MackCollier.com

by

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!

 

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse’s Growth Slows, YouTube Pushing Users Back to TVs, the Power of Fandoms

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for an amazingly productive week! Here’s some business and marketing stories that have caught my eye since last Monday:

 

So from February to April, Clubhouse saw its number of downloads fall by roughly 90%. To help combat this, Clubhouse is pushing for growth in Brazil and India, two countries where Android devices dominate over their iOS counterparts. With the introduction of Greenroom from Spotify, I think it signals that social audio is already shifting toward more targeted or niche groups, and I believe that will help accelerate Clubhouse’s decline. Clubhouse needed to own the social audio space before competitive offerings came out that offered a more niche appeal, and that hasn’t happened. I still think Clubhouse will be competitive in the social audio space for another 6-12 months at least, but it likely won’t end up being the dominant player in the space that we thought it could become.

 

I always find it fascinating how our content consumption patterns change over time and as we become more adept at using tools. For instance, YouTube now claims that roughly 40% of its viewership happens on TVs. What can we deduce from this?  That likely suggests that more YouTube users are viewing longer-form videos. Maybe it means they are viewing more movies on the platform, or maybe it is a sign that YouTube Gaming is continuing to gain in popularity, as most streams from gamers last several hours.

 

I love this deck on The New Fandom Formula by Zoe. It’s a great primer into the power of fans and online communities. Online communities are going to continue to become a major story in the coming months and years, as several stories are converging around the power of fans and customers connecting online. I’ve already talked about what’s happening in esports, but there’s much more on the way. And I love how Zoe’s deck has locked content, and if you want access to the full deck, you have to purchase it. I can speak from experience, creating a high-quality deck like this takes many hours. Content creators deserve to paid for creating high quality work like this, and I think the money asked helps communicate the value of the content. The free version has a ton of useful information so definitely check it out.

 

 

So that’s what I wanted to talk about this week! Now, let me warn you that there is a huge breaking news story happening on July 1st. It will have massive ramifications for the marketing and branding worlds, and I’m honestly shocked that more of my peers aren’t addressing what’s coming. Check back here on Weds for the rundown on what’s coming and why it’s relevant.

Till then, have a wonderful week, see you on Weds!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Stack Overflow’s Huge Pricetag, Shorts Expanding, Twitter Trying out Subscriptions

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are ready for an amazing week! We have a pretty massive lead story so let’s jump right into this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute:

 

This could end up  being the most significant acquisition in the tech space this year. Stack Overflow is a Q&A site that caters to programmers. It has developed a massive community over the years, and is known as the go-to site for any current or aspiring programmer to get answers to their technical questions. And it was just acquired for $1.8 BILLION.  That pricetag is massive, and it will hopefully start a trend of companies either acquiring or building their own community sites for users and customers. Yes, such sites are a long play, but once they get rolling, it’s such a competitive advantage.

 

YouTube’s wildly popular Shorts feature is expanding into more countries. Shorts, much like Reels from Instagram, are competitors to Tik-Tok, and both are gaining traction. We could see something similar play out in lesser form over the coming months as the popularity of social audio migrates from Clubhouse to other sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Twitter is beginning to follow through on its strategy of offering subscription services for users.  The first is focused on weather. For $10 a month, you can get the following:

  • Ability to ask a team of meteorologists unlimited questions and they promise to answer
  • Members-only weekly newsletter
  • Early access to podcasts

Twitter also says they will hold Spaces during periods of potentially harmful weather. Honestly, I’m struggling to see how the $10 price tag is justified for this. For instance, I can get pretty much all this information for free from following James Spann on Twitter.  Maybe $5 a month would be more plausible, but if people start paying $10 a month for subscriptions, they are gonna expect an experience above and beyond what they can get on Twitter now, for free.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Hope you have an amazing day and week!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: YouTube Shorts on Fire, Pinterest Enters Livestreaming, In-Person Events Coming Back

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are ready for another amazing week! Here’s some breaking marketing and digital stories that caught my eye…

 

 

YouTube’s Shorts videos are proving to be insanely popular both with viewers, and content creators.  As you can see below, they are already generating over 6B daily views, and YouTube is rolling out more options to pay creators. Compensation for content creators is going to be one of the major themes for 2021. We will soon reach a point where SMEs will start leaving companies because they can make more money as content creators. Let’s keep an eye on compensation for content creators and see what the landscape looks like by this Fall.

