Reddit is trying to copy TikTok. This is good for marketers
We saw it coming. Back in December Reddit acquired Dubsmash, a TikTok-like platform for short videos.
Seven months later…
Reddit has just announced the rollout of a TikTok-like video feed on their iOS app. You can access this feed by clicking on the button next to the search bar.
Why we care: Higher organic reach. Currently, if you want to get exposure on Reddit, you are limited within the context of a specific subreddit. With this feature, your content could potentially be seen by all Reddit users. So if your video becomes popular under /r/personalfinance, people in /r/finance or /r/economics may see it as well.
One month ago we reported on how Reddit is turning into Facebook (but in a good way). The platform wants to break the chain of “subreddits” and use AI to determine what content to show its users. This is great news if you want to increase your organic reach.
Short video is huge: TikTok is the most downloaded mobile app for the sixth month in a row. Instagram Reels is the platform’s “largest contributor to engagement growth”, according to Mark Zuckerberg. In addition, YouTube Shorts now has 15 billion daily views. If Reddit does this right, we wouldn’t be surprised if they reach similar numbers.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Twitch is angry with streamers who make lots of money promoting online gambling offers
Here’s a fact: Popular Twitch streamers spend hours playing slot machine games.
Why they’re doing this: Money. It comes when they share a referral link to the actual game as they play it. In July, for example, Trainwrecks, a popular Twitch streamer, made $250k from sharing referral codes.
Why Twitch is upset with streamers who do this: Mostly bad publicity. Allowing popular streamers to promote casino offers to an audience that includes minors is a recipe for disaster.
Twitch announced on August 11 that streamers would no longer be able to share referral links to gambling offers. However, some streamers are already finding ways around this by directing viewers to Linktree first, for example.
All of this gave us an idea: use streamers as influencers to promote your e-commerce products.
Imagine creating a slot-like game and sponsoring relevant streamers to play it. Unlike gambling, the awards could be your own products, and participation (for the viewers) would be free.
“Spin-a-Sale” is a popular Shopify plugin that does something similar for email opt-ins. If you could execute this with streamers-as-influencers, you’d open up a new acquisition channel.
You heard it here first. Just don’t forget about us when you make your millions!
SPONSORED BY ONE VA AWAY
Hey… relax!
When you go on holiday, are you actually on holiday?
Or your body is there, but your mind is still in the office? Thinking about all the stuff there’s to do with your business and all the tasks you left to complete.
Running a business is not a walk in the park.
But as all entrepreneurs know, there’s a solution to almost every problem. And if the problem is a shortage of time and endless tasks to tackle, the solution is John Jonas and his One VA Away Challenge.
He specialized in building outsourcing empires:
Since 2007, he has helped thousands of business owners to recruit and train high-performing virtual assistants. And build companies that run almost on themselves, for extremely affordable labor prices.
Small businesses, as well as big organizations like Google and Uber, have benefitted from this man.
And he included his system in the One VA Away Challenge, a complete system that will help you hire a high-performing VA in 7 steps.
Just seven steps, and you could have an extra twenty hours per week of free time.
SEO
$2M SEO lessons
These came from Hrishikesh Pardeshi after growing his startup from $0 to $2M in revenue, and 400k visits per month in organic traffic.
There are 29. Some of them are pretty basic. Others will surprise you.
Here are a few. Check it out for yourself:
- Organic traffic is the best kind of traffic you can get. However, the conversion rates aren’t as high as paid traffic.
- Work on increasing your website authority from day #1. The higher your website authority, the greater chance you have of ranking higher.
- Guest posts are the best way to increase your website authority. Set up a process to research opportunities, automate outreach, create outlines, and write content.
- Establish a topical authority. Once you rank a few pages for a topic, chances are that Google will favor the rest of your content over other websites for that topic.
- Content creators like to link to data and analysis. Create this kind of content to get links organically.
- Internal linking is the best way to improve ranking. Get SEO juice from top pages to trickle down to other pages.
- Don’t have orphan links. Make sure that each page has at least one internal link.
- Do regular website SEO audits and fix errors.
- When you find the right keywords, half your job is done. But you’ll still need quality content.
- Update and optimize old posts. Avoid being outranked by competitors just because you didn’t update your content.
- The easiest way to get more traffic is to optimize pages that are already ranking in one country for other countries.
- Never use sub-domains. Google treats them as separate websites. Use sub-folders.
- Do not rely entirely on SEO. Diversify your traffic sources. Other organic channels are social media, Reddit, ProductHunt, HackerNews, etc.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-COMMERCE: This Sailthru guide will help you implement the marketing strategies six leading fashion brands used to thrive despite 2020’s lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions. Download it here.*
ADVERTISING: Cookie banners are those annoying pop-ups that ask you to “click allow to accept all tracking cookies”. They’re everywhere now that GDPR has passed. This proposal aims to put an end to cookie banners once and for all. Life may become a little easier for end users, but it will be very different for advertisers.
FACEBOOK: Social video ads. Facebook wants you to master them by releasing a new series of blog posts entitled “Data, Creative & Advertising Excellence”.
TIKTOK: The platform has released a useful guide on mastering every element of a short video ad.
ADVERTISING: Ads are coming to your browser address bar. Mozilla is experimenting with sponsored suggestions for the U.S.
TWITTER: They’re really struggling with this; Twitter has once again paused verifications due to bots receiving the blue check mark.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
What is unusual about the following words: revive, banana, grammar, voodoo, assess, potato, dresser, uneven?
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.
The Museum of Failure
Yes, this is a real thing. The Museum of Failure is a traveling exhibition which showcases over 150 failed products throughout the year. Trung Phan was kind enough to remind us of some of the bigger failures (while simultaneously making us feel better about ourselves):
- The ESPN flip phone. Launched in 2006. It provided video highlights and 24/7 sports news. This phone caught the attention of Steve Jobs, who called it “the dumbest f***ing idea I have ever heard”.
- Harley-Davidson Cologne. It sounds cool until you learn the scent’s name is “Hot Rod.”
- Nike Magneto. A pair of futuristic sunglasses that looked kinda cool. There was one catch: you had to glue large magnets on your face so the shades could clip on.
Lesson learned: Even multi-billion dollar corporations can make dumb judgement calls.