MackCollier.com

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Sam Altman Back at OpenAI, Cyber Monday Sales Set to Surge, Twitter Beats Facebook and IG for Referral Traffic

Happy Cyber Monday, y’all! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving week with friends and family. We have now officially entered the ‘lull’ part of the year for most of us. The rest of the year will primarily be focused on the holidays, our families, and planning for 2024.  In both our personal and professional lives. I hope you have a wonderful close to your 2023 and that it sets you up for an amazing 2024! Here’s some of the business stories I’ve had my eye on this year:

 

Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI. The rumor is that OpenAI had recently made a ‘massive breakthrough in AI that could threaten humanity’ and Altman didn’t notify the BOD. Sounds like a cover-story, but if true, it makes no logical sense. If the BOD is worried that OpenAI will eventually have a breakthrough in AI that will pose a huge threat to humanity, why does the company exist?  Obviously, when you take some of the world’s brightest engineers and coders and put them together on a project, you can expect huge advancements in short order.

An interesting side note to this story is that when Altman was fired, almost every OpenAI employee signed a letter saying they were going to Microsoft if the board didn’t resign and re-hire Altman as CEO.  It looks like that’s exactly what happened, so that’s quite a testament to the support Altman has from his employees.

 

I think we all could use good economic news, so here’s some: Cyber Monday sales are projected to spike 8.4% over last year. Online sales every day since Thanksgiving are up solidly over 2022 levels. Let’s hope this is a sign that the economy is starting to finally rebound from the pandemic bottom.

 

I’m not a huge fan of sharing info with such little sourcing, but here you go. I tend to believe this since referral traffic from Facebook in particular has been falling for a long time, mostly by design as Meta keeps creating barriers to keep traffic locked on its site. Of course, if all three sources are going down, does that change the value of the information? Hmmm.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I will likely have another post up later this week.  Possibly one over the weekend as well, I have a few ideas from my Bible studies that I am mulling over for a post.  Till then, I hope you have a wonderful and productive week!

by

Soon You Will Have to Pay for All Social Media

BOLD PREDICTION: By the end of 2024, all Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X users will have to pay to continue to use the sites.

Since taking over Twitter/X, Elon has progressively moved the platform toward a pay model. He offered a ‘Premium’ version of Twitter, and has now started adding multiple tiers to the offering. Features that were once available to all, are being incorporated into the ‘Premium’ plans. Now, he has begun charging new users in certain countries a small fee to tweet.  This is being sold as a way to ‘combat bots’.

Make no mistake, it’s a way to eventually rollout fees to all Twitter users.  That’s where we are headed.

And Elon’s moves to make Twitter pay-to-play has opened the door for other sites to follow suit.  Facebook and Instagram will begin charging users in the EU to avoid ads. This move is being sold as necessary to combat changes in privacy laws, but as with Twitter, it will likely be used to introduce the idea of charging all Facebook and Instagram users.

Should Social Media Sites Charge Users?

These moves and their inevitable end point will prompt the logical question: Should social media sites charge users?  At the end of the day, like it or not, Elon and Mark are running businesses, and they have every right to charge users to access their sites.

That’s not the question that interests me.  What I want to know is Does Twitter, Facebook or Instagram offer an experience that is worth paying for?

In my mind, that is a far more relevant question. And in their present forms? Absolutely not.

The irony is, I would have happily paid $10-20 a month for the experience I got on Twitter from say 2007-2012.  Today? No way. And I would pay for Twitter long before I would either Facebook or Instagram.

Which makes this whole episode confusing to me. The time to attempt monetization for these sites has long since passed.  Say what you want about Elon, but he’s a very smart businessman.  I have no doubt he will figure out a way to turn Twitter into a money-maker.

But I’m not interested in paying for an experience that has been degrading on his site for years.

Social media sites started out as being free for the most part.  Monetization came through selling ads. As the saying famously goes ‘If you aren’t paying for the product then you ARE the product’, or something like that. Most of us just accepted that these social media sites were collecting our data and selling it to advertisers, and in exchange we get to use their site for free.

To me, this always seemed backwards.  The time to attempt monetization was at first, while the community was being built. Get a core group of enthusiasts, tap their brains and roll out premium features that they want. Charge them extra for extra features that are relevant to how they are using the site.

But What About LinkedIn?

Did you know that LinkedIn generated almost $15 Billion in revenue in 2022? Numbers fluctuate, with some sources claiming 21% of LinkedIn users having a Premium account and some say it’s more like double that.  Either way, LinkedIn has done a great job in offering premium features to users that they actually want.

