Similar thoughts on Signal’s cryptocurrency announcement yesterday to Diehlâs post here… (side note: I wish more people still used blogs as their social outlet for these types of thoughts):
Signal users are overwhelmingly tech savvy consumers and weâre not idiots. Do they think we donât see through the thinly veiled pump and dump scheme thatâs proposed? Itâs an old scam with a new face.
Via Stephen Diehl – Et tu, Signal?
But Nextdoor has gradually evolved into something bigger and more consequential than just a digital bulletin board: In many communities, the platform has begun to step into roles once filled by Americaâs local newspapers. âAnecdotally, Nextdoor has gone from being kind of sub-Facebook to actually being the main platform you hear people discussing as a vector for local news and events and discussions,â says Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.
â Read on onezero.medium.com/nextdoor-is-quietly-replacing-the-small-town-paper-ca583962c15a
Must read here. I won’t summarize the article as you need to read the entire piece for yourself, but the implications for things I care about very deeply (such as marketing, politics, technology, religion, and education) are serious.
Take some time and read:
Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the âillusion of explanatory depth,â just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. Weâve been relying on one anotherâs expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and othersâ begins.
Interesting… didn’t realize the bit about the WordPress 5.6 release team. That’s admirable and something that we need more of in the open-source world (and the tech world in general):
One thing Iâll call out WordPress 5.6 had an all women and non-binary release squad of over 50 people, a first for WordPress and probably any large open source project. Also the market share of WordPress grew more in 2020 than it has in any year since it started being tracked!
I remember the first few times I saw a friend post a Reel on Instagram and thought “well, that’s a weird knock-off of Snapchat and Tik-Tok” and wondered how or if my clients should even know about (or bother) with it.
Then in November, we also got word from Instagram that major changes were coming to how they promoted content in a much search-friendlier way (without having to use hashtags!).
Those two combined together means that Instagram with its 2 billion active users and built-in affinity groups shouldn’t be overlooked in 2021.
Use Reels for whatever you’re marketing or trying to message about and don’t skip over the functionality there.
2021 is going to be the year of 15 second videos.
Engagement umbers are already through the roof with Reels and that’s only going to continue to increase.
To further help Instagram categorize your account, you want to consistently post content thatâs relevant to your niche. To illustrate, if you run an Instagram account for your dog training business, youâll want to focus on posting content about dog training and avoid content that strays into an unrelated category. Other ways to help you show up in search within your category include following other similar accounts and adding a relevant keyword to your name in your bio (i.e., Alexa | Dog Trainer).
To compete with the rise in popularity of TikTok, Instagram launched Reels, a new form of video content delivered in 15â30 seconds to create quick, attention-grabbing moments in a creative and entertaining way. Instagramâs new UI update, which put IG Reels front and center, should hint to marketers that Instagram Reels will be here to stay in 2021.
Source: Social Media Marketing Trends for 2021: Predictions From the Pros : Social Media Examiner
I’ve had a few people reach out to ask me if there’s a way to integrate TikTok with their WordPress site… so I recently did some research and testing and this is the plugin I’d recommend:
TikTok Feed is premium WordPress plugin to create stunning gallery of TikTok videos for any user, hashtag/challenge, Music or Trending feed.
With 40+ shortcode options to adjust the feed to suit your need, the plugin comes with interactive shortcode generator tool to play with and preview the output with the changes.
Source: TikTok Feed – WordPress Plugin by WPPressPlugin | CodeCanyon
Along the same lines of posts I’ve been making about authentic marketing outreach aimed at specific communities, causes, and moments… this isn’t just about crass capitalism.
Businesses, nonprofits, churches, community orgs, public officials etc need to be engaged in this sort of marketing messaging regardless of your political or religious affiliations but in respect of what your group’s ethos represents… super powerful:
Show up where and when it matters.With advancements in communication, moments create new avenues for marketers, planners and creatives looking to connect with these once-a-day, once-a-year and once-in-a-while moments. Find a moment like Giving Tuesday, Ramadan or Pride Month when your business can connect with customers and communities who share the same values.
