Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner... | Presented by |  |
It's Share a 😁 Smile Day, Alluser! Say cheese.
In today's edition:
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Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for Facebook ads
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Find the 🏁 winning marketing channels for new products
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🩹 Improving Instagram content performance
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✒️ Writing and 🎤 scripting persuasive copy
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🛍️ Shoppable Pinterest live streams
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TikTok live tests 🕵️ product identification feature
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📣 Additional industry news from Google, Threads, YouTube, and more
Are you responsible for allocating Facebook ad spend? Wondering when to assess campaign performance so you know which campaigns to scale and which to turn off?
The 1-3-7 Facebook Ads Performance Analysis Model
On Day 1, check stats about clicks and click-through rates. If they're much higher or lower than expected, consider tweaks.
On Day 3, switch off any campaign that isn't visibly successful. You can let campaigns that aren't leaning one way or the other ride for another 4 days.
By Day 7, your ad campaigns are either getting great results or not. Let successful campaigns continue to run and check in on them again every 1, 3, and 7 days.
Review the week's failed campaigns and use what you learn to inform future campaign decisions.
Today's tip is inspired by Nick Shackelford.
Just Hours Left: Social Media Marketing World Recordings...
One last reminder…
You only have a few hours to secure your On-Demand ticket for Social Media Marketing World.
After tonight it will be gone forever.
With your On-Demand ticket, you'll be able to watch every keynote, session, and workshop from the conference for a fraction of what people paid to attend in person.
"They provide you with all of the sessions, so for the coming year I'll have resources on a lot of different topics as they come up with our clients," said Cliff Winkler.
YES! I want the recordings before they are gone.
Experimental Marketing Framework
Are you faced with marketing an entirely new product or service? Wondering where you should focus your marketing efforts?
This framework will help you identify the most profitable options.
Step 1: Brainstorming
Start by making a comprehensive list of all the potential marketing channels and specific ideas you can think of that could help you achieve your marketing and sales goals.
Include things like social media platforms, advertising channels, partnerships, influencer marketing, content creation, email marketing, referral programs, etc.
Step 2: Rank Marketing Options by Their Expected Impact
Next, look at everything on your brainstorm list and rank them from highest potential impact to lowest, based on your knowledge of your product, customers, and industry.
The criteria to consider for this ranking should include expected conversion rates, level of effort/resources required, tactic creativity/uniqueness, etc.
The goal is to identify the marketing channels that look the most promising.
Step 3: Experiment With Systematic Testing
With your ideas ranked, start systematically testing the highest-ranked options, working your way down the list over time.
For each test, you need to track quantifiable results rather than soft metrics such as likes. Suggested key performance indicators include sales, email signups, traffic to your website, etc.
Tracking these metrics will allow you to see exactly which marketing channels and tactics are helping you reach your goals.
Step 4: Double Down on Your Winners
After running experiments for some time, you'll likely start to see a pattern emerge with 1–3 marketing channels or tactics demonstrating the best return on investment. These become the "winners" you want to scale.
If an experiment isn't working, try the next idea on your ranked list. Continually focusing your limited resources on the highest-performing experiments is key.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Noah Kagan.
3 Tips to Improve Instagram Content Performance
Want your brand to stand out on Instagram?
Not many marketers are professional graphic designers. This means small editing and design errors–not the algorithm—could be negatively impacting content performance.
For example, text overlays or captions with fonts sized too small to comfortably read on a tiny phone screen leads viewers to simply keep scrolling rather than pausing to decipher the words.
Likewise, a lack of sufficient contrast between text colors and background images causes readability issues that fail to grab attention in the queue of posts. Such frequent graphic design mistakes likely damage your content's reach much more than changes to Instagram's feed algorithm or platform tweaks.
Additionally, boring recycled content that merely mimics what other accounts have already done fails to convey what uniquely defines your particular brand. Replicating others' video trends or templates without customization ignores the chance to showcase your specialized products, services, or perspective.
The following tips will help you design content that performs better—even with limited resources.
Tips for Pinned Posts: Profile Banners
This clever hack lets you efficiently repurpose and re-highlight performing content without complicated editing or ongoing design work: divide an extra-long rectangular image into three pieces and pin them across the three top posts at the top of your profile feed to function as a large continuous billboard.