I think a lot of this is due to positioning.  LinkedIn isn’t positioned as a social media site. It’s positioned as a career development site that has some social elements. If you are on LinkedIn, then it’s almost certain you are either looking for a job, hiring for a job, or networking to find your next partner, client, etc. LinkedIn is a very purpose-driven site in a way that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram simply cannot match.

Will We Pay to Use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram?

Overall, I don’t think we will. I do think Twitter and Meta will have some success with their monetization efforts, but I don’t think it will be as much as they will need to sustain the model.

So, what will that leave us with?

I would like to think it would lead to many of us changing our behavior and turning back to writing and reading blogs, listening to podcasts and turning away from centralized social media platforms. But I’m not expecting that to happen.

What will hopefully happen is blogs, podcasts and owned media will see a bit of a revival. But past that, it will hopefully lead to new social sites and tools that are more thoughtful about their monetization efforts. Twitter and Facebook should have always been founded with the idea that this will be a money-maker. So to that end, the user experience should have been designed in a way that provides an experience that’s worth paying for. The community should have been involved in strategic planning and development from the jump. This would have led to users being more invested in the platforms and their success. So when monetization options were rolled out, the moves would make sense to the users, and the users would be the biggest sellers of the new offerings.

Think of it this way: How many Twitter users have told you that you need to get the Premium version?  I haven’t had a single Twitter Premium user promote the service to me.  But I’ve had many LinkedIn members tell me that it’s worth the money to upgrade to its Premium service.

A social media site’s monetization efforts should be driven by providing utility to members that improves the user experience. Not by trying to make a fast buck to fix a broken balance sheet.

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Huge Legal Promise, AI Use Grows For All Age Groups, Meta Betting on AI Chatbots

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone is having a great summer and is ready for another productive week! Here’s a few business stories that caught my eye recently, I hope you enjoy!

 

Elon is totally confounding me right now. Almost every day he makes a move that seems incredibly smart on the surface, then 10 mins later he will make another announcement that seems to undercut what he said in the first one. For instance, multiple users are reporting that accounts that they have held for years, were suddenly taken over by Twitter, with zero compensation. Of course that’s Elon’s right, but it is a terrible look and it makes it much harder to defend his future moves.

Then, he turns around and does this: Announces what he claims will be a bottomless defense fund for anyone who has been treated unfairly by their employer due to activity on Twitter.

 

According to eMarketer, AI usage across all age groups will spike roughly 1,000% in 2023 over 2022 levels. It’s not surprising, and given how immature the AI space is, that growth should continue for the next several years at least. If I’m reading the numbers right, it looks like almost half the population will be using AI in some form within 3 years.  I think that number might be low, if anything.

 

Keeping with the AI trend, Meta is looking for integrate personality-based AI chatbots into Instagram and Facebook. As the technology behind AI matures, I think you will see much more use of AI chatbots, I could see going to your favorite rock stars’ website and being greeted with an AI chatbot that lets you ‘chat’ with them.  At first it would be text-based, then add audio, then eventually video.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute, I’ll have a new post up on building customer loyalty in the restaurant industry via digital up tomorrow and….I’m not sure what Thursday’s post will be yet. I want to do a case study post as I haven’t done one in a while, but I will have to find a good one I can share.  Saturday’s Bible study post will feature one of the most amazing stories of faith in the Old Testament, and probably the greatest foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, hundreds of years before His birth.

So that’s what you can expect this week. As I wrote about last week, I am loving Claude as a tool to boost my writing output, here’s where you can learn how I am using it to write more.

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Threads’ Userbase Collapses, Data Marketers Use to Personalize Ads, Meta’s Ad Rev Up While X Offers Discounts

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready for an even better week! You can just feel social media going through a midlife crisis right now, trying to reinvent itself, not sure what it wants to be. And it seems like most of us who have been in this space for years are looking around wondering what happened to all these sites I used to love? It seems the space is ripe for disruption, but I’m not seeing any serious contenders at the moment.  Let’s hope that changes and social media gets back to being social and fun, soon!

Meanwhile, here’s a few news and business stories that have caught my eye:

 

I have a confession to make: I’m not on Threads and have no intention of joining. Now, Meta is announcing that most of you that flocked over on launch, have already bailed.  BTW I love Zuckerberg’s reaction, yeah, how do we maybe Threads STICKIER???  This reminds me of a brilliant post written eons (in social media terms) ago by Tara Hunt. If I remember correctly, she was in a website design meeting where similar questions where being asked about how to make the site ‘stickier’ and keep users on.  She blurted out ‘Where is the ability to throw sheep in this plan?’ Which was an allusion to the feature Facebook had years ago that would let you ‘throw a sheep’ at someone.  It’s a reference to those playful little features that help us build connections and community, which is how you build and sustain growth on a site or social platform, much moreso than ‘stickiness’.

