TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

Social Media Marketing

All The Best of 2020 Reviews For Content & Marketing

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As each year comes to an end, it’s traditional for most big technology and content services to publish a look back at what’s been successful or interesting over the past 12 months. And as content creators and marketers, they can be really useful, which is why I’m collecting the best of 2020 reviews, right here.

There’s not always a correlation between popularity and quality, or in providing business or personal value. An extremely niche article on a specific part of a product may result in more sales than a viral video of someone dancing, or pranking a member of the public. But at the same time, maybe you’ll be inspired to look differently at content which might seem a bit dull in hindsight, or which has been underperforming.

At the same time, it’s also hopefully a useful resource for numbers and statistics if you still need to convince clients or senior management to let you spend some spare time playing around with a new social platform, create some short video content, or invest in better editing software.

Obviously 2020 has been a tough year for so many, but it’s also likely that trends and habits which have emerged during the last 12 months will define the future for the next few years at least.

I’ll be updating this article over the coming months as more platforms share their reviews of 2020.

Collecting The Best of 2020 Reviews
Collecting The Best of 2020 Reviews

All of the reviews will be listed in alphabetical order below as they become available:

  • Google
  • Pocket
  • Spotify
  • TikTok
  • Youtube

Google

One useful resource Google offers to marketing professionals is the Think With Google website, which includes reports, interviews and trends on various topics. So the 10 most read articles are useful, including some guides to lockdown and Christmas advertising, plus some of the free online courses currently offered by Google.

Plus it’s handy to see what was of interest to other people working in marketing!

  • Think with Google UK: Most Read Articles

Pocket: Best of 2020

If you’re not familiar with Pocket, it’s one of the remaining survivors from the bookmarking tools which article lovers and curators find invaluable. Acquired by Mozilla Corporation in 2017 (who also run the Firefox web browser), seeing what users have saved to read later is incredibly interesting whether you’re looking for writing inspiration, or just want some interesting things to read over Christmas downtime.

Pocket has shared the top 3 Most Read articles, along with the most popular trio for “Life in 2020”, Tech, Culture, Racial Justice, Making History, Science and Long Reads, so you’re bound to find something intriguing which you might not have already seen.

Pocket: Best of 2020

Spotify: 2020 Wrapped

I’ve always been a music nerd, even before it was possible to track all of my digital listening. So the personal side of the annual Spotify run down is always interesting, although also predictable, considering more of my work is powered by a couple of playlists (ambient classical music for calmer work, and a loud punky playlist for hammering out tasks closer to deadlines).

But it’s also interesting to discover something different, and see what’s proved popular for different genres, and in the world of podcasts. Especially when our teenage tastes tend to shape our listing as we get older, and it can be tempting and reassuring to replay the same classics over and over again. Creativity is shown to come from changing routines, and when you’re not able to travel to work a different way or meet new people as easily, choosing to dive into an entirely different genre of music can help.

Spotify: 2020 Wrapped

The Year on TikTok

The video sharing network may still be relatively new, and somewhat incomprehensible to many businesses. But it’s continued to grow in importance and utility despite controversy, a nationwide ban in India, and other issues over content and privacy.

The Year on TikTok: Top 100 (2020)
The Year on TikTok: Top 100 (2020)

So it’s worth being familiar with the type of videos which are popular, even if you haven’t already experimented with TikTok or jumped all the way into using it as another marketing channel.

The Year on TikTok: Top 100

Youtube

Youtube has listed the top trending videos and creators for 2020 in the U.S, along with breakout creators and top music videos. But you can find other data on the specific Youtube Culture and Trends website.

Hopefully by collecting the Best of 2020 reviews in tech and digital, I’ve helped you discover something interesting or new. Because that’s something I love doing, whether that’s from working with clients to provide articles, SEO and more. Or via the blog, and The Cipher email newsletter, which are going to be big priorities for 2021, as TheWayoftheWeb evolves after celebrating 10 years of business in 2020.

(image credit: Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash)

Flickr adds Downloadable Video Sharing

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It’s not often that there’s a new feature worth talking about at Flickr. And it seems to have been so long that Flickr’s marketing team dropping it into a particularly bare email, giving it just two lines.

