Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
Hello and welcome to the latest digital roundup, this week brings a focus on ways that small businesses are being helped by brands such as Meta and Adobe, how users will find the new WordPress easier than ever to use, and how TikTok plan to expand their advertising capabilities.
TikTok introduce Pulse- a new way to advertise
The number 1 social media platform is stepping up its advertising capabilities with a new advertising feature called TikTok Pulse: which is a way for brands to be a part of the everyday moments and culture that users engage in.
What is TikTok Pulse?
TikTok Pulse is a new advertising solution that focuses on context, so your ads show around the top content on TikTok- specifically, your ads can show next to video content on a user’s For You feed.
TikTok has stated that Pulse will show your ads among the top 4% of all videos on that platform. The additional benefits of TikTok pulse include:
- Drives engagement and action.
- Confidence in brand suitability measurements.
TikTok plan to offer 12 categories of Pulse for brands to choose where their ads will show, some examples of the categories include:
- Beauty
- Fashion
- Cooking
- Gaming
As you can choose where your ads will show category wise, It allows you to engage with the groups that are most relevant to your brand.
To ensure that your ads are running next to the top content of your selected category, TikTok will use an in-house inventory filter. The filter will ensure that your ad is suitable for the platform.
To measure the impact of your Pulse ad, you will have access to third party brand suitability and viewability verification for post-campaign measurement.
As of now, individual creators and media publishers who have at least 100k followers are eligible for the program, it’s believed the program will launch in the US before anywhere else.
Meta expanding ad formats and tools for small businesses
During National Small Business Week, Meta announced that they are going to give SMBs the attention they deserve and spoke about new ways for them to take advantage of lead generation and share content.
The new tools and ad formats are aimed at helping businesses gain higher quality leads by identifying different ways they can connect with their customers.
Messaging and conversation features
Meta identified that over 70% of people wish that they could communicate with a business in a similar way to how they connect with friends and family: through messaging.
Businesses are starting to realise the value of messaging a customer, such as the ad format that opens a WhatsApp chat, which is a great way for new customers to discover a business and have a conversation.
With this insight from Meta, they are creating ads for Facebook and Instagram that can be made directly from Meta’s WhatsApp business app. Here’s what the new experience looks like:
The next messaging update is to a business’ inbox itself, Meta is streamlining business communications by having all its messaging tools in one place.
A business inbox as of now only contains messages from Facebook and Instagram, the update will contain WhatsApp messages now too.
This feature is designed to save you and your team time, money, and efficiency.
The final messaging update that was talked about will allow you to send promotional message adverts to customers who have opted in to communications, through Meta Business Suite. This feature looks like this:
Lead Generation and Customer Acquisition tools
As well as the new messaging tools, Meta is also launching new tools to help a business capture and manage leads through their platforms. These tools and features include:
- Quote Requests on Instagram
- Lead filtering with Instant Forms
- Creative flexibility
- Gated content
- Partner integrations
Select businesses on Instagram are currently able to test the Quote Request action button on their profile, which allows a customer to request a quote for a good or service.
In the future, a business will be able to filter their leads which works by reviewing responses to a multiple-choice question from leads.
Meta is currently testing its Instant Form for more personalisation such as adding visuals or content to Instant Forms.
Meta are hosting an event called Conversations on the 19th of May where these features will be spoken about further, so if you’ve had trouble leveraging Facebook or Instagram to work for your small business; then these tools are definitely for you.
Adobe and Meta join together to offer a free training program for small businesses
Meta and Adobe have come together in partnership to create a free, online training program called Express Your Brand. The training is intended to help small business owners grow and expand their businesses online.
This year-long initiative combines skill training, community building, and inspiration.
Over half of small business owners believe that improving their social media skills would have a meaningful impact on their business, given they had the time and resources to do so.
