Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner... | Presented by |  |
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In today's edition:
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🧪 Today's Tip of the Day is for YouTube content testing
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💬 Get people talking about your business online
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🦸♀️ 3 advanced tips for getting reliable results from AI
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⚖️ A fresh take on video strategy
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Experimental Facebook ad placement
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Instagram's new best practices for Reels
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LinkedIn offers sponsored articles and newsletter articles
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📣 Additional industry news from Instagram, X, YouTube, and more
Are you new to YouTube? Wondering how to find out what types of video will work best for marketing your business, products, or service?
If your channel is new, you won't have any data of your own to look at. Spend time looking at channels from 8–10 of your competitors to learn what's working for them. Note the trends in topics, formats, and thumbnails.
YouTube Content Testing Format
Once you've identified the patterns and elements that make content successful in your niche, create a set of 7 test videos that incorporate the title and thumbnail patterns, content topics, and formats that have proven to perform well with your target audience.
Create:
By strategically testing a variety of content styles and formats, you increase the likelihood of having 1–2 breakout videos that outperform your typical average. These successful videos will provide valuable insights into what resonates with your audience so you can double down on what works!
Today's advice is provided with insights from Liz Germain, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
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How to Get More Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Wondering how to get more people talking about you, in a good way?
As a marketer, you are uniquely positioned to find and enhance customer touchpoints so that they become lasting memories consumers can't wait to tell others about.
Where to Look
First, experience the four main stages of your customer journey for yourself. This hands-on approach provides insights that data alone can't capture.
Go through the entire customer journey yourself, from initial contact to post-purchase follow-up, and experience every step as a customer would. To get an honest experience and unbiased feedback, have someone from your marketing team pose as a customer and report on their experience.
You'll also want to observe customers in real time. Watch how they interact with your product, service, or space, and note any points of confusion or frustration.
Pay attention to:
Transaction Triggers: This is how people first discover and decide to engage with your brand. For customers, this might be seeing an advertisement, getting a recommendation from a friend, or stumbling upon your website.
Onboarding: This stage is all about preparing people for their first interaction with your brand. For customers, it might include pre-purchase information, a "know before you go" guide, or a welcome email series.
Main Event: This is the core experience itself. For customers, it's using your product or service, attending an event, or visiting your store.
Last Impression: This crucial stage is what people remember long after the experience ends. It includes the immediate aftermath (like walking out of a store or leaving work for the day) and how people reflect on the experience weeks or months later.
Analyze Your Experience
Start small and focus on improving one thing at a time. Think about how you can improve the customer experience, one piece at a time, and make it easy for consumers to share. This makes the process less overwhelming and allows you to measure the word-of-mouth impressions from social media.
First, look for ways to tailor experiences to individual customers. This could be as simple as using their name or remembering their preferences.
Then, think about how to make people feel like VIPs. Consider what special touches you can add to make customers or employees feel valued and important. Can you find a way to provide insider tips or exclusive access to certain perks?
Next, identify places where you can create peak moments. While you can't maintain a high throughout the entire experience, focus on creating a few moments that people will remember.
Finally, consider how you want customers to reflect on their experience weeks or months later and work backward to create those lasting positive memories. This might involve follow-up communications or surprise touches long after the initial interaction.
Put Enhancements Into Place
First, brainstorm low-cost or no-cost enhancements. Think creatively about how you can improve these moments without significant investment. You can implement many enhancements at little to no cost.
Then, train the customer-facing team. Ensure all employees understand the importance of these small gestures and how to deliver them consistently.
Empower Customers to Share Their Story
This can be as simple as creating and promoting a hashtag customers can use when posting about you on social media.
This will not only give you word-of-mouth marketing; it will also give you content for customer testimonials and the ability to spotlight happy customers.
Real-World Examples for Inspiration
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Deliver personalized videos to fans a week after their visit.
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Provide guests with digital access to photo memories after their visit, allowing them to relive their magical moments.
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Send personalized emails after a purchase, offering tips or additional information related to the product.
