💌: TikTok strike, cookies, & GA4 is 💩

👋 Welcome to another week of the most interesting things happening in marketing. A big shout out to everyone who joined in the last week, it was the biggest week for new subscribers so far. Writing this each week truly brings me joy, so thank you for being a part of that! If you’re new here, reply and let’s chat!

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

🤳 Social Media & Creator Economy

✏️ Copywriting, email marketing, and advertising

  • This NY times article about Moray eels has been making the rounds this week on Twitter and among my journalist friends. It might be one of the best headlines ever.
  • We’ve talked about the AIDA copywriting framework in previous issues, here is a Twitter thread by @jmosser of some others, with examples of them in action.
  • No link on this one, just a crazy stat: Google, Facebook, and Amazon accounted for almost 90% of the US digital ad market in 2020, per ad agency GroupM.
  • Buzzfeed has confirmed their intentions to go public via a SPAC. They’ve come a long way since click-bait style listicle articles. They even won a pulitzer this year! Going public is a big deal because they want to use funding to acquire other media companies. Why? To become a bigger network for marketers to advertise on. They want to grab part of that 90% from the point above.
  • Google has decided not to block cookies until 2023. Why is this a big deal? They were supposed to begin blocking as early as the middle of this year, and the news sent many companies scrambling to acquire first party data. This is why so many newsletters and smaller media companies have been getting acquired left and right. Hearing news of the delay, advertisers everywhere celebrated and got drunk, probably.
  • In a recent issue, we talked about Apple’s iOS 15, and how it’s going to change email marketing. The last time we discussed, we talked about how the new privacy-focused changes could hurt newsletter creators. Here’s an alternate take: it could actually improve email marketing as a whole. The basic thought: email marketers will have to focus on making better, more impactful email instead of focusing on vanity metrics like open rate. If you’re not familiar, here are all the changes iOS15 brings for privacy.

🖥 SEO (making Google happy)

  • GA4 (the latest version of Google Analytics) has been given the universal thumbs down so far. Some people say it even made them cry when trying to use it. I haven’t read a single positive thing about it so far, and the collective opinion is Google took a difficult-to-use product and somehow worsened it. Or, as my friend Nick told me: “it’s doodoo, baby.” Not gonna lie, when I went to set it up for this site, I threw up a little as I was trying to get used to everything. It’s not weird to fantasize about previous software versions, right?
  • Let’s talk about on-page SEO. For those that are new to SEO, or those that want a refresher: On-page SEO is one of the components of any good SEO strategy. The basic concept is making your page or blog post search friendly by making sure the correct keywords (and words related to your main keyword) are in your titles, images, headings, and body copy. Here’s a handy interactive guide on how to set up a page for SEO success. Worth a bookmark, even if you're an SEO vet!
  • While we’re on the topic, here’s a bonus: 8 things you can do to rank on page one of Google.

😀Just for fun

That’s all for this week, I thank you again for reading these words.

- Jordan AKA Forge

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