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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Reddit’s Banger IPO, X Launches Articles, Liquid Death’s CoFounder on Innovation

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is having a great early Spring and are ready for a productive week ahead. Here’s a few business, marketing and digital stories that caught my eye recently:

 

Reddit had its long-anticipated IPO last week, and it went surprisingly well! Shares ended its debut day up almost 50% over the IPO price.  I just checked and RDDT is currently at $50.58 on early trading, so it’s looking to be up again today. It will be interesting to see how Reddit does long-term, the same concerns over moderation and censorship that have plagued other social platforms are present at Reddit. So far the company is doing quite well in public trading, it will be interesting to see if that’s still the case 6 and 12 months from now.

Twitter/X has finally launched Articles. Elon has long promised that he would give Twitter users a way to write long-form articles similar to blog posts on the platform, now it’s live.  The catch (there seems to always be one these days with Twitter) is that it’s only available to Premium+ subscribers. I have all of 5 minutes checking out Articles, but it seems like this functionality could only benefit a creator who is primarily using Twitter as a communication hub and who doesn’t have an established blog or website. Twitter’s play is they want creators to post articles on its platform instead of having creators like me post a link on the Twitter platform and then link to here. Twitter doesn’t want you leaving its platform to come to my blog, they want me to publish this on Twitter, and keep the traffic on Twitter.

 

Liquid Death is a wonderful example of how creative branding and communications still packs a ton of impact. I’m currently enjoying this wonderful podcast with Liquid Death co-founder Mike Cessario where he discusses his branding philosophy, and how to think differently to disrupt markets when you have no money and no visibility. Lotta useful branding nuggets in this one, you will want to dive right in.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. Look for a new post on loyalty programs on Weds, and a very special Bible Study post on Easter on Sunday.

I hope you have a wonderful and productive week, see you on Weds!

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Elon Musk Illustrates the Problem With ‘Authenticity’

In a shocking turn of events, Elon has posted something on X that caused controversy. I’m not going to comment on what Elon posted, mainly because I didn’t see it or the aftermath. Due to many of Elon’s erratic decisions recently regarding X, I have been spending less time there and more time on LinkedIn.

But I did read what Elon said, and his response to the backlash. From what I can gather, Elon’s stance is that he made a short comment and didn’t completely explain his thinking behind that comment. Doing so led many people to form an opinion about him that he claims is untrue.

One of the recurring themes around social media since it started seeping into mainstream consciousness about 15 years ago was the value in being authentic. We were told that brands (personal or company) who are authentic, who are ‘real’ are the ones that will win. That people crave honesty, we crave authentic communications.

But is that accurate? Do we really want people to be ‘real’?  Love him or hate him, but Elon is about as ‘real’ as it gets. He says whatever he is thinking, whenever he is thinking it. He is so ‘real’ and open with his communications that he often makes people very uncomfortable with what he says.

And I think that’s the problem. The problem with authenticity is that it leads to people like Elon saying whatever pops into their heads at any moment.

Now, as you read that bolded part, you likely had one of two reactions to that statement:

1 – You thought “Yes, this is it absolutely!’

2 – You thought “Wait, how is that a ‘problem’, and who is it a ‘problem’ for?’

 

I’ve seen people in media and online say some variation of that same point. That Elon thinks he can say whatever he wants, whenever he wants.  A lot of people don’t like that.  Watch this interview that Elon gave yesterday with Andrew Sorkin. I will warn you ahead of time, there is some NSFW language at the start.  It’s a long video, the salty comments that Elon made that everyone is talking about came in the first few mins:

What struck me about this video wasn’t Elon’s comments. Elon makes very blunt comments in most interviews like this. Elon is an introvert, and you can tell that he is socially awkward to a degree, and I think a byproduct of that is he doesn’t seem to filter his comments as much as most people would.  Especially in the business world.

