What’s up y’all? It’s hard to believe January is coming to a close already. It’s been a weird one here, as it’s snowed the last 3 weekends here in NC, which is unheard of. Moving somewhere tropical ASAP!

Spent the week working out the new branding for Forgematic now that it’s growing beyond a newsletter. Plus onboarding more help for SEO and paid search. Hope everyone had a good week!

And with that, let’s get into this week’s roundup!

Social Media & The Creator Economy

• Let’s get nerdy for a second. A group of researchers at North Carolina State University wrote an algorithm to determine what exactly makes for a perfect image. They scanned 147,963 images for the study 🤯. Read all about their findings here. TL;DR: it’s all about color balance and the complexity, or simplicity, of your image.
• You can now schedule Instagram Lives up to 90 days in advance. The new feature is meant to help with discovery. But the hidden benefit is just good marketing: letting your followers set reminders as well as publishing countdown timers in advance. Here’s what you need to know.
• Facebook is removing the ability to have profile videos starting next month. All five people who use this feature are shook.
• Twitter is implementing an about tab in user profile pages. From the look of it, the about section could become a handy place for everything we try to stuff in our bios.
• TikTok launched a new course for marketers this week called TikTok Tactics. It’s designed to help marketers level-up their approach to marketing on the platform.
• TikTok is also working on a feature that will let you see who viewed your profile in the last 30 days. TikTok previously had this feature, but this time it’s coming back as an opt-in.
• Another TikTok update: there’s some trouble brewing with them and creators over payments and monetization. Creators want a bigger slice of the pie. TikTok can’t figure out how to make it happen.
• This section of the newsletter is always the most packed because social media just moves so fast. To help us all keep up, AdEspresso put together this list of the 8 most important social media trends to watch for in 2022.
• Last update for this section: turns out Instagram is still on top when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns. It’s the one thing TikTok hasn’t taken juuuust yet.

SEO & Content Marketing

• If you’re trying to learn more about SEO this year, take a look at this list of SEO podcasts over at the ahrefs blog.
• Late last year, news broke that Google was automatically rewriting page titles in the search results pages. SEOs everywhere freaked out. The team at Zyppy wanted to find out how true it was and if this was really happening. They studied 81,000 page titles, and Google rewrote 61% of them. One interesting thing: Google seems to rewrite titles that are too short OR too long, so they’re (maybe?) doing you a favor if that’s the case.
• I fully believe 2022 is the year of the content marketer, and perhaps the year smart companies realize they need to create a moat between themselves and competition via content. But, how do you provide ROI on content? Here’s a guide to doing just that.

Before we get into the copywriting section of the newsletter, I want to shout out something new from Forgematic community member Sophia O’Neal 👇

Copywriting, Branding & Advertising

• Celebrity scandals are nothing new, but do seem to be more intense in the age of social. Even though celebrities are prone to scandal, there are no signs of a slowdown for using them in advertising.
• Another week, extra refinements for Google Ads. You can now use performance max for smart shopping and local campaigns. Performance max sounds like a crazy dietary supplement, but it’s actually Google’s latest ad type. It uses automation to place ads where users are most likely to convert.
• If you’ve ever watched live sports via streaming (rather than via your big cable provider), you’ve likely noticed awkward gaps where ads should be. They usually feature the platform or channel’s logo and some cheesy music for about 30 seconds. Here’s why those still exist (it’s complicated).
• Twitter is revamping its ad product in an effort to get more marketers active on spending some sweet ad dollars. Personally, I’ve found Twitter ads effective, depending on the industry, but they are often ignored.
• Oh hey, you can advertise on Instacart now. Because that’s a thing everyone was totally expecting!
• Looks as though you might soon be able to include emoji in your Google Ads. Can’t wait to run ads with ☕️ in them.

For Fun

• You’ve seen LinkTree / LinkInBio / Etc used for most people on social’s bio link. They’re replacing websites entirely in some cases, especially for IG and TikTok stars. Here’s a deep dive on the trend.
• Here’s a list of all 36 new emoji coming in the next version of iOS.
• Finally, you should check your spam folder. You might get lucky, like one Michigan woman who found a winning lottery ticket for $3M in her spam. Whut.

Woo! You made it to the end. Thank you so much for being here for another week.

If you want to support Forgematic and keep the newsletter going, here are the top ways to do that:

• Share the newsletter to your friends and ask them to sign up.
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