Staying up-to-date in the world of digital marketing is daunting, especially if you're a one-marketer team with your hands full of deliverables. That's why This Week in Digital is a great time-saver.

We sift through countless email updates and articles so you don't have to and highlight the most important and useful updates.

Keep your eyes out for a new update every Monday!

Monday's not a good day? We also do a live stream marketing update, Live At The Hive: Digital Marketing from the Trenches, every Friday at 4:20 pm!

Tune in on Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube to find out what's new and what's working straight from our marketing specialists.

Now let's get into what's happening this week in the marketing world!

1. Facebook Collaborative Stories
2. Google Makes Big Changes to Nofollow
3. YouTube Masthead is coming to TV
4. Facebook Messenger Lead Generation

Facebook Rolls Out Collaborative Stories

This week in digital, Facebook announced that they will be introducing a new story feature geared towards helping creators grow their audiences and monetization efforts.

• These new Collaborative Stories will allow multiple public figures (think influencers) to all posts within a single Facebook Story.
  
• This is yet another tool in Facebook's fight to help creators grow their reach, especially those still climbing back from the infamous brand page limitations of early 2018.
  
• It has been tested by large brands already (performing artists at Tomorrowland, a popular music festival in Belgium, used it with success).
  
• The Chainsmokers also tested the tool and saw 92% of their story views come from users who did not follow them yet.

This is a great opportunity for influencer marketing tactics like Takeovers, which have become very popular with large brands.

The way it works now, a takeover involves an influencer or third party actually logging in to a Business Profile to use it on their behalf, usually during an event. (i.e. Victoria Secret "Angel" takes over Instagram account posting during yearly fashion show.)

A lot of businesses are wary when it comes to giving an influencer (or anyone) log in credentials to their social accounts, so this alternative seems to resolve that concern.

Google Makes Big Changes to Nofollow

Google introduced two new link attributes that will join rel="nofollow" in an effort to better understand the purpose of the link:

1. rel=“sponsored”: Use this to identify links on a site that are created as part of an advertising or sponsorship agreement.
   
2. rel=“ugc”: Use this to identify links that appear within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.

These link attributes are considered "hints", meaning they may be ignored. The relevancy of the links will be left to the algorithm to decide.

• Starting now, use these two link attributes for either sponsored or UGC (or both) links.
• You don't have to change previously used "nofollow" links.
• After March 2020, "nofollows" will be considered a "hint".

Nofollow will work the same as always up until March 2020, at which time it will also be treated as a hint.

Search Engine Journal

Check out Dan explain it on Live At The Hive: Digital Marketing From The Trenches, Episode 95.

The YouTube Masthead is Coming to the TV screen

YouTube is now globally offering a beta version of YouTube Masthead for TV YouTube is now globally offering a beta version of YouTube Masthead for TV screens.

What does that mean? You can now reach your audience with the most prominent placement available on practically all devices.

• TV is YouTube's fastest-growing device for watch time.
  
• Over 250 million hours are watched per day on TV, making it the #1 ad-supported streaming platform for TV when considering reach and watch time.
  
• Masthead will autoplay after a few seconds on all compatible devices.
  
• Masthead & home-feed placements will ensure your ads are front and center on TV Screens.

Test it out today and explore how YouTube Masthead for TV Screens can impact your upper-funnel of sales.

According to a recent experiment we conducted with Media Science, YouTube ads on TV screens drive a 10 percent greater lift in recall than ads on linear TV.

Google Ads

Facebook Messenger Making Lead Generation Easier

Facebook Messenger has already had a great impact on both consumers and businesses (not to mention chatbot marketing.) Now, they've introduced a global rollout of lead generation straight from Messenger.

• You can now create message objectives when you use ads that click-to-Messenger.
  
• A conversation will be started which will use either pre-filled or free-form text to qualify your leads.
  
• Businesses have the ability to integrate messenger with their CRM to move the lead down your pipeline.
  
• You can also continue the conversation using Pages Inbox, Page Manager App. You can even continue through a third-party provider for live chat such as ManyChat.

Facebook Messenger has changed the way businesses provide customer service through social media.

Over 61% of people surveyed agree it's an easier way to get in touch with a business.

New features, platform updates, and tactics come around every week, but it's up to us as marketers to choose which one's are the best fit for our strategy. It's important to stay informed, but easy to get overwhelmed.

Remember if you try to do it all, you'll end up doing nothing!

Stay tuned for more ideas and updates in This Week in Digital. Or tune in to Live at the Hive on Friday's at 4:20 pm!

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