💌: Live shopping, Simpsons, & Clubhouse

What’s up everyone! I hope you all had a great week and are using your weekend to reflect and relax as we recap the week in marketing together. I’m considering adding a weekly livestream format of the newsletter. Would you join if it was a scheduled time and day? Should it be over cocktails or coffee? Let me know!

Ok, let’s get into it!

• Pinterest is testing live-streamed events because live shopping is a growing trend. This could come in handy, especially since they now have over 5 Billion (!) monthly searches on the platform. On a related note, Facebook debuts live shopping Fridays because FB wants a piece of the pie, naturally. Have any of you joined a live shopping stream? I’m curious to know if it encourages you to buy stuff!
• Speaking of shopping, Mailchimp is getting into e-commerce with the launch of online stores this week. This is unexpected, but also great because you get stuff like automated abandoned cart emails, which are done natively without the need for tagging and implementation with another e-commerce platform.
• Twitter is testing a new subscription service called Twitter Blue that will cost $3 per month. They’re officially declining to comment on it, but I’ve seen some test images floating around. Are you willing to pay $3 per month to finally get an edit button? For that price, I’m willing to sign up — Twitter has provided so much value to me over the years. What about you?
• Speaking of testing, it seems Instagram might soon allow browser-based posting, and they’re testing it now. This could come in handy for a variety of reasons, but would be a life-saver for brand social media managers everywhere.
• A quick look at The Simpsons’ secret to writing. The short version: create an imperfect world, then improve on it. Or just write a rough draft as fast as possible, and improve it constantly until you get where you want to be.
• Ever wondered if there’s a way to cheat the Instagram algorithm? Here are 8 ways to cheat it (allegedly).
• Rand Fishkin (Founder of Moz and Sparktoro) wrote an excellent piece, The “Marketing Is Evil” Problem, which breaks down how the public feels about marketing and marketers (hey, that’s us!). A friendly reminder: great marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
• We’ve talked in previous issues about TikTok’s influence on purchasing behavior. So, you know all those products people are buying because they saw them on TikTok? Amazon is making them easier to find — they set up a landing page dedicated to trending products from TikTok. Could there be a bigger testament to your company’s influence on buying habits than when the name most synonymous with online buying dedicates space to you?
• Let’s talk about Clubhouse. People loved it, then they hated it. Maybe they’ll love it again. Maybe you’ve checked it out, maybe you haven’t — either way, this breakdown on Clubhouse is outstanding. It covers the onboarding experience, and a lot of the annoyances with using the app but in a comic story format.
• This 🧵 by Corey Haines is an excellent overview of buyer psychology. Worth a look if you are involved in writing or marketing with the intent to sell something.
• Google published a handy video on page experience and why it matters for SEO. If you have anyone on your team that does SEO, they have been getting ready for something called Core Web Vitals, and this is a great overview of what that’s all about it. How much of my job is just making Google happy?
• How to be an influencer on LinkedIn, in 5 simple steps — if you want to stand out and increase your chances of being noticed by recruiters you can use these tactics. Skip the notable influencer section at the bottom, that part is just fluff.
• Here’s a fantasticTwitter thread of 30+ landing pages with commentary on what makes the pages great and what can be improved. Check it out the next time you need some landing page inspo.
• Snap released the fourth generation of their Spectacles that have built in AR-displays. The styling on these are super future and is already garnering respect, especially for accessibility and inclusion — the Spectacles render darker skin tones closer to the way the human eye does — which isn’t typical for AR. Oh, and then they one-upped this announcement by buying the supplier that makes the displays in this version of their Spectacles for $500 million. Not bad for a company that started off as a disappearing nudes messages app 👻

Phew, that’s it for this week — feels like a lot happened and was announced. Know someone who is into marketing or simply wants to learn more and keep up with the industry and knowledge nuggets. Forward this to them and tell them to join us at https://forgematic.com.

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Forge