The weekly Digital Download is out. Get all the Marketing hot news, quick tips, and highlights you need to get you through the week, rolled up into a five-minute read.

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In the News 

Hot Off the Press 

• Star Rating Now Showing in Google Review Summary
  • In the world of local SEO, there’s always something new to keep your eye out for that could be a game-changer. This week, that news is that star ratings are now appearing in review snippet on Google My Business listings. Previously, when a business’s Knowledge Panel was generated by a local search, Google would highlight potentially relevant keywords. For example, “great service” might be bolded for a restaurant. Now, not only is a searcher presented with these highlighted keywords, but the accompanying star rating is shown too.  So, if someone left a review saying “great service” along with a 4-star rating, that’s what will be shown to the searcher.

• In-SERP Lead Forms Convert Google Ads Users Without a Click-through
  • Previously in beta, Google Ads announced its updated lead form extension which pops up a form directly from a click on an ad in search, Video, and Discovery. If opted into, it means that when a user clicks a headline from an ad, the lead form appears in the SERP instead of requiring users click through to an advertiser’s landing page to complete a form. After the form completion, the lead can choose to go to the advertiser’s site or continue searching on Google.

• Instagram Plans to Launch Multi-Participant Live-Streams Later This Month
  • While audio live-streaming is having its moment, Instagram is still catching up on the last big live-streaming trend, with Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri revealing that that company is planning to launch multi-participant IG Live video chats within the next few weeks.

• Twitter Spaces to Perform Wider Testing and Bring About a Few Changes
  • Twitter Spaces is now working on wider testing for better features. Twitter in November of last year announced that they will be launching an audio only chat room similar to Clubhouse on their application which will be called “Twitter Spaces.” This feature according to the company will allow users to express themselves more along with other people through proper conversation which they cannot do in a 280 characters’ tweet. The feature was powered by Periscope and will allow users to create spaces to start conversations. Anybody who creates the Space, their followers will be able to join that conversation, however, who is allowed to speak will be managed by the host.

• Sorry, Millennials. The 😂 Emoji Isn’t Cool Anymore
  • Bad news for people who frequently use the 😂emoji: It is no longer cool. In recent weeks, two internet-savvy generations have been clashing in videos and comments on TikTok over the hallmarks of millennial culture that are now deemed uncool by Gen Z. The list includes skinny jeans, side parts, and the popular laughing crying emoji that some millennials, myself included, use hundreds of times a day, or more. Side note: Gen Xers unite. Continue using any emoji you like, wearing your wide legs and rocking the vote! I see you quietly taking over the world. 

• The Most Important Elements of Customer Segmentation in 2021
  • When it comes to customer segmentation in our new normal, marketers have some serious training to do. Segmentations are massive undertakings that lost a lot of luster during the pandemic. Even before COVID-19, they took months to complete and analyze, could cost into the six figures to conduct, and depreciated rapidly. They represent a sliver in time, and as soon as they are completed, they go stale quickly. Segmentations conducted before the pandemic lost usefulness in the face of new purchasing behavior. What is the most important thing about segmentation moving forward? Flexibility.

• 50 of the Best Social Media Tools Selected by Top Marketers
  • Let’s be honest, social media is a jungle. Forget about the flood of apps, integrations, and add-ons, just figuring which network you should invest in is overwhelming. What if you could ask today’s influential online marketers one question: “What social media tool is your all-time, desert-island, can’t-live-without favorite?” Aaron Orendorf did just that.

• Dispo Explained – The Next Hot, Invite Only, Exclusive App Still in Beta and Taking Twitter by Storm
  • Dispo acts like a disposable camera. It has an old-school view finder and that scroll wheel to moves your film forward. The new beta version has a social component that allows users to follow friends, like and comment. The original app is available for download. The new Beta is invite-only. How is Dispo different than Instagram?
    • Users snap pics and wait until the next morning at 9:00 am to see the “developed” photos
    • You get one chance to take your pictures. If you close your eyes, that’s your pic.
    • The pics are grainy and raw like a real disposable camera
    • Users can’t edit the photos, add text or filters.
    • If you are a Kardashian, or into posting perfect fake laughing pics with your friends, this one is not for you.