What struck me about this interview was actually Sorkin’s comments. I noticed he kept going back to this idea of regret.  He kept trying to get Elon to admit that he regretted his comments.  That he needed to be more careful with his language.  That he needed to think more carefully about what he says.  Sorkin repeatedly asked Elon if he has ever said anything he wished he had not.

I’ve seen other interviews with Elon where the host has chosen a similar stance. It’s clear that the interviewer is desperate to get Elon to admit that he doesn’t think about what he’s saying. The interviewer is clearly trying to discredit what Elon says.

To what end?  I believe the media wants to discredit what Elon says, because Elon often says things they don’t want to hear. Elon often criticizes the media.  And Elon is argubly the most influential person on the planet.  People listen to him.

So do we want authenticity, or not?  Do we want free speech, or not?  I’ll be the first to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with Elon. He can say or do something that I think is absolutely brilliant, and 5 mins later say or do something that makes me want to delete my X account that I opened in 2007.

But at the end of the day, I think we as a society need to think about what we want free speech to mean. Do we want people to have the ability to speak freely, or do we want someone’s speech to be restricted? And when we discuss guardrails to speech, how do we determine where those limitations are placed, and who they affect? Do they affect everyone equally, or only the people who say things that we don’t want to hear?

I believe people like Elon Musk are gathering so much attention because we are hungry for honest conversation. We have gotten so far away from the idea of having honest and open conversations with each other, that when someone comes along that says whatever they want whenever they want, we listen. In a perfect world, Elon’s behavior would cost him a lot more than it does. Society as a group would push back and say “Hey Elon, do you have to use that language to get your point across? Do you have to be so brash, so controversial? It detracts from your message, which has some value. But by framing your message in crude and incomplete terms, the focus is put on you, rather than your ideas. Is that what you want?’

If we were truly in a place where we as a society encouraged the free-flow of ideas, even ones we disagree with, that would be the response to Elon. Instead, the response is either ‘You need to shut up’ or ‘Keep going!’

Our response is either to tell Elon to stop sharing at all, or to share even more. And the breakpoint for which response we choose falls on whether or not we agree with what Elon is saying at the moment.

That’s not authenticity. That is censored speech. And we need to decide which one is more important.

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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!

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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.

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Innovative: Inside Elon’s Plan to Turn Twitter in 2023 into CompuServe in 1996

The slow, incrementalist march toward turning Twitter into a ‘pay to play’ platform continues. Here’s the latest news, which I mentioned in yesterday’s Monday’s Marketing Minute:

Call me a cynic, but it seems pretty obvious to me that this is simply part of a larger plan to eventually have all Twitter users pay a fee to use the platform. I think Elon knows that this will be another in a long line of highly unpopular moves, so he’s easing Twitter users into this. First he does it in select countries, like New Zealand and the Philippines, and it only affects new users. Later, he claims the trial in those two countries was a rousing success, and rolls it out worldwide to all new users.  Later, he claims that move has also worked, then he expands it to ALL Twitter users, regardless of how long they have been on the platform.

At that point it’s simply a matter of raising prices as much as he feels he can.

This whole episode reminds me of my days on CompuServe on the mid 90s, with a twist.  When I started using CompuServe in the mid 90s, its pricing was $25 a month, for 10 hours. If you went over 10 hours of access, you paid $2.50 for every hour over. Imagine my shock that one month when I received a $100 bill, yikes!

That bill was for about 40 hours on CompuServe for that month. I cannot remember the last month that I spent 40 hours on Twitter.  It’s been years, maybe over a decade.

And that’s the point: While CompuServe was expensive, it was also FUN TO USE! I got entertainment, business and social value from being on CompuServe. It was an experience worth paying for. We could argue how much, but it was worth something.

