In the Headlights: September 25, 2019 Issue - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

Missed our live event and webinar this week about the social networks to watch in 2020? No worries – grab the full paper here!

This week, at our live event in New York City with Talkwalker, Inc., we suggested a term that many marketers hadn’t heard before: blended listening. In marketing, our operational silos often have us buying point solutions for every imaginable task; many marketers have a social media listening tool, a media monitoring tool, a hashtag tracking tool, a suite of SEO tools, etc. but none of these tools share data or insights.

Blended listening is exactly that: getting every vendor’s data into a common repository in some fashion so that we can connect the dots across the customer journey. When we look at the average business digital customer journey, every major channel has its own point solution, but none of the tools connect – and neither do our teams. How often does the SEO team talk to and share data with the social media team? How often does the social media team share insights with the mobile app development team?

When we sequence a digital customer journey, one of the key takeaways should be that, in order, each channel’s appearance in the journey should pass data and insights to the next channel:

If social media leads the journey in awareness, and SEO nurtures the customer, then the social media team should be passing along data to the SEO team. And the process isn’t one way – the SEO team may see data trending that could help the social media team create content that’s not being discussed yet, but will be soon.

Only a strategy of blended listening, when you have your people and processes integrated along with best-in-class point solutions, will magnify the impact of each team, individual, and vendor beyond simple linear growth. This isn’t a tool you can buy – it’s a set of processes and skills you need to grow in your marketing organization.

This week’s Bright Idea is the video edition of our MarTech Conference podcast episode. We’re experimenting with more video, so please let us know what you think AND what you’d like to see more of.

Watch the video on YouTube now »

In the rear view this week, we’re digging a bit into private community software packages. After the release of our Social Networks 2020 paper, a number of people asked about different platforms and options. Using the Talkwalker social monitoring platform and AHREFS SEO tools, we identified and looked at the top searches for 11 providers of private community services:

What we see is that Discord, the B2C app, has by far the greatest general overall monthly interest, followed by Slack and then Microsoft Teams. Facebook’s much vaunted Workplace by Facebook has gained no substantial share of mind – to no one’s surprise, given the company’s serious privacy issues.

What should you take away from this? Unless you have specific regulatory needs that mandate a certain platform, when it comes to setting up private communities for your brand, go where the people are (because you don’t need to convince someone to install an app they already have). If you’re a B2C marketer, build on Discord. If you’re a B2B marketer, build on Slack.

Methodology Statement: Trust Insights identified the top co-occurring terms around the major private community platforms such as Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams in relation to group chats with the Talkwalker platform. The study period was 13 months, from August 25, 2018 to September 25, 2019. Once specific brands were identified, Trust Insights validated search volumes in the AHREFS SEO tool.

Shiny Objects is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week. It uses machine learning for the automated one-sentence summaries.

Facebooks new Portal TV turns your television into a video chat monitor BGR: The built-in speaker that comes with both of those devices supports playing music when youre not on video calls, and they also include an adaptive display that adjusts the brightness and color to their surroundings making photos and videos look more natural.
What Got Banned? ‘Tens of Thousands’ Of Facebook Apps, And Twitter Accounts: The app shared user data with only limited protections in place and its developers refused for an audit.
Businesses can now schedule Instagram posts and IGTV videos with Facebook heres how: Earlier this week, Facebook released a new update for its Creator Studio, allowing businesses on the platform to schedule Instagram posts and IGTV videos up to at least six months in advance.

Media and Content

YouTube account verification changes draw ire from creators: No one lost a verification badge today; If you received an email that your channel will no longer be verified, this was just an advanced notice & you can appeal.
How to Scale Your Content Marketing: This comes with a caveat: Don’t bargain hunt for discount writing.Instead, find content companies that specialize in writing SEO-friendly content and let them do their magic.
How to Inspire More User-Generated Content for Your Brand: User-generated content (UGC) is a game-changer for businesses.

Tools, Machine Learning, and AI

Vishal Sikka: How AI Can Be Used to ‘Amplify Humanity’: We understand the strengths and weaknesses of previous AI approaches and I would love to see tens of millions of people be able to build intelligent systems, and to be able to bring basic intelligence into anything that they do.
How machine learning in policing could fuel racial discrimination: A better way forward is for the police to work with experts and build machine learning models specifically designed for policing purposes that make better use of data to tackle problems, such as those inherent with drill music videos.
Why and how communicators should embrace artificial intelligence: 2. Generate optimized content.

Analytics, Stats, and Data Science

How Data Analytics Can Drive Innovation: They are also very, very productive in terms of their innovation.
Tableau Software’s latest AI helps explain what your data means: Explain Data is all about making sophisticated statistical analysis of data more accessible, the company said.
4 Methods to Optimize Python Code for Data Science: I feel this is a must-know method for data scientists who deal with data manipulation tasks (so almost everyone then!).

SEO, Google, and Paid Media

Breadcrumb structured data reports now available in Google Search Console: If your breadcrumb trail isnt displaying as expected, this new report gives you something to check, which may help you resolve the issue.
9 Web Development Trends to Skip in 2019: Vue, Angular, and React are a few of the most popular JavaScript frameworks available today, but many novice web developers are making the mistake of diving into these systems without first cultivating stronger roots in basic JavaScript.
Search Ads 360 rolls out auction-time bidding for Google Search campaigns: By activating auction-time bidding you can enhance your performance when bidding on Google Search, while still maintaining your cross-channel bidding strategy powered by Search Ads 360, explained Jason Krueger, a Search Ads 360 product manager, in the announcement.

Business and Leadership

Healthcare industry needs treatment to improve data security: A new report from SecurityScorecard confirms this, aggregating data from a number of different sources it reveals that healthcare remains the most breached industry.
Commercializing Blockchain: Strategic Applications in the Real World, July 2019, reviewed: The book follows a logical series of chapters, looking at what sectors could benefit from blockchain technologies.
[What We Can Learn from These Innovative Women by @DrRKayGreen](https://trustinsights.news/2cpvh): Anyone who wants to start a business but is waiting for the right time should take note of Nichole Mustards journey.

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Upcoming Events

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MarketingProfs B2B Forum, October 2019, Washington, DC
Social Media Marketing World, March 2020, San Diego, CA

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