Facebook, Instagram, Google, the Queensland Government and more have all made big announcements impacting Australian businesses this week. Check out the latest Australian business news below including new Facebook Ads rules, a QLD budget recap and more…
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This Week’s Australian Business News: 14 June 2021 – 18 June 2021
ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac have announced financial support for individual and business customers impacted by the recent severe storms and floods throughout many Victorian communities.
Depending on your circumstances, support may include:
- Adjustments to loan repayments.
- Waiving of fees and charges.
- Debt consolidation.
- Interest-free periods or no interest rate increases.
Speak with your bank or financial professional for tailored advice.
The New York Times has reported Google is working on an anti-slander algorithm, which would negatively impact web pages featuring unverified or slanderous claims about other people.
This ties in with Google’s ‘known victims’ concept, which would remove web results for a certain name being shown if similar content has been reported as slanderous.
It’s a reminder to website owners to ensure the information they share always follows the Expertise, Authority and Trust (EAT) best practices or be utilising a trusted SEO service.
Google has announced a host of new features to rollout with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), including:
- Administrators will be able to customise what their reports look like, giving them the metrics most valuable to them.
- A new, easier-to-use left-hand navigation panel.
- Expanded conversion modeling to help fill reporting gaps from website visitors who have not consented to cookie tracking.
- New data-driven attribution reports, including conversion paths report and model comparison report.
The new features will help website owners know exactly what in their website marketing plans are or are not working
The 2021 Queensland Budget will be handed down today, with big investments expected to be made into health, infrastructure, education, employment and renewable energy.
Big spending across the sectors is expected to help create more opportunities for businesses and Queenslanders looking for work.
Google has revealed AMP pages will no longer be needed to score a place in their Top Stories on relevant search engine results.
On the Google Search Central YouTube channel, they said to help increase your chances of securing a Top Stories spot, you’ll need to focus on:
Twitter is further helping businesses build their marketing databases by adding newsletter subscription buttons to profiles.
The feature will integrate newsletter tool Revue, allowing people to click the Subscribe button and instantly be subscribed the newsletter connected to the profile.
Direct marketing, like email marketing, is a great way to retain existing customers, whiling connecting with new customers too through sharing of news, offers and relevant information.
The Queensland 2021–2022 Budget was handed down yesterday, with small businesses being a focal point of many announcements.
Some of the highlights include funding into:
- Support for small-to-medium businesses to invest into eCommerce platforms to reach new areas.
- Support for live music and live music venues.
- Electricity Tariff Adjustment Scheme to help regional businesses with electricity connections due to phasing out obsolete tariffs.
- An extension of the Back to Work Initiative.
- A $100 million Business Investment Fund.
- The Mobile Black Spot program improve QLD coverage.
- Roadworks and infrastructure to create more jobs.
- 3,600 new public houses to be built over 4 years to create jobs.
- The tourism sector ($15 million) to create sustainable jobs.
A Privacy Designer at Twitter has revealed the micro-post social media is working on a new anti-abuse feature.
The tool would notify users of being mentioned in another user’s Tweet, with the option to remove the mention.
This is good news for businesses using the platform to engage with their audience as it allows them to moderate irrelevant negative brand attention.
Twitter is encouraging feedback about the feature via the platform.
Google has combined the power of Google Search Console and Google Analytics to launch Search Console Insights.
Anyone with a verified Google Search Console account can access the new product to help them better understand how their website content is performing to better optimise their pages and blogs.
The new tool can be found within Google Search Console.
Facebook has rolled out a set of new tools to help admins of Facebook Groups with easier moderation. The updates include:
- Machine-learning notifications to the admins when negative conversations are taking place in the group.
- A centralised group admin dashboard where all settings and features will be in one place.
- Automatic comment moderation, such as automatically not approving comments from new Facebook accounts and how often certain people can comment.
This will give businesses more confidence in using Facebook Groups for staying engaged with their audiences.
Broad outlines for an Australia-UK Fair Trade Agreement have been agreed upon, giving businesses more opportunities for importing and exporting to and from the United Kingdom.
Australian producers and farmers get a big advantage with all tariffs to be removed within 5 years. Other benefits include:
- Sugar tariffs removal over 8 years with transition periods.
- Dairy tariffs to be removed over 5 years.
- Sheep and beef tariffs to be removed over 10 years.
- UK liberalisation of 99% of Australian goods.
And more…
Facebook has announced business pages will be able to add their Podcasts to their account from 22 June 2021.
The feature works similar to an RSS feed, where Facebook will notify people via a post when a new podcast episode is released on a page they follow.
With roughly 5.6 million Australians already listening to podcasts every week, it’s another reason for businesses to utilise this method of marketing themselves.
Businesses with a Google My Business account will soon be able to edit basic information straight from search engine results.
Info you will be able to update includes:
- Adding posts, including events with specific details.
- Add/update services.
- Accept takeout and delivery orders.
Remember, Localsearch is a Google My Business Partner, so if you need to take the stress out of managing your GMB, drop us a message.
Instagram announced on Thursday they would be rolling out ads on Instagram Reels globally after testing since April.
Ads can be up to 30 seconds and will loop in-between other reels.
The ads have already been tested by big brands such as BMW, Louis Vuitton, Netflix and Uber, but are yet to be explored by smaller businesses.
From 29 June, Facebook will require advertisers seeking to run “social issue ads” to go through an authorisation process.
The policy was previously rolled out for political and electoral advertisers, but will now also remove ads without the correct authorisation and disclaimer for social issues also.
This could impact businesses who provide services for social issues, such as immigration lawyers.