Flickr Photostream

But it’s actually quite interesting. Flickr has now made it possible to allow you to share videos in the same way as you can allow people to download your photos. You set your defaults and can tweak them for individual items.

It’s useful in two ways. Firstly it’s a way to allow videos to be used, modified and uploaded by others under a Creative Commons License, which is a great way to allow others to build on your work. And it also allows friends and family to potentially download and save videos which are important to them – meaning that your backup archive doesn’t just have to be on your own computer.

The first way is the most interesting though – obviously Youtube, Facebook and the likes of Instagram and Twitter are either the giants in online video or trying to get there. But although they all have ways to embed video and therefore display the original upload information and advertising, they don’t have any ways to allow people to share and download videos.

That relies on filesharing services like Dropbox, Hightail etc.

But that then relies on a personal relationship with the sender. I need to know the videos exist and be given the link to their location to be able to access them.

Flickr allowing video sharing changes that. It could really benefit a core group of video creators – although I wonder how many of them will actually be aware, given the lack of promotion about it. Strange considering how immensely important video is for big tech brands and publishers right now.

Friendfeed and GigaOm announce closures as Apple launches new products

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While Apple launched new products including MacBooks and Watches, two pioneering services announced they would be closing. Friendfeed was a useful social network which combined short updates similar to Twitter with the ability to easily collect and aggregate your content from a huge variety of sources, into one feed. It launched back in 2007, and the service and team had been acquired by Facebook in 2009.

FriendFeedLogo

There’s no official news beyond the April 2015 closure date, but there is some unofficial code on Github to export your data if you wish.

And at the same time, one of the first big independent tech blogs has ceased operations. GigaOm originally launched in the mid-2000s, and became a full time job for founder Om Malik in 2006. It since acquired PaidContent, launched a paid Research area and various events etc.

GigaOm Logo

It’s sad news for those of us who have followed the site closely for 8+ years, and for the team of around 70 employees, although it may be wound down, acquired or who knows what else. It is known that the latest $8 million round of funding took place 12 months ago, but it has ceased operations due to being unable to pay creditors.

Whilst it’s unfortunate for all involved, including the millions of readers, it’s important to remember that the closure of GigaOm is more a reflection of the economics of an individual business. FriendFeed, meanwhile, reflects the trend for social network acquisition by the big players in the space – Facebook obviously went on to pick up Instagram and WhatsApp with far, far larger userbases and bigger brands.

Google Authorship and rel=author is no more

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One of the main benefits of signing up for a Google+ profile as a writer, blogger and author has been the Google Authorship program, which began back in 2011 with the launch of Google’s own social network. And in a Google+ post, Google’s John Mueller has confirmed that not only will the search results no longer show any Authorship results, but data will no longer be tracked from the rel=author markup.

Since the start of 2014, Authorship has carried slightly less benefits for those who implemented it correctly with first a reduction in the amount of author photos shown per query, and then a complete removal of author photos, leaving only bylines. Now that’s gone as well.

Rel=Author Explained: What Happened to Google Authorship

Should you remove Authorship markup?

Although the markup is no longer being utilised for authorship, Mueller has confirmed that it will be treated just like any other markup (e.g. Schema), and won’t cause any problems.

Part of the reason given for Google Authorship ending has been the low take-up and correct implementation of the process. Given that Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated the importance of real identity and information tied to online profiles, it’s unlikely that Google won’t continue to try and complete the link between people and their work in a less public way in the future.

 

What about Publisher markup?

Although the links between an individual and their articles won’t be correlated and highlighted any more, there’s been no explicit mention of Publisher markup between a brand and their Google+ page. It’s always been slightly easier to implement, and obviously only has to be done once for potentially hundreds of authors working for a brand, so the future is potentially brighter for Publishers than Authors.

 

Why was it ended?

The reasons given for Authorship ending at Google are:

  • Low numbers implementing it, and even fewer implementing it correctly.
  • Low value to searchers. Mueller stated ‘Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from those results’ – partly this may be down to the need to display properly on mobile devices, and there have been conspiracy theories about the impact on paid search advertising, as well as the possibility Authorship didn’t offer an increase in click through rates after the initial novelty had worn off.

