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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Twitter Takeover Back On, Twitter Re-Embracing Devs, What Makes B2B Content Memorable

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone has a wonderful and productive week! Here’s some business and marketing stories that I’ve had my eye on over the last week:

 

So it seems the on-again, off-again bid by Elon to buy Twitter is back on. Multiple sources are saying that the Twitter board is reconsidering Elon’s latest offer to buy the company. I would caution that just because it’s being reported that Twitter is close to a deal with Elon, that doesn’t mean they are. Control of Twitter is a BIG BIG deal, as its become such a massive platform to create and shape public opinion. The company and its shareholders want to continue to control that.  So does Elon.  We will see how it plays out.

 

Years ago, in a time where Twitter let 3rd party developers access its API and build tools on top of it, one such tool called Monitter existed.  At the time, Monitter was one of the most useful social media tools out there. It gave you the ability to search Twitter VIA TARGETED LOCATION. You could see, in real-time what people were saying on Twitter, at a particular location.  It had amazing potential, say you were a restaurant that offered delivery, you could search Twitter for people tweeting ‘I am hungry’ within the last hour, in your neighborhood.  Or if there was a breaking news event at a particular location, you could search for tweets from people at that location, reporting live as the event was unfolding.  It was amazing.  But like many promising apps, Twitter cut off access to its API, and they went away.

Well now they may be coming back.  It seems Twitter is reaching back out to the same developers it once turned its back on.  This may end up being a case of too little too late, but hopefully Twitter will embrace developers building on the platform’s functionality as it once did.  If so, Twitter’s users will be the real winners, and Twitter can always just acquire any successful apps that emerge.

 

New research from Demand Gen gives insights into the types of content that B2B buyers prefer. Specifically, B2B buyers gravitate to content that relies on research and data in presentation. Research and data lends to credibility for the buyer. When it comes to shareability, buyers said that being able to quickly distill key insights derived from the data made the reader more likely to share the content. This is why it’s a good idea to summarize lengthy content with ‘Key Takeaways’ at the start of the post. Readers will often use these insights when sharing your content.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute! At some point I want to do a deeper dive into Elon’s flirtations with buying Twitter, and what it really is all about. I might do that later this week, or I may wait until we see if his bid to buy the company actually works or not. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to read, and I hope you have a wonderful and prosperous week ahead!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon vs Twitter Continues, Baby Boomers Still Hold the Cash, AM/FM Radio Still a Thing?

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is having a fantabulous day and ready for an even bigger week!  Here’s some business and marketing stories I’ve been watching over the last week:

 

The Elon vs Twitter saga just keeps getting weirder and wilder. Since we talked last week, Elon made a very generous offer to buy Twitter outright, offering $54.20 a share. The move was blocked by existing shareholders. Elon is now rumored to be building a consortium of investors to make an even bigger offer.

What I find revealing about Elon’s overtures to buy Twitter, is how users and personalities on Twitter are reacting. Elon has long been critical of how Twitter moderates content, and many feel if he owned Twitter he would bring sweeping changes to how content is moderated on the site. This has sparked outrage among many Twitter users and personalities, and suddenly Elon and his company Tesla are under a microscope.

I think what this story proves, more than anything, is that both Elon and the outraged users understand that Twitter is not a free speech platform, it is a platform for shaping speech. Via moderation, any message that the owners of the platform want to see highlighted, can be highlighted. Any message that the owners of the platform want to see suppressed, can be suppressed. This makes Twitter’s value far greater than anything you will see on a balance sheet.

Elon understands that.  So do the ‘outraged’ users and personalities. This isn’t about protecting free speech, this is about some people wanting to ensure that their speech continues to be protected.

And I suspect this story ends either with Elon owning Twitter, or being suspended by Twitter. We’ll likely find out sooner rather than later.

 

Half of US wealth is in the hands of Baby Boomers, while their Gen X children now control 30% of the wealth. Millennials control 6.4% of the wealth, but it should be noted that for this survey, millennials are everyone born after 1981. So everyone in the US 41 and younger.  That’s a pretty big group, you would think their share of US wealth would be at least 15% or so.