Source: Social Good for Business: Facebook Resources to Make an Impact | Facebook for Business
For the last 18 or so years that I’ve been in marketing, I’ve used “democratization” and “community focus” as consistent buzzwords in both my consulting work as well as speaking at conferences etc.
I don’t think there’s any better example as to why those terms are important than the experience of living through 2020. Specialization is everything as people are looking for a community in new ways online to replace the in-person human element we all miss.
Regardless of whether we are able to have in-person gatherings again soon and not have to worry about the virus, things have changed for many of us and there are new habits and norms (Zoom and hyper-special media isn’t going away) that will not be going away. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be wearing a mask for a while.
One key I’m pushing with all of my clients is the idea of specialization in community building. As marketers, we’ve generally done a poor job of handling “community building” correctly. There has been too much focus on affinity metrics, KPI’s and NPS (Net Promotor Score) that has resulted in insulting generic surveys when we happen to purchase anything from dog bowl from a pet’s store all the way to a car. “TELL US HOW WE DID!” is now one of the least clicked email subject lines in our inboxes.
Engagement, authentic presence, customer service, and democratization of the message are very important. But “generic” is a poison pill. Choose wisely in your messaging in 2021.
Today weâre announcing some big changes to Instagram â a Reels tab and a Shop tab. The Reels tab makes it easier for you to discover short, fun videos from creators all over the world and people just like you. The Shop tab gives you a better way to connect with brands and creators and discover products you love.
Source: Introducing a New Home Screen for Instagram
Instagram’s new layout announced today isn’t a massive overhaul and most people will probably adjust just fine… but the inclusion of Reels as a separate tab is super interesting and yet another way that Facebook and Instagram are looking to capture some of the virality and buzz around TikTok.
There’s not much conclusive data on Reels’ success or adoption so far (released back in August), but it is notable that it now has its own tab in an interface that hundreds of millions of active users visit daily (or hourly depending on your demographic).
Shopping also gets its own tab. Again, like the talk late in the summer about how Wal-Mart was interested in acquiring TikTok due to its ability to be a platform for e-commerce, Instagram is making it easier for users to make direct purchases from their app rather than the janky “link in the bio” workaround we’ve been using for years. I know I’ve personally made a few impulse buys of new camping gear or knives (looking at you, Smoky Mountain Knife Works) because of an Instagram Story or pic.
But take note that the landscape is changing ever so slightly from Instagram (and TikTok) being places of consumer-generated content to consumer buying and selling. That will continue, especially as we all hunker down in our homes this winter to avoid Covid outbreaks.
The idea would be to help turn TikTok U.S. into more of an e-commerce app for creators and users, much like what TikTok parent company ByteDance does with a similar app in China.
Source: Microsoft working with Walmart on TikTok deal – Axios
One of the main reasons TikTok has taken off with influencers, soccer moms, niche businesses, and aspiring dance stars here in the US is that it “feels” like an indie app that isn’t owned by Facebook or Google.
TikTok very much has that Instagram feel from about 2013 (I remember when an 8th grader first showed Instagram to me and explained why it was so much better than Facebook or Twitter and wasn’t owned by a big company).
With the ongoing speculation that Oracle is somehow involved in the attempts to acquire TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance at our current administration’s behest, the CEO resigning last night, and now the two COOLEST brands in the United States… Microsoft AND Walmart!… I just don’t see how TikTok retains that feeling. Especially if this odd consortium of mega-companies turns it into an “e-commerce app for creators and users.”
I think we’ll look back on this period a few years from now and use it as a cautionary tale for huge companies looking to make a play in a hot space.
Yes, there are some previous examples of successful transitions for creative-focused apps and services that kept the mojo after being gobbled up, such as when Google acquired YouTube for $1billion in the mid-2000’s. But then, Google wasn’t quite the behemoth it is now, and YouTube sorely needed the backing of a Google to stay on the web given the legal and logistical load it was rapidly taking on. But then consider services like Flickr or Tumblr that had a diehard communities before being subsumed into the Yahoo! debacle and mismanaged into oblivion.
All that to say, I don’t see how Oracle / Microsoft / Walmart pulls this off and pivots TikTok into a successful “Made in America!” platform while keeping the hotness of the app.