 

What now?

So for the time being, we’d recommend that if you have Authorship in place, you don’t rush to remove it. And you continue to link your Google+ page with your website.

Mueller also mentioned an expansion of support for structured markup such as Scheme.org, which we recommend all clients look at to see how it can be implemented.

And Google+ posts and pages will still appear in searches where relevant, so there is still some reason to post on the network, even if it’s lost one compelling reason for a lot of journalists, authors and bloggers.

 

Best Business Social Media and Blogging Guidelines

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Social Media policies and guidelines are vital for every business and employee. Not only are they helpful in ensuring that everyone in a company understands what is expected of them, they can also be a way to empower your employees to feel comfortable and confident in engaging with customers or clients via social media.

Rather than relying on the efforts of a small group of individuals to monitor, engage, interact and report on all activity across the plethora of social networks, blogs, wikis, forums and other locations, a good social media policy or set of guidelines means that the workload can be shared, and the responses can be crafted by those in the best position to respond with the right knowledge on a subject. That also cuts down on response times, as it avoids having to spend time internally contacting the right people within your business and obtain an answer.

Even with a small business, it’s good practice to instill the right guidelines and policies early on. That way you are already building a strong brand image and reputation, and new employees as you grow will pick up the right methodology by example as well as by instruction.

 

List of Social Media Guidelines and Policies:

Company NameDocument NameLink
AFPGuidelines for using social mediahttp://www.afp.com/newsletter/new-social-media-guidelines.pdf(PDF)
American Medical AssociationProfessionalism in the Use of Social Mediahttp://www.ama-assn.org//ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion9124.page
BBCSocial Networking, Microblogs and other Third Party Websiteshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-blogs-bbc-full
Boy Scouts of AmericaSocial Media Guidelineshttp://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Marketing/Resources/SocialMedia.aspx
Cabinet OfficeSocial Media Guidance for Civil Servantshttps://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/62361/Social_Media_Guidance.pdf(PDF)
Civil ServiceLets Get Socialhttp://www.civilservice.gov.uk/news/lets-get-social
Coca ColaSocial Media Principleshttp://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/online-social-media-principles
Exeter UniversitySocial Media Guidelineshttp://www.exeter.ac.uk/staff/web/socialmedia/
FordFord Social Media Guidelineshttp://www.slideshare.net/opinionwatch/ford-social-media-guidelines-scoot-monty
HPBlogging Code of Conducthttp://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html
IBMSocial Computing Guidelineshttp://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
Imperial College LondonSocial Media Guidelineshttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/webguide/socialmedia
IntelSocial Media Guidelineshttp://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html
International Olympic CommitteeSocial Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelineshttp://www.olympic.org/social-media-and-internet-guidelines
Inter-Paliamentary UnionSocial Media Guidelines for Parliamentshttp://www.ipu.org/PDF/publications/SMG2013EN.pdf(PDF)
Nursing & Midwifery CouncilSocial Networking Siteshttp://www.nmc-uk.org/nurses-and-midwives/advice-by-topic/a/advice/social-networking-sites/
OracleThe Oracle Social Media Participation Policyhttps://blogs.oracle.com/otn/entry/the_oracle_social_media_partic
RocheRoche Social Media Principleshttp://www.roche.com/social_media_guidelines.pdf(PDF)
TescoSocial Media Colleague Guidelineshttps://www.ourtesco.com/media/2013/09/social_media_colleague_guide_160913.pdf(PDF)
University of Texas at AustinSocial Media Guidelineshttp://www.utexas.edu/know/directory/guidelines/
Thomson ReutersSocial Media Guidelineshttp://thomsonreuters.com/site/social-media-guidelines/
University College LondonSocial Mediahttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-media
University of MichiganGuidelines for the use of social mediahttp://www.voices.umich.edu/docs/Social-Media-Guidelines.pdf(PDF)
University of YorkSocial Media Guidelineshttp://www.york.ac.uk/admin/hr/resources/policy/social-media-guidelines.htm
WalmartWalmart's Social Media Guidelineshttp://corporate.walmart.com/social-media-guidelines

 

 

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