 

I found these results on ad-supported audio interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I was honestly surprised that AM/FM radio had such a large share, but when you consider that the figures include listening to audio while driving, it makes sense.  AM/FM radio accounted for 88% of the ad-supported audio that we listened to while driving in 2021. Podcasts at 11% actually seems like a fairly strong number to me. Podcasts lag behind traditional radio in terms of monetization options, unless the podcasts are run through a larger platform like Spotify that has ad network capability integrated into the offerings.

Still, the takeaway from these numbers has to be that modern marketers shouldn’t overlook that traditional AM/FM radio in car still has a lot of potential for generating sales.

 

So that’s all for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope everyone has a wonderful week and we will see what craziness awaits us in the coming days!

 

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Case Study: Lego Ideas

Let’s talk about Lego Ideas. Whenever I work with companies on designing customer advocacy or brand ambassador programs, I always stress the need to incorporate customer feedback into the program. Members of any type of advocacy or ambassador program are hand-raisers.  They are your most passionate customers, and they feel a sense of ownership in your brand, and want to see it succeed. So they will happily provide your brand will plenty of feedback on what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and what it could be doing.

That’s why I love what Lego does with it’s Lego Ideas program. This is an initiative where Lego customers submit ideas for future playsets. Other customers can then vote on and provide feedback on each idea.  Submissions that are popular enough, go to market.

Other brands have tried similar programs, such as Starbucks My Starbucks Idea or Dell’s Ideastorm, and it’s always a big win for the brand and its customers.

Lego Ideas

Why is Lego Ideas a good idea?

In short, Lego Ideas gives Lego a way to let its customers design new products for the brand. Take this submission for the creation of a playset for the Nautilus from Jules Verne’s book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. First, everyone can rate the submission and leave comments. This means Lego can get detailed feedback from its customers on what they like and dislike about the submission. If Lego decides to eventually make the set, it can make the set incorporating the feedback it received from customers.

Additionally, if the set ever makes it to market, Lego has a ready-made customer base ready to buy the set. Also, if Lego does decide to produce a submission, 1% of the royalties from the set go to the designer.  Not a bad deal, and this gives fan designers an extra incentive to submit ideas.

The Power of Giving Ownership to Your Most Passionate Customers

Lego Ideas works because Lego understands the connection that its most passionate customers have with the brand. Customers with high degrees of loyalty to your brand often view themselves as owners of your brand.  They view it as THEIR brand as much as it is yours! So these passionate customers will act in what they perceive to be the best interest of the brand.  Their brand.

Lets say you just purchased a brand’s product for the first time.  So far, it’s been a pretty meh experience for you.  Not a great product, not a terrible one.

What if, tomorrow, a product manager calls you and invites you to join a product design program for the brand. Where you will be required to submit new product ideas, then spend the next 6-12 months promoting and engaging with other customers about the product, fleshing out the design and creating a model that’s ready to go to market. The brand will then take your idea to market, and give you 1% of the royalties.

What would be your response? You’d probably tell the brand to take a flying leap, right?

But what if this was a brand you adored?  A brand you evangelized to all your friends, buying every new product the brand offers.  If that brand, which you are insanely loyal to, offered you a chance to join a program like Lego Ideas, how would you react?  You would probably jump at the chance, right?

Customers that are loyal to a brand want more ways to be involved with the brand in all facets, from product design, to product feedback, to product promotion.

They want a program like Lego Ideas. And that’s why it’s a winner.

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Beyond Bored Apes; How Businesses Can Use NFTs as Digital Membership Cards

While more businesses are experimenting with using NFTs, the majority of the use cases remain centered on the digital collectibles/art angle. As brands begin to gain a better understanding of the underlying functionality made possible with NFTs, we will see more robust and dare I say relevant business examples.

Case in point: NFTs can be used by brands as digital membership cards. Not just digital membership cards, but dynamic ones at that, membership cards that evolve and change based on the member’s participation and activity within the program.

Why Use NFTs as Digital Membership Cards?

