Welcome to Episode 43 of This Week Online Today, where I will be talking to you about the big online news that has been happening this week today to make sure that you are ahead of the game when it comes to running your online brand successfully.
And at the end of the show, I will also be giving you a bonus tip of the week to help you further.
In this episode of This Week Online Today, we discuss the following:
- Facebook usage has gone down for the first time ever
- Google is going to move sites into mobile-first index
- the early signs of Google’s new ‘Reply’ smart messaging app
- Snapchat is copying Instagram (for once)
- Anchor has relaunched itself into a podcasting platform
Sources
- Facebook usage has gone down for the first time ever
- Jay Bear’s video announcement on Facebook usage going down
- Google is going to move sites into mobile-first index
- the early signs of Google’s new ‘Reply’ smart messaging app
- Snapchat is copying Instagram (for once)
- Anchor has relaunched itself into a podcasting platform
- Anchor’s video launch of their new platform
Transcripts
Ahmed Khalifa: Welcome to This Week Online Today podcast with your host Ahmed Khalifa, where I’ll be talking to you about the big online news that has been happening this week, today, to make sure that you are ahead of the game when it comes to running your online brand successfully. And at the end of the show, I will also be giving you a bonus tip of the week to help you further.
So let’s get straight onto the show.
Facebook Usage Has Gone Down for the First Time Ever
And the big news this week is about Facebook and this has been, kind of mentioned by Jay Baer at Convince & Convert. Apparently there has been research, carried out by Edison Research and Titan Digital, and they look at how Americans use social media and audio services, and technology.
There has been a bit of a revelation about Facebook because it seems like for the first time ever, the usage of Facebook has gone down. The number of Americans using Facebook has gone down and that’s a big deal.
And Jay Baer had his reason, which kind of like, makes sense actually on why that happened, and he pointed out three things.
One is that there is an increase on distrust of Facebook because they have been criticised for the increase of fake news so people are not very trusting of Facebook. Another thing is increase in discord on Facebook… of negativity, and it’s forcing people to say, “You know what, I’m logging off. I can’t be bothered with this. I’m staying away”.
And the last one is that there’s an increase in disinterest in Facebook because users are shifting to other platforms that Facebook owns like messenger, Instagram, and What’s App. They have had users increase instead of the general Facebook platform.
So that is interesting, and I’m going to put in the show notes the link to the article and also the graph of how the usage has gone up over the years since 2008 and then for the first time you have dipped, which is amazing.
So, we have talked about what I have talked about in the past about how Facebook are adjusting their algorithm to focus on the whole friends and family connection and focus is not only on the brand. Pushing vital content or anything and maybe, jut maybe, going back to old school format. Maybe that is part of the reason why they have noticed that things are going down.
Things are not going good, but it’s just funny. In my mind I am thinking, can you see Facebook, maybe, advertising on Instagram, on What’s App and messenger to promote their own products. I mean, can you imagine that? Can you imagine Facebook saying, “WhatsApp, can you mention us. We’re losing people. Can you give us a hand”?
I’m not the heaviest of users in terms of Facebook but even I’ve been using it less. And to be honest, if I want to connect with friends and family, I’ll just use What’s App because that’s kind of like the cleanest way, really. There’s no distractions, there’s no noise, to find out. And this is yet another reason which I’ve talked about many times before on why you should never be dependent entirely on one platform because you never know what they are going to do.
YouTube are being aggressive about what people are doing on their platform and now you have minimum threshold of what you need to have to be able to monetize. And Facebook now, usage is going down and your visibility for your business is going to go down unless you spend a lot of money. Being dependent on someone else’s back yard, this is what you’re going to get. You’re going to be playing by their rules and how can you control your own rules? Well, by having your own website! Make that the hub of everything you do.
You can still use Facebook, you can still use YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever, to support it but in the centre of what you do it should be the website because, here is what happens. Facebook has usage has gone down and if you have been almost a hundred dependent on them, well now, you have to adjust dramatically and now you have to see what is plan B and what you are going to do about it but at the end of the day, make your website the hub of everything.
So, it’s just amazing that’s been happening. What does it mean though for Facebook commercially? I mean, what happened to the shareholders and investors? What will they think? They should be concerned about the data. Not just them, but Facebook as well. Having said that, the overall user base, across entire products are still dominating the online world so maybe overall their looking good but still Facebook is not looking good alone. What will that mean for them commercially? Business? It’ll be interesting to see what happens there, especially when they start releasing their new algorithm of [inaudible 00:05:16]. So, let’s see how that goes but fascinating news. Just really interesting.
Google Will Start to Move Sites to Mobile-First Index
The next big news of the week is Google is going to start focusing on the mobile-first index more and more. They have announced recently, at a conference, like a digital marketing webmaster conference called Pubcon. That was… it’s normally held in Las Vegas and Austin. I believe the recent one, a few days ago, was in Austin. Apparently one of the employees at Google mentioned that they are going to start moving a lot of sites to mobile first.
