user’s attention in the first 0.29 seconds (I’m not kidding – think of how fast you can swipe up from one post to the next)
Fast-paced video with quick cuts. Even a little too fast is OK – that means users might be inclined to go back and watch a second or third time, which is great for your algorithm score
Use graphics/GIFs/text/effects to break the monotony and add useful context
Make it as short as possible, although that doesn’t mean it has to be short. But the longer your video, the higher the bar for holding users’ attention
Investments
Sound: At minimum, buy a microphone. I got this one from RØDE and it has markedly improved the quality of my recordings
Light: This can be free depending on where the sun is and how big your windows are. But a half-decent ring light won’t break the bank, either
Video editing: I’m on a 90-day trial of Final Cut Pro X, and I’m strongly considering buying it for the one-time fee. There are cheaper alternatives, but using a separate video editor gives you a lot more control, and you won’t be at risk of losing all your work should Insta or TikTok crash
I could share more, but that’s a good place to start. This isn’t a call to throw out your existing social media strategy, but – I’ll keep this ships-on-the-sea metaphor going for as long as I can – it’s good to know the tides and the wind directions.
News
ALPHABET UNVEILS ‘GOOGLE NEWS SHOWCASE’
Today, we’re doing more to make it easier to find local publishers in Google News Showcase by bringing their panels into the local section of Google News. News Showcase publishers hand pick the content for these local panels, enabling them to highlight the most important stories of the day in their area and giving them another powerful way to deepen their relationship with readers.
Publishers will also be able to see how readers interact with their News Showcase content in real-time.
More positive updates: “We also improved our ranking systems so authoritative, relevant local news sources appear more often alongside national publications in our features such as Top Stories.”
TIKTOP TOPS TIME-SPENT-PER-DAY COUNT
U.S. adults (18-plus) spend more time per day on TikTok (38 minutes, down 2 from last year) than any other social media platform.
DON’T EXPECT META TO PULL OUT OF EUROPE
Despite reports suggesting otherwise, Meta says it does not want to pull Facebook and Instagram from Europe.
“Much like 70 other EU and US companies, we are identifying a business risk resulting from uncertainty around international data transfers. … We have absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe; of course we don’t.”
WHAT INFLUENCERS GET PAID
Influencers earn an average of $4,491 per post on YouTube, and $3,514 per TikTok. But the big money comes from combining an Instagram Story with a YouTube video: $13,025 per hit, according to a recent study by IZEA.
For “Nano” influencers – between 1,000–9,999 followers – payout has grown 36X since 2015 to $901 per post.
TWITTER’S PLAN TO KEEP INFLUENCERS ON ITS PLATFORM
On its Q4 earnings call, new CEO Parag Agrawal “said new products aimed at creators, including live audio feature Spaces, newsletters and money-making tools such as Super Follows, should help grow Twitter’s business.”
The platform’s leaders say they want to do a better job of helping creators make money on Twitter instead of simply building an audience there and bolting to other platforms.
WHICH CMS ARE YOU USING?
The most popular CMSs for news websites*:
WordPress (44%)
Custom CMS
Drupal
HubSpot
Unbounce
Wehaa
Squarespace
*In a study by Press Gazette of 2,409 news websites
GOOGLE SEARCH
Don’t worry about having too much code compared to the amount of text on your site – it’s not an SEO factor.
Have a CTA (call-to-action) button on your site? Putting it “above the fold” – so that it appears on the screen without any scrolling once a page loads – doesn’t hurt SEO, either.
HERE IS META’S ‘BIG GAME’ AD
UPDATES & TESTS
YouTube
Get ready for shoppable videos on YouTube, where viewers are watching more than 700 million hours of YouTube content daily. The platform also says its expanding monetization options for all three of its formats: Shorts (its TikTok clone), Live and video on demand.
A button to turn off politics content in your feed, as well as live video and audio events.
TikTok
Updated its community guidelines to give guidance when you see an online challenge after a number of harmful trends were recently spread using the platform, including school shooting threat hoaxes:
101 Tip
Pages vs. ???
Not everything in Google Analytics 4 looks (or will look) the same as it does in Universal. I want to help you figure them out now so that when The Transition takes place, you won’t be in the dark.
I’ll be sharing these differences on social media as I come across them. To start, let’s look at what a “page” in GAU is called in GA4:
You can also view this tip on TipTok. I mean TikTok.
Advanced Tip
SEO Anchor Text
You might know that inbound links to your site are important. But did you know that the exact text to which the link is attached – called anchor text – is important, too.
For example, above I gave some advice on how to improve your online videos, and I linked to a microphone made by RØDE (not sponsored, though I wish it were!) with the text “this one from RØDE”.
Because improving RØDE’s SERP position isn’t my number one priority, I linked to the words that made the most sense to me without adding too much orange – the color of linked text – to the page. What would have been even more helpful for them?
Probably if I would have linked to text such as “great iPhone microphone from RØDE” instead of what I actually linked.
Why does that matter? Because when Google’s search bots crawl sites, one of the factors they examine is anchor text. If done in good faith, that text tells the bots what the linked site is all about.
While it’s often out of your control the manner in which others link to your website, it’s important to be aware of how it works. Especially if you own more than one site and crosslink between them, or even link between pages on your own single site.
So if I want people to find my website, bradgerick.com, it would make sense that anytime someone links to me, “Brad Gerick” would be the anchor text. But what if I’m hoping to generate more leads for my consulting business? Then someone linking to my site with the anchor text “digital strategy expert” would be much more valuable than using “Mount St. Mary’s alum”.
I don’t care if Google’s bots know much about where I went to college, but it would be great if they’re trained to think of me as an expert in my work.
So how can you put this into practice? Here are two ways to get started.
When you do have an opportunity to link to pages on your site – whether within the site itself or from another site – choose your anchor text carefully. What do you want people to think of when they come to your site? Link to that, and try to choose brief key phrases – like search terms – instead of entire sentences.
Remember the golden rule: Link to others as you would have them link to you. If it were your site, what anchor text would you want others to utilize? I guess I broke that a bit with RØDE, but I’ll make up for it now with two other sites:
For more information, check out these posts on anchor text by Semrush and SEO expert Moz.
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Shoutout to Donn for letting me know the links were hard to read. I changed the color from apocalyptic green to Tahiti-sunset orange.
Here are two loaves of bread I baked while editing this week’s edition: