YouTube New Features, Google’s New WordPress Plugin and More Social Media Marketing News

Have you ever seen one of those funny shirts on Facebook with jokes like, “Scary without Coffee… I’m all BOO without my brew?” or perhaps those oddly personalized jackets with slogans like “Soon to be December Bride”

As a digital marketer that’s always up to date with social media marketing news, you’re familiar with Facebook ads and how advertisers are targeting you based on your interests and activity on the social platform. What you probably don’t realize is tons of people are making a business selling these shirts online. If you’re interested in this line of business, we have something for you here.

If not, we have other news that may interest you, such as YouTube’s bet against Instagram Stories and Google’s upcoming WordPress plugin.

Social Media Marketing News and Digital Marketing Trends to Check this December

1. YouTube Launches ‘Stories’ Competitor

YouTube Stories, formerly called Reels, was just rolled out last week after its failed debut a few years ago.

Now, YouTube creators with at least 10,000 subscribers can access its features.

YouTube Stories comes with its own set of tools, including features to add music, YouTube stickers, filters, and the ability to respond with images and videos on comments. Viewers can also engage with your stories through thumbs up, thumbs down, comments, and hearts. Of course, all the comment moderation tools on regular videos are also available on Stories so you can manage your community easily.

 2. Site Kit by Google Gives WordPress Users Easy Access to Google Website Tools

Soon, you won’t need a separate window to access your Google Analytics, AdSense, Pagespeed, and website console because Google’s Site Kit will make all these accessible directly on your WordPress dashboard.

For instance, instead of visiting your analytics dashboard, with Site Kit you can just go to the specific page on your website to check its traffic stats.

Search Engine Journal reports that you can also get notifications about your publishing milestones and consolidated data on the average traffic of your recent posts.

Site Kit will be available for beta-testing early 2019, but users interested to see an early version can sign up to try it here.

3. Facebook Relaunches Search Ads

Facebook is competing with Google AdWords again with the relaunch of its ads in the search results and Marketplace section.

For now, this option will only be available for ads in the ecommerce, automotive, and retail industries in the U.S. and Canada. Since Facebook is just testing this feature, Search ads will just be a repurposed version of News Feed ads labeled as “Sponsored,” so it’s going to have the same structure, complete with a headline, image, copy, and link to an external URL. You can’t create an ad specific for Search ads yet, and there’s no option to target specific keywords.

Unfortunately, we don’t have screenshots of this ad type as Facebook declined to share this with Techcrunch and other sites that publish social media marketing news, citing that the feature is still in testing and that the features may change as they gather more data.

4. The Birth of the Dabbing Santa Sweater and How People are Making Millions Selling Shits Online

Charlie Jabaley, co-founded Sreet Execs, a marketing firm that sells merchandise for celebrities, among other services. Unfortunately, his first few ventures selling merchandise and apparel for music celebrities weren’t as successful as he hoped.

But he kept at it, until he stumbled upon the idea that would eventually lead him to sell millions of dollars in hip-hop shirts—the Dabbing Santa sweater, a play on the dance stepped popularized by 2 Chainz’ Dab dance.

His previous failures led him to believe that the old model of researching a product design for two to three months, and then spending a few more months making and stocking inventory, isn’t effective anymore. Like other retail businesses, Jabaley lost time and money on unsold inventory.

So to solve the potential inventory problem and minimize upfront costs, he turned to Print on Demand, a method where a supplier custom prints white-label products with your own design, so you can then sell them on a per-order basis. Since the supplier will only manufacture your items once someone orders it, you don’t have to worry about unsold inventory. You can quickly test designs with little effort.

How can you use Print on Demand?

• Create original products for a niche – like the hundreds of designers and micro-entrepreneurs selling custom merchandise via their own online stores (like this one selling apparel and trinkets for engineers), or these individual sellers on Etsy cashing in on the unicorn trend.
• Monetize your following – Like how popular stand-up comedian Ali Wong is selling shirts with her jokes on it.
• Test products – Have apparel, accessory, or a home product idea you’d like to test out? There are print on demand suppliers for just about any product imaginable. Even if these aren’t your main products, you can easily create an extra revenue line that complements your main product offerings.

Because of the low-overhead, plenty of success stories like Jen Smith of Budget Babe and Michael Essany of Merch Momentum are published online, not only because they’re making a good profit selling Print on Demand apparel but because tons of people are starting to get into this business.

5. How to Nail Down Your Audience Persona

Folks at Bootcamp Media shared this article with great tips on creating an audience persona. Most articles on this subject would have you include the target audience’s location, job titles, estimate salary, gender, and the usual demographic stuff.

They suggest you go a bit further than that by creating negative personas—people you know that don’t want your product. It makes total sense. For instance, targeting marketing managers in the hotel and restaurant industry in one country will still give you a big, somewhat undefined audience. But if you create a negative persona with details like red flags, buying behavior you want to avoid, or goals that don’t fit in line with your offer; you can further narrow down your marketing efforts. You can even include these details in your content to tune out people you’re not interested in.

Social Media Marketing News and SEO News

The year 2018 is about to end. Were you able to accomplish your business and marketing goals this year? If not, what are your plans for 2019? What changes are you making to make 2019 a better year for your business?

As for us at McDougall Interactive, we’re going to continue improving our craft in helping businesses get on the first page of the web using search engine optimization, social media, and content marketing.