Here’s how Facebook’s News Feed works
Why do people see what they see on Facebook? It’s a question marketers have been asking since the dawn of time (in Facebook years, that’s 2004).
The company has just released a blog post hoping to put an end to the dilemma. Here’s the process that Facebook uses on a high level for its news feed:
- First: Facebook compiles an inventory of all the posts you could potentially see (from your sister’s night out to your neighbor’s annoying dog)
- Second: for each post, they gather signals, such as: who posted it, how you interacted with that person in the past and whether it’s a video, photo or a link.
- Third, Facebook uses these signals to make predictions about the post. That is, predictions on how likely you are to find it relevant, whether you’ll interact with the post and whether the post is worth your time (whatever that means).
Finally, Facebook will compute a score based on those signals and predictions. Posts with a higher score will appear, well, higher.
What you can influence: The only factor you can have control over here are the signals. Will you post a video without a link? Will you use a personal profile or a page? Test it and see; luck favors the doers.
YOUTUBE
YouTube Audio vs. Video Ads: Who wins?
Listening vs. watching. What’s more likely to convince us to take action?
To find out the answer, Creatopy, an ad design platform, spent $6k: Half on a video ad and half on an audio ad on YouTube.
The setup: They made two ads with the exact same message. The only difference was whether the ad was shown as a video or spoken as audio.
The results: Drumroll please… Each ad won in its own unique way.
The audio ads received far more impressions (772k) than the video ad (458k) for the same budget. However, because the audio ad received fewer clicks (315 vs. 778), the cost-per-click was much higher.
Show me the money: Vanity metrics aside, which ad got the company actual conversions?
Audio ads resulted in 6 view-through conversions, versus 3 view-through conversions for video ads. So when it came to people taking action, audio ads were the winner.
The reason audio ads won: Probably because far more people saw them. Luck not only favors the doers, but it also favors the brave. YouTube only launched Audio Ads 6 months ago, and those who were the first to figure them out are most likely reaping the rewards as we speak.
SPONSORED BY PROPELLERADS
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This is the most detailed explanation for all situations. You will find the following information:
- What website monetization is.
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- What tools you can use to improve your traffic.
- How publishers get paid.
- Why you should choose PropellerAds as your monetization solution.
Prefer video more than text?
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You know what to do after reading the guide and watching the webinar, right? 😉
FROM THE CREW
How to get a free conversion-rate-boosting landing page roast
One of the most popular pieces of content we’ve featured in the last couple of months is this piece by Oliver Meakings about his lessons from 200+ landing page roasts.
When we saw how much you (and other readers) liked it, we reached out to Olly to see if we could do a collab and… He agreed to roast one of your landing pages for free.
What you need to do:
- Submit your landing page link as a reply to this email.
- Tell us what you think the best and worst parts of your landing page are.
You have until Sunday, 18th July 2021 to submit, then Olly picks his favorite to do a roast that we will share in our newsletter while it’s still fresh out of the oven.
Don’t worry if you don’t get picked! Everyone who submits their landing page gets a 20% discount on Olly’s roasts, if they decide to book it.
Send us your landing pages!
CONTENT MARKETING
Firing out content faster than a machine gun
Struggling to scale your content creation?
Today we’ll look again at a post shared by Backlinko’s Brian Dean, outlining the process he follows to scale content creation.
This structure helped him create 326k words of blog content in a single year. That’s around 160 blog posts with 2000 words. He didn’t stop there though. In that same year, he created a course, dozens of social media posts, email newsletters, YouTube video scripts, and more.
Here are the steps:
1) Break down the writing process into smaller steps: Writing isn’t just about “writing”. It can involve finding keywords, choosing the format, outlining the structure, editing, creating visuals, and so on. Identify the areas where you can’t be efficient, and outsource them.
2) Create an organized content calendar: Include each of the phases you identified in the previous step, their current status, the person assigned for each task, and so on.
3) Plan your content schedule for the next 6-8 months: Relieving the stress of a looming deadline helps you create better content. Plus, you batch tasks and save time.
4) Create outlines for upcoming posts: Freestyling may work for people like Ernest Hemingway, but not always for normal folks. Outlines help your writing turn out faster and better-structured.
5) Write content based on first-hand knowledge and experience: Writing about topics that are already in your head makes the process faster and easier, as well as making the finished article of much higher quality.
6) If you have to hire writers, look for experts on the topic: Rather than hiring random writers on Upwork, find people that run blogs in your industry or people that contribute to other sites in your niche.
7) Create a world-class content team: Scaling content is all about people, and if you want to fire out content like a military tank, you need to stuff up your content team.
Brian Dean went into detail for each one of these steps, and you can check them out here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
AFFILIATE MARKETING: It’s fine to use affiliate links. Google’s Mueller weighs in on the subject.
ADVERTISING: Talking about change is one thing. Going through that change, on the other hand, is a whole new level. Here’s how Apple’s IDFA change affected seven live advertising campaigns.
SEO: MozCon 2021 is here with plenty of interesting insights. Here’s a recap of day one.
TWITTER: The company wants to show your followers that you own a newsletter, just below your main profile.
E-COMMERCE: First, it was Shopify. Then WooCommerce. Now it’s GoDaddy’s turn. Google has just made shopping integration easier for GoDaddy merchants.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Becoming verified on Facebook or Twitter is more than a nice-to-have; it’s a status symbol. Enter the industry where people promise to get you verified for four or five figures.
E-COMMERCE: Curated content, according to Zappos, is the future of e-commerce.
BRAIN TEASER
Why did the scarecrow win so many awards?
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.
Meet Tobin, Paige and Ava
Meet Tobin. He’s “energetic and insightful”. Meet Paige, who’s “poised and expressive.” Let’s not forget Ava, the woman who’s “polished, self-assured, and professional.”
Tobin, Paige and Ava have something in common. They’re AI voice actors that sound scarily realistic.
AI to blame: Before AI, synthetic voices sounded, well, synthetic. With AI, you just feed the algo a few hours of data and voilà – you’ve got your own AI voice, who can say anything you want.
Now, these voices are being used in game development, dictation, and of course… Ads.
So, one more profession’s in jeopardy due to AI. As for marketers? We’re safe.
So far.