Facebook wants you to go live (on audio)
If you think your Facebook friends are annoying, wait till you hear them live.
Facebook just rolled out its “Live Audio” (aka Clubhouse copycat) feature to more users, according to Alexandru Voica, Facebook’s technology communication manager.
Who can create live audio rooms now: All verified public figures (if you have a blue checkmark, you’re one of the lucky ones), as well as Facebook Group admins.
Yup, if you have a Facebook group, you can now create a live audio room for your members.
Facebook Watch is getting an audio tab. Users in the U.S. will see an “Audio” tab under the “Facebook Watch” tab. They’ll be able to discover live audio events, podcasts and short-form audio.
Side note: Why would you add something that’s meant to be listened to under “Watch”? Hey, this is Facebook’s world…
The Crew’s take: Will live audio finally take off now that Facebook has made it widely available?
The next few weeks should be interesting. If live audio becomes popular on Facebook, more marketers will use it as part of their content marketing arsenal.
SEO
Google is showing short videos in some search results
A rewind. Google wants to include videos from TikTok and Instagram in its search results. We’ve known that since September 24th.
Now, it appears that the search company has finally started doing that. Brodie Clark reported that Google is testing a “short videos” carousel as part of its desktop search results. TikTok is one of the results in the carousel.
For some queries, short videos make sense. If you search for “easy recipes” (like Brian did), it makes sense to expect to-the-point, quick videos on, well, how to cook an easy recipe. There are literally thousands of keywords that can benefit from short videos.
Prepare for the future. Ask yourself: Do short videos make sense for any keywords in my niche? Do I have a keyword equivalent to “easy recipes” in my industry?
If yes, experimenting with short videos might be a smart idea. Especially because we’re likely to see them appear more and more in Google’s search results.
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COPYWRITING
Copywriting techniques to cast a spell on your audience so they read anything you write
Write as if your reader has to pee.
As odd as it sounds, this is probably the most valuable piece of advice given by Geroge Ten in this Twitter thread. You want the reader to enter a trance state at the first sentence. And exit it only after making a purchase.
And these are some tactics that George Ten gave to accomplish this:
Hook: This is what grabs their attention. The easiest way to generate hooks is the format “How to Y without X”.
“How to scale your Facebook Ads without launching a single campaign”
Seeds of curiosity: This is easy to execute but extremely powerful. We’ll get to it in a minute but first…
This is a seed of curiosity.
Others are:
– But there’s more…
– It got worse…
– Here’s why…
Open loops: These are quite famous. An open loop is a complete sentence but that gives an incomplete thought.
“They laughed when I sat at the piano… but when I started to play”
Transitions: These make sure that the passage from one thought to another is smooth and doesn’t interrupt the flow of the reader.
You can have a highly interesting piece of copy, but without transitions, you’re losing readers at every paragraph.
Other transition words are:
– so
– and
– plus
The “I” to “you” formula. Talk about yourself in a negative way first. Then, when the story turns positive, shift to from speaking about yourself to using “you”.
“We struggled with Gmail spam filters for years, until we implemented a simple trick that you can use to double the open rate of your email campaigns.”
A word to the wise. These tips are quite useful. However, they won’t work if your basic principles are not in place. We are talking about doing sound market research and having a solid product.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Run these ads to get newsletter subscribers
There are a million and one ways to promote a newsletter. But Facebook Ads is one of the biggest.
Here’s what types of ads you should run on Facebook to get more subscribers. These ad types have been run by newsletters like us here at Stacked Marketer, Morning Brew, and more.
+ Testimonials
Yes, social proof works for newsletter ads. Include a short video testimonial from a reader along with the best snippet of their quote as the description text.
+ Direct pitch
People are accustomed to subscribing to newsletters via Facebook Ads. Create a short promotional video or image to do this properly. If you can, pull some of the copy from your newsletter landing page. You want to keep it simple.
+ Memes
These are make or break. But when they hit, they hit big. Spend time researching what meme formats are popular in your industry. Then, test until you find something that works.
Try this: Before running your meme as an ad, post it on your organic social media. If it gets positive engagement, that’s a good sign it may work as an ad.
There’s plenty more to talk about here, and we spent a lot of time diving into newsletter ads for our deep dive on Morning Brew. If you want to check that out, head over to our Insights community.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
MARKET RESEARCH: What’s a marketer’s ultimate super-power? Knowing how your potential customer thinks, behaves, and buys gives an edge over your competitors. Bloom & Wild, Brew Dr. Kombucha, and Organic Valley use Attest to gain a deep understanding of their target consumer. And you can do the same for free.*
SEO: Google wants to standardize things. AMP, “Mobile Friendly,” and “Rich Results” will be combined into Google Search Central’s URL inspection tool.
TWITTER: Be a jerk, but don’t get caught being one. On Twitter, you can now remove followers without blocking them.
E-COMMERCE: Go big or go live. Facebook will organize live shopping events with some big and small brands over the holiday season.
GOOGLE: Web Stories are an interesting new way to get more organic reach on Google. If you haven’t heard of them, Google published a recent blog post to help you get familiar.
SOCIAL MEDIA: It’s on the verge of becoming mainstream. Twitter and TikTok are experimenting with NFTs. Will these tokens become the new reputation system of the digital world?
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
You roll a 5 sided pencil on the table. On one of its sides is written “HB Pencil”. The others are blank. What is the chance that the side with text on it ends up straight on top?
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.
Instagram has a message for you: Consume responsibly
Take a break.
This is the actual name of a feature that Instagram plans to introduce to teens on its platform.
According to Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s head, the goal of the “take a break” feature is for teens to “take a moment to consider whether the time they’re spending is meaningful”.
This is kinda like asking a drunk person to consider if the alcohol they drank was healthy, but we digress.
In addition, Instagram will “nudge” users to look at other content when they’re looking at the same content over and over again.
Instagram will also use this “nudge” if people view content that the company considers to “not be conducive to their well being.”
…yeah, we are not sure where they are going with this either.