Weekly Digital Breakdown – 5.1.20
Weekly Digital Breakdown
May 01
Instagram Introduces Live Fundraising
During trying times, communities begin to rally together and in the wake of COVID-19, people are turning to social media to offer support. In an effort to help these causes, this week Instagram announced an easy way for users to fundraise, straight from their account.
Through Instagram Live streams, users now have the ability to raise funds with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the charity of their choice. During the broadcast, the host will be able to see how many people are supporting their cause and money raised in real time. The feature also let’s them thank donors with a wave feature.
To further promote giving back, those who contribute will receive a custom “I Donated” sticker that can be added to their Stories bar. Instagram hopes the display will encourage others to participate in various community causes.
Instagram continues its commitment to those who are struggling during this time by providing new tools and functions that make helping easier. While this new feature is currently only geared toward charitable organizations, it could potentially be expanded to help anyone in need.
Google Updates Ad Credit Qualifications
As COVID-19 began to cripple small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Google announced they would be committing $340 million in ad credits as well as an additional $40 million specifically for U.S. small business grants to help companies stay afloat.
The company recently added clarity around applicants qualifications needed to receive the assistance. In order to be eligible, advertisers must have spent ad dollars with a Google Ads account either directly or through a partner at least 10 months in 2019 and either January and/or February of 2020. Google is looking to reward its loyal business advertisers and amounts will be allocated based on past spend.
Advertisers will be notified if they have received credits and they will automatically be loaded to their Google Ads account. All credits can be used across any of Google Ad channels and will continue to be released in phases starting in late May. All credits valid until December 31st, 2020 and any that are unused will be removed from the account.
Specifics are further outlined on Google’s Help Center and will continue to be updated as needed.
Anchor Turns Video Conferences Into Podcasts
Anchor, Spotify’s podcast creation platform, now lets users convert video conference recordings into podcast episodes for free. The new feature will help businesses, especially those with smaller budgets, get more from their content with the ability to utilize other formats.
The process to turn the video files into audio is pretty simple and most video platforms are supported. Once the files are converted, they appear in Anchor’s episode builder and can be easily edited for various uses.
When the podcast is ready for audiences, Anchor also offers free unlimited hosting and automatic distribution to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms. Anchor also offers ideas for starting a podcast channel and best practices for sharing.
With more people working remote, podcasts have seen a decline in listeners over the past month. However as the country starts to open back up and more resources like those on Anchor become available, businesses are hoping to see a renewed interest.
