MARKETING
Xbox showed everyone the right way to handle drama on social media
Handling problems on social media is one of the biggest challenges that marketers have to face – information spreads fast, and it’s important to handle drama before it explodes into a wildfire of negativity and damaged sales numbers.
Early yesterday morning, information about one of Xbox’s new consoles (which we now know to be the Series S) was leaked. And no matter where you stand on the console debate, the way Xbox handled the leak was a masterclass in social media marketing.
Let’s dive in:
- In the early morning hours yesterday, information about the new Xbox Series S was leaked. The details hit tech blogs within minutes. At this point, Xbox had to make a choice about how to approach the situation.
- Less than 3 hours later, Xbox tweeted out the Awkward Look Monkey meme. You know, the one where the puppet monkey is giving an awkward look to the camera, then looks away? It was a hilarious first step to acknowledging the leak.
- About an hour after tweeting the meme, Xbox tweeted an official confirmation. And, just like clockwork, the Xbox team put together an official announcement on Twitter. No use ignoring what’s already out there, right?
- A couple hours after the confirmation, Xbox tweeted even more details. To capitalize on the hype, Xbox announced more details about the console in a tweet about 12 hours after the initial scandal.
Why is this important? Xbox used humor and honesty to confront the console leak, which generated hype on social media and no doubt gained some respect in the gaming community. If your brand is on social media, it’s important to understand to know how to approach unexpected situations like this one.
Oh, and also: we summarized our breakdown from Jack Appleby’s thread on Twitter. He’s a creative strategist at Twitch, and his thread is definitely worth checking out – you can do that here.
Take notes, marketers!
ADVERTISING
It’s back to school season
It feels like fall, doesn’t it? It’s back to school season for most of us (sorry, those of you reading from the Southern Hemisphere), which means shopping season!
Twitter recently released some statistics on trends during this hectic time of year, and there are some serious changes to how people are approaching the school season – you can probably guess why that is. Here are some of the main changes to keep in mind for the next couple of months:
- Pencils are so last year. Conversations about pencils and folders are down 50% and 13%, respectively. Maybe it’s the pandemic, or maybe this year is a big year for pens? We’ll let you take a guess.
- Computers and tablets are the talk of the town. Conversations about computers is up 77%, and tablet talk is up 86%. If your brand sells any kind of electronics, this fall might be a bigger one than normal.
- Pajamas all day, baby. Discussion surrounding shoes and jeans is down, but the conversation about pajamas and sweatpants is nearly quadrupled from normal – is it time to launch an e-commerce store for pajamas?
Check out the full post from Twitter here – there are a couple more interesting statistics in the full post.
Has a “new normal” back to school season had an effect on your marketing campaigns or sales? If anything, though, these statistics confirm what we were all hoping – it’s OK to wear pajamas all day.
SPONSORED BY VISTO
Facebook media buyers are saving thousands of dollars on testing using this tool – and you can get it for free
Maybe you missed it…
But we already introduced you to Visto. It’s an AI-based spy tool that lets you access your competitors’ money-making campaigns, ads, and landing pages.
This will show you how Visto works, and it will make you understand why Visto isn’t just another spy tool:
- They have one of the biggest Facebook Ads databases on the market. Chances are you’ll find your competitors’ ads on Visto.
- You can search your competitors’ top-performing ads with the keyword search function. And sort them by most commented or by most shared ads first.
- Search campaigns by demographics.
- Find Facebook Ads by language, format and CTA. You will know exactly which CTA performs better. Without needing to test it.
- You can see detailed information about every ad: when the campaign started to run, when it stopped, landing page and other ads ran by the Facebook Page.
- Find hidden landing pages run by affiliates: Some affiliates use advanced tools to show different landing pages to their visitors depending on where they’re coming from or how they’ve engaged with their ads.
That’s a long list of features. And it’s not even everything.
All this information will give you an advantage when testing campaigns. You don’t really need to “spray and pray”, because you know what works.
If you wish to save budget on testing campaigns, Visto is currently 100% free for our readers (use coupon StackedMarketer), but only for a limited time.
Discover Visto’s full features for free while you still can.
SEO
SEO mythbuster episode #45678
Yeah, SEO mythbusting articles are a dime a dozen these days – and sometimes, people write mythbusting articles to mythbust the other mythbusting articles. It’s confusing. But, they’re mostly useful, so let’s dive into the latest.
If you do a Google search about LSI keywords, you’ll get over 1 million results telling you to use them in your SEO strategy. However, according to this article from Suzanne Scacca and Vlado Pavlik, the importance of LSI keywords is another myth to be busted.
Okay, okay, calm down. Let’s start with the basics.
What are LSI keywords? LSI stands for “latent semantic indexing”, and the term LSI keywords means phrases that are related to the main keyword or topic.
For instance, if the topic of a post is weight lifting, LSI keywords can be fitness, barbell, or personal trainer.
How do they get misinterpreted? You can find plenty of advice online telling you to incorporate as many LSI keywords into your content as possible – there’s a misconception that they’re used as a ranking factor.
Why do people think LSI keywords are a ranking factor?
- People confuse LSI and semantics: While there’s no evidence that Google ever used LSI, the search engine does try to understand the semantics of searches.
- It might have worked in the past, back in 2000, when keyword stuffing and keyword density were strategies that worked.
Can you use LSI keywords to improve your ranking?
Not in the traditional sense. Putting too much emphasis on specific words doesn’t equate to higher results in the SERP.
Here’s what you can do, though:
+ Do keyword research. Not to pump these keywords into your posts, but to understand:
- How many people search for the keywords?
- How hard will it be to rank for these keywords?
- What pages rank for these keywords in my desired location?
+ Analyze your competitor. Look at the keywords you find and define:
- What type of content ranks for the keyword?
- What content structure do the top pages use?
- How comprehensive are the posts?
- What subtopics do they cover in the post?
- To what extent do they cover the sub-topics?
The point is to make your content as relevant as possible, not about how many keywords to put in your articles!
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
GOOGLE: Android 11 launched yesterday, and with it came a series of updates that should improve the overall user experience.
PINTEREST: Content shown to users on Pinterest is becoming more relevant and targeted, the company said in a blog post this week. Into geeky engineering stuff? The article is a good read.
SEO: If you’re looking to get a unique overview on your site’s SEO, this free Chrome extension is a good place to start!
NATIVE: Its announcement in October 2019 shook the advertising world but it seems Taboola and Outbrain might call off their $850M merger. Let’s wait for the official announcement…
FACEBOOK: There might soon be a reply reminder for Messenger, great news if you’re frequently forgetting to respond to messages! (It happens to the best of us.)
TWITTER: Following its goal to give more context to Trends, the company is adding improved headlines and short descriptions so you can understand why a topic is trending.
SEO: Does shorter content earn more backlinks? This study says yes – check out the article to learn more about why that may be.
BRAIN TEASER
Someone walks up to you and says, “If I write your exact weight on this piece of paper then you have to give me $50, but if I cannot, I will pay you $50.” You don’t see a scale anywhere, so you agree. In the end, he hands you the sheet of paper and you quickly realize your mistake… You end up paying him the $50. How did you lose the bet?
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.
This Twitter account tweets out Switzerland’s weather – in emojis
Do you live in Switzerland?
Or, more accurately for most of y’all reading this, do you spend your days dreaming about living in Switzerland?
Whichever situation applies to you, this Twitter account is worth checking out. It’s called TweteoSwiss, and each day, it tweets out the weather in Switzerland – in emojis.
The account tweets both weather and temperatures in a virtual emoji-style map of the country. It’s one of those things you have to see to really understand, but it’s pretty cool!