Digital Marketing News: International Women’s Day, Google Warning, Facebook Tops YouTube

McDonald's International Women's Day

McDonald’s Flipped Its Famed Golden Arches for International Women’s Day – McDonald’s made a major play to celebrate International Women’s Day this year, taking its famed golden arches and turning them upside down across social media and at an owner-operated location in Lynwood, Calif. The effort is getting both kudos and criticism as a marketing ploy. Of course it is, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s bad, right? AdWeek

Also drawing attention to International Women’s Day: Here are two thoughtful videos from TopRank Marketing co-founder Susan Misukanis and Content Marketing Manager Christine Berres on the importance of women in the workplace and how to be the best you.

The 2017 Inc. 500 & Social Media: Finding Its Place in the Marketing Mix – LinkedIn and Facebook are reported as the most effective social media platforms while Twitter and YouTube are ranked among the least effective platforms for the Inc 500 companies. UMass Dartmouth

Analytics 360 Suite customers can now set up ‘user groups’ in Google Analytics – Individuals on internal teams at agencies and consultancies often have various levels of access to a Google Analytics account. Overseeing all those individual permissions — particularly as people come and go — is getting easier with the introduction of user groups in Google Analytics. Marketing Land

Google Engineer Issues Warning About Google Crawler – A Google engineer issued a “public service announcement” notifying web publishers that Google does not support CSS custom properties which means that Google’s crawler will not be able to render the web page properly and that can mean a lower ranking. Search Engine Journal

Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones – Wait, what? Anybody else think Google should stick to search and Pixel phones? The DoD partnership is to help develop AI for analyzing drone footage and quite a few Google employees are not happy about it. Gizmodo

Facebook Tops YouTube In Branded Video Space -According to a survey by video ad-tech company Clinch, Facebook’s platform is home to some 46% of all branded video campaigns, topping YouTube, which has 41% of the campaigns. Digital News Daily

Facebook’s Testing a New Option Which Enables Brands to Mass-Send Promotions via Messenger -Facebook’s rolling out a new test of a self-serve sponsored messaging tool, which will enable brands to mass-send promotional messages to anyone who’s already initiated a conversation with them on the platform. Social Media Today

Forget Facebook? Why Marketers are Embracing Both Pinterest and Instagram – Both platforms are interest based and both Pinterest and Instagram provide a better frame of mind for shopping and let’s face it – Facebook just isn’t what it used to be. AdWeek

Forrester Calls Amazon, Voice New Search Opportunities -Findings in a new Forrester report suggest that retail brands will invest 55% more in online marketing and advertising by 2023. Publicis, Omnicom, and WPP plan to boost their ad spending with Amazon between 40% and 100% in 2018, according to Forrester, citing online reports. MediaPost

On the Lighter Side:

Heinz Brings in a Real Hostage Negotiator to Resolve Parent-Child Standoffs at Dinner – AdWeek
Amazon Says It Has Fixed Randomly Laughing Alexa Speakers – Bloomberg

TopRank Marketing and Clients In the News:

3M has launched the Champions of Science podcast series (client) – 3M State of Science Survey
Lee Odden – 5 Expert Tips to Refine Your Content Marketing Strategy for 2018 – Marketing Insider Group
Lee Odden – Influencer Marketing Summary of Lee Odden at Social Media Marketing World: EAR Model – JM Internet Group
Lee Odden – What’s Trending: Linking Your Social Media Strategy – LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog
Lee Odden – 20 Inspiring Digital Marketing Experts – VBout
Lee Odden – Top 55 Social Media Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2018 – Status Brew
Alex Rynne of LinkedIn (client) and Lee Odden – [Video] Millennials & Influencer Marketing: How To Organize & Optimize For B2B (client) – B2BMX
Lee Odden – Is less more in content marketing? A data-driven answer – Scoop.it

Be sure to check in next week when we’ll be sharing all new marketing news stories or you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for daily news. Also, be sure to check out the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.