This might be a new way to reach audiences on Instagram…
…except, it seems, Instagram’s entire user base hates the idea. What are we talking about?
Instagram just announced that suggested posts are coming to your main Instagram feed – and unsurprisingly, people aren’t happy. At all. Here’s what the new update might mean for Instagram and marketers:
- As soon as you scroll past the ‘You’re All Caught Up’ messaging on your main feed, Instagram will start showing you content from people you don’t follow. The addition of algorithmic suggestions in the main feed is a huge change to the way Instagram typically operates, and people aren’t loving it.
- In Instagram’s official guidance, it sounds like Suggested Posts in the main feed will be similar to what you see on the Explore page. This would make sense, as Instagram has recently been experimenting with replacing the Explore tab with a Reels tab.
The Crew’s take: The addition of recommended posts to the main feed is a big change for Instagram, but we can’t say it’s a surprising update. The change will make your Instagram feed ever-so-slightly more similar to a TikTok feed, which Instagram likely believes will help it compete.
Love it or hate it, this feature could have some potential impacts for marketers. People may find it easier to discover brands and influencers on the main feed, which could result in a change in how some brands create social content.
Or instead, everyone will just delete Instagram in protest of the new feature – it’s 2020, who knows?
Does creative matter for Facebook advertising?
The creative branch of marketing is romanticized more than any other area of the industry. From the Super Bowl to Mad Men to advertising award ceremonies, an emphasis on flashy, creative genius is at the forefront of the conversation (sorry, SEO people, your day will come).
But, in a modern era of advertising, is good creative as important as it’s talked up to be? Andrew Faris outlined his thoughts on Twitter. This is the gist:
+ Creative makes a difference on Facebook – but changing creative without changing your offer can be meaningless. In short, assuming you’re not flipping the switch from terrible to award-winning creative, don’t expect to see astronomical results unless you’re also switching up your offer to customers.
Good creative is crucial for a successful campaign, but it shouldn’t be a crutch for a poor offer or product to lean on. As Andrew puts it, “it matters most when ‘new creative’ is ‘tested a different product’ rather than ‘tested a different visual/copy approach.’”
Now, on the subject of Facebook Ads…
You can now advertise hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes
Ready to make the world a cleaner place? Facebook announced yesterday that you can now promote hand sanitizer and wipes on Facebook and Instagram, a big change from their previous ban on promotion of the products.
There are some restrictions, though:
- Advertisers will need at least four months of advertising history, and some countries will have more restrictions than others.
- Products will need to be promoted in a non-medical capacity, similar to the way masks are allowed to be promoted. This is in an effort to curb pandemic profiteering.
Given the colossal mask market out there, we’re sure there are already thousands of hand sanitizer campaigns running. Are you planning to jump on the bandwagon?
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Very?
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Yeah, we said “unicorns” because “virtual assistant” would be an understatement.
But why do we think that?
Well, there are many features that make this platform unique, such as:
- All Delegated assistants are college-educated and live in the USA.
- They are skilled and trained in their craft so you only have to onboard them for the specifics of your tasks and processes.
- Delegated gives you access to specialized assistants with experience at law firms, medical offices (HIPPA compliant) and financial firms (LPL & New York Life certified). Whether you need virtual administrative assistance with social media, bookkeeping tasks, sales & marketing support, or you are looking for a virtual office manager, Delegated can help!
- You’ll have the benefits of an employee without the costs. How? Your assistant is employed by Delegated, so you don’t need to worry about payroll, benefits, or costly overhead.
- Zero risks of hiring the wrong person: if your VA under-delivers, Delegated will credit the time used back to your account and will switch you to another virtual assistant to do the job right.
Delegated is like Google for specialized assistants – It always gives you the best match for your search.
CONTENT MARKETING
The creation of a Stacked Marketer newsletter
It all started when Jacob Heinz asked on the Stacked Marketer Insiders group what processes we follow to find and write content for our newsletter five days a week.
Jacob had a need to create content for his business – so, why not ask somebody who sends top-notch content to more than 15k people every day? (Yeah, we’re humble).
If you’re in the group, you probably know the answer. If not, and you want to join the group, just share this newsletter with your friends and you’re in.
In any case, here are the questions Jacob asked us, along with our responses:
- How do you find your writers?
Before being writers, members of The Crew used to be readers of this newsletter. In other words, if you’re looking for writers or any sort of content creator, make sure it’s a person that is already passionate or interested in your niche.
- How do you find interesting topics to write about every day?
Manually. Everyday we scrape the whole interwebz and select the best topics.
Sound scary? It’s not. When you have the right process in place, everything becomes faster.
To write about interesting topics, you need to know what your audience finds interesting. Whether it’s a newsletter or an Instagram post, you need to know your reader like they’re your best friend.
What does your best friend want for their birthday? A good friend knows it. And a good content creator knows what a reader wants to find in their inbox. Or Snapchat homepage, if that’s your thing.
Once you know what your audience wants, establish guidelines to follow every time you curate content.
- How do we manage our team and newsletter creation?
The Crew is process-oriented. We document everything we do. And if something doesn’t go as expected, we go into the relevant document, look if the steps were followed and what can be improved to avoid the same issue.
Processes are the essence of this whole post. And it’s what we suggest you do. Build processes around everything you do and constantly improve them.
You might not build Rome in a day, but we reach the heart of over 15k marketers every day – and we think that’s a pretty good substitute.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
FACEBOOK: Zoom, WebEx, BlueJeans, and more are getting integrations with Facebook’s Portal. Don’t remember what Portal is? Neither do the rest of us, but Facebook’s doing their best to position it as a work-from-home powerhouse.
E-COMMERCE: Target had a massive Q2 across the board. Notably, digital sales picked up by almost 200%, a great sign for e-commerce in the coming months.
TWITTER: A new transparency center was announced yesterday by Twitter, in an effort to be open about how Twitter rules are applied across the platform.
MICROSOFT ADS: There are a couple new features in Microsoft’s Ad Manager that aim to make managing large campaigns a little bit easier.
E-COMMERCE: The U.S. Commerce Department reported retail sales data from Q2, and e-commerce sales were up by 45%!
APPLE: $2T? That’s Apple’s market cap. It crossed the milestone yesterday, just two years after hitting $1T.
BRAIN TEASER
Paul’s height is six feet, he’s an assistant at a butcher’s shop, and wears size 9 shoes. What does he weigh?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
He finally did it
A dose of genius social media marketing, a popular Twitch streamer, and a ludicrous Twitter roast all came together yesterday to form a perfect storm of some genuine fun.
TimTheTatman, the popular Twitch streamer in question, has been having some problems with a game called Fall Guys – a game where you play as a ridiculous cartoon character in a competition against 59 other people.
His failures were getting noticed, too, and the official Fall Guys Twitter account made fun of him on multiple occasions. On a stream yesterday, though, he finally won his first Fall Guys game (hence the trend, ‘he finally did it’).
Here’s the craziest part: Tim’s stream got nearly 350K concurrent viewers at its peak, the entire event spawned a massive Twitter trend, and the Fall Guys Twitter account hit 1M followers. It was a win-win for everyone involved – props to the Fall Guys social media manager.
We’d love to continue the conversation, but Fall Guys is waiting, and we’ve got wins to secure. See you tomorrow.