It’s a valid question, I mean whether you are using membership cards for your organization or as part of a brand ambassador or loyalty program, these members already have a card they carry in their wallet, right?  Or maybe they even have a digital membership card on an app.  Why is it better to use an NFT as a digital membership card?

There’s a few reasons:

1 – Eliminates the need to mail out physical membership cards. They are easy to lose, hard to track who has one and who doesn’t.  Plus the associated printing and mailing costs.

2 – Physical cards are more likely to be stolen or used fraudulently. A digital membership card helps alleviate this concern.

3 – Digital membership cards are more dynamic, and can more easily foster a connection with the brand. With a physical card, the connection is more to the card itself, and any discounts or features it entails. A digital membership card makes it easier to facilitate real-time communication with the brand and receive relevant updates.

 

But why use an NFT as a digital membership card instead of an existing one? 

Many of us already have our membership tied to a digital membership card on our phone in a wallet or maybe in an app. For instance, I have the Chick-fil-a app on my phone. It has all my rewards program integrated into it.  I can see how many rewards points I have, what those points can be spent on, etc. This is a natural evolution of the membership card as associated digital technologies have matured.  If this program was around 30 years ago, there would be no app, any tracking done would have to be on the physical card itself. This is why punch cards were so popular for so many years, and are still used to this day.

But as digital technologies evolved, then we could track activity associated with a membership card digitally via an app, for instance. This makes it easier for the brand and customer to see and track activity, and make adjustments on the fly. For instance, the local Chick-fil-a store manager can send me a reward at any time, straight to my app. In a pre-internet world this could be done, but via mail or an in-person visit.

With NFTs, we have the next evolution of memberships. NFTs take many of the conveniences we have with existing digital membership cards (portability in an app, ease of use and ability to add points and offers) and expands on it.

 

digital membership cards

Your NFT is Your Identity

One of the key aspects of a successful brand ambassador or loyalty program is to make the members feel special.  Because they are. I wrote about this recently, but one of the key drivers of customer loyalty is if the brand treats the customer like a VIP. The NFT can store not only your membership level and privileges, but also your identity and standing within the program. If you were one of the first 10 members to an ambassador program that now has 100,000 members, that’s part of the digital DNA of your NFT.  That’s recorded, along with the benefits that you have as a result.  If you attend brand events, the NFT can not only act as your ticket, but it can also verify your attendance and involvement.

Additionally, the NFT can be a collectible. Unlike a digital membership card that’s incorporated into your photo app, an NFT serving as your membership card can be collected and traded.

Let’s go back to the previous example of being one of the first 10 members of an ambassador program that now has over 100,000 members. That not only entitles you (if the brand is smart) to much better perks and utility than newer members, but it gives you a lot of clout within the community itself. You are an OG, and that’s recorded in your NFT.  So it means that within that 100,000 member community, your NFT has value.  Maybe you want to sell that NFT to another member of the community.  You could do that, and pass along the benefits (and clout) that comes with the NFT.

The value that the NFT has amassed reflects the work that the member has put into helping grow the community and program. So it’s a way for the member to monetize the time and effort they have put into the program. Or if the member wants to help onto their NFT, they could receive tokens associated with their work and length of time in the program. This is another form of compensation which is easier to facilitate via an NFT vs existing digital technologies.

 

Is your business ready to create its first NFT? This article tells you how to get started.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon/Twitter Drama, NFTs Coming to Facebook, Traditional TV is Dead

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you have a fantabulous and productive week! Here’s some marketing and business stories that caught my eye recently that I wanted to share:

 

In a bizarre statement explaining a surprising move, late last night Twitter’s CEO said Elon Musk will NOT be joining Twitter’s Board of Directors. A couple of things seemed odd about the statement; first Agrawel said Twitter was excited to bring Elon on the Board, but then said it was for the best that he didn’t join. Huh?  Also, I found it interesting that Agrawal made a point to say that there were ‘risks’ involved with letting Elon have a seat on the board, and the clarification that Elon could only be accepted to the Board after passing a background check.  It almost sounds like Agrawal is trying to give the impression that Twitter’s background check found something and Elon bailed before Twitter announced they couldn’t accept him on the Board as a result.

