Instagram Loses 25% of its Daily Active Users, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week

2012 is wrapped up, and 2013 is cruising in, full speed ahead! Have you gotten your marketing plan all sorted out to start the new year off with a bang?
I'd like to help you out by sharing these top marketing stories of the week so you can get your marketing plan in order and catch up on what you might have missed over the holidays.
But I also know that coming up with your 2013 marketing plan -- including your strategy, goals, and schedule -- is way easier said than done.

Google+ Now Allows Pages to Interact With All Users, Analytics Coming Soon

Before I give you this little recap, just hold on one second while I … YAHOOOO! Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into exactly what this new update means for Google+ Business Page owners. Previously, Google+ Pages could only +1, share, or comment on posts from users who had already added the page to one of their Circles. But now, Google+ Pages can interact with any post from any user without these Circle limitations. A-mazing. This opens up so many doors for marketers wishing to grow their reach and generate more leads through Google+. Remember this update while you’re monitoring brand mentions and interactions on Google+, because now you’ll want to take a peek at specific hashtags (just as you would on Twitter) and Google+ Communities as well.
+1 for better Google+ engagement! But how about that second part of the announcement, marketers?! How long have we been asking for Google+ analytics? Um, probably since the moment the platform launched business pages back in November, 2011. According to Google+’s “Measure” page, Google+ explains, “Data trumps guessing every time. That’s why in the coming weeks, we will be launching tools to give you access to as much data as possible about your Google+ Page and +1 activity.” Google+, you had us at “data trumps guessing.” The page activity data will include information about who’s interacting with your page (and how), your users’ demographics, and information about their social activities (this includes +1’s, shares, and comments). Now, not only is Google+ a great SEO booster and internal business tool, but it's also coming through as an excellent platform to help you market your brand, become a thought leader in your industry, and successfully measure your results. If you’d like to learn more about these new Google+ updates, read the full story here.

Gangnam Style Makes YouTube History: First Video to Hit 1 Billion Views, From The YouTube Blog

By now, you must have heard PSY’s "Gangnam Style" -- a song that completely blew up the internet and has now officially amassed 1 billion views on YouTube. The music video was YouTube's top rising search of 2012, and on October 6th, there were more than 5 million searches for the term “gangnam style” in a single day. Absolutely incredible!
Back in September, we fell in love with "Gangnam Style" ourselves and released a parody of our own called "Inbound Style." Before creating this parody, we took some tips from marketing strategist and author David Meerman Scott about how to newsjack our way into the media. He even had a cameo in our parody video -- see if you can spot him here. The original video was catchy, hilarious, and easy to parody, which is why it went completely viral. Do you want to create a viral video to help your marketing in 2013? You might want to take some pointers from PSY! To see more "Gangnam Style" stats, check out the full post on YouTube’s blog here.

A New Year Brings New Marketing Opportunities: Complementary Marketing Consultation

What are your marketing resolutions for 2013? Do you want to create a viral video like "Gangnam Style?" Increase your blogging frequency? Automate some of your social media posts? I’m sure you’ve already got a great list piling up, but that list can seem awfully daunting if you’re not sure where to start or how to focus your marketing efforts.
That’s where HubSpot comes in! We’d love to chat with you about your plan (or possibly lack thereof) for 2013 to help you get more out of your marketing budget, determine how you stack up against competitors, send more traffic to your website, and more! Just let us know what you want to talk about and what you’re hoping to achieve in 2013. We’re ready to answer your toughest marketing questions. So fire away! Ready to zero in on those marketing goals? Submit your request to chat with a HubSpot inbound marketing specialist about your marketing right here.

Why Instagram’s Reported Drop in Daily Users Is Probably Not Due to Terms Of Service “Revolt,” From Marketing Land

You might recall last week’s marketing round-up post where I mentioned Instagram’s updated privacy policy, which led to some serious backlash from users -- which then led to a rollback and replacement of the originally publicized privacy policy. Well, it turns out that Instagram recently lost 25% of its daily active users (DAU). Wow! Without any further information, one would assume this loss is due to the new privacy policy update and the uproar that came from it. But when you look at the data, the “revolt” took about a week to show a noticeable decrease in DAU. And with the announcement around December 17th, a week later would put us at December 24th: Christmas Eve. Interesting. But there’s even more data to consider. Flickr’s DAU recently increased from 30,000 to 60,000 (as compared to Instagram’s 16,400,000 to 12,400,000). So did Instagram’s users flock to Flickr? It’s possible.
Data is great, but the marketing takeaway here is that the way you analyze data can make a huge difference in how you move forward with your efforts. If Instagram had only considered the data gathered during the “revolt," they would have completely missed the fact that Christmas could have played into the DAU data. Just remember that data shows the facts, but you have to connect the dots. If you’re interested in seeing more data regarding the Instagram “revolt,” take a look at the full post here.

Randi Zuckerberg Not Happy About Facebook Photo Privacy Breach, From Mashable

Over the holidays, Randi Zuckerberg, the former head of marketing for Facebook, posted a photo on Facebook (how fitting!) of her family goofing around with the new Poke app. Sounds like a pretty normal thing any Facebook user might do, right? Well, this photo was posted to a private group of Facebook friends, but was somehow found circulating around Twitter, the blogosphere, and other unexpected places.
Awkward.
Randi was not happy about this discovery and got caught publicly complaining about a Facebook privacy breach. Oh, the irony! In reality, another member of the group had taken the picture and posted it to Twitter. Of course, Randi then covered up her complaint by sending a tweet that said, “Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly. It’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency.” Whether you agree with Randi, or you’re siding with the idea that this is a privacy policy issue, we can all take an important marketing lesson away from this debacle. Don’t steal people’s content on the internet. Are you taking steps to ensure you give credit where credit's due with shared content on the internet? It’s something to seriously think about when implementing your 2013 marketing plan. Would you like to read more about the Zuckerberg photo controversy? Read the full story here.