Letting the cat out of the bag
9 8ry fhdsj,fcshdg f,asd
Sorry, we literally had a cat on the keyboard for a second. To the real news.
Secrets coming out – that’s the theme of these updates about Facebook. Some good, some bad. Here’s what we learned about the blue giant yesterday.
- Cambridge Analytica is back in the spotlight, because the UK’s information commissioner told a parliamentary subcommittee that she cannot discuss the app audit that Mark Zuckerberg promised. So people are in the dark about what’s really going on.
- Staying within the UK, the country’s data watchdog says that millions have stopped using WhatsApp. We’re sure Facebook would like to keep those users, but at over 2B global users, it’s still just a drop in the ocean.
- Alexandru Voica shared the machine-learning models which power the ranking system and personalization in News Feed. Time to start an FNFO (Facebook News Feed Optimization) agency? Kidding, but it’s interesting to see how organic content actually gets reach on Facebook nowadays.
And now, from one blue social media platform to the next. We have some news from a little birdie as well. Read on…
Twitter is making all the moves
The talk of the newsletter-world, Twitterverse and creators in general is that Twitter has acquired Revue, a newsletter publishing platform.
Why does this matter?
Substack is hot. Revue is the less-hyped company that provides a similar service. So, Twitter is now in a hot space. And it’s not the only hot space Twitter has been getting into.
They literally have Spaces, which is a rival to the other hot topic of 2021: Clubhouse. Twitter also purchased Squad, a video screen-sharing app.
In short, Twitter is building itself up for all kinds of creators and is jumping on recent trends.
While acquisition sprees don’t always succeed (looking at you, Yahoo!), we’re slightly optimistic about Twitter and its potential. Maybe not as much potential for media buyers, but there’s certainly potential for content marketers and content creators at large.
By the way, we are also active on Twitter and are happy to dive into marketing talks with you. Give us a follow!
SPONSORED BY QUICKFRAME
The definitive guide to creating outstanding (but affordable) video ads in a crowded social media world
One way is launching as many creatives as you can, and see what sticks.
Or… you can get smarter about it.
How?
By reading the 2021 Guide to Social Media Video Marketing created by QuickFrame. Their job is creating video ads. They work with brands like Colgate, BuzzFeed, Pfizer, MVMT, Uber, and much more.
This free guide includes trends, opportunities, and best practices you can leverage to improve your creatives in 2021 on every major platform, such as:
- Facebook: How to revamp your approach to UGC (user generated content) videos to deliver the authenticity consumers are looking for.
- Pinterest: Organic video Pin views are up 240%. The guide outlines how to craft a compelling narrative even in a short product video.
- Snapchat: Repurpose your mobile-optimized brand creative to unlock younger demographics with Snap Originals.
- TikTok: UGC-style videos are top-performers, but UGC doesn’t mean you always need to use on-screen talent. This guide shows you how you can repurpose assets with editing techniques to create TikTok-optimized video.
- Twitter and Reddit: Diversification is key. And video ads on these two platforms can be a good source of leads.
- LinkedIn: Users are 20x more likely to share a video on LinkedIn than any other content type. Learn how to customize creative concepts for each buyer persona you are targeting to publish hyper-relevant content that converts.
SEO
Are your local competitors lazy?
f local SEO is your playground, this case study will up your game.
Over the course of 12 months, Miriam Ellis from Moz studied the search results for a local search query – “breakfast (X city)” – to see if anything that the brands did, would shift the top restaurant from the first spot.
You can check the study methodology here, however, the main results from the study are:
- Nothing anyone did in 2020 shifted Brand #1 out of its top spot. This can probably mean a lazy market, where businesses aren’t putting enough effort into it. If this is your case, it’s easy to win!
- The higher a business appeared in the local finder, the more stable it tended to be throughout the year.
- The lower a business appeared in the local finder, the more erratic its position was as the year moved along.
- Of the 15 total brands that won a spot in the top 10 results over the course of the study, three began and ended the year in the same position.
So, given these results, Miriam Ellis wondered what other brands could have done to outrank Brand #1. So, she decided to audit the brand in the fifth (Brand #5) and tenth (Brand #10) positions.
She analyzed 48 data points to understand what Brand #1 did well, and where the other two could have improved.
- Location: All three brands are within Google’s mapped city borders, though Brand #10 is right at the edge.
- Business title: No business has the word “breakfast” or the name of the city in its title.
- Category: Brand #1 is categorized as “breakfast restaurant”, but both Brand #5 and Brand #10 are categorized as “American Restaurant”. This is the first “a-ha!” moment.
- Photos: Brand #1 has about 20 photos and accumulated 400+ total photos from the public. Brand #5 uploaded zero photos, while it has 100+ pics from the public. Brand #10 only has 20 pics shared by the public. “A-ha!” moment number two.
- Reputation: All three brands have an average rating of 4.6 stars. However, Brand #1 has 510 reviews, Brand #5 has 245, and Brand #10 has 109.
- Google posts, Q&As, and menus: Brand #1 led again with 4 Google Posts and 4 questions asked, with some response from the brand. The other two businesses never published a post or received, published, or answered questions.
These were the most obvious takeaways. However, Miriam went deeper into their websites, attributes, place topics, and other data points in her full blog post.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
YOUTUBE: Creators have been paid out more than $30B by YouTube over the past three years according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.
MICROSOFT ADS: Another ad extension from Microsoft sees the daylight. Filter Link Extension is the latest to join the collection.
SEO: How did the White House website transition look from a more technical point of view? Steven van Vessum (Hi, Steven!) lays it all out for everyone to see.
PINTEREST: Stories on the app home screen. They made it to Pinterest too.
TIKTOK: India permanently bans TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps. But this is making someone else happy… YouTube Shorts is getting 3.5 billion daily views in India.
ADVERTISING: David Hermann and Natalie Sportelli say we shouldn’t sleep on the 65+ years old category when it comes to user-generated content. It’s the fastest growing category of online shoppers. Create content with and for them!
BRAIN TEASER
When you don’t have me, you want me, but when you do have me, you want to give me away. What am I?
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.
A big Wall Street hedge fund versus Snoo’s friends – who wins?
You’re probably thinking “Who is Snoo?”. Well, before we googled it to complete that headline, we didn’t know either.
Snoo is the name of Reddit’s logo, and Snoo’s friends is what we’re going to call Redditors – particularly those that hang out on r/WallStreetBets.
What did these people do? They pushed GameStop’s (GME) stock to incredible heights within just a few short days.
But why? Hedge funds had a short position on it. Melvin Capital Management, to name one example, was short $55M GME. The Redditors noticed and wanted to send a message against the “Wall Street suits”.
Shaan Puri did a great job explaining the whole ordeal in this Twitter thread.
There’s one critical problem with the idea of fighting against “Wall Street suits”, though. There weren’t many hedge funds actually short GME. And the biggest winner of this whole ordeal was probably Citadel, one of those “Wall Street suits”.
Twitter user Toxic explains it in detail here.
The gist of it: Robinhood, the app used by many for trading, is paid by Citadel for the order flow. That means Citadel sees Robinhood’s orders a few milliseconds before they are filled. So Citadel knows what trades happen on Robinhood milliseconds before they take place and can choose to act on it. And they probably did…