The ONeil Edit – June 25, 2021

🎶Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I’ve ever known 🎶.

Wait what? 

I don’t know. I’ve had a few earworm songs in my head this week and this morning that’s the one. It’s probably not even the right lyrics because my kids tell me that the songs I’ve been singing this week, I got all wrong. 

But on an up note, my youngest daughter taught me my first Tik Tok dance last night! To a song I told my older daughter was called Gummy Gummy but apparently that’s wrong too. Whatever! It’s too hard to get it right and too fun getting it wrong. 

O. M. G. Do you know what just occurred to me? Taylor, our new Junior Digital Strategist is young and could potentially be engaged in some TikToking herself. Taylor, do you TikTok? If so, will you teach our team some TikToks at our next in office meeting? (She edits these for me before they’re posted and I’m hoping she answers yes to all of the above questions.) 

ETA: Taylor does not in fact TikTok, but she may have a line on some young people who do, that are not my children so there’s hope yet for an in office TikTok lesson!

Wait for it though because I’m bringing it all back to some relevance for this week’s edition of the Edit. I’ve got some news about Instagram Reels (their version of TikTok). Also on deck is a slew of Google info and a little sunshine in the form of housing and economic recovery news.

FACEBOOK WANTS TO TAKE OVER ALL THE SOCIAL MEDIAS

Instagram is rolling out the reels ads. 30 seconds long and ready to invade your daily mindless scrolling, these ads are launching right as TikTok is working on upping their own advertising game. I think the trick to these ads is going to be coming up with creative content that isn’t exactly a dance move but is also not your traditional 30 second video ad. I’m not convinced this is a space for home builders just yet, but I’m also not totally against it. 

While rolling out the new ad product, Zuck also got busy debuting his answer to Clubhouse. It’s got a far less catchy title, Live Audio Rooms, and is slightly different from Clubhouse in its functionality, but you can see where Facebook is going with it. Currently hosting is limited to a public figure or a Facebook Group which means regular people can’t just go out and host one but then again, maybe there aren’t masses of regular people itching to host a live audio show on Facebook?

A GAGGLE OF GOOGLE UPDATES

First and foremost, it would appear that enough people and businesses rained on Google’s FLoC parade that they are delaying the launch and extending their support of 3rd Party cookies. 

On the SEO front, FAQ’s were something that could get snippets from your website featured in Google Search results and it was a great opportunity to improve a website’s SEO. But this week Google decided to return the rain parade favor and has limited the opportunity to appear in the FAQ results to 2 per site. Womp Womp. 

In the always evolving world of Google, they launched a new tool for advertisers, their version of something Facebook has offered for a while, a creative studio in which to create ads. I’m interested to see how useful it turns out to be. 

As with any product whose purpose it is to simplify a task that typically requires professionally trained individuals and lots of time, there are guard rails built in to keep the average user from making a total mess of the task at hand. But those guard rails prove very limiting. Often, I forgo what Facebook provides me in favor of the more labor intensive option of doing it myself because the final product will be more polished. TBD on Google’s offering.

ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND THE LUMBER CRISIS

Apparently, the Fed Chair thinks the roller coaster ride that lumber took us on is a map of what our economic recovery will look like. Yikes and yay?! Since reaching an all time high in May, lumber prices have fallen by almost 50% and things are looking bright for the future. The housing market remains strong, lumber is getting back on track and we all made it through. This is exactly what Jerome Powell thinks our economy will do as well: hit a few bumps but come out stronger on the other side. I’ll take it!

Ohhh what about a TikTok about lumber? Nah.

Ohh but maybe an Instagram Reel ad showing a home built from the ground up in a time lapse with some words and phrases splashed on it in those bright chat bubbly things that shows a potential buyer facts about the home buying process could work. Yasss that could be really good!

And maybe in the Homefiniti user group on Facebook we could host a live audio panel sometime? What do you think? Would you tune in?

Perhaps all those earworms this week served a purpose to get my creative juices flowing just when I was starting to feel that well go a little dry? 🤷‍♀️Either way, they certainly helped get me through a tough week. Here’s to the freakin weekend 🥂. See you all next Friday!