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.

Instagram may be changing their feed to act just like Facebook’s

Instagram has just announced that it is testing a more personalized feed for its users. The new feed organizes content based on what users are most likely to be interested in, instead of most recent. As the heading states, this sounds a lot like Facebook.
Facebook used to be an absolute goldmine for marketers. Everyone would see your posts and gaining traction was simple. But now, marketing on Facebook is an art form, you must know how to market on Facebook in order to gain any traction. Otherwise your posts will fall into oblivion.
Is Instagram going to be the same way?
Instagram is currently an awesome medium for marketers. But if this update eventually rolls out to the masses, that could change. Many of your posts may never actually end up on anyone’s feeds and you will quickly lose any traction that you’ve gained. As of now, Instagram is planning to test this on only an unspecified single-digit percentage of users. But if you’re an Instagram marketer, you are definitely going to want to keep an eye out for any updates regarding the new feed.

Ads acting as article may start showing up on your Apple News news feed

You’ve seen them before, although you may not have noticed. I’m talking about ads that act like news articles. We see this on nearly every major platform out there, and now it’s coming to Apple News.
DigitalTrends reported that “according to the document, the ads are meant to blend in with their surrounding articles, and are in the same font. The only intentional tip-off of their real nature is a small tag reading “sponsored” in the lower left. Publishers who don’t use the appropriate metadata to mark their sponsored content could find their Apple News access revoked.”
This can be both good and bad news for marketers, but it is most likely good. You will now be able to advertise your own brand through Apple News and not get in trouble for it. The only downside might be that if readers begin to frown upon those sponsoring content and your brand gets a negative reputation. However, when we consider how long sponsored content has been making its way into news feeds that is unlikely to happen.