Creativity 

Out of the Box 

• What Made Weetabix Baked Beans a Viral Hit – From the Agency Behind it
  • The viral Weetabix and baked beans meme was successful because it combined much-needed humor and a sense of “debatability”, the boss of the agency behind the meme has told PR Week. The post from Weetabix’s Twitter account, featuring an image of the breakfast cereal covered in Heinz Baked Beans, led to a barrage of responses from other brands and organizations such as Ford, Domino’s, Kellogg’s and KFC.

  https://twitter.com/weetabix/status/1359074254789165059?s=20

• How a Paradox Mindset Boosts Creativity
  • Before you can create something new, you first have to use and even mimic something old. It sounds like a paradox but it’s one at the heart of creativity. You have to consume before you create in order to understand what others have done. Only then can you start to innovate. But can paradoxes themselves improve creativity?
• The Bandwagon Effect: What Brands Need to Know About Working With Social Media Trends
  • Your brand doesn’t need to be on every social media app. Last year there was a lot of hype around TikTok, right now it’s Clubhouse. Considering new platforms to use is exciting, but the first step should always be researching. Figure out your target audience and assess if it lines up with the demographics of the app. To establish a successful presence on any new platform or trend takes careful planning and resources. Every social media manager will encounter ‘we should have an x, y, and z account’ at some point in their career. Knowing when to say yes or no, plus having the information to back your judgment, is an amazing skill to have.

• Purpose, Connection and Culture: Lessons from Twitter’s #BestOfTweets Winning Brands
  • Key trends for this year include marketing with purpose, tapping into the culture at the speed of life and being personalized, according to Southeast Asia’s top brands on Twitter. The Drum and Twitter have brought together three of the winners of last year’s #BestOfTweets to share lessons and tips about how to become a successful brand and create campaigns worth remembering and talking about, as well as what they think will be the biggest marketing trends for 2021.

• Forget the Super Bowl Ads – Brands Took Their “A” Game to Twitter
  • This week, we’re going down the rabbit hole of brand tweets during the Super Bowl. We’re measuring out our pasta cooking time with hot tunes. And we’re racing along with a brand underwriting a NASCAR fan’s dream job. No ad budget, no problem. Brands figured out how to capitalize on the biggest collective audience of the year –without having to spend millions to air a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl.

Tricks of the Trade 

 Tips and Tricks 

• Twitter Revue: Email Newsletters? What You Need to Know
  • Want to turn your Twitter followers into email newsletter subscribers? Have you heard of Revue? Twitter has long been used by thought leaders, business owners, brands, authors, and content creators to spark a conversation about what’s happening around the world and how it affects their industry. And now, that conversation is about to get deeper. Twitter has acquired Revue to give its members a way to build and share an easy-to-use newsletter—which is poetic since Revue was designed to make sending an email newsletter as “simple and enjoyable as Tweeting.”

• How to Use Audiences in Google Ads: Ask a PPC
  • What are audiences in paid media? Learn the basics of audiences in Google Ads and how to use them in your campaigns in this AMA about PPC column. Getting comfortable building prospect personas and using those traits to target budgets and creatives is a crucial skill going into 2021 and beyond. Using audiences without taking the time to adapt your creative to the given audience is arguably a bigger waste of money than not leveraging them at all. Be sure to take that important creative step (regardless of whether the creative is for search, display, YouTube, or discovery).

• How to Start a Clubhouse Room and Moderate Like a Pro
  • Are you using the Clubhouse app? Wondering how to start and moderate an engaging Clubhouse room? In this article, you’ll discover how the pros host and moderate a room on Clubhouse. Learn how to add other moderators, bring people to the stage, mute people, and more.

• The Ultimate Guide for a Successful Brand Awareness Campaign
  • Brand awareness fosters loyalty. The more people recognize your brand, the more likely they’ll buy your products or services. Simply put, brand awareness can influence our buying decisions. To create a successful and strategic brand awareness campaign, set goals for what you want to learn, and why. It’s important to know your customers well and where they hang out so you can create targeted campaigns. Learn how to create a brand awareness campaign and the best ways to measure its success.

• Paid vs. Organic Social: Which Strategy is Right for your Brand?
  • Being more strategic about maximizing your business’ visibility on social media is a great goal for marketers in 2021, but where do you start? You might consider upping your content and engagement game on the organic side or looking into how a paid campaign could benefit your business’ bottom line. How to maximize these channels and the best approach to do so is not always so simple and may require a deeper dive.

• Cool Tool Alert!
  • Emojitracker: Real-time emoji use on Twitter

• Instagram Keeps a Detailed List of Everything it Thinks You’re nIterested in — Here’s How to Find it
  • You can see what Instagram thinks you’re interested in by going into the app’s deeper settings options. The list of interests is related to ads and ad data. Instagram says your ad interests are based on a combination of who you follow, what posts you like or comment on, and other websites and apps you use. If you have a Facebook account, Instagram pulls data from there, too. You can check your own list of topics of interest that Instagram has compiled about you to see if it’s accurate.

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