When you want to get the latest digital marketing news with insightful analysis and commentary, all you to do is step up to the EDGE. The latest news roundup featured host Erin Sparks and Creative Studio Producer Jacob Mann along with special guest Kristine Schachinger of Sites Without Walls. Here’s the news roundup from Episode 352 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast: 

00:00:28

LinkedIn Engagement Up 76% for ‘Work From Home’ Content

From Matt Southern on Search Engine Journal we learn that LinkedIn Engagement Up 76% for ‘Work From Home’ Content. Engagement for ‘work from home’ posts has been on an even greater rise, particularly in the United States. Although not all posts are resonating with users. Data shows it’s the tone that makes the difference as to which content drives the most engagement. In particular, posts with a theme of support, community, and care are on the rise.

  • Erin Sparks: Obviously there’s a lot more engagement on social media these days, and it’s not really a surprise that work-from-home content is big right now.
  • Kristine Schachinger: I was sick during a big chunk of this when it first got started so I haven’t gotten into much of that content. As a consultant I’m used to the impacts of economic upheaval, but I think a lot of people are just looking answers and guidance in the midst of all this because it’s new territory for them. 
  • Erin Sparks: There’s so much uncertainty right now, and for a lot of these companies, they were thrust into remote working basically overnight.
  • Kristine Schachinger: And a lot of those companies that are more “old-school” really have no idea how to do this. For me, it’s not so unusual. I have a client I’ve worked with for three years and I’ve never met a single person face-to-face in that company. That’s pretty unusual. 
  • Erin Sparks: And we’re fortunate to have so many different platforms like Zoom so we can work remotely and still have meetings. I haven’t even heard much in way of issues with Zoom in terms of bandwidth to handle the increase in users.
  • Kristine Schachinger: No, their main issues have been around security, but they’re working on that even for the free version. Their enterprise version, however, is HIPPA compliant.

00:03:40

Messenger Rooms are Facebook’s answer to Zoom and Houseparty for the pandemic

According to Casey Newton on The Verge, Messenger Rooms are Facebook’s answer to Zoom and Houseparty for the pandemic. Facebook is rolling out a suite of new products to expand its capabilities in video chat. The company today announced Messenger Rooms, a tool for starting virtual hangouts with up to 50 people and allowing friends to drop in on you whenever they like. It’s also doubling the capacity of video calls on WhatsApp from four people to eight, adding video calls to Facebook Dating, and adding new live-streaming features to both Facebook and Instagram.

  • Erin Sparks: That’s like a quadrupling of their investment in livestream meeting capabilities. But you have to wonder how distracting that is to now have so much more live video interactive capability on social media platforms. How can we get any work or learning done with that kind of distraction available.
  • Kristine Schachinger: Well, Facebook has yet to hit a home run with live or interactive video. When they rolled out Facebook Live everyone was excited about it, until they tried actually using it and found it was full of problems and limitations. So I don’t think there’s going to be a stampede of users latching on to these new interactive video meeting capabilities. Maybe for personal use, but certainly not for work use.

00:08:41

Google launches search tips for when the query doesn’t return great matches

On Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz reports Google launches search tips for when the query doesn’t return great matches. Google today announced it is launching a new feature that tries to help you rephrase your query when the search engine cannot find relevant results on the web. Google said it is rolling out in the U.S. today “a new message that lets you know when Google hasn’t been able to find anything that matches your search particularly well.”

  • Erin Sparks: This is about relevancy, and it’s showing up right on the search page. 
  • Kristine Schachinger: I had this happen on a search I did just the other day. I was doing a search on “Walmart pharmacy locations in Vegas,” which shouldn’t be a troublesome search for Google, but because it had me geolocated in Los Angeles, that geolocation information was overriding the query. Call me crazy, but if I type in a search for “Vegas locations” it should probably return results based on what I type in.
  • Erin Sparks: And then you can bet they will find a way to monetize their “suggested search,” right? At what point do Google’s efforts become an overreach? Instead of guiding and suggesting, it’s supposed to just return relevant results.
  • Kristine Schachinger: Google definitely has a problem with the way it’s now doing search. Because they have to mix entities and match them and then use the vector relationship of the entities to determine the relationship between the words, they’ve gotten stuck in a bit of quagmire. It used to be that the links and other items on a page would tell them what the page was about, and it was a little squishier or fuzzier. But now that they’re trying to link things to other things, it’s harder for them to bring back relevancy. They can’t just ignore keywords. And they’re relying on us to teach them how to be better at it.

Connect with Kristine Schachinger and Sites Without Walls

Twitter: @schachin (https://twitter.com/schachin)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kschachinger

Subscribe to the EDGE Newsletter for News You Can Use

If you like the insights we bring to digital marketing headlines, why not get them delivered direct to your inbox? Go to EDGEofthewebradio.com and you’ll see the subscribe box at the very top of the page. It’s free-of-charge, and we will never use your email for anything except sending you the newsletter. You can also sign up by texting the word “EDGETalk” to 22828. Enjoy these digital nuggets of gold from the EDGE – your source for digital marketing news.