Don’t know what a lot sites means, I don’t know if they are talking about hundreds, thousands, millions, who knows but it’s happening.
Announcement – In the next month and a half or so, Google is moving a LOT of sites to mobile first.@methode; #Pubcon
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 21, 2018
If you don’t know what mobile first index is, this is where, it’s like a separate kind of indexing platform for Google where right now their looking at how desktop users are engaging with the content online but now, or pretty soon actually, is where mobile first will be Google’s attempt will be to look at how the web, and indexing, and ranking of a website on Google from a mobile first perspective instead of a desktop perspective. That is because ever since going toward mobile search, everything is going toward mobile behaviour.
The number of people using Google on mobile has increased and the number of people using websites in general has increased. Maybe there are some industries, some websites that still have desktop users as their main kind of traffic.
In general mobile users are on the rise so Google is going to look at the mobile version of the site which means that it is even more crucial for you to have a mobile-friendly version of your site and it’s not just about having focus on your desktop. It’s about everything now. Mobile first, mobile everything, it’s just everything is mobile, mobile, mobile.
So, it’s going to happen over the coming months and a half or so, so if you’re not ready even now you should be ready. Even last year you should have been ready but it’s becoming more important now. If you are not ready for being mobile first, if you don’t have a mobile first or mobile friendly website.
I have said mobile quite a lot, haven’t I. That’s weird. Anyway, if you’re not ready, get it ready because it is becoming even more important now. Google has mentioned it and this was only a few days ago.
Yeah, it’s expected but now it’s on the rise.
Google’s ‘Reply’ Attempting to be a Smart Messaging App
Here’s a new one I just heard recently and I didn’t even know about this but they, Google, has a new app. It’s called ‘Reply’. It’s supposed have a smart reply functionality. This is… Google is going to be attempting to get into more of the messaging platform because they have this Allo platform. I think it’s called ‘Allo’with no ‘H’, just ‘Allo’.
It’s starting to get into the messaging platform to compete with What’s App, obviously. It was just dominating it. Their trying to get into the industry by making it smart, making it integrate with other platforms like WhatApp, and like Twitter DM, and Android messages, and Hangouts and all these. They want to be all in the same place and apparently their using reply for that.
If you are familiar with using Gmail on mobile, you’ve probably seen when you receive an email and you can see at the bottom you have like three different versions of a quick reply. For example if someone sends you a message and you received it on Gmail it says, I dunno, “I will meet you at the shopping mall later today at 7”, and then you have three options automatically that Google has provided that says, “Yeah, that sounds good”, “See you soon”, “Looking forward to it”, it could be any of them.
Here’s another way for Google to get really smart at it. You know, it’s all about getting smarter now, getting quicker, and releasing. It’s getting there. I believe it’s not really working just yet but it’s still in the early stages. Having said that… yeah, it’s going to get big, this whole smart reply functionality.
For Once, Snapchat has Copied Instagram
A couple of times in a previous episode I have talked about how everyone is copying Snapchat and it’s not just Instagram copying Snapchat, even Google has copied Snapchat when they are going to release their AMP story or AMP stories. I have talked about that in a previous episode. Well for once, Snapchat is copying Instagram. Amazing! Apparently Snapchat has announced, it has either happened already or it is going to happen, one of those gif stickers, which is, courtesy of giffy, who has the most gifs online.
It’s just like on Instagram, if you haven’t noticed it, you can pin gif video stickers on your stories and now Snapchat is doing that as well. I mean, look at that. Isn’t that funny. I mean, I guess, you know, it’s going to happen anyway because it seems to be quite a popular thing to use. I’m seeing it quite a lot actually on my own Instagram feed but it just shows that anyone can copy anybody.
Snapchat just wants to stay ahead of the game and they are trying so hard and that’s why I was kind of surprised in last weeks episode when Google had announced they were releasing, their own kind of… looks like a Snapchat on mobile. The VP of content said, “We are delighted that the industry is taking notice of this format of content for our users”, and blah blah blah. I am thinking, how can you be encouraging it, how can you… I mean, encourage it in your own way and not just copying the stuff.
Kind of gets boring after a while when everyone has the same thing so it just seemed a bit weird that Snapchat is encouraging that to happen when really, isn’t it better that someone has their own version of what they want to do instead of copying someone else, like for like. That’s my opinion about it but anyway, getting slightly off track here. Snapchat copied Instagram gif stickers.
Anchor has Relaunched Itself as Podcasting Platform
The final news of the week is about Anchor and Anchor has, kind of, re-released itself it seems to Anchor 3.0. If you’re not familiar with Anchor, its like… it’s originally, before I get into the main story, it originally had been launched as like a social audio platform for your voice. You create a… it’s almost like voice notes or short voice notes to your audience.
You know, it could last maybe 30 seconds or a minute, a few minutes and tends to be short and snappy kind of thing. Think of it like Twitter, a short tweet, a quick message by voice and you share that with your audience. On top of that you can customise it further by adding intro music, or a sound effect, or even a snippet of popular music and put it in your anchor message app and it just makes it seem like a radio.