The experience on Twitter, honestly isn’t worth much, and hasn’t been for a long time. In the mid 90s, AOL became a competitor to CompuServe by offering similar functionality and features, at a LOWER PRICE.  While CompuServe charged $25 for 10 hours, AOL charged $25 for UNLIMITED access. It allowed AOL to quickly take massive amounts of market share from CS, and within a few years, AOL dominated the online services space and CS was all but done.

Elon seems to be attempting to do the opposite with Twitter in 2023. He’s taking a platform and differentiating it from his competitors by CHARGING users when they can get a similar experience on a competing site…for free.

Let’s go back to the AOL/CompuServe example. Let’s say AOL and CS were both offering unlimited access (I believe CS later switched to this model, but by then it was too late) in 1996. AOL announces it is launching AOL Plus, and it will be $50 a month for 50 hours a month of access.

What would need to happen in order for that move to be a success for AOL?  Obviously, AOL Plus would have to offer a MUCH better experience for users than they could get from AOL or CompuServe. Right?

Yet, Elon is trying to move Twitter from being free to paid…and he really isn’t improving the experience that much, if at all. Bots are still a massive problem on the platform. Every new ‘feature’ rollout that Twitter adds that charges users has the same disclaimer that ‘this is necessary to combat the bot problem’. Yet the bot problem continues, apparently unabated. As do the moves to charge users for features that have been free for the last 17 years.

A few months ago, Elon announced that users could participate in revenue sharing. They could actually make money from using Twitter!

Then the fine print: You had to be a Twitter Blue subscriber.

Moving from a free to paid model for a social media site only works if its users can see a clear value in the fees which they will be required to paid. I’m not seeing the clear value in any of Elon’s moves so far.  We finally got the ability to edit tweets…and you have to pay for it. Bots are still a problem. Censorship is still a problem. Porn and trolls and toxicity are still problems.

But I did lose my verified status, so there’s that.

This was Elon’s biggest mistake

He never embraced Twitter’s user community. To be fair, neither did Dorsey and his crew.  Elon came into Twitter, guns blazing, and made a ton of sweeping changes to the platform. And he did so without really consulting Twitter’s users.

That was a big mistake. One of Elon’s top priorities when joining Twitter and BEFORE making huge moves should have been to establish a board or council of Twitter users and let that board/council have a say in his decisions. This would have ensured that Twitter’s user community always had input into moves, and they could have helped communicate the need for any moves to the larger community.

Instead, Elon came in shooting from the hip, making decisions with little or no input from users, and as a result many of those moves were a disconnect to the Twitter userbase. Then we watched as Elon made move after move that wasn’t aligned with what we wanted for Twitter, or what we thought it needed.

The reality is, Elon had a lot of supporters when he first took over Twitter. Many of those supporters have since left Twitter as a result of the moves he’s made.

I remember in 2009 having a conversation on Twitter with several other users about why Twitter needed a Community Manager. We concluded at the time that Twitter was really starting to grow, and now was a good time for Twitter to invest in its community and incorporate feedback from users into its decisions.

Almost 15 years later, and we are still waiting for Twitter to make that commitment to its users. I hate to say, but if it hasn’t happened by now, I don’t think it ever will. As a result, Twitter has never reached its full potential.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Begins Charging Users to Tweet, NICKMERCS’ Massive Kick Deal, B2B Marketing Growth Slows

Happy Fall, y’all! We are just 8 days from Halloween and this is my favorite time of the year! The days are warm but crisp and the nights are cool but not yet cold. Here’s some business stories that have caught my eye over the last week:

 

It just feels like the long. slow march toward irrelevance is underway for Twitter/X. Elon seems determined to turn X into a pay to play platform. Since taking over, he’s been introducing numerous ways to charge users for services that were formerly free.  First there was Twitter Blue. Now, he’s begun hinting that users will eventually have to pay to tweet. In fact, such a program is currently being trialed in select countries. New users in New Zealand and the Philippines are being charged $1 a year to tweet. The name of the program is called ‘Not a Bot’ and Elon’s spin is that this will help fight the proliferation of bots on the platform.  The same justification he gave for Twitter Blue, limiting daily tweets, etc. The reality is, bots are just as big of a problem as they ever were.  This is about Elon introducing the idea of paying for Twitter. It’s incrementalism, once the idea has become accepted that core services now will cost something, then he can over time raise the price as much as he wants. I may have more thoughts on this tomorrow, I want to mull this over, but it seems like Twitter is entering that long, slow death spiral.