But there’s an interesting legal point to all this: If Elon had taken a role on the Board, his agreement with Twitter would hold that his stake in Twitter would be capped at 14.9%.Meaning, he couldn’t increase his current position owning 9.2% of the company to more than 14.9%. This, coupled with a tweet from my brilliant friend Carol Roth, makes me suspect that Twitter might be engaging in some smoke and mirrors here. Either way, this remains a very interesting story to follow!

 

Facebook/Meta is exploring adding NFTs to its ecosystem. Facebook is set to start a pilot program for introducing NFTs in mid-May, and according to this article. What I found very interesting, are claims that Facebook will soon after start rolling out the ability to have Facebook Groups tie membership to owning a particular NFT. I will be writing about this more this week, but NFTs are going to become the Digital Membership Card for business programs and organizations.  If you have the NFT, you can access the group/program, and its associated perks. This move by Facebook will also be a shot in the arm for mainstream business adoption of NFTs. Facebook embracing the technology will give a lot of businesses the courage to explore NFTs as well.

 

In a sign of the times, less than half of US households are forecast to have traditional pay TV in 2023.  Most of the losses will be customers migrating to ‘virtual multichannel video programming distributors’ (vMVPDs) such as Hulu TV and YouTube TV. I suspect streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Max are eating into that number as well.

 

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have a wonderful week, and if you want to share your thoughts on these stories, feel free to leave a comment below! I have to admit, Twitter’s response to Elon not joining its Board suddenly has me a lot more interested in this story.  What do you think about it?

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New Research Uncovers the Drivers of Customer Loyalty

customer loyalty

I recently came across a new research study from Cheetah Digital (via MarketingCharts) that uncovers the reasons why customers have a ‘favorite’ brand. The study surveyed over 5,000 customers worldwide to determine the factors that drove brand loyalty. I wanted to cover the top seven drivers of customer loyalty:

The Top Seven Drivers of Customer Loyalty

Provides a Consistent Customer Experience (80%) I think an important caveat is that the brand provides a consistently GOOD customer experience. The experience is part of the brand, and according to this study, it’s the top driver of brand loyalty.

If a brand makes the effort to create a good experience for the customer, that communicates to the customer that they are valued and appreciated. You will see that valuing and appreciating the customer are common themes on this list of drivers of brand loyalty.

 

Rewards Customers For Their Loyalty (78%) This is the where most brands make their biggest mistake in attempting to cultivate brand loyalty. Most brands confuse rewards and incentives in the context of brand loyalty. A reward comes after the purchase. An incentive is given before the purchase in an attempt to change customer behavior.

A reward creates loyalty to the brand, an incentive creates loyalty to the incentive itself. For example, look at the classic punch card, designed to ‘reward’ the customer with a free purchase afer a set number of purchases are made. Maybe Pizza Hut has a deal where if you purchase the lunch buffet 10 times, you get a free purchase.  This is an incentive to change behavior, and it builds loyalty to the OFFER, not to the brand. You will be more likely to continue to purchase the lunch buffet at Pizza Hut UNTIL your punch card is filled. When you claim the free lunch buffet, then you have to start again at zero.  And your loyalty to the incentive resets to zero as well.

As I explain in this post; If you want to build loyalty among your customers always remember: Loyalty is built by saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, not by offering coupons as incentives for new behavior.

 

Uses Customer Data In a Way That Makes Them Feel Comfortable (74%) Data privacy is top of mind for all customers. Most customers are very concerned over how their data can be used, or misused by brands. Transparency is imperative to building trust with consumers, and that’s especially true when it comes to customer data. Brands that are clear and forthright with how they collect and use a customer’s data are more likely to build trust with customers, which is the prerequisite for building loyalty.

 

Treats the Customer as an Individual (74%) This speaks to the desire that customers have for a personalized experience. Every customer has different wants and desires, and when a brand can give us a personalized customer experience, the brand is communicating to us that we are worth communicating to as an individual. It shows us that the brand appreciates us enough to put forth an effort to customize its communications with us.  That communicates respect and appreciation, and it makes it easier for us to adopt those same traits back to the brand.