Meta and Adobe wish to make this a reality, the company announcement can be read below:
“It’s no surprise that social media is an essential marketing tool for small businesses today. According to a recent Adobe survey, we found 59% of small business owners (SBOs) say improving their social media skills would be the most impactful thing they can do for their business.1 But with limited time, resources and technology, it can be a daunting task for entrepreneurs…
Empowering people to create and communicate has always been core to Adobe’s mission of changing the world through digital experiences, and Adobe Express makes it possible for everyone, independent of skill level, to make something great and quickly.”
Express Your Brand launches on the 17th May and will highlight a variety of digital marketing topics such as building a brand, driving engagement on social media, and creating your own ads on Ad Manager.
Skills and Community
Express Your Brand will be delivered with monthly virtual training sessions and will focus on giving tips to small business owners to maximise their impact on Social Media platforms. Each monthly session will include hands-on training on Adobe Express, formerly known as Adobe Spark.
Using Adobe Express will teach participants how to build a creative library, and then be shown how this library can be used to market on Facebook or Instagram.
Express Your Brand also strives to inspire participants creatively and will feature guests and experts such realtor Hrishell Stause, chef Melissa King, and interior designer Justina Blakeney, who will speak about their experiences in growing their own brands into the successful ones they are today.
In addition to the skill training and creative inspiration, the program aims to create a community where small business owners can connect with each other and share tips to personalise their learning experience. The training will be hosted on centralised hubs and a forum will allow for personal interaction between businesses.
Adobe Premium incentives
To sweeten the deal, the partnership will provide 10,000 lucky Meta Elevate members with a one-year subscription to Adobe Express.
Meta elevate is a learning platform that offers Black, Latin, and Hispanic business owners the resources they need to succeed, and was launched in 2018. Meta Elevate is a community for entrepreneurs of colour and provides access to virtual coaching, one-on-one mentorship, and other digital marketing tools.
Read Meta’s full announcement here.
WordPress 6.0 improvements
WordPress has published a list of improvements that are coming to WordPress 6.0, the list focuses on changes coming to the block editor that aims to make designing webpages and websites easier and more inspiring. WordPress 6.0 will deliver a UI that makes it easier than ever for people to design web pages and edit text.
Here’s what a member of the WordPress design team had to say about 6.0:
“I think some of the features being released in 6.0 are absolutely going to empower that end-user.
Particularly in terms of improvements around design tools and some of the quality of life improvements.
For example, partially selecting across multiple blocks and being able to partially select texts there.
That’s the type of thing that really brings the writing experience in the editor to be on par with how you would expect a text editing experience to work.”
WordPress Gutenberg blocks
WordPress’ block system has been subject to criticism in the past because people thought it wasn’t ready. 6.0 will bring notable improvements that bring the block system in line with what users expect a visual website editor to function like.
The key improvements include a new user interface that makes it easier for users to create content or design a website. However, many of the improvements depend on the theme designers to implement and get on board with the changes, such as offering theme.json config files that offer a user an easy way to switch between different page patterns and styles.
Page creation
WordPress 6.0 includes page patterns, which is a way for users to select from patterns or templates to help them begin designing web pages. For example, a user can select a page pattern appropriate for an about us page.
Page patterns do not ship with WordPress core. Page patterns are a feature that theme designers will need to take advantage of.
Global Style Switcher
In 6.0, theme creators can now include different style presets that can change the look and feel of a webpage. This is one of the key changes coming to WordPress.
The Global Style Switcher is a critical feature because it provides theme designers with a way to make it easier for users to change how their website looks to make it feel truly unique. In a recent podcast, a member of the WordPress design team explained why the style switcher is an important advancement:
“I’m most excited about the style switcher within the global styles panel.
Um, so if folks still don’t know what I’m talking about there, it’s the ability to change between different variations of the theme.json without actually switching the theme.
So this is a way to get a drastically different look and feels across your site with just a single click.
And I see it as a really fun place to experiment and kind of get inspired for the different ways your site could appear without ever having to change your theme.
But now, with 6.0, I think even more so it’s starting to showcase the real power of block themes and what can actually be done there.
And style variations is a huge kind of first step into this new world of block themes and starting to really open up the possibilities and all the flexibility that you have there.”
To read about the full list of changes, read the WordPress 6.0 Field Guide