 

If you’ve read this blog for the last few years, you know I am a big fan of NICKMERCS. He just signed a $10 Million, one year deal with Kick, a Twitch rival. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this deal is that it’s apparently NOT exclusive! Nick will still be streaming on both Twitch AND Kick. Nick is one of the most popular streamers in the world, and he is a masterclass in building and leveraging a community. Nick started streaming in 2010, with an audience of zero. On one of his streams I watched, he mentioned that when he was first starting he would go to a local gas station and buy $20 Amazon gift cards to give away to subscribers during his stream. And his parents were NOT happy with his initial decision to become a full-time streamer. So he went from zero to being one of the wealthiest streamers on the planet, in under 15 years. And a big part of that was due to him creating and SUPPORTING his community of fans. He has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe more?) to his fans over the years. He loves the people that love him.  Well done, Nick, now how long before that first Nick/Doc/Timmy stream???

 

The economy is hitting B2B Marketing spending as it is all areas of our lives right now. Projected spending on B2B marketing data in 2023 will be almost half what it was the last two years. Spending growth is forecast to see a marginal improvement in 2024, before increasing solidly in 2025.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have an amazing week, look for a new post tomorrow and another on Thursday. Oh and likely a post on the Bible over the weekend. Have a wonderful and productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Amazon’s $4B Investment in Anthropic, Twitter Making a Profit, Gen Z’s Social Media Habits

Happy Monday, y’all! Welcome to October, probably my favorite month of the year, at least from a weather perspective. It’s starting out hot, but by Halloween the days and nights will be crisp and clear, I can’t wait! While we wait, let’s stay busy and immersed in a few stories from the business/marketing/web3 worlds:

 

As I’ve said before, Claude is my favorite AI tool. Well it’s parent company, Anthropic, just announced a massive $4B investment from Amazon. This makes sense, as Amazon would no doubt love to leverage the technology behind Claude to help with production recommendations, summarizing user reviews, etc.

 

So Twitter/X CEO Linda Yaccarino recently gave us an update on the platform’s performance. She claims that 90% of its Top 100 advertisers have returned to Twitter/X, and that the platform is on pace to return to profitability sometime early next year. When Elon announced Yaccarino as new CEO, I speculated that the main driver for this move was the sense that Yaccarino could coax advertisers to return to Twitter, and it seems that’s working. I’m still very much worried about the future of the platform, as Elon keeps hinting that he wants to take Twitter/X to a completely paid platform, meaning all users would have to pay a fee to use the platform.

 

How are Gen Zers (born approximately 1996-2010) using social media?  To watch videos…and some other stuff. If you want to create content that connects with teens and twentysomethings, it needs to be video first, at least that’s the findings we see below:

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! What do we have on tap for the rest of the week here? Tomorrow, we will have the FIRST update to a Power List, as the October Power List for Technology will be revealed (Spoiler alert: We have THREE new entries!). And on Thursday there will be a new post up on restaurant marketing.