 

Strives to Develop a Relationship (71%) This is one of the biggest misconceptions that brands have when communicating with customers. Most brands attempt to develop relationships with NEW customers, but ignore CURRENT customers. This thinking is completely out of phase, new customers typically have no interest in building a relationship with a brand. On the other hand, repeat customers are more likely to be loyal to the brand and more likely to be open to developing a relationship with the brand. Additionally, repeat customers can better serve the brand as they have a better understanding of its products/services and can better promote the brand to new customers.

 

Surprises Them With Rewards They Don’t Expect (64%) Unexpected rewards communicate appreciation. But remember, an unexpected reward is a ‘thank you’, not an incentive to make a future purchase. Sending a customer an email with discount codes for a ‘secret sale’ isn’t an unexpected reward. It’s an incentive to make a purchase, and your customers will see it as such. But a handwritten note from the manager thanking the customer for their business and delivered with a small box of gourmet cookies, that’s an unexpected reward and the customer will love and appreciate the gesture.

 

Treats Them Like a VIP (58%) This ties in with the previous point. The brands that do the best job of cultivating advocates understand the importance of their current customers and treat them as the special customers that they are. A good way to treat current customers as VIPs is to appreciate and reward them for what they are doing to help build and promote your brand.  Say ‘Thank you’ with no expectation of future purchases, but as appreciation for past behavior. Communicate to your customers what impact they have on your brand and thank them for it. You will find that by doing so, your loyal customers will work even harder for your brand.

 

Want to learn more about how to build a brand that cultivates customer loyalty?  Here’s every article I’ve written on brand loyalty.  Have questions about how to implement these strategies for your own brand?  Feel free to email me and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon Apes Into Twitter, Livestream Purchases, Paid Music Streaming Grows

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you, we have some breaking news and some other stories I enjoyed, so let’s dive right in!

 

This will be the story of the day and possibly the week. Elon Musk just bought a $3B stake in Twitter, and is now the company’s largest shareholder. For reference, his stake is almost 4 times that of Jack Dorsey’s. There will be a lot of commentary about what this move signals, I’m already seeing a lot of chatter about how Elon will stop shadowbanning and ham-fisted censorship, etc.  Let’s take a step back and remember: Elon’s Twitter account is essentially Tesla’s marketing. So this is simply about Elon getting more control over his company’s primary marketing channel.  That’s all this is, a smart business move. Do I think this signals that Elon is coming in on a white horse to save Twitter from itself? I do not.  I think he is going to use his ownership stake to push for changes that make it easier for him to use Twitter as a platform to market himself and his company. That’s it.

 

Facebook and Instagram are the dominant players when it comes to driving purchases via livestreams. This isn’t a huge surprise, but I think we will see a lot of growth in the coming years from YouTube in this area as the platform is seriously trying to up its streaming game.

 

2021 was another strong year for growth in paid music subscription services. As I’ve talked about for the last two years, covid and the ensuing lockdown changed consumer behavior and purchase patterns. Certain industries and products benefited greatly from these changes, and music subscription services are one of them. To be fair, paid music subscription services were already seeing solid growth prior to the pandemic, but that growth was only accelerated by customers spending more time at home, for both work and play.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have an amazing and productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: BAYC Launches $APE, Magazine/Book NFTs Are Here, Your Grandparents Are Mobile Gamers

Happy Monday, y’all! Welcome to another edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Every Monday I bring you 3 news stories that caught my eye, covering business, marketing and web3.  Let’s dive in:

 

Bored Ape Yacht Club, the wildly successful NFT collection, launched its $APE coin last week.  The token will help fund community initiatives as well as reward current BAYC members.  The coin debuted at a dollar and quickly shot up to over $37 before settling down and is currently trading in the $10-14 dollar range. This will likely be the first of many such token offerings associated with NFT collections that we will see this year.

