The "Partner Permissions" Change Facebook Isn't Talking About

✨ PREMIUM EXCLUSIVE ✨ TIKTOK: How to Close More Sales — Advice from Thousands of Videos

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Imagine if you had a magic box that would automatically flip through thousands of TikTok videos, could figure out which videos were most successful at selling things, and be able to categorize what was common among all of those high-performing videos.

Well, we have that box — and it came from TikTok itself.

Today, the company shared a pretty comprehensive set of tips on how to maximize conversion with your TikTok ads, based on a data set that included thousands of video ads.

Here's what they found:

• Videos that were shot at 720p resolution or higher saw more than a 4x lift in conversions compared to lower-res videos. To me, this is a warning against repurposing video. But also, remember that many web-based video editors will compress resolution on lower-priced plans. So make sure you're exporting in 720p or higher.

• Obviously, vertical videos did better than letterboxed videos — nearly double.

• Also, TikTok says: "Don’t beat around the bush or try to be too clever. Give your audience the clear and direct action they need to take to convert. Calls to action in text format have shown to provide an astonishing 152% lift in conversion compared to videos that don’t clearly state what their audience should do next." By text format I think they're saying put your call-to-action as overlaid text on your video.

• As for the best length? Between 21 and 34 seconds. Those got nearly triple the number of conversions than videos outside that window.

• They also suggested lots of edits and cuts to keep people's interest. Videos that had a lot of scenes had a 38% conversion lift over those that didn't. If you don't know what to cut to, TikTok suggests even b-roll stock footage could work.

• "For ecommerce ads," said TikTok "a human voiceover illustrating the product, combined with a written offer, proved to be a winning combination for driving action. Compared to videos that don't use this combination, these ads saw an 87% lift in conversion. This held true for most of the world, except for Europe and Brazil."

We have made a shortlink to the full study for you Premium podcast listeners, and that link is https://b.link/tiktokstudy 

AGENCIES: The Fix for Facebook's New (and Broken) 'Partner Admins' Screen

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If you work at an agency or are a freelancer handling your clients' Facebook assets, you may have run up against a nasty change that's preventing some Partners from being able to reply to comments on their clients' pages.

'Partners' is Facebook's term for groups that work with a brand's assets.

Previously, this was all done through Business Manager. Your client would give you, as the Partner, certain privileges, then the partner would manage the access of their own staff.

That's still the way it's done — but Facebook has changed the names and function of some of these settings.

In a statement explaining the changes to its users, Facebook said.... Oh right, they didn't say anything about this at all. They just sort of dumped it on us.

First, the old way — those settings had two groups: "Partial Access" where you could turn on and off features like Ads, Messages, Comment Replies, and "Full Control" which essentially makes that Partner (and everyone on their team they assign to that asset) a co-admin:

Now, though, for some pages, that admin screen looks different — but only on some Pages. We have screenshotted examples in today's Premium Newsletter.

Now, those two groups are Task Access and Facebook Access. And — here's the problem — even though the Task Access setting is the one that says it will let you reply to comments (here's what it says verbatim: "Review and respond to comments, remove unwanted content, and report activity"), it's kind of a lie. Or at least a bug is preventing that from working.

I should mention this new screen now says these functions will work within Business Suite and Creator Studio — it doesn't mention third-party tools — but even Facebook's own tools don't appear to let you comment if you have any of the Task Access toggles on.

As you can probably guess, we know of this because it happened to us this week. With Task Access on our client's side and our side, we were able to onboard the Page to our third-party tools and, interestingly, we were also able to hide comments. We just couldn't reply to comments.

What is the solution? When both we and the client selected Facebook Access instead of Task Access, that seemed to solve the problem. Again, it's misleading because the Task Access screen claims that's the option that will give you commenting privs, but in our experience, it doesn't.

Also, side note, we filed support requests with our main third-party tool, our backup tool which is Agorapulse, and Facebook itself.

• Only Agorapulse answered within 12 hours and they were pretty detailed with their reply.

• Facebook took two days to get back to us  — told us to clear our cache. 

• The other third-party tool took more than two days and just reset the token.

Which is all to say — support matters.

GOOGLE: Employees Can Continue To Take Shower Breaks

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Google is rethinking its return-to-office plans once again. Which could mean continued longer support wait times for marketers.

With concerns over the rising number of Covid-19 cases and the uncertainty of the new Omicron variant, employees will continue to work from home for the time being. 

