[Ep60/7Jun21] - Apple Announces New Privacy Features That Will Upend Digital Marketing & other Digital Marketing updates from the week of Jun 7, 2021

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

1. TikTok is Accepting Applications for Next Cohort of Support Black Businesses - On June 7th, TikTok announced that they are accepting a the next cohort of Support Black Businesses! In partnership with Vimeo, Support Black Businesses aims to give Black small business owners critical skills and resources to help them not only rebuild, but grow stronger. The second round of Support Black Businesses builds on the program that TikTok launched last year and gives participants tools and resources to better advertise on digital platforms and drive sales.

Here's what to know about the program:

- They're selecting 40 black owned businesses for the cohort

- The program will run from July 2021- December 2021; there will be at least one event to attend a month.

- Participating in this program is free of charge.

- The events and programming will be held virtually and will be a mix of educational content, thought leadership, mentorship and culture + community.

To apply to be part of this program, your business must have the following:

1) ​Less than 100 employees

​2) Public facing website representing their business ​

3) Offering a product or service ​

4) Current social media presence (does NOT need to have a TikTok account)

5) ​Commit to attend at least 75% of the programming offered

Deadline to submit the application is June 23rd at 11:59pm. You can find the application here.

2. Instagram Shared How the Algorithm Works & Shadowbanning - This week, Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri wrote a blog post to clear up one of the main misconceptions about the Algorithm. According to his post, IG uses a variety of algorithm, classifies, and processes, each with its own purposes. The main goal of these algorithms is to make the most of our time by personalizing our experience. Thus each part of the app - Feed, Explore, Reels - uses its own algorithm tailored to how we use it.

Feed and Stories - are places where people want to see content from their friends, family, and those they are closest to so they show all the recent posts shared by the people we follow. Next they take all the information they have about what was posted, the people who made those posts, and our preferences. IG call these “signals”, and there are thousands of them. They include everything from what time a post was shared to whether we’re using a phone or the web to how often we like videos.

Explore - was designed to help us discover new things. The grid is made up of recommendations – photos and videos that IG goes out and find for us – which is very different from Feed and Stories, where the vast majority of what we see is from the accounts we follow. Again, the first step they take is defining a set of posts to rank. To find photos and videos we might be interested in, they look at signals like what posts we've liked, saved, and commented on in the past. Once they’ve found a group of photos and videos we might be interested in, IG then order them by how interested they think we are in each one, much like how they rank Feed and Stories. The best way to guess how interested we are in something is to predict how likely we are to do something with the post. The most important actions they predict in Explore include likes, saves, and shares.

Reels - is designed to entertain us. Much like Explore, the majority of what we see is from accounts we don’t follow. So IG goes through a very similar process where they first source reels they think we might like, and then order them based on how interesting they think the reels are to us. The most important predictions they make are how likely we are to watch a reel all the way through, like it, say it was entertaining or funny, and go to the audio page (a proxy for whether or not we might be inspired to make our own reel.)

“Shadowbanning” - is a broad term that people use to describe many different experiences they have on Instagram and people consider their posts getting fewer likes or comments as a form of “shadowbanning”. They can’t promise us that we’ll consistently reach the same amount of people when we post. The truth is most of our followers won’t see what we share, because most look at less than half of their Feed. But they realized that they can be more transparent about why IG take things down when they do, work to make fewer mistakes – and fix them quickly when we do – and better explain how their systems work. So now they are developing better in-app notifications so people know in the moment why, for instance, their post was taken down, and exploring ways to let people know when what we post goes against their Recommendations Guidelines.

3. FB/IG Introduce New Ways for Creators to Make a Living - Zuckerberg & co wants Instagram and Facebook to serve as a home base for creators to tell their story, grow and make a living. Whether they are just starting out or are further along in building their business – they want to support creators and give the creator ways to accomplish their goals. So On June 8th, they announced new ways to help creators make a living as they build their personal brands across the platforms.

Affiliate & New Shops Features on Instagram - a native affiliate tool that will allow creators to discover new products available on checkout, share them with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app. When people come across an affiliate post from a creator featuring a tagged product, they will see “eligible for commission” at the top of the post, so it’s clear that their purchases help support that creator.

This will make it easier for people to shop directly from the creators they love and give brands a new way to partner with and reward creators who share their products.

For creators who want to sell their own merchandise, they're making it easier to add an existing shop or open a new shop on their Instagram profile.

Stay up to date on new shopping features for creators here.

More ways to earn from Badges and Stars - Badges on Instagram Live and Stars on Facebook give creators ways to earn from their supporters. As they see more and more creators use these tools to engage directly with their fans, they want to reward the creators for the impact they’re bringing to FB & IG communities. That’s why they ’re launching ways for creators to make extra money for hitting certain milestones with badges and Stars.

Starting June 8, 2021, creators on Instagram are eligible to earn an extra payout when they meet certain milestones while using badges in Live, such as...