The way to record it is on your phone and you just hold your phone like you are talking to somebody. Hold it by your ear and record it by just talking to your phone like that. It’s supposed to be an easy way to record voices without any fancy gadget for that. It seems like they’ve adjusted themselves a little bit because have introduced an all new Anchor 3.0 and it’s focusing on podcast creation and they have really revamped everything. They have looked at making it easier for people to create podcasts and just use their phone, keep it is simple.
I think it’s really interesting, it think it actually looks really cool. I’ve used Anchor in the past just to experiment. I didn’t really use it as much as I should or want to but looking at this it’s quite interesting we’re going to use it because their offering a hundred percent free podcast hosting for everyone and they’re claiming that it’s going to be the best place for everyone to create and to store your podcasts.
It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or you are an expert, Anchor is apparently the place to be. You can add full songs from Apple music or Spotify for your audience to listen to it. It’s just like… imagine the transition from one story to another.
The same idea. You can record, not just by yourself but you can record with up to ten friends as well. I’m not sure what a podcast with 10 people would be like, it sounds a bit manic, but anyway, it’s an option that you have. You can add any kind of podcast, focus on any kind of topic really. There’s not really anything that you should limit yourself to. The world is your oyster. You can do whatever you want.
I think Anchor may have kept it before but what you can do is you can receive calls. So imagine, if someone wants to call you and leave, kind of like, a voicemail message. It could be a voicemail message about something you have talked about in Anchor and the same thing can apply.
Imagine on a radio platform and imagine you’re… the presenter is talking and someone has left a message, you can play that message because it’s about a debate about what you said, or disagreeing with what you said.
It kind of creates a a conversation and kind of create a debate as well. On top of that, Anchor seems to have really focused a lot on the analytics side of things. You can really look at the data properly, what’s working, what’s not working and just pull the data from different places. On top of that, again, you can distribute it in so many places on iTunes, which is actually called Apple Podcast now, on on Spotify, on Google Play Music and it can work, as well, with Alexa. It can work with Google Assistant and really push it out there.
I find that really interesting. I must give it a shot. I really want to give it a shot. If you haven’t seen it, if you haven’t tried it I’ll put a link in the show notes again and check out the video as well. They’ve released how it’s going to look. Very Cool.
It’s also on Anchor.fm if you want to check that out, as well.
Bonus Tip of the Week
And now it’s time for the bonus tip of the week.
This week, I want to talk about the use of subdomain and categories and just for your domain, in general. The reason I want to talk about this is because I’ve seen it time and time again where for some reason people think it’s a good idea, but I can understand what their talking about.
This is when you have your domain and you have ‘forward slash’, for example, blog or ‘forward slash’ whatever it could be. Let’s just say for example, you have a website, domain.com/blog, that makes sense but there are other situations where people have it as blog.domain.com. Now, it looks fine, it looks simple, it’s easiest to set up for the developer, that makes sense.
That is totally fine but in terms of the way Google sees it and in terms of an SEO as well, having it blog.domain.com is like a subdomain instead of like a subcatergory, it kind of looks like a separate website, like a separate entity, and such.
When you have your site as blog.domain.com it almost looks completely separate to the same domain.com, for example but if you have it on domain.com/blog it is part of that website.
It’s all connected together, it’s like if you have created a new post, your domain.com will also benefit from it but if you have it on blog.domain.com then your content there, it’s not… well, according to evidence, research carried out by a number of people, it still seems separate. Your domain.com will not necessarily, directly, benefit from it.
There might be other ways it can benefit from it but if you’re talking about SEO, if you’re talking about maybe getting people linking to your site, will you benefit as much as /blog? According to research, you don’t. Wherever possible, and not just talking about blogs but your pages in general, wherever possible go for the /, wherever category, directory, blog, wherever that’s going to be.
Instead of having it as a subdomain, now your developer, the technical people that must have said that, it’s because it can easier depending on how your site is set up, it can be easier to set up a subdomain but having it in a category format is much more beneficial for your site in terms of SEO. Go for that. And like I said, it’s not just for your blog, it could be… for example, you are an eCommerce site and you have a specific category, for example, shoes, it breaks down even further will have it domain.com/shoes instead of shoes.domain.com/ whatever it is going to be.
Keep it simple. Keep it sweet. It’s just easier for you in the long run as well. Go for that. I hope that makes sense, I hope that’s really useful.
If you have any questions, let me know. Send me a tweet. Send me a tweet at iamahmedkhalifa and let me know what questions you have.
Thank you for listening to this episode of This Week Online Today, I really do appreciate it and I hope you found it useful. If you have enjoyed the show, please do leave a review on iTunes as it would mean the world to me. I really would appreciate that.
Thank you again, you rock. And one more thing, I just want to remind you to do your thing, because it matters.
Ahmed Khalifa
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