 

Interesting stats on the data that marketers use to personalize user experiences. As I was looking at this list, I’m thinking about what data I would want marketers to use, versus what they prioritize. For instance, my transaction history and any preferences I set sound good to me. But if they get into areas like my social media history or website activity, then I am less receptive. I’d be curious to see how others feel about this.  Hmmm…this may warrant a standalone post at some point.

 

So Meta’s ad revenues get a nice bump, while Twitter/X is having to slash prices to get advertisers back on the platform.  Could these two stories be related? Quite possibly, as I am sure some of this is simply a case of ad dollars being transferred from Twitter to Facebook. While I do believe Elon will eventually get Twitter/X on track, the rest of the year could continue to be very bumpy.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, look for a new post on tourism marketing tomorrow, and I think one on artificial intelligence on Thurs. I’ve been experimenting with a new tool the last few weeks that’s been a godsend for my writing productivity. I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve learned.

Till then, have an amazing week!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Threads’ Rocky Launch, More Twitter Woes, Facebook App Store Soon?

Happy Monday, y’all! We are now into July, which for the South means Summer is halfway over! Thankfully we have been spared the brunt of the heat and humidity so far this year, but I suspect it’s coming by the end of this month and into August.  Ugh….till then, let’s try to cool off with some hot tech news. And oh my is the social media space having some growing pains right now…

 

Threads officially launched a few days ago and you are likely either thrilled with this news, or pretty indifferent. My take on Threads launching is pretty much the same as when Bluesky launched:  I didn’t trust the guy in charge when he ran his previous site, so why would I trust him with a new one?

It seems my fears over Threads were founded, as many users began noticing that they were being censored as soon as the joined Threads. Some were being flagged before they even posted!

Additionally, Elon is making a move to block Threads, and has already sent Meta a C&D letter.  Which honestly is just free publicity for Threads at this point.

So we will see where this slapfight between Elon and Zuck goes next. I’m on the edge of my seat and I’m sure you are as well.

 

Speaking of Twitter, the site continues to have many issues. Recently, it was revealed that there were still shadowbanning codes found within the sites programming even though Elon had claimed to remove those. Apparently even Elon was being censored at times!  Additionally, Elon recently started ‘rate limiting’ users from viewing a certain number of tweets.  The reasoning given was to address bot activity on the platform.  I’m honestly not sure if this is still being practiced as I’m not spending enough time on Twitter these days to hit the limit (I’m neck deep in website maintenance this month).

 

Finally, Meta is making moves to launch an App Store for its platform. These seems like a move that should have been made a long time ago, but will no doubt be a money-maker for Zuck if he decides to move forward with it.

 

So that’s all I have for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  As I eluded to earlier, I am in the middle of my annual website maintenance, so I’m spending WAY too much time with Google Search Console and SEMRush these days, but the results show it’s paying off.  I will probably write a post with some takeaways to help the rest of you, in a few weeks.

Till then, thank you as always for reading, and have a wonderful week!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Twitter Purchase Back On (For Now), Paypal Backlash, Facebook Dumping Newsletters

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend, and are tanned, rested and ready to have an amazing week!  Here’s three marketing/business/web3 stories that caught my eye:

 

It looks like Elon’s on-again/off-again purchase of Twitter is back ON. The case that Twitter filed against Elon to force the sale has been put on hold by judge’s order till October 28th so the sides can close the deal. Initial media reports when this story broke said that the deal could be closed as early as today, so we will see what happens.

This deal has always gotten a lot of attention due to Elon’s constant complaints about Twitter’s ham-fisted content moderation efforts, and how things would change if he took control. While changes in this area are needed, it’s worth remembering that Elon has long maintained that Twitter has many untapped revenue streams available. So an Elon acquisition of Twitter should bring a LOT of changes across the board for users. Hopefully we will have some finality soon on if this deal actually happens.

 

 

So PayPal recently updated its user agreement, and very quietly slipped in a clause that said, more or less, if you post something online that PayPal doesn’t like, it can pull up to $2,500 from your account. As expected, once this clause was found, it created a massive uproar on social media, and many users began cancelling their PayPal accounts.  PayPal quickly reversed course, claiming the policy addition was an error. Social media, for all its faults, does still give us a way to hold companies accountable for bad decisions in near real-time.

