Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner... | Presented by |  |
It's National Horseradish Month, Alluser! It's definitely a top-tier condiment.
In today's edition:
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🏜️ Today's Tip of the Day is for thumbnail design
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🧩 Your next marketing hire
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✅ ✅ ✅ Setting up custom GPTs to do repetitive tasks
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📸 🤳 How to acquire valuable UGC
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OpenAI releases GPT-4o Mini
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Meta launches Llama 3.1
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Bing tests new AI search experience
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🗞️ Additional industry news from Meta, TikTok, X, and more
Want to improve the click-through rate on your videos or podcasts? If you set and forget your thumbnail, you might be missing out on important data that can dramatically improve performance.
Let Retention Guide New Thumbnail Designs
After your episode has been up for a week, take a look at your retention graphs to see the places where audience interest peaks.
Pull quotes of no more than eight words from these sections and use them on new thumbnail designs.
When you're ready, run A/B tests to determine which thumbnails perform better.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Mike Russell, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
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Hiring the Right Person for Your Marketing Team
Are you looking to grow your marketing team? Want to be sure you hire the right person the first time?
Before you start hiring, you must understand your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. If this is your first hire, consider choosing someone who complements your skills.
For example, if you're great at strategy but struggle with content creation, look for someone with strong copywriting and video skills.
This approach allows you to focus on your strengths while addressing areas where you need support.
Job Descriptions for Marketing Roles
When crafting a job description, focus on your team's specific needs rather than copying generic descriptions. Instead, highlight the experiences and skills most relevant to the role you're filling.
While you want to learn about each applicant, avoid asking them to include unnecessary details. For example, if you're hiring for a digital marketing role, focus on obtaining relevant experiences rather than unrelated past jobs.
Pro Tip: Potential applicants will research your company before they apply. Ensure that your company's profile is up-to-date and reflects your agency's culture and values.
Narrowing the Field
To find your top candidates, ask each applicant to create a short video explaining three reasons why they're awesome and three reasons why they think your company is awesome. This helps you assess their creativity, resourcefulness, and genuine interest in your company.
Keep the instructions for this video intentionally vague—don't provide a timeline or a preferred video length. This will allow you to see how candidates handle open-ended tasks and whether they take the initiative to ask questions or research your company.
Interviewing Candidates
During interviews, pay attention to how candidates talk about their current or previous jobs. Look for candidates running toward a chance to work with your company, not away from problems at their current job. It could be a red flag if a candidate speaks negatively about past experiences.
Be sure to involve any team members who will work closely with the new hire in the interview process. This helps ensure a good personality fit and gives current employees a sense of ownership in the hiring process.
You'll also want to focus on how candidates react to problems and interact with others to gauge whether someone is a good cultural fit.
Pro Tip: Skills can be taught, but personality and work ethic are harder to change. Look for people who can handle stress well and maintain a positive attitude when facing challenges.
Onboarding Your New Team Member
When you've chosen your new hire, set clear expectations from the start. Have upfront conversations about potential challenges and how to navigate them. For example, "We will have difficult conversations in the future. But how we navigate them is going to be super important. What are your thoughts?"
Pro Tip: Consider using a virtual office platform such as So Works to create a sense of community for remote workers. This tool allows new and existing team members to have impromptu conversations and feel more connected, similar to an in-person office environment.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is holding onto underperforming employees for too long. While giving someone multiple chances may seem kind, it can harm your top performers and overall company culture. Hire slow and fire fast.
If an employee is underperforming, have an honest conversation about expectations and provide specific steps for improvement. If the employee doesn't meet these expectations within a set timeframe, it may be time to part ways.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Karen Hite, a featured guest on the Marketing Agency Show.
Custom GPTs: Create Your Own Personalized AI Assistants
Have you ever wished for a personal assistant that knows exactly how you like things done? Custom GPTs might be the answer.
AI can do more for you than you think. If you look past all the technical jargon, these powerful tools can help with all sorts of tasks in both work and personal life.
Inspiration for Custom GPTs in Daily Life and Work
Custom GPTs are simply personalized versions of AI chatbots like ChatGPT that you can train to help you with specific tasks or processes. Instead of typing long instructions every time, you create a custom GPT that remembers how you like things done.
The goal is to let AI handle repetitive tasks so you can focus on what you do best. With custom GPTs, you're limited only by your imagination in creating helpful AI assistants tailored to your specific needs.
For example:
Interactive Customer Personas: For work, Brian Piper, Director of Content Strategy at the University of Rochester, creates GPTs that act like potential students to help improve his marketing materials. These GPTs can review website content, suggest improvements, and even do competitive analysis by looking at other universities' sites.
Meal Planning: Brian's "Culinary Creator" GPT plans meals for the week, creates recipes, makes shopping lists, and even suggests prep work. It knows his family's food preferences, dietary restrictions, and even his local grocery store layout. This GPT can plan a whole week of meals in about five minutes, saving Brian hours of work.
