👋 Hey everyone! I’m back with another roundup of the latest marketing trends.

In the middle of the newsletter this week, you’ll see the pre-launch of our membership options.

They’re on sale for the remainder of ‘21, and will be going up in ‘22, as we move to a paid membership offering only. If you used the Buy Me A Coffee link this year, you’ll be auto-upgraded to a paid membership for life as a thank you for the early support! ❤

Social & The Creator Economy

• It seems Instagram might be getting closer to launching creator subscriptions. In theory, could subscribe directly to a creator, and get billed as an in-app purchase. Techcrunch has the details.
• A new report by social app Vibely revealed 90% of surveyed creators experienced burnout. 71% of them have considered quitting social media altogether. Being a creator is tough, especially when you gain a following. Even writing this newsletter every week for my small following is sometimes stressful 😵‍💫
• One thing that would make being a creator less stressful would be guarantees that come with regular jobs, like a salary and benefits. Workweek, a new platform, launched this week to do just that.
• It’s no secret that every app wants a piece of the TikTok pie, including video giant YouTube. In their latest attempt to capture attention: they’ll automatically open Shorts if it was the last feature you were on.
• This guide to optimizing your TikTok Bio might just mint you some new followers.
• Twitter Blue (Twitter’s subscription plan) has rolled out to a wider global audience, including those of us in the U.S. and New Zealand. For $2.99 per month, you’ll get a few extra features, one of which is an undo button!
• Speaking of Twitter, it appears they are hiring a full team to focus on crypto, blockchains, and other tech.
• YouTube is now hiding the dislike count on videos, even though the actual dislike button isn’t going away.
• Here are 20 tips to grow your Instagram following. Some are fairly basic, but there are a couple of gems on the list.
• You can get a TikTok business account now, and Hootsuite put together a handy guide detailing how to set up your business account and optimize it for success.
• Thumbnails are key to success on YouTube. But how do you make a thumbnail stand out? Maybe borrow some tips from the team at Netflix, who create multiple thumbnails for every show.

SEO & Content

• If you use any sort of interstitial (pop-up) on your site, it might soon negatively affect your Google rankings, according to some reports.
• Webinars are still critical for B2B marketing — but the life of a webinar shouldn’t end with the event itself. Here are 13 ideas to repurpose your latest webinar.
• Google put together a video about the future of SEO. It’s 45 minutes, and it’s straight from the Google search team, so it’s worth paying attention to.

Brand & Advertising

• Facebook announced the removal of thousands of ad targeting options to meet privacy regulations (and to avoid problematic issues).
• The Google Ads Editor got a new version this week.
• Carbon Offsets are all the rage for companies marketing their commitment to the environment. Turns out, buying them might be counterproductive.
• Iceland spoofed Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announcement in a new tourism video, and it went viral.
• Tea Brand Celestial Seasonings iconic mascot, Sleepytime Bear, woke up this week. Yes, really.
• You can now advertise directly on the fortunes inside Fortune Cookies. Have we gone too far?

Fun

• The 10,000 Faces That Launched an NFT Revolution. Read the backstory of the creators of CryptoPunks. The duo had no idea their 2017 project would light the fire for the NFT craze. These days, the rarer punks can go for millions of dollars, and Snoop and Jay-Z both own one. What a wild time we live in.

That’s all for this week’s news — it was a light week, with just a couple of stories dominating the news cycle. If I had to guess, next week’s letter might be a bit more action-packed 😎

See you next week,

Forge