SOCIAL MEDIA
A couple of updates from Facebook and Reddit
Twitter stole the update show on Monday, but it was Reddit and Facebook news that took center stage yesterday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Reddit is working on expanding its ads business. In a company blog, Reddit announced that it has set up an office in Canada. The blog post puts emphasis on how this will help Reddit better serve brands who want to advertise on the platform.
- Facebook is working on auto-captioning for Stories. Alessandro Paluzzi reports that Facebook is working on an auto-captioning feature. That’s good news as this feature makes videos more accessible.
WRITING
Lessons on building an audience and writing well
If you’ve wandered over to the bestselling book list on Amazon at any time in the past year or two, it’s pretty likely you’ve seen Atomic Habits near the top of the list.
It was written by a guy named James Clear, who’s established a large following on both Twitter and his email list. He recently did an AMA on Twitter, where he answered plenty of popular questions about building an audience, marketing, and writing.
Here are some relevant highlights:
+ How do you come up with so many ideas?
“Read a lot.
When I feel like I’m running low on ideas it’s a sign that I need to read more. Make contact with great ideas and you’ll have more of your own. Great reading material becomes your starting material.”
+ If you had to start over, what is the first thing you’d do to build an email list?
“Write something people want to read each week.
It sounds like a boring answer, but every marketing strategy is easier once you have great content. It’s always the first thing.”
+ How to consistently get writing done, without being distracted?
“Find a time and place that work for you. Make that location your sacred writing space. Pick an amount of time that you can sustain and write each day. Keep showing up and the book will get finished eventually.”
That last one applies to more than just writing. Whether you’re knocking out lookalike campaigns or working on the backend of your e-commerce site, a dedicated space and time work wonders for productivity.
You can read the full Twitter thread here for plenty more questions and answers.
SPONSORED BY MOTION
Take out the guesswork out of your ads and unlock hidden profits
Did you know that you can unlock way more profits from the campaigns you’re already running? Just by looking at your campaigns from a different perspective.
Now you’re probably using tools like Google Sheets or Data Studio to analyze the performance of your creatives.
But how long does it take to create a report that allows you to answer the following questions?
- What is the best performing ad for prospecting?
- What is the best performing ad for retargeting?
- What is the best performing video ad?
- What’s performing better? Single image ads vs multi-image ads vs video ads?
- Brand copy ads vs social proof ads: What kind of ads are getting more sales?
Seriously, how long does it take?
Because if the answer is “More than 3 seconds”, then you should try Motion. This is the new, fast way to identify your best-performing creatives and improve them.
You just need to connect it to your Facebook Ads dashboard and in a matter of clicks, discover what creatives are getting the best results and why.
We would suggest you try it… but before you do that, cover your children’s ears. The reactions of media buyers using this tool were a bit too enthusiastic:
“This is fu***ing amazing” or “Before using this, it was a pain in the a** to do that”.
We hope you’ll have the same kinds of reactions.
Unlock the full potential of your creatives.
FROM THE CREW
Email tips and strategies from… Us!
Here’s something you might not know: This newsletter has a more than 45% open rate.
And we don’t mean to pat ourselves on the back too aggressively, but by newsletter standards, that’s pretty good.
If you want to learn a little more about email marketing tips and hacks (ones that we use, in these emails), check out the podcast that our founder, Manu, just did. It’s with Diego Rios on the Land The Right Clients podcast, and it goes over:
- Email list hygiene.
- How to find communities where you can promote your newsletter.
- Getting yourself in the shoes of your audience.
- Strategies for monetizing your newsletter more effectively.
There’s plenty more in the full podcast. Check it out here!
MARKETING
B2B marketing lessons from NFTs and sneakers
What can you learn from a sneaker drop?
Turns out… It’s a lot.
Ross Simmonds showed different marketing lessons he learned after immersing himself in the world of sneakers and NFTs.
Since the best ideas come from mixing different worlds, such as marketing and digital art, hopefully you’ll find something valuable here:
+ Products (or features) drops: These are changing the way consumers buy. It’s very common in the NFT and sneakers world. Companies like Shoe Palace will announce that they have a new shoe available for sale, and it’s gone in seconds.
How to apply it to B2B marketing: Create a piece of content that is ridiculously valuable, like a series of interviews or a private event.
But don’t release it to everyone. Create scarcity by offering the product only to a limited number of people. Then, work on your launch strategy and watch the items getting sold out.
+ Don’t think you’re too good for contests: This is a simple idea used for decades, but rarely in the B2B and SaaS markets.
On Instagram, there are some accounts that giveaway NFTs to people who enter a drawing.
How do you enter these? Follow their page, like a photo, and tag a friend in the comments. This allows them to gain followers and build their audience.
How to apply it to B2B marketing: You can use these raffles to generate leads. Before your product goes live, create a raffle asking people to sign up or do things to access the product in advance. This gives them access to the raffle, and therefore, the chance to win a prize.
The gamified experience can be improved by incentivizing your audience to share on social, via email, and more. Every action gives more entries to the raffle.
This is definitely a great strategy. If you remember, we ran giveaways here at Stacked Marketer back in December and January. To enter the raffle, readers had to refer the newsletter to a friend. The more referrals, the more entries in the giveaway.
As you can see, this can be applied to almost every business model.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SEO: Here’s a great list of common Google penalties, and how you can recover from them if your website ends up in Google’s doghouse.
INSTAGRAM: After initial tests in the US, IGTV Ads are now available in the UK and Australia.
TIKTOK: The app launched a playlist feature allowing users to group videos into themed collections.
SEO: Looking for SEO inspiration? This is a comprehensive list of more than 200 SEO experts, in various areas of the field, that you can follow to learn more.
BRAIN TEASER
How many letters are there in the English alphabet?
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 Suez is free – what’s next?
Over the past week, social media has had a field day with the situation at the Suez Canal.
We wrote about it in Friday’s Poolside Chat section, if you’re looking for the full backstory. But, the bottom line is that the ship that was stuck in the canal is now free.
We’re assuming that the Ever Given doesn’t plan on getting stuck anywhere else, but in case you want to test the possibilities, check this site out.
It lets you move the ship anywhere in the world, scale it to size, and see how it’d fit in other bodies of water. It’s pretty fun!