Fitness Routines: Another GPT helps plan workouts based on Brian's preferences and any injuries. It can adjust routines based on his energy levels, available equipment, and even the weather.
Selling Items Online: A custom GPT helps Brian list items on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. He just takes a picture of the item, and the GPT writes the title and description, researches a fair price, and can even create an Excel file ready to upload for bulk listings.
5 Steps to Create a Custom GPT
To make your own custom GPT, follow these steps:
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Get a paid ChatGPT account (Custom GPTs are only available with paid versions).
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Go to "Explore GPTs" in the upper left menu and click "Create GPT."
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Answer some basic questions about what you want the GPT to do.
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Use the "Configure" settings to provide detailed instructions. During this step, use Chris Penn's "RACE" model (Role, Action, Context, and Example) to give the AI what it needs to deliver your desired output.
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Provide any necessary information or data for your GPT to use.
Remember, creating a good custom GPT is an iterative process. Start with a basic version and improve it. As you discover what works best, you can expand its use to more complex tasks. You'll also want to experiment with multiple AI tools (like Claude, Gemini, and HyperWrite) to gain diverse perspectives and find the tools that work best for you.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Brian Piper, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
UGC Strategy for Improving Visibility and Sales
Wish you could easily get great content for your social platforms? Wondering how to leverage user-generated content (UGC) in your marketing?
The advantages of UGC extend beyond just building trust. It can significantly reduce the content creation burden on marketing teams, allowing them to focus on strategy and curation rather than constant production. This is particularly valuable for smaller businesses or those in niche markets where professional content creation might be challenging or expensive.
UGC also provides invaluable market insights. By analyzing the content users create, brands can better understand how their products are being used, what features are most appreciated, and what pain points might still exist. This information can inform product development, marketing strategies, and customer service improvements.
As a bonus, UGC can enhance SEO efforts. User-created content often includes natural, conversational language that potential customers might use in searches, helping to improve a brand's visibility in search engine results. It also grows the volume of content associated with a brand, potentially improving its overall online presence.
UGC is particularly powerful because it represents authentic experiences and opinions from real users. Unlike traditional marketing materials, UGC often captures genuine moments of product use in everyday life, providing potential customers with relatable and trustworthy content.
The authenticity of UGC can be especially impactful in industries where trust is paramount, such as healthcare, finance, or high-end consumer goods. For instance, a skincare brand might benefit from users sharing before-and-after photos or detailed reviews of their experience with a product over time. This kind of content can address potential customers' concerns and showcase real results in a way that branded content often struggles to achieve.
Sound good? Let's get started…
Put Permissions in Place
Before using UGC, consider the legal aspects, particularly intellectual property rights. Ensure you have clear policies and user agreements that outline how you intend to use submitted content.
3 Practical Tips for Acquiring Strategic UGC in Your Marketing
Brands can employ creative strategies beyond basic contests and hashtags to stimulate UGC creation. For instance, creating "unboxing experiences" with visually appealing packaging and unexpected extras can encourage customers to share their initial reactions on social media. Some companies include small, branded props or accessories with their products specifically designed for social media photo ops.
Interactive elements can also improve UGC. For example, a coffee brand might include a QR code on its packaging that, when scanned, opens a mobile app, allowing customers to record and share their morning coffee ritual. This not only encourages content creation but also provides the brand with valuable data on customer habits and preferences.
Collaborations with UGC creators can be taken further by involving them in brand ambassador programs, product development, or limited edition releases. This generates content and creates a sense of exclusivity and insider access that can be highly appealing to audiences.
Implementing UGC in Your Marketing
Now, you have to decide where and how to use your content.
Consider how you can integrate UGC into the entire customer journey, from awareness to post-purchase support. For example, you could incorporate user-submitted questions and answers into product pages, or customer success stories could be featured in email marketing campaigns to re-engage past purchasers.
To maximize the impact of UGC, consider creating dedicated spaces for it on your website or app. This could be a community forum, a customer photo gallery, or a section for user-submitted tips and tricks. This not only showcases the content but also creates a destination for potential customers to explore real user experiences.
