👋 What’s up y’all - back in your inbox with another weekly roundup of what’s what in marketing. This edition is fairly short, like last week’s. As you can imagine, there’s less to report on with the world’s attention focused on current events.

I’m finalizing my list of guest posters for the months of May (and maybe June). If we’ve already chatted, stay tuned to your inbox. If you’re interested in being a guest author, reply and let me know!

Alright, on to this week's roundup:

Social Media & The Creator Economy

• TikTok expanded the max video length to 10 minutes, presumably in an attempt to challenge YouTube for long form content. The big question to be answered: do people want to stick around for long videos on TikTok?
• Twitter continues to roll out it’s Birdwatch platform, which is designed to add context to misleading tweets.
• TikTok is reportedly rolling out an “Agency Center” which lets creators signal to talent agencies that they’re open to guidance (and presumably brand deals).
• Is it too late to get started on TikTok? No, it’s not, and here’s how to get started for your brand. Personally, don’t think it’s ever too late for any particular channel. Imagine thinking it was too late to start a YouTube channel in 2013 because the channel had been around for a few years.
• Plus, TikTok put together this list of insights to help you up your game.
• This week, Instagram launched automated captions for Feed Videos. It’s default to On for creators, and is available in 17 languages at launch.
• The team at Buffer put together six strategies you can use to jumpstart your social media activity this year.
• You can now highlight career breaks on your LinkedIn profile, so you can give more info about your life experiences.

SEO & Content Marketing

• You may want to bookmark this one: A glossary of everything on the SERP (search engine results page). Now you’ll know what SEO folks are talking about all the time :)
• Here’s a dope breakdown of BERT (Google’s latest Machine Learning algorithm) and how it affects search results from a before & after POV.
• Anchor Text (the text you use when you make a link) comes in different flavors, and SEO peeps are always wondering the best format for them. Here’s a breakdown on anchor text best practices, straight from Google.
• It appears that Google is adding 3 new UTM parameters to GA4. This marks the first time in over a decade that new parameters appeared. The new parameters are utmsourceplatform, utmcreativeformat and utmmarketingtactic.

Copywriting, Branding & Advertising

• The good folks over at Stacked Marketer put together a great guide on Landing Page Copywriting. It’s usually reserved for their paid members, but you can get the preview version for free.
• It’s no secret that Apple’s privacy updates last year made a real mess of Facebook advertising. Here’s what some advertisers are doing to attempt to stay successful.
• Olly from Roast My Landing Page put together a great video this week showcasing how leading companies use the before&after technique on their pages.
• Here’s a great primer on online advertising, that will get anyone up to speed on the basics. After reading it, you’ll know enough to set up basic ads — or at least know what your ad friends are talking about.

For Fun

• A wild story about a fake design agency that conned dozens of people into unpaid work. The BBC is calling it “jobfished” and we’re calling it “nothing on the internet is real.”
• Kytch was a company helping McDonald’s troubleshoot their often-joked-about ice cream machines. Now, Kytch is suing McDonald’s for $900 Million dollars. That’s some expensive soft serve.

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