 

In January, I wrote about 3 NFT categories primed for growth in 2022; Music, photography, and books.  We are beginning to see some publishers begin to dabble with books and media, as Time has offered a recent edition of its magazine as an NFT for the first time:

https://twitter.com/MarkEglinton/status/1504106432316297222

 

I knew which age group was going to be the leaders in mobile gaming before I read the article. The age group that plays mobile games the most in the US and Canada?  The age group 45 years and older. This age group accounts for 32% of all mobile gamers.  Now to be fair, 45+ is a LARGE range.  But you would be surprised how many people over the age of 40 are playing mobile games.  I’ve been actively playing them for the last few years and the majority of the players are consistently over 40 years old.  Many are over 50.  Often, these games have chat functionality, and for older gamers, they may have limited mobility, and the friends they make while playing mobile games could be a significant part of their social circle.

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope all of you have a wonderful week and enjoy the Spring weather!

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I’m Ready For Web 3.0 to Give Me Twitter 2.0

Two weeks from today will mark my 15th year being a user of Twitter. Twitter likely had less than 500k users at that point, so it’s safe to say I was a very early adopter to the platform.

Twitter, warts and all, remains the best social platform we have for creating and participating in free-flowing conversations. This is almost completely due to the determination and ingenuity of Twitter users. When Jack, Ev and Biz started Twitter in 2006, they were very clear about their intentions for Twitter.

Twitter was designed to be a broadcast and promotional platform. You broadcast what you are doing.  You promote what you are doing. But organic conversations springing up around those broadcasts? Not a big care for Twitter. Users engaging their networks organically and making connections and creating new conversations on the platform? Again, not a priority for Twitter.

Twitter was designed to be a broadcast and promotional platform.

For a decade, I ran the most popular chat on Twitter, #Blogchat. It was not uncommon for #Blogchat to generate over 100M impressions in ONE HOUR every Sunday night, and create thousands of tweets. I had people refuse to join the chat as a co-host, citing ‘I can’t keep up with how fast it is’. At the height of its popularity from say 2010-2012, #Blogchat was the top trending topic on Twitter almost every Sunday night.

#Blogchat generated hundreds of organic conversations on the platform every Sunday night.  It drew thousands of people to the platform.

Twitter never once reached out to me about the massive engagement that #Blogchat created on its platform every Sunday night. Never a thank you, never a we see what you are doing, keep it up. Nothing.  Actually, I take that back.  Twitter did reach out once about #Blogchat; to let me know about its options for running a PAID PROMOTION to help #Blogchat reach an even larger audience.

This story is offered to illustrate that Twitter has never viewed its platform as a way to create conversations. Which is a shame, because the platform remains the best place in social media where you can create and participate in conversations.

Twitter is a better networking tool than LinkedIn will ever be. I have been saying this for 15 years. Just yesterday, I left a tweet. Someone who I follow, but have never interacted with, replied to me. We started chatting. Now we are connected. It’s that simple and this happens EVERY day on Twitter.

It’s time we apply the potential of Web 3.0 to create Twitter 2.0

The promise of Web3 or Web 3.0 is that creators will own their content and have shared ownership of the platforms that they help create and grow. In Web 2.0, the platforms take our content and monetize it. In exchange, we get back Likes and RTs.

The promise of Web 3.0 is that our activity on a Web 3.0 platform would reward us with tokens that would grant us ownership in the platform itself.

With this in mind, let’s consider if we created Twitter 2.0 using Web 3.0 technologies. Let’s say we created a platform similar to Twitter, that was focused not on broadcasting and promoting content, but instead its focus was on helping people create and engaging in organic conversations.  I talked about this yesterday, of course on Twitter:

Think about the possibilities. Everything on the platform would be based around creating and contributing to conversations. Think about how much easier it would be to meet new and interesting people! You could meet people who shared both your personal and business interests. You could use it to dive into personal conversations around your life and hobbies, or use it as a professional tool to grow your business or career.

To be fair, Twitter was very much like this in its first couple of years. Conversations were free-flowing and organic. You could easily lose yourself for hours on Twitter just by scanning your timeline and finding so many interesting conversations to jump into.  And it was so easy to pull someone else into a conversation as it was happening.

But eventually, Twitter began courting investors and investors wanted more revenue and that led to pushing for more promotional content and fewer conversations.