Prominently placing pinned posts with strong visual continuity signals importance to visitors landing on your profile, indirectly encouraging them to click and learn more about your pinned content.
Refresh your pinned banner posts monthly or whenever you have a new major promotion or product launch worth spotlighting front and center.
Tips for Captions
Clear, benefit-focused captions tend to perform better than lengthily worded captions aimed primarily at showcasing creativity through clever turns of phrase, humor, or storytelling.
Lead your captions with an interesting emotional hook, intriguing question, or highlight about your product or service to grab attention right away—before diving into a longer backstory or anecdote.
End captions with a strong, clear call to action that provides viewers with an obvious next step, like clicking your link or visiting your website to make a purchase, sign up for a freebie, or learn more.
Pro Tip: Use intentional line breaks between paragraphs and emoji icons to better visually organize blocks of heavy text for readability at a glance.
Tips for Trends
Viral internet and entertainment trends work like timely inside jokes almost everyone quickly understands on a visceral level.
Instead of wholesale copying what others are doing with a trend, put your unique spin on a popular topic in a meme format or challenge to tailor the recognizable humor to your niche while benefiting from the shared context.
Rather than painstakingly recreating popular dances or video formats entirely from scratch, a simple text-based Instagram post can nod to a trending meme or react to a news event that aligns with your brand voice and still features enough creativity to garner attention.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Manu Muraro.
Oops…You Missed It, Alluser!
That's what you'll see if you wait until tomorrow to grab your On-Demand ticket to Social Media Marketing World 2024.
Why?
Because the doors close tonight at 11:59 PM Pacific.
After that, the only way to get marketing training like this is to wait until March 30th, 2025, for next year's Social Media Marketing World
Do you really want to wait 394 days to improve your marketing?
Imagine being equipped with the newest marketing strategies so you can embrace AI and the latest social platform changes TODAY.
YES! I want the recordings before they are gone.
How to Use Agency and Identity to Write and Script Persuasive Marketing Content
Subtle changes of just a few letters can transform the effect our words have. The right language can influence other people, get their attention, make meaningful connections, and persuade them toward a desired action.
The tips in this article are based on research that used machine learning and natural language processing. By analyzing millions of pieces of content—such as customer service calls, slide decks, and blog posts—linguists have started to identify the word hacks that convince, connect, and persuade consumers.
What are agency and identity?
Agency refers to one's capacity to make choices and take responsibility for those choices. When we have agency, we feel empowered and in control over a situation rather than passive or helpless. Those with a strong sense of agency take pride in their actions and accomplishments.
Identity encompasses our self-perceptions and how we define ourselves. Our internalized sense of identity shapes our behavior, relationships, and decision-making. A secure identity provides a steady inner compass for navigating life's complexities.
Language that speaks to our agency and identity can make us feel more, or less, in control. It can help us identify as the right or wrong fit for a product. We can even change others' behavior by linking certain actions, values, or products to more or less desirable identities.
Using Action Versus Identity
According to conventional wisdom, marketing content should contain lots of action verbs. Buy! Try! Discover! Join! Experience!
But the science says something different.
A study from Stanford University found that you could activate up to a third more people by asking them "to be a helper," instead of just asking people "to help." A similar study found that voter turnout grew by 15% when people were encouraged "to be a voter" instead of just "to vote."
In other words, when you speak to people's identities instead of their actions, you get a more active response. You can use this insight in several different ways:
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Motivate your audience by offering them an identity instead of suggesting an action. Think of the success YouTube has had by framing people who post content on the platform as "creators."
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Represent your business or personal brand as an identity. Don't say, "I coach entrepreneurs." Instead, say, "I am a coach!"
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Downgrade undesirable actions by associating them with unpopular identities. Nobody wants to be a cheater, a loser, or someone who misses out.
Second and Third Person
You can persuade and dissuade people and empower and disempower them based on your language.
Sometimes, it's as basic as which point of view you use: first ("I"), second ("you"), or third (he, she, or they).
On social media, the second person (you) is most effective. It grabs people's attention by putting them in the spotlight. They feel that they have all of the agency. They feel that their identity is recognized.
