Twitter Launches Gender Targeting, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week

Isn’t it scary how quickly the marketing world is moving these days?

Search engines and social networks will roll out a new feature one week, then BOO! They’re terrifying us with a whole new update that requires us to adapt quickly and learn the new rules of the game.

These updates might seem like nasty little tricks, constantly keeping you on edge, but we see them as treats just waiting to be uncovered! To help you see the treats inside the tricks, we’ve provided you with a weekly round-up of the top marketing stories of the week. Don’t be scared, just read these top articles and you’ll be prepared for the bone-chilling week ahead!

Twitter Launches Gender Targeting For Advertisers, From Marketing Land

You might recall Twitter’s previous update for advertisers in the beginning of September, when they launched their targeting by interest and username for promoted tweets. Now these ad targeting abilities are diving even deeper, giving advertisers the option to target by gender. What’s interesting about this is, users don’t actually need to specify whether they’re a male or female when creating a Twitter profile. So how does Twitter know? Well according to Twitter, the platform is determining gender through public signals, including profile names and the accounts he or she follows. And where Twitter can’t accurately predict the gender of the Twitter account, they don’t, and those accounts are not included in the targeting option. Marketing Land also hinted that Twitter might be looking at certain types of phrases that are generally more common amongst men such as, “What a comeback!” or women including, “My tummy hurts.” Will you leverage this new targeting capability once it rolls out to all advertisers? If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full story here.

Facebook Brand Engagement Grows 896% [Study], From Search Engine Watch

Hey, remember when Facebook profiles were just a long wall of comments instead of a timeline organized by year? Do you believe that change was made just about a year ago? My, how time flies! In that one year span, Facebook engagement for brands has grown 896%, as reported by Search Engine Watch, and about 25% of that engagement came from mobile. Agile marketers have not only taken advantage of Facebook’s timeline over the past year, but they are also taking advantage of this impressive trend towards mobile Facebook usage. Additionally, Search Engine Watch reported that one in five paid search clicks came from a smartphone or tablet. This just goes to show that if you’re not thinking about mobile marketing yet, you might want to start! To see more intriguing mobile marketing stats, check out the full story here.

How to Verify Your Website on Pinterest [New Feature]

It’s always comforting to see that little blue ‘verified’ checkmark on specific Twitter profiles, don’t you think? Well, Pinterest is now trying out a similar concept. This ‘verified’ feature is intended to help pinners learn more about each other, highlighting your full website URL on your Pinterest profile. Before this change, Pinterest users would only see a little globe icon as the link to a user’s website, next to all other social media icons. Now, users will see the actual full link with a red ‘verified’ checkmark next to it. Perhaps these signals are a step toward more Pinterest features tailored to businesses. Just note that website verification is not available to all Pinterest accounts just yet, so you might need to wait a bit before seeing the changes on your own profile. To see where and how to verify your own profile, check out the full post here.

Uncovering Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000 Businesses

It’s difficult to know how to grow and scale your business if you don’t have many benchmarks to compare your efforts to. You might be asking yourself questions like, “If I increase my blogging frequency from once a month to twice a week, what impact will I see?” or “How much will growing my Facebook reach improve my website traffic?” Lucky for you, these questions can be answered in two different ways. One option would be to jump in and experiment with your company’s blogging frequency or Facebook reach firsthand, then measure the results. Of course, this will take some time if you want to get a decent sample size for more accurate results. Option two would be to learn from our latest study based on real results from HubSpot’s 7,000 customers. You will see exactly what sort of impact blogging frequency had on these customers, at what number of Facebook Page likes these customers saw a significant boost in traffic to their website. To get a better idea of what you need to do in order to see significant results in your marketing, take a look at the full report here.

YouTube Launches InVideo Programming To Boost Video And Channel Promotion, From TechCrunch

Have you ever watched a YouTube video and noticed an annotation pop up, explaining a certain part of the video? Well, YouTube just introduced a similar feature where you can include a thumbnail inside the video that you’re currently watching. These clickable thumbnails can be linked to specific videos or entire YouTube channels to help drive more traffic internally. Not only will this feature increase viewership of individual videos, but it will also help to grow a brand’s reach on YouTube and boost channel subscriptions. When you watch YouTube videos, do you tend to click on the “Related Videos” on the side once you’re finished with the one you’re watching? This new feature will essentially create a similar, constant cycle of video viewing. So as a brand, make sure you’re taking advantage of this feature and optimizing your YouTube channel to keep the attention on YOU and not on the “Related Videos” that lead a viewer outside your channel. To read more about this new YouTube feature, check out the full story here.

The REAL Benefits of Guest Blogging, From SEOmoz

Has your company taken part in guest blogging yet? If so, are you doing it the right way and taking advantage of all the opportunities it provides? Guest blogging is often seen as solely a SEO opportunity for link building, but it’s also so much more than that! Hopefully you’re leveraging guest blogging to help build relationships and discover new business opportunities, too. Through guest blogging, you are able to capture a wider audience that you normally wouldn’t have, and develop thought leadership to help you become an expert in your industry. So when you’re contemplating guest blogging for your company, make sure to think outside the box and seek out more than just the link. If you’re interested to learn more about how guest blogging can benefit your business, take a look at the full story from SEOmoz here.

What else have you learned from this week’s marketing stories? Share your learnings in the comments below!

Image credit: wwarby