Weekly Marketing Roundup

Every week, updates are released, products are announced, or an event happens that could potentially affect your marketing strategy. Some things spell disaster while others scream opportunity. So each week, I’m going to provide you with some updates from the news that could affect your marketing strategy, for either better or worse. So checkout this week’s weekly marketing roundup.

Facebook is opening up Messenger to publishers

Facebook is once again expanding the power of their Messenger App. They recently began allowing Ubers to be hailed directly from Messenger and now they have released plans to open Messenger to publishers as well.
Marketing Land’s report says:
Publishers will use the bot-based service to share stories with readers inside of Facebook Messenger. Rather than the typical articles people may come across in their News Feeds, publishers would be able to share short snippets about stories in Messenger threads, along with links back to the full story on their website, according to the report.
This is big news for marketers as it allows an entirely new channel via Facebook. Facebook has bounced back and forth between being a friend to marketers or an enemy. This is looking like Facebook is beginning to make Messenger more friendly to marketers. Of course, if you want this to be effective for your brand you will want to be sure you’re creating value. If you are, I suggest keeping an eye out for an update from Facebook.

Google is now allowing celebrities and brands to post directly in search results

Not only is Facebook stepping up Messenger, but now Google is stepping up their search results. Google has begun testing an entirely new way of displaying certain search results. This experiment could eventually let any brand, celebrity, or organization have a dedicated place on Google.
What is first starting out as a way to put political candidates stances on top of search results, will turn into an entirely new market for Google’s search engine. The Twitter-feed like search results will allow brands and celebrities to have updates displayed directly in the results. When clicking on one of these results, a dedicated full-screen webpage with text and photos is shown.
Reportedly, this new feature does not have a name but it does have a website, which you can check out here. As of now, the new feature is on a waitlist and is only available to 2016 US presidential candidates. But in the future, Google does plan on making it available to other prominent figures and organizations.
This is potentially huge news for marketers because if social media updates become a norm in search results, a strong social media strategy is even more imperative. You will want to make sure all social media updates are also strong performers on a search engine. This could potentially add an entirely new element in digital/social media marketing.