1. LinkedIn Rolls Out Articles, Live Events for Pages & Creator Accelerator Program - LinkedIn users have long been able to publish longer content from their personal accounts. Company pages, on the other hand, have been restricted by an arbitrary character count. LinkedIn’s new Articles For Pages gives companies the ability to publish long-form content for the first time, rather than being restricted by a character count. 

In addition, company pages are getting a new way to produce live content through an all-new product called LinkedIn Live Events, which combines live streaming with event planning. The simplified experience allows companies to:

LinkedIn is rolling out additional updates to Live Events to make the feature accessible and easy to use.

It may not seem like the most obvious choice for creators, but LinkedIn is also looking to tap into the emerging creator economy, with the launch of its own ‘Creator Accelerator’ initiative to support in-app talent, and keep its top voices posting to the platform. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get these popular users to keep posting to LinkedIn more often, which will help drive on-platform engagement. You can find out more info, and apply for a spot in the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program here.

2. Facebook’s Invoice Fast Track Program & a New In-App Application Process for Grant & Loan Opportunities - Facebook’s launching an expansion of its Invoice Fast Track program, which enables SMBs to apply for Facebook to buy up their outstanding invoices, providing immediate cash flow benefits.

As explained by Facebook:

Through the program, eligible businesses can submit their invoices to Facebook, which Facebook will then pay immediately. Facebook then notifies the relevant customers that they’ll pay the Facebook Invoice Fast Track program when the invoices reach term – so essentially, Facebook becomes a debt collector of sorts on the business's behalf, while the business doesn’t have to wait around for the cash.

Businesses can find more information on the program at the dedicated Invoice Fast Track mini-site.

And on the opportunities side, Facebook is launching a new in-app application process for grant and loan opportunities, making it easier for SMBs to access resources and information.

The new resource showcase will highlight grant opportunities and business education programs, as well as SMB groups that can help provide guidance and support. Facebook’s partnering with a range of ‘mission-driven’ organizations for the initiative, which are focused on providing resources to owners from underserved communities, in order to ensure that such opportunities are reaching those most in need.

Business Page Admins will be able to access this new experience on Facebook by clicking on Business Resources and Small Business Funding.

As per Facebook’s latest State of Small Business report, more than 60% of small businesses are facing some form of difficulty in paying business-related expenses, as the COVID crisis drags on, and while the end is now seemingly in view, it’ll still be too far off for many to remain in operation at the current impact rates.

3. Shopify Makes it Easy to Market to Specific Countries - Up until now, if a business wanted to reach a global market, they’d have to sell on a marketplace or through another retailer. Shopify Markets is a new solution that will allow businesses to manage cross-border storefronts from a central hub. This eliminates the the need for a third party and allows businesses to sell directly to international consumers.

With Shopify Markets merchants can sell outside of their home country without having to worry about complexities like currency conversion, language localization, providing local payment methods, and duty and import taxes. All cross-border tools are available to Shopify merchants right out of the box.

With Shopify Markets, you can:

Shopify store owners can target single country markets, or create custom markets by grouping multiple countries together.

Shopify Markets is available in early access globally as of September 14, and will roll out to all merchants in the coming months.

4. Changing WordPress Themes Can Impact Your Google Rankings - Google's John Mueller said in one of his #AskGooglebot short video answers that changing your WordPress theme can directly impact your rankings in Google Search. It obviously depends on what is changing with the website when you change the theme, but in general, it can impact your Google rankings. 

John first said that often when it comes to site themes, it is often more than just a splash of color on your web site. Often, the theme can impact how:

John then gave some tips on how to see if changing a theme impact your rankings at a high level, so watch the video here.

5. Google: Ignore Mobile Usability Issue Notices If Your Site Passes Live Test - Google's John Mueller said that if your page passes the live mobile usability test - that means you can ignore the Search Console notices of "new mobile usability issues detected for site." So as long as you pass the live mobile friendly test, you are good to go. 

Why might your site pass the live test and you would still get these notices? Well, those email notices can be days late from what you might see on the live site. So if you fixed the issue already, and the live test picked up on it, then you are good.

6. Google Ads Combining Smart and Standard Display Campaigns - Beginning this month, Google Ads will combine standard Display campaigns and Smart Display campaigns into a single option. In addition, Google Ads will also be introducing optimized targeting to Display campaigns. 

When advertisers create a new campaign, they’ll see the new Display campaign type. During the setup process, advertisers can choose what to automate or control manually, and they can change their automation choices at any time without having to create a new campaign.

As explained by Google:

Essentially, the new process will merge Google’s Smart Display campaigns and regular Display creation into one flow, which will provide more ways to automate your ad targeting, or specific elements of your process that you want to use automation for.

In addition to this, Google’s also adding optimized targeting to Display campaigns, which provides additional automatic audience targeting options for Display advertisers.

7. Google Will Enforce Unique Product Identifiers on Free Merchant Listings - Starting September 15, 2021, Google has begun enforcing the requirement of products having unique product identifiers in the merchant feeds for free listings.

Google said a unique product identifier, also known as UPIs, are considered products that include Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs), and brand names in the product feed you submit to Google Merchant Center.

Google said it may disapprove product feeds if they do not have UPIs. Google said “different products that use the same GTIN with the same variant attributes will be considered ambiguous and will be disapproved.” This includes “variant attributes” that include condition [condition] and multipack [multipack] for all products, as well as color [color] and [size] for apparel products, the company said. Also, Google said “if a group of products are identified as duplicates, only one will remain active and eligible to show in free listings.”

If you are taking advantage of the free Google Merchant Center and you are not using UPIs on your products in those feeds, you may soon start seeing those products being rejected and disapproved. Your next steps is to ensure you have UPIs on those products in those feeds. You can find a list of these approved unique product identifiers over here in the Google help docs.

8. YouTube Partners Can Appeal via Video - If your channel was suspended or rejected from the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), you can create a video explaining more about your content and why you believe an appeal is necessary. Our teams will view your video and make an assessment – if found to comply with our policies, we’ll either approve your channel for YPP or turn monetization back on within 30 days. Upon review, your channel will be assessed in its current state. This means you should not delete videos before submitting your video appeal. 

You can read more about the appeal process here. 

9. YouTube Community Posts is Now Available to Channels with 500+ Subscribers - YouTube has announced that content creators with just 500 subscribers can now access and make Community posts. Earlier, at least 1000 subscribers were required to get access to YouTube Community. But starting from October 12, 2021, any YouTube channel owner with just 500 subscribers will be eligible

10. YouTube Shared How Its Recommendation System Works - YouTube has published a new overview of how its content recommendations system works, which is one of the central drivers of video reach and views on the platform, and may help YouTube marketers get a better understanding of what guides optimal response. If you are interested in increasing your presence and reach on YouTube then this is a must visit article for you.

Per YouTube:

Here are some of the key notes on exactly how YouTube’s recommendations process works.

YouTube does also note that it is working to limit exposure to what it identifies ‘low quality content’. YouTube also bans content that includes false health claims (like COVID conspiracy clips), while it’s also taking more steps to address political misinformation. 

In seeking to limit the reach of borderline clips – those that don’t necessarily break the platform’s rules, but do present potentially harmful material – YouTube uses human evaluators to assess the quality of information in each channel or video. To determine ‘authoritativeness’, YouTube says that its evaluators answer a few key questions: