💌: House of Max, IG Timing, & 2006

Hey, what’s up everyone. It’s Sunday, which means it's time for another edition of what’s happening in the marketing world! I’ve really appreciated getting to know all of you each week, and especially lately when everyone has been sharing their coffee prep methods!

Today, I’m swimming in iced coffee, since it’s 102F on the “feels like” scale today. I’m honestly surprised the iPad survived writing this on the porch today.

Ok, here’s what’s been happening in marketing this week

Social and The Creator Economy

• You know how all social media apps are free? That’s because you are the real product, and your data is how you pay for continued use. It’s somewhat dystopian and depressing, but we tend to forget about it when the dopamine hits from someone liking our posts. Anyway, the apps aren’t the only ones that care about your data. Turns out a lot of it can be scraped, and here’s how it’s being done by third parties.
• The folks at Later have crunched the numbers on 35 million posts and have suggestions on the best time to post on Instagram. Spoiler alert, it’s 6AM in your local time, usually on Saturday and Sunday. The worst time? It varies, but it’s usually in the midday. Check the link for an in-depth breakdown!
• TikTok is a legit music powerhouse. Studies show two-thirds of users go to streaming services to play songs they first heard on TikTok. Releasing your song on TikTok is about to be the first stop on promo rollouts for major label artists. We’ve already seen relative unknowns blowing up after being discovered on TikTok. Just ask Tai Verdes, who went from Verizon retail employee to Lollapalooza main stage in less than a year, all thanks to TikTok. Watch/Listen to this interview about his journey if you have some time today.
• Last week we mentioned that TikTok was testing a new stories feature. Here’s everything we know about it so far.
• Twitter made a few design changes this week to its web app. The one everyone noticed? The new font choice, called “Chirp.” I’m pretty indifferent about it, how about you?
• We’ve talked before about the “TikTok made me buy it” phenomenon — but here’s a deeper dive into how TikTok influences fashion retail.
• One interesting TikTok trend: eating frozen honey. I guess we’ll just do anything any other human does on TikTok, even if it’s not the best thing for our health.

Advertising and Branding

• Amazon is seeing an increase in ad money as advertisers leave Facebook. Chalk it up to the iOS privacy fallout and the lack of reporting on FB ads. We’ll likely see more money exit FB ads for other platforms, and this is just the start.
• Coke Zero Sugar is having an advertising moment. The reason? A new formula. This isn’t Coke’s first rodeo into a new recipe with an ad storm to match. Previous formula changes haven’t been met with a warm reception, but hopefully this time is different.
• WarnerMedia launched “House of Max” this week, which helps advertisers use iconic HBO characters in ads. The goal is to make the ads feel more natural, placing them in shows on HBO Max.
• Here’s a great list of places to get stock video clips for your ads or your feed in general. Bookmark it, it could come in handy the next time you need to make your vacation video look a bit more epic 😎
• Twitter released an updated version of its Agency Playbook, which details how to run effective Twitter ads. It’s not super popular to run Twitter ads, but I’ve had great success with them this year. Take a look if you’re interested in paid social.
• Instagram is testing ads in the Shop tab. If you’re like “wtf is the Shop tab?” — well, Instagram introduced the Shop tab last year in an effort to help make Instagram an online shopping destination. It offers seamless checkout and now might get ads from big brands — depending on user sentiment.
• Here’s an in-depth article which gives an overview of 10 copywriting tips specific to Google Ads. It references class writing and psychology principles, which is a good way to demonstrate that some techniques will always be useful.
• Copywriting is hard, especially when you are trying to get the reader to take a specific action. When you’re trying to write words that sell, the way you present your offer is super important. Here are 4 elements of an effective copywriting offer.

SEO and Email

• Google released an SEO exam that anyone can take, to test their knowledge on how Google crawls and indexes sites. It’s a simple true and false exam that gives you tips when you select the correct answer. Check it out to test your knowledge — or learn more about SEO.
• Here’s an interesting new Google search feature for eCommerce websites. Now when you search a brand’s name, like Wayfair as an example, you get their categories returned as images. Take note if you run an eCom shop.
• Here are 9 subject line styles that you can use to increase your open rates if you’re an email marketer. Ever wondered why the subject lines for this newsletter are so short? I try to keep them under 40 characters, which is the point where subject lines start getting cut off on mobile devices.
• Google is experimenting with showing you affordable versions of whatever product you happen to be searching for, effectively turning it into a deals search engine. This could be huge in the future, assuming the experiment is successful, that is.
• Speaking of Google, they put together this infographic comparing the top searches from July 2006 to the top searches for July 2021. The most searched lyrics from 2006 is an interesting mix, while Olivia Rodrigo dominates that category for this year.

Just For Fun

• What would your top searches from 2006 be? You can likely find this out from your Google search history, but it’s more fun to think back to that time and think about what you were up to. Here’s what I think one of mine would be: “how to make a custom myspace background” 🤣

I really appreciate y’all reading along with me for another week! Follow me over on IG and Twitter if you’re not already. I’m going to try to start sharing more marketing nuggets during the week.

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