In customer service, the third person (he/she/they) or passive voice is more effective. That's because when someone has a problem with your product, they don't want to feel like it's their fault. They don't want that agency or identity! Try flipping the script by talking about the product or using passive voice. For example, instead of saying, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" try, "Has the device been restarted?"
You'd be amazed how much difference these changes can make.
On social media, your audience will feel empowered and recognized. In customer service situations, they'll feel supported and understood, not blamed or condescended to.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Jonah Berger.
🗞 Pinterest Shoppable Streaming: Pinterest has launched its first-ever streaming show, "Deliciously Entertaining," in partnership with media company Tastemade. The 10-episode cooking and lifestyle series also features a shoppable experience on Pinterest. Menu items, decorations, recipes, and tutorials from each 22-minute episode can be shopped via QR codes that link to Pinterest boards. Source: Pinterest
🗞 Threads Features in Testing: Meta has started testing two highly requested features on Instagram—drafts and an in-app camera. The drafts feature allows users to save a single post that they may want to publish later. Users can write the post in the composer and swipe down to save it as a draft. The Threads app will also display a different composer icon when there is a saved draft, indicating to the user that they have content ready to post. Along with drafts, Meta is testing a new camera shortcut that opens directly in the composer, making it quicker for users to take and post a photo. Both new features are only available to a small number of test users at this time as Meta evaluates the functionality. Source: TechCrunch
🗞 TikTok User Details: A new Pew Research Center study of United States adult TikTok users reveals that a small minority of highly active posters are responsible for producing the vast majority of content on the platform. This means those who do post can enjoy amplified visibility. The top 25% of most prolific posters generate 98% of all public videos from adult users. In contrast, around half of adult TikTok users have never posted their own video. The typical user rarely or never posts but instead uses TikTok mainly to view content made by others. There are no major differences in posting rates across age groups—around half of users ages 18–34 and 35–49 have posted videos, similar to the overall rate. Users who do post videos tend to be more engaged with TikTok in other ways as well, like having more followers and finding their personalized "For You" page more interesting. Still, 40% of all users say their "For You" content is extremely or very interesting to them, far exceeding the 14% who say it is not interesting. So most users seem pleased with the content TikTok's algorithm recommends, even if they don't produce much of their own. Source: Pew Research
🗞 Google's AI Help Me Write: Google has updated the visual design for the "Help me write" feature in Chrome that was first previewed at Google I/O in 2022. It now appears as a floating window beside text fields on webpages, with options to customize the length and tone of the generated text. When enabled, users can right-click on text fields to access AI-generated writing suggestions. To use the feature, Chrome users in the US must turn on Experimental AI in their settings and enable "Help me write." Source: The Verge
🗞 Save on Threads: The feature began rolling out more broadly yesterday. This feature allows users to bookmark their favorite posts for later. To use this new feature, users can tap the three-dot menu on a post and select the "save" option. The posts a user has saved will be available to view in their account settings. This allows users to easily save posts they are interested in and want to revisit later in a convenient place. Source: Adam Mosseri via Threads
🗞 X/Twitter Features: The platform is rolling out video and audio calling functionality to non-Premium users. Source: @enriquebrgn via X/Twitter
🗞 TikTok Shopping Feature Test: The platform has launched a live test of its "Identify Similar Objects" feature. When activated, TikTok's object identification AI will identify objects in your videos and highlight potential product matches viewers can purchase in the Shop tab. Source: Social Media Today
🗞 Monetization on X/Twitter: The platform has added a new "Monetization" feature in the app to provide Premium members with an overview of the various revenue-making options available. By accessing the Monetization page, Premium users can now also view estimates of their total earnings from these features for the current payout period. Source: XNewsDaily via X/Twitter
🗞 X/Twitter Video Spaces: Spaces hosts on iOS can now turn on their video during live audio chat sessions. The new feature gives hosts the option to share video from their front or back phone camera in either landscape or portrait mode. Host video takes prominence in the interface, surrounded by icons of other co-hosts, speakers, and listeners. Source: The Verge
🗞 YouTube Create Expansion: YouTube Create beta is expanding to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey. Users in these countries can now download YouTube Create from the Google Play Store to test it out. Source: YouTube
Did You Know?
In 14th century France, farmers were taxed 2 pounds of beeswax each year.
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