We have a chance to get back what we lost from the early days of Twitter. Back before our timeline was 90% link sharing.  Back when you made new connections every single day on Twitter due to the conversations happening on the platform.

Think about a Web 3.0 platform similar in functionality to Twitter, but designed from the bottom up to facilitate the creation of conversations. It’s a digital happy hour, a chance to meet and engage with new people every single day.

And if you perform the desired actions (creating and participating in conversations on the platform) then you are rewarded with tokens, not Likes and RTs. These tokens have monetary value, but also give you ownership of the platform and let you participate in the platform’s governance. So you can either hodl the tokens, or sell some/all of them.

Either way, the users who are working to grow the conversations, and by extension the platform facilitating those conversations, are being rewarded monetarily for their work. That makes us more invested in the platform and seeing it grow.  The more successful the platform is, the more valuable our tokens become.

But the reality is, the conversations themselves have far more value. The ability to meet and connect with people from all over the world was the promise of Web 2.0. That promise has been met with gated access and platforms taking our content and monetizing it to grow itself.

It’s time for Web 3.0 to realize its promise and give us Twitter 2.0.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Yuga Labs Acquires CryptoPunks, Massive NIL Deal, Social Media Engagement Rates By Platform

Happy Monday! Hope you had a wonderful week as we (hopefully) begin to tip-toe into Spring like weather over the coming weeks! Here’s a few business and marketing stories I read over the last few days that I wanted to share:

 

Yuga Labs, which previously acquired the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club brands, has now acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits. As you can see from the tweet, and article here, Yuga will be granting the same commercial rights to the NFT owners as BAYC and MAYC owners enjoy. I want to do some more digging into this ownership issue, because it almost seems like we have a licensor/licensee arrangement happening here. Which isn’t true ownership, and a bit contrary to the intended web3 ethos. But still very cool move by Yuga Labs, regardless! Either way, it will be interesting to see what develops commercially from this, either with individual NFT owners, or as a collective.

 

So last Summer, I wrote a post on NIL laws going into affect in multiple states. When it happened, I immediately knew this was the story of the year, because of the huge impact it would have on the business, sports, and branding worlds in the future. Well now the future has arrived. As my friend Kristi writes, there is an offer on the table to an unnamed Class of 2023 football recruit that would pay him $8 Million for the exclusive rights to his Name, Image and Likeness for 4 years.

Read those numbers again: A high school junior football player is being offered $8 Million dollars over 4 years.  Not to play football, but to post on social media, make public appearances, etc. Kristi talked to the NCAA about this deal and it would likely be a violation of its rules on pay to play. Still, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before similar deals become commonplace, and if that happens, the worlds of collegiate and amateur athletics will effectively be over.

 

Marketing Charts has a very interesting analysis of engagement rates for content posted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Before reading, which platform do you think has the highest engagement rates?  Instagram, and it’s not even close. Visual content drives engagement, it’s just a fact of digital life. But what industry on Instagram drives the most engagement? Would you believe Higher Education? I found that very surprising. The 3 percent engagement rate for content about higher ed was almost double the engagement for the 2nd place industry: Sports teams.

 

So that’s all I have for this week, hope all of you have a wonderful and productive week, and I will see you here next Monday!

 

SPONSORED: If you’ve noticed, the content here over the past several months has moved more to covering the emerging web3 space and technologies. A big reason why is the emerging opportunities these technologies will create for content creators to build engagement and monetization opportunities around their content. My friend Joe Pulizzi has been one of the content marketing and creation leaders for well over a decade. He’s teamed up with Brian Clark (of CopyBlogger fame) to create an event just for content creators, CEX. CEX is the Creator Economy Expo. If you are a content creator who is looking to build engagement, a larger platform and maybe even an INCOME from your content, then CEX is your tribe. The event will be held in May in Phoenix, and features a who’s-who list of content speakers, including Joe and Brian, along with Ann Handley, Dan Pink, Jeremiah Oywang, Pam Slim and many more!

If you want to build a business around your content, CEX is where you need to be! You can register here, and when you do, use code Collier to get a $200 discount! And please note that the Early Bird rate ends on April 1st. Hope to see you there!