These follow-up touches help turn moments into lasting memories, reinforcing positive associations with your brand. They show customers that you value their experience even after the transaction is complete.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Katie Rudy, a featured guest on the Marketing Agency Show.
3 Tips to Get High-Quality AI-Written Content
When working with AI, it's crucial to be very clear and specific with your instructions. Once your base prompts are in order, you can further guide your AI writing assistant to get exactly what you need.
Supply Context
This might include details about your business, target audience, or personal preferences. For example:
I'm a solopreneur and content creator on X. My content focuses on productivity hacks and time management techniques for freelancers and small business owners. My audience consists primarily of millennials and Gen Z professionals who are looking to optimize their work processes and achieve better work-life balance. My writing style is typically informal and engaging, focusing on actionable advice and real-world examples. I often use humor and pop culture references to make complex topics more accessible.
Save these contextual cues in ChatGPTs Custom Instruction feature or a notepad so you can easily add them to your prompts when needed.
Use Templates
A template gives your AI assistant the structure you want it to follow, almost line by line. This helps ensure you get consistent, high-quality results each time.
To create a template, you can ask the AI to analyze a piece of content you like and turn it into a general format. For example:
Analyze the structure of this blog post and create a general template that can be used for similar posts on different topics. Identify key elements like the opening hook, main points, transitions, and conclusion. For each element, provide a brief description of its purpose and how it contributes to the overall effectiveness of the post.
You can then use this template repeatedly, plugging in different topics as needed. A detailed template might look like this:
1. Opening Hook: Start with a surprising statistic, provocative question, or brief anecdote related to the topic (2–3 sentences)
2. Introduction: Briefly explain the importance of the topic and what readers will gain from the post (1 paragraph)
3. Main Point 1: Present the first key idea, including:
a. Clear explanation of the concept (2–3 sentences)
b. Real-world example or case study (1–2 sentences)
c. Actionable tip for implementing this idea (1–2 sentences)
4. Main Point 2: Follow the same structure as Main Point 1
5. Main Point 3: Follow the same structure as Main Point 1
6. Potential Challenges: Address 1–2 common obstacles readers might face when implementing these ideas (1 paragraph)
7. Solutions: Provide practical solutions or workarounds for the challenges mentioned (1 paragraph)
8. Conclusion: Summarize the main points and reinforce the benefits of implementing these ideas (1 paragraph)
9. Call to Action: Encourage readers to take a specific next step, such as trying one of the techniques or sharing their own experiences (1–2 sentences)
Provide Examples of Good and Bad Content
This helps the AI understand your expectations more clearly and learn what you're looking for and what to avoid. To enter examples, you can copy and paste or upload PDFs and other documents to your AI assistant.
Here are two examples of effective email newsletters:
Example 1: [Insert or upload full text of a well-crafted newsletter]
Example 2: [Insert or upload full text of another well-crafted newsletter]
Notice the following elements in these examples:
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Conversational, friendly tone
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Short paragraphs (2–3 sentences each)
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Use of subheadings to break up content
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Inclusion of personal anecdotes
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Clear call to action at the end
Now, here's an example of a poor newsletter:
[Insert or upload full text of a poorly crafted newsletter]
Notice these issues with the poor example:
Overly formal tone
Long, dense paragraphs
Lack of personal connection
No clear structure or subheadings
Vague or missing call to action
When you write my newsletter, please emulate the style and structure of the good examples and avoid the mistakes in the poor example. Additionally, incorporate my brand voice as described in the context I provided earlier.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Moritz Kremb, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
The QvQ Video Content Marketing Strategy
Are you using the wrong types of video in the various stages of your customer's journey? Wondering how to make adjustments?
Video content has become an essential part of marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. However, creating compelling video content that drives results requires a thoughtful approach.
A good strategy helps you create the right content for each stage of your marketing funnel, effectively balancing quality and quantity. It also ensures that your content aligns with sales objectives, bridging the gap between marketing and sales teams.