 

Facebook is abandoning its move into integrated newsletters.  Last year, Twitter acquired Revue, and Facebook launched Bulletin as newsletter sites like SubStack were taking off. Well Facebook has now tapped out and will be pulling the plug on Bulletin in early 2023. The lesson, once again, is to think carefully before you plant deep roots on social media sites that you don’t own.

 

So that’s it for this week, I am now going back on Elon-watch to see when the Twitter deal completes. Feel free to join me, or check out my post on why A Community Cannot Go Mainstream from last week. It’s on pace to be my most popular post in 2022.

by

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?

by

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!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Facebook’s Rebrand, PayPal/Pinterest Rumors, Pinterest Creator Fund

Welcome to another glorious Fall week! Hope you’re enjoying the cooler weather and are in the Halloween spirit! Here’s some marketing and breaking business news that’s caught my eye the last few days:

 

I can, and probably should write a longer post on this issue at some point. Facebook’s many problems and user complaints are well-documented. My biggest issue with Facebook has always been that it extracts massive amounts of information and data from its users, while giving the users almost nothing in return. This extends to businesses, who have seen their organic reach on the site fall for years. Now, Facebook is wanting to rebrand, not just to hopefully deflect some of the criticisms, but to also position itself as a player in evolving Web 3.0 platforms and technologies.

More than anything, I think Facebook is the poster child for both the unrealized potential of Web 2.0 companies, as well as the changes that need to be addressed that spurned the development of Web 3.0.

 

So a bit of breaking news. All last week, the rumor was that PayPal was going to acquire Pinterest. Well just this morning, the news is breaking that PayPal has DENIED the acquisition rumors. It will be interesting to see how this affects stock prices for both companies, PayPal fell sharply on the rumors, while Pinterest spiked.

 

Pinterest is the latest platform to offer incentives for content creators, starting a $20 Million fund to support its users. The Creator Rewards program will initially be available only in the US, but should rollout worldwide soon. So any Pinterest user in the US, over 18 and with at least 1,000 followers could be eligible to start making some money off their pins!

 

So that’s the latest marketing news for this Monday. We’ll see what happens with the PayPal/Pinterest news this week.  See you next Monday!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Paid Events Coming to LinkedIn and Twitter, Young Adults Using Facebook Less, NFT 101

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for a wonderfully productive week! Can I complain about the weather for a minute? October has always been my favorite month of the year, by far. The weather is always amazing, low humidity, temps in the low to mid 70s the entire month.

But this year has been a weird Summer and Fall, weather-wise. June-August was consistently 5-10 degrees below normal almost every day, which was VERY welcome! But starting in September, the temps inexplicably stopped falling.  The temps since have been mid to upper 80s.  So now it’s 5-10 degrees ABOVE normal. So crazy. The good news is that starting next week we are supposed to get highs in the low to mid 70s, and lows in the low 50s. Which is finally normal for this time of year. Ready for cooler temperatures and Halloween!

On with the marketing and social media stories I’ve been reading…

 

So LinkedIn is tinkering with an option to let creators charge for virtual events on the platform. This comes after Twitter has begun rolling out an option to let creators charge for Spaces. I think paid virtual events make complete sense for LinkedIn. There are a ton of monetization options being made available to creators of all shape and size right now. If you are active on any social platforms in any capacity, it’s worth your time to see what’s available to you.

 

 

Internal documents from Facebook show that will users under age 30 make up over a quarter of the userbase, they are spending less time on the platform versus their older counterparts. Let’s be honest, Facebook has had a lot of problems for years. The reason why its getting attention now is mostly because politicians are scrambling to leverage them to attack or silence the opposition. Facebook is no longer the ‘cool’ social network it was 10 years ago or so, and young users will avoid anything with even a hint of ‘uncool’ about it. So don’t be surprised if more problems are on the horizon for FB in the coming year.

 

Two topics that I am woefully ignorant on is cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Luckily, I found this guide to NFTs shared on Twitter to help get you up to speed.

 

So that’s it for this Monday, thanks for reading! I’ve added a Donate button to the sidebar on the right underneath the search box near the top. If you’ve gotten value from my content, please consider donating whatever you like. I will use the tips to help offset the cost of hosting, certificates, security and equipment to run the site. So any help is greatly appreciated! Hope you have a wonderful week, see you here next Monday for more news!