I hope you all have a wonderfully productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Another Elon Misstep, Instagram Still the King of Influencer Marketing, YouTube Adds AI Tools for Creators

Happy Monday, y’all! It’s the first official full week of Fall! My favorite time of the year! I hope you are ready to have a productive week, here’s a few stories that caught my eye over the last week:

 

I started to spin this story into its own post, and probably will at some point soon. Elon is floating the idea of charging ALL Twitter users a fee to use his platform. This is the first time in my 16+ years of using Twitter that I am seriously considering if it is time to leave the platform. Working on the Power Lists for Technology, Retail and Tourism (with Restaurants debuting on Weds) has been an eye-opener. I had always heard peers claim that there was a mass exodus of professionals from Twitter when Elon took over, but I just assumed that was overblown. It’s not, at least not in the four industries above.  Pros from technology, retail, tourism, and restaurant are absolutely more active right now on LinkedIn than they are on Twitter. In reviewing hundreds of Twitter accounts over the last month, I lost count on how many pros hadn’t tweeted in 2023, who were active on LinkedIn. I’ve been hearing ‘Is Twitter dying?’ for at least the last 10-12 years. This is the first time I think it’s a legitimate question to ask.

 

Companies working with influencers are still spending more marketing dollars on Instagram than anywhere else. Perhaps it’s simply a desire to be contrarian, but I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity for a certain brand to partner with the right influencer and create some momentum on Snapchat? Sometimes it pays to go in the opposite direction of the herd.

 

Social media platforms continue to integrate AI as a way to aid creators. LinkedIn has done it, Elon is working on an AI alternative to ChatGPT that will no doubt be integrated into Twitter/X, and now YouTube is doing the same. I think we will eventually see a time very soon where video platforms like YouTube will allow you to create a video on the fly from a simple prompt, using AI. An additional app YouTube announced is YouTube Create, which is a standalone app that is geared toward mobile creators, giving them simple editing tools to use on the fly. I actually think it will be a big hit with smaller YouTube creators.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. On Thursday, I will have a new post on tourism marketing. But tomorrow the debut edition of The Restaurant Power List will launch, so be sure to check back here to see who ends up #1! Hope you have an amazing week!

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Erratic Behavior, Money Troubles for ChatGPT, Social Media’s Age Divide

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and ready for another productive week! Temps here in the Heart of Dixie this week are expected to approach 100 on multiple days. I am hoping this will be summer’s last gasp, as temps, or at least the humidity, normally starts to fall after Labor Day. Here’s a few business and marketing stories that caught my eye!

 

Elon Musk is making it super hard to defend him these days, and I reallllly want to see him turn Twitter around. It seems like every decision he makes either seems amazing, or totally insane. His latest, is he wants to remove the Block feature from Twitter/X. He may not even be able to do that, as it seems Community Notes has flagged some of his tweets saying that Apple and the Google Play app store require that the mobile app for Twitter offer a block feature.  But I just don’t understand why he thinks that’s a smart move.  Unless he is simply saying something provocative to get people to engage with him.  If so, that hints at far more problems. But taking away basic features then mocking users for losing those features OR that they will have to pay if they want them back is simply not good business on any level.

 

So this story made the rounds a few days ago, claiming ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI could go bankrupt by the end of 2024. The article contends that it costs the company $700k a day to keep ChatGPT running, thus the financial calculations. Many have since chimed in that this probably wouldn’t happen anyway. The cynic in me wonders if this story wasn’t planted by OpenAI as a way to drive more investor interest in the company. Having said all that, it’s true that the userbase for ChatGPT is indeed leveling out. I suspect that will continue to be the case as other players in the AI space enter the game.

 

This chart forecasting social media usage by age group was a bit interesting. The only age group that’s forecast to see solid growth in social media usage over the next 5 years is Gen Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012.  So they would be age 11-26 today. Millennials will see very slight growth, but Gen X and Baby Boomers will actually continue to leave social media over the coming 5 years. I am playing this out as a Gen Xer myself.  The only social media channels I am active on these days are Twitter and LinkedIn, and I spend maybe 15 mins a day on Twitter and maybe an hour a week on LinkedIn. Actually I probably spend a total of 30 mins a week scanning my Facebook feed for any important announcements from friends, but that’s about it. Ten years ago, I was on social media channels for at least 5 hours a day during the week.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have a wonderful week!

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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.