Videos to Grow Awareness
At the top of the funnel, the focus is quantity over quality. Your goal is to create many short-form videos to reach a broad audience. These videos should be:
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30–90 Seconds Long: Use clips from longer content like podcasts or presentations and look for soundbites that stand out.
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Focused on Providing Value Instead of Selling: Avoid strong calls to action.
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Easy to Produce Quickly: Don't worry about perfect production quality.
At this stage, your content should never look like an advertisement. You want to provide value and capture attention quickly.
For example, if you interview an expert for a podcast, you might extract several 30-second clips of their best insights.
Share these videos on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn to reach a broad audience.
Videos to Maintain Interest
As people show interest in your brand, you can create slightly longer videos. This stage still leans toward quantity, but quality becomes more important. Your videos can:
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Combine top-performing short clips into 3–5 minute videos.
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Expand on popular topics from your short-form content.
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Start introducing more about your brand and offerings, but maintain a balance between providing value and promoting your business.
When creating these videos, use the performance of your short-form content as research for your longer videos. If certain awareness-focused clips resonated well with your audience, use those topics as the foundation for more in-depth content.
Share these videos on social media platforms and your website. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are allowing longer videos, so don't be afraid to experiment with longer content where your audience is already engaged.
Videos to Encourage Consideration
At the consideration stage, focus on creating less video. What you create should be higher-quality, longer-form, more polished content with stronger calls to action. Your content can be based on:
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Case studies and research presentations
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In-depth product demonstrations
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Thought leadership content from company experts
Share these videos on your website, YouTube channel, and as targeted ads for interested audiences.
Videos to Prompt Action
At the bottom of the funnel, create videos heavily focused on quality and designed to push viewers to make a purchase decision by giving potential customers a peek into life as a customer. Here, it's okay for your content to be more promotional, as your audience is actively considering a purchase.
Consider creating videos that feature the following:
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Customer testimonials and success stories
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Detailed product walkthroughs
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"What happens next" videos explaining the onboarding process
Place these videos on landing pages and use them in final marketing pushes to convince potential customers to buy.
Videos to Deepen Customer Loyalty
After the purchase, maintain a commitment to quality over quantity to create exclusive video content designed to build a community around your brand and encourage repeat business. Consider these types of videos:
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Advanced tips and tutorials
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Behind-the-scenes looks at your company
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Sneak peeks of upcoming features or products
Pro Tip: Tease this exclusive content to potential customers to incentivize purchases.
Today's advice is provided with insights from A. Lee Judge, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
🗞 Facebook Notifications Ads: Meta confirmed a new advertising experiment that places sponsored content directly in users' notification lists. This test, currently limited to a small group of users, introduces ads labeled as "Sponsored" among regular notifications in the Facebook app on Android devices. The sponsored notifications share common characteristics, including options to hide specific advertisers but no ability to opt out of all sponsored notifications. Users can access a "Why this ad?" link, though the targeting appears to be broad rather than personalized. These ads have not yet appeared on iPad or desktop versions of Facebook. The test seems to be in its early stages, with no mention of this ad format in Facebook's official ad guide. Source: PCMag
🗞 TikTok Ads Updates: TikTok announced a series of updates aimed at enhancing user privacy and advertiser accountability. For users, these changes include stricter ad targeting restrictions for U.S. teens aged 13-17, limiting advertisers to broad targeting options only. The platform has also introduced enhanced ad personalization controls, allowing users to customize their ad experience based on interests and behaviors. Additionally, the "Disconnect Advertisers" feature enables users to prevent specific advertisers from using their off-TikTok data for personalized ads, and the "Clear My Activity" feature lets users disconnect off-TikTok activity data shared by advertising partners from their accounts. For advertisers, TikTok has implemented an AI-generated content (AIGC) disclosure tool, requiring them to label realistic AI-generated content in ads. Source: TikTok
