The Popcorn team understands the importance of ensuring that we’re up to date with emerging trends, digital marketing news stories and platform updates. During our weekly team meeting, we each highlight an interesting article or news story. In this weekly blog feature, we’ll share our exciting findings of the week with you.
THE NEWS ON TUES!
Hutchinson, A. (2020, May 18), “TikTok Appoints New CEO in Disney Executive Kevin Mayer” – Social Media Today
TikTok has appointed a new CEO; Disney Executive, Kevin Mayer. Mayer’s background as the Head of Streaming for Disney+ puts him in a capable position to guide the ever-expanding platform. This new hire has sparked speculation that TikTok may start to expand into new services including a record label and longer form digital content. Savage.
Koltun, N. (2020, May 18) “Where does TikTok go from here?” – Mobile Marketer
Continuing with the topic of TikTok, this article takes a deep dive into the potential next moves for TikTok. This creator-centric platform continues to grow at an impressive rate. Later this year, the user base is forecast to skew slightly older towards the older demographic. High numbers of families used the platform as a bonding exercise during the lockdown, so it looks as though the platform will be increasingly flooded by those from the older generation too. So the question is: Where does TikTok go from here? It seems the only way is up.
Hutchinson, A. (2020, May 11) “Google Announces New, Free Digital Skills Training Sessions Online” – Social Media Today
Google has announced an expansion of its Grow with Google training and education courses and has released a series of online courses. These courses offer individuals an excellent opportunity to use Google as a resource for understanding Google tools a little better but also as a learning resource for a variety of digital skills. Some examples of training sessions are: “Connect with your customers and manage your business remotely” and “Make the leap to E-commerce”.
Side note: Online courses are great, but please try to remember that your productivity does not determine your worth! 😉
Bond, S. (2020, May 19) “Facebook Launches Virtual Shopping Mall, Saying It Will Help Small Businesses” – NPR.org
Facebook is making a big push into online shopping by letting businesses set up free storefronts on its social network and Instagram. Shoppers can browse virtual “storefronts” and make purchases either directly from the Instagram app using the Instagram checkout feature or from the businesses website.
Have you been supporting local businesses in your area? Other than showing support online, what other efforts have you gone to give them your support?
Sterling, G., (2020, May 15) “More missing Google My Business reviews appearing as publication speed picks up” – Search Engine Land.
Due to COVID-19, office closure and a shortage of moderators, Google temporarily disabled publication of new reviews in mid-March. Google is now gradually bringing back new user reviews, new user photos, new short names, and Q&A by country and business category, especially as more businesses reopen. However, many local search engine optimizers have complained that they still aren’t seeing the bulk of their customers’ reviews appear online.
To summarise: trying new things and focusing on learning is vital at this time, as is streamlining e-commerce and making online shopping easier. After weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, is our online behaviour adapting? More importantly, am I no longer too old for Tik Tok?