💌: Adrian’s Kickback, Landing Page Roasts & More

This weekend is a U.S. holiday so hopefully those of you in the states get some rest or do something fun (and hopefully catch up on this week’s edition on Tuesday). For everyone else, welcome to this week’s edition of Forgematic.

This week I’m trying a new format and breaking up the stories into themes.

Let me know what you think!

🤳 Social Media

• How a 17-Year-Old’s Birthday Party Became the Biggest Thing on the Internet. What Happened at Adrian's Kickback? — The New York Times
• TikTok, the Fastest Way on Earth to Become a Food Star — every week I’m blown away by some new thing on TikTok. This week it’s a generation of young chefs who don’t need to go pay dues at restaurants. Welcome to FoodTok.
• Ok, I swear once again this is not a TikTok newsletter. But when it’s one of the building blocks for Olivia Rodrigo’s success, you gotta respect it. This article is a great breakdown of how her new album, Sour, is breaking records. It all started on TikTok.
• And Here is a bonus read, with a quote I feel is insane and accurate at the same time: “TikTok is merciless — it is a constant, unending flume of new posts, of new features, there is no breathing room, there is only more content, with seemingly everybody blowing up and going viral except you. There are no shares, no reposts, only the ability to stitch onto someone else’s (where you add onto someone else’s video) or duet with them (IE: you do a video in time with theirs), which means there is no way to go viral other than by the hand of the algorithm.”
• Instagram Reels got a new feature this week: Insights. As Instagram tries to make Reels more appealing than TikTok, they need ways to differentiate. Giving insights and analytics is a good way to do that and could give it an edge for marketers (if not creatives). Still, it’s not going to help Reels turn into something that influences pop culture like the stories above.
• Twitter previews Ticketed Spaces, says it’ll take a 20 percent cut of sales - downside: there isn’t much money left for the actual creators and hosts.

🔎 SEO and search

• One of my favorite SEO tools, SEMRUSH, updated their Keyword Difficulty scoring this week, and it’s actually a good breakdown of what it takes to rank any given keyword on Google. If reading this makes your head spin, consider buying your SEO friend a cup of coffee.
• When to target low search volume keywords, which goes against the advice of lots of SEO strategies. Basically, it’s ok to target low volume keywords if there is a chance to grab some niche traffic.
• Google is testing a couple of interesting things in search results including audio features which let you hear a search result.

💰 Advertising

• Here's a great thread on how to use Facebook Ads to grow a small business from $0 to $120K in six months.
• Hardee's and Carl's Junior are now promoting sandwhiches on Onlyfans. Yeah, that's not a typo. Their campaigns are safe for work, but still play along Onlyfans' reputation as a sex-centric website. This is great for Onlyfans as well, as they want to break that stigma and be known for more. Best of luck to both.

🎨 Web design and conversion optimization

• A handy breakdown of the differences between Google Analytics’s new GA4 version vs. Universal Analytics (the last version).
• This person named Olly roasts landing pages. Not only is that a smart service offering, but he has tons of actionable advice as a result.

📊 Strategy

• Do you work in B2B marketing? This article is for you: The real audience for your marketing is not the C-Suite. Find out who to target in the article (spoiler: Director level and below). I work in B2B marketing and I’ve seen first hand the folly of only targeting C-suite execs in previous jobs I had.
• Here’s an awesome thread on how influencer marketing works and how it’s core to DTC (direct to consumer) brand strategy.

🥳 Interesting reads

• That sinking feeling you feel because there’s too much going on, and you just can’t get your brain to work? Creating content all the time makes you feel the same way, and all the influencers are burned out too.
• For fun: how to check your email in 1984. That’s a lot to go through to read messages. Now we don’t even want to get email (except this one of course)

That’s all for this week. Thank you as always for reading and please keep sharing the newsletter with your friends in marketing or friends that want to know about Marketing.

Forge