The company had intended to keep in-office work voluntary until January 10th, 2022, and then continue with a hybrid work schedule.

It’s been nearly two years of remote work for Google employees. How many of us in the last year have been on some kind of support call and heard a baby crying, a dog barking, or even being put on hold while your rep gets an Amazon delivery. 

New plans about Google’s return to real life won't be unveiled until next year, with decisions about timelines being left up to local offices.

CONTENT MARKETING: If You Don't Get 38 Instagram Likes, You're Below Average

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Attention social media marketers... eMarketer and Mention have provided some useful data that can help you with your Instagram content strategy.

According to eMarketer:

• Instagram's growth will slow down over the next few years. 

Instagram’s future lies with millennials and Gen Z:

• The audience that is predicted to grow the most over the next five years is Gen Z, from 33.3 million to 44.3 million.

• So far this year, 29% of Instagram users purchased something via Instagram. (That's way higher than I was expecting, to be honest.)

• That number is expected to increase over the next few years — but only by one percentage point

But what of engagement? Mention collected data from over 100 million posts. The company analyzed average followers, ideal caption length, which post types lead to the most engagement, hashtag use, and the best time of day to post.

Here’s what the study found:

• When it comes to the average number of followers, home and auto pages dominate the business categories. Like, really dominate. If you look at the chart, that category is way, way ahead of second-place which is Content and Apps. And, this surprised me — third place on Instagram: Government agencies.

Content-wise, if you're still not on board the carousel or video bandwagon, it's time to make the leap: 

• Carousel posts average 5 comments and 62 likes

• Video posts average 4 comments and 56 likes

• Image posts only average 3 comments and 38 likes

As for the all-important caption, the findings: 

• Write shorter captions! 

• People are posting longer captions on Instagram (between 101 and 1,000 characters), but not getting as much engagement.

• 21-100 character posts had a significantly higher engagement rate.

How many hashtags should you use?

• To get the best results only use 1…. or go full hashtag and use 20. There is no in-between.

And finally, the answer to one of the biggest unknowns for social media marketers… 

WHAT TIME SHOULD YOU POST? 

• Around dinner time. According to the study you should post early in the evening if you want to drive engagement. 

Here is your regular disclaimer, though — these studies give out averages as results. Your account may indeed have radically different bests... the only way to know is to test.

GOOGLE: It Must Be Friday

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Check your Google product listings to make sure you're not paying people to buy your products.

A Tweet from Zac Stafford shows Google's auto-generated promotions using old codes with discounts greater than the product value. 

The Tweet displays a screenshot showing a product for $20 but with a code, it's negative -$27.95, implying that your customers will be paid $27.95 to order it.

What's to blame — my favourite kicking horse: machine learning algorithms that are making changes to promos on their own because... Daddy knows best?!

Quoting Zac:

So yeah, double-check your promotions.

And another "oops" from Google today...

It's not just you if you're experiencing problems with Google Ads Editor's ad image uploader. The company has confirmed a bug with the most recent version of the editor and is working to fix it. 

The issue seems to be with the bulk image upload. Unfortunately, no solution at our deadline.

There is no update on when the bug will be fixed.

PPC: Google Ads Gets Rid of Campaign Drafts

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Speaking of Google Ads, they're testing a new experimental workflow in select accounts.

Specifically, they're testing ditching campaign drafts.

According to a Tweet, marketers that have access to the new experiments page may see a notice in their Google Ads Account.

Quoting Google:

To reflect the change, the left-side navigation has been changed from "Drafts and experiments" to just "Experiments". 

Google has not provided an official rollout date for the update.

BRANDING: Eggshell, So Hot Right Now

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As you are planning your content strategy for 2022, here's what you can expect *aesthetically*. 

The Marketing Insider has outlined the biggest trends that will be shaping colour and packaging design choices in the new year.

Quoting the article:

• Light and airy hues, watercolour washes, muted pastel shades like eggshell and mint

• Packaging wise light, simple design.

• Minimalist typefaces and dainty illustrations

• There’s also a noticeable absence of bold, busy or copy-heavy labels.

• 2022 is going to be an acid trip. Designers are using lots of psychedelic bright clashing colours and “groovy” typefaces.

• Expect to see more experimental bold and contrasting colour schemes and layering… which will be a refreshing change from the minimalist mindset. 

Yes, I noticed the strange contradiction between "light and airy" and "psychedelic clashing" too. 

I don't judge.

I just report. 😉