🗞 X to Redesign User Experience: Elon Musk confirmed plans for a significant redesign of X's user interface. The platform intends to remove several familiar features from posts in users' timelines, including the like, report, and reply buttons, as well as the engagement counts for reposts, likes, and replies from individual posts. Instead of using buttons, X plans to implement a swiping system where users will swipe left or right on a post to like or reply. iOS users will have the additional option to force touch a post to access more options. The only visible metric remaining on posts will be the view count, relocated to the upper right corner. The platform is also testing simplified post-expansion and new video controls. Source: Mashable
🗞 Facebook Tests 'Clear Mode': Facebook is testing "Clear Mode" for both videos and Reels posted on the platform, which will hide all video controls and action buttons. The feature can be enabled by tapping on a video/Reel. Source: Radu Oncescu via Threads
🗞 TikTok Launches '£1 Million Club': TikTok Shop has launched the "£1 Million Club" to help businesses reach £1 million in revenue on the platform. The program offers new merchants benefits, including 90 days of commission-free sales, no-cost fulfillment services, priority support, and marketing assistance. The initiative runs through September 30 and is open to all business sizes. Source: TikTok
🗞 No-Cost Trials for X Premium: X is considering offering no-cost trials for its Premium subscription service. Source: Social Media Today
🗞 X Expands Grok Integration: X is expanding the integration of its AI chatbot Grok within the platform. New features in development include a profile analysis option, word-specific context in posts, and a separate Grok window that users could keep active while using the app. While launch dates are unconfirmed, these features are expected to roll out soon. Source: Social Media Today
🗞 YouTube Tests New Shorts Feature: YouTube is experimenting with a Shorts feature that makes it easier for creators to start and participate in creation Trends. If you're a creator in the experiment, you'll see an "Add yours" sticker available in the Sticker Picker. Creators watching your Short can add their own take on your prompt. This experiment is rolling out to mobile to a small number of creators worldwide. Source: YouTube
🗞 Instagram's Best Practices for Reels: Instagram's Professional Dashboard now includes a Reels best practices section. It recommends using a 3-second hook, keeping videos 30–60 seconds long, using trending hashtags and audio, uploading in high resolution, and posting 10 Reels monthly. Source: @liahaberman via Threads
🗞 Instagram Won't Focus on Long-Form Video: Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the platform will not focus on long-form video anytime soon. Source: @mosseri via Instagram
🗞 LinkedIn's Sponsored Articles and Newsletters Articles: LinkedIn now offers sponsored articles and newsletter articles. Company Pages can post sponsored articles organically or as thought leader ads. Sponsored newsletter articles, currently being rolled out, are limited to company-authored content posted organically by Company Pages. These can only be used for brand awareness and engagement campaigns. Sponsorships for member-authored newsletters will be available in the future. Both types of content are written on LinkedIn with LinkedIn URLs. Source: LinkedIn Help
🗞 LinkedIn's Company Page Verification Badge: LinkedIn is rolling out Company Page verification badges soon to select organizations. Source: LinkedIn Help
🗞 TikTok Stats Since US Ban Threat: TikTok's ad spend growth has slowed since the potential United States ban announcement in March 2024, with year-over-year growth cooling from 19% to 6% by May. Despite this, ad spend reached $1.5 billion from January to May, up 11% from 2023. Some major advertisers reduced spending, while others shifted to performance-driven objectives. TikTok is experiencing demographic shifts, with fewer younger users and more users aged 35–44. The average US user is now over 30, and daily usage has slightly decreased. Source: Adweek
🗞 X Reports Q2 2024: X has reported growth in user engagement and platform usage for Q2 2024. Users collectively spend approximately 361.9 billion seconds on X daily, up 8% from last year. Monthly active users have grown to about 570 million, a 6% improvement. Additionally, video has emerged as X's dominant content type, with daily views hitting 8.2 billion, a 45% jump from the previous year. Source: @XData via X
🗞 YouTube's New Shorts Tools: YouTube is launching six new tools for Shorts to enhance creativity and ease of use. These include Auto layout on Android for converting longer videos, Text to Speech for narration, and an "Add yours" sticker for community engagement. Additionally, YouTube is launching Minecraft-themed effects, customizable auto-generated captions, and a "Remix a Remix" feature. Source: YouTube Blog
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