PR and Marketing News October 2017

27th October 2017 / All, Blog

LATEST PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MARKETING NEWS

Business Zone Closes

At the end of September Business Zone announced it would be closing its doors, after re-launching itself in 2015. SIFT has made the decision to no longer run two publications and over the last month, it has merged Business Zone into UK Business Forums.

Twitter is developing a Save for Later feature

On the 10th October Twitter announced they are in the process of developing a feature that will allow you to bookmark interesting Tweets that you would like to read later. They have put out a call for suggestions through the #SaveforLater hashtag. Up until now many of us had to rely on liking tweets in order to bank them for later reading, this feature will now offer greater clarity as to whether someone approves of your tweet or whether they wish to bookmark it.

MailChimp introduces Google Remarketing Ads

At the end of September MailChimp announced a new channel which sets up an advertising campaign that reminds people of the products they left behind, Google Remarketing Ads. Through the Google Display Network, your published ads will appear on websites that make a clear connection to your business and/or products. For example if you sell cooking equipment, your ads may appear on frequented recipe blogs. MailChimp can automatically build ads that feature your best products or you can tailor the ads to your preferences. MailChimp does not charge more for the use of the feature. This is a great new tool for SME’s using wishing to expand their digital advertising campaigns.

Facebook trials only permitting paid-for articles to appear on News Feeds

This month Facebook has introduced a split news feed in 6 countries, including Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka. The main news feed now only displays commercial posts that have been paid for. Although this change may not drastically impact companies and publishers with large budgets, various SME’s digital marketing plans may be forced to change. Facebook says it has no current plans to roll out this trial to all of its two billion users, but it is something to keep your eye on.

Google and Facebook announce features to support publisher subscriptions

Alongside their split news feed tests, Facebook announced that in the upcoming weeks it will launch a test to support a paywall in Instant Articles in the US and Europe. Facebook is working with publishers to set up either a metered approach (10 articles can be read for free) or freemium models (the publisher can lock certain articles) and after this, the reader will be encouraged to subscribe for full access.

Google plans to replace it’s ‘first click free’ model which has been criticised for prioritising titles that offer more free stories in Google searches. Through integrating user data with its applications including Google News, Google hopes to convert readers into subscribers by permitting publishers to set limits to how many articles readers can access for free.