Pro Tip: Analytics plays a crucial role in a successful UGC strategy. Tracking metrics such as engagement rates, conversion impact, and sentiment analysis of UGC can help refine your approach over time.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Neal Schaffer, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
OpenAI Launches GPT-4o Mini: OpenAI has launched GPT-4o Mini, a cheaper, more compact AI model aimed at developers. It outperforms GPT-3.5 and will replace it for most ChatGPT users. The model supports text and vision, with plans for additional multimodal capabilities. Source: OpenAI
Instagram expands Notes Feature: Instagram is expanding its Notes feature to Reels and grid posts. Users can now leave temporary, semi-private comments that disappear after three days. These Notes appear as bubbles on content and are visible only to close friends or mutual followers. Content creators can opt to disable Notes on their posts. Source: @Instagram via Threads
Meta's Verified Subscription Plans for India: Meta has launched Meta Verified subscription plans for businesses on Instagram and Facebook in India. The service offers four tiers—Standard, Plus, Premium, and Max—each providing a verified badge, account support, and impersonation protection, with additional features in higher tiers. Source: Meta
X's New Trend Genius for Ads: X has launched Trend Genius, a new ad product that automatically deploys ads based on real-time conversation trends. Advertisers can select topics they want to align with, and ads are activated when discussions peak on the platform. The system also integrates third-party data for localized advertising based on events like sports outcomes or weather. Source: @XBusiness via X
Instagram Prioritizes Messaging: Instagram is testing a new layout that prioritizes messaging by moving the DM icon to the center of the bottom navigation bar. Source: Social Media Today
Meta Launches Llama 3.1: Meta has launched Llama 3.1, featuring a 405B parameter open-source AI model and improved 70B and 8B versions. CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that this release marks a shift toward open-source AI dominating the industry. He cites benefits, including customization, data privacy, and cost efficiency. Source: Meta
Meta AI's New Features: Meta AI has expanded to 22 countries with 7 new languages. New features include personalized image generation with "Imagine me," improved image editing tools, and in-app image creation across Meta's platforms. Users can now access the advanced Llama 405B model for complex math and coding tasks. Meta AI is also being integrated into Meta Quest devices. Source: Meta
Meta Adds Offers to Ad Sources: Meta has introduced a new feature to enhance Facebook ad campaigns by automatically incorporating offers from advertisers' websites. This updated URL ingestion process detects existing offers and discounts listed on a site during the ad setup. The system can display these offers to viewers who are more likely to respond based on their previous ad interactions. Advertisers can also edit these offers within the campaign setup for greater control. Source: Social Media Today
Metas's European Ad Subscription Service: Meta's European "pay or consent" ad model faces new regulatory scrutiny. The Consumer Protection Cooperation Network claims Meta's marketing is misleading and pressures users to decide quickly without clear information. This follows a European Union Commission ruling that the plan violates the Digital Markets Act. Source: European Commission
X to Disable Links in Replies: X is developing a new feature that would allow users to disable links in replies to their posts. Source: Engadget
X Tests 'Request a Community Note': X is testing a "Request a Community Note" feature, allowing users with verified phone numbers to request notes on posts needing clarification. The initial limit is 5 daily requests per user. Top Writer contributors will see requests on posts less than 24 hours old with at least 5 requests, helping focus efforts on potentially problematic content. Source: X Community Notes
YouTube Shopping Updates: YouTube has launched a new Chrome extension on desktop. With a new browser extension, creators can save products they want to tag in their content and see commission rates. Additionally, if users have a merch store connected to their channel YouTube is automatically adding a merch shelf to their channel's homepage. The shelf will feature products from their store, and a "View store" button will allow viewers to view the whole store. Source: YouTube
Bing Tests New Gen AI Search Experience: Microsoft's Bing is testing a new generative search experience that combines AI language models with traditional search results. This feature creates an AI-generated layout that includes answer summaries, source citations, and related sections alongside standard results. Source: Search Engine Land
Adobe Adds New Gen AI Features: Adobe is adding new generative AI features to Illustrator and Photoshop. Illustrator's updates, powered by the latest Firefly Vector AI model, include Generative Shape Fill, improved Text to Pattern, and Style Reference tools. Photoshop updates include upgrades to its Generate Image feature, Enhance Detail for Generative Fill, and a new Selection Brush tool. Source: The Verge
Threads Tests 'Your Feeds': Threads is testing a new feature called "Your feeds" for iOS users. This feature will enable users to access personalized content streams directly from the app's homepage. Specifically, users will be able to view custom feeds such as "Liked posts" or "Saved posts" without navigating away from the main screen. Source: Radu Oncescu via Threads
Threads Updates Images: Threads is rolling out an update that removes the borders and rounded corners of photos when users pinch the images to zoom. Source: @mosseri via Threads
TikTok's Custom Thumbnails: TikTok has added a new feature allowing creators to upload custom thumbnail images for their videos. Users can now choose a specific video frame or upload their own image as a thumbnail during the upload process. Source: Social Media Today
TikTok Launches TikTok Shop in Spain and Ireland: TikTok plans to launch TikTok Shop in Spain and Ireland as early as October. Source: MSN
X's New Grok Features: X is introducing new features for its AI chatbot, Grok, which is available to Premium subscribers on the web platform. One new capability allows users to hover over an account, prompting Grok to summarize that account. Users can also highlight any text on the platform and ask Grok for information or analysis about the selected content. Source: Miguel Bollar via X
YouTube Updates: YouTube creators can now see personalized content in the Inspiration Tab in Japanese, Korean, or Hindi. Additionally, creators can now save music directly from their Shorts feed to any of their playlists. Finally, YouTube has added new creator resources to the YouTube Help Center under the "Creator tips" tab. Source: YouTube
What Did You Think of Today's Newsletter?
Did You Know?
Bluetooth tech was named after 9th-century king Harald Bluetooth. The logo we all recognize is a combination of runes for his initials.
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