 

Pinterest is beginning to experiment with livestreaming for its users. Later this month, Pinterest will host live virtual events with some of its top content creators.  I think this idea could work.  First, the events will only be available through the Pinterest app, so I like that they are pushing users to the app.  The events themselves will be structured around helping Pinners get better at skills that tie into how they are already using Pinterest.  So the events will focus on things like cooking a better meal, or planning your next vacation, or home improvement project.  So the focus won’t be on Pinterest as much as why people are using Pinterest. I think that’s a smart play.

https://twitter.com/thekenyeung/status/1392935923394875392

 

Fall 2021 looks to be when we can expect to see in-person events begin to return. Almost half of ad executives plan to be back to attending in-person events in Q3 2021. We’re still about 6 months behind where I thought we would be with returning to in-person events.  I assumed there would be a few events this Spring, but then a big return in the Fall of this year.  It seems like the big return won’t come till Spring of 2022. Still, I expect to see a decent spike in the number of in-person events this Fall.  People are hungry to get back to in-person events, there’s simply no better learning environment.

 

So that’s what I’m reading this week! I will see you back here tomorrow, hope you have a wonderful week!

PS: Are you subscribed to the Backstage Pass? Every Friday I give you stories, tips and ideas on how you can engage your customers and convert them into passionate fans, who love your brand.  Want in?  Signup below, and I’ll see you on Friday!

 

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: DOJ Targets Google, Twitch Thriving Under Lockdown, Burgers in the Sky

Happy Labor Day, y’all! Hope you had a great holiday weekend and are as ready for Fall as I am! The weather here has been about 10 degrees cooler than normal for the last couple weeks and looks to continue this for the rest of the month. Bring on Fall!

 

It’s been fascinating to watch how consumer behavior has changed during 2020 as we are all spending a lot more time at home. This is also altering how we consume content and the types of content we consume. This actually factored heavily into my decision to double-down on blogging, I think you will see more people spending more time reading and consuming blog content for the rest of this year and into 2021.

Another content source that’s thriving in 2020 is video-game streaming platform Twitch.

I’ve written about how content creators are leveraging Twitch in the past and will have more on this later in the week.

On a bit of a surprising note, the amount of time we are spending listening to podcasts is down slightly in 2020:

https://twitter.com/Claire_Harris82/status/1299678670622085121

This is actually quite revealing. At first blush, you would think podcast listening would go up as we are spending more time at home. But the fact that it will go down suggests that most of us listen to podcasts while driving to work.  The fact that eMarketer is projecting a rebound for podcast listening by 2022 helps support this thought.

What’s the key takeaway? If you are looking to start a podcast, 2021 could be the right to, as more of us return to offices for work, and the daily drive to and from work becomes a thing again.

 

One of the emerging stories I’ve been following the last couple of years is how the big tech/social media giants are increasingly making questionable moves from a censorship and free speech standpoint. I’ve talked before about how Twitter is confusing many of its users with inconsistent application of content policing, but sites like Facebook and YouTube have made similar moves. The reality is that as long as humans are policing content on social media sites, they need to be able to check their own internal biases toward that content, and apply rules evenly to all users. If they cannot, and a culture of bias is allowed to grow and fester at these companies, that can lead to an environment where users either leave, or worse.  I think we will see all big social media sites have few users in 5 years than they do now.

 

I love this. Burger King will be redesigning its restaurants to create more contactless options for food delivery, but also will be moving the kitchen and dining areas OVER the drive thru lanes! I think this is very innovative, Burger King is betting on the fact that people will continue to want contactless options for food payment and delivery after we move past covid, but they are also factoring in that when we do fully reopen, many will want to get out more, and putting the dining area over the drive thru lanes helps create a unique experience for dine-in customers. This will no doubt improve the mood of customers that dine in, which will also improve the mood of the BK workers.  I love this and I would be surprised if we didn’t see other fast food chains try to copy this design.

 

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day, see y’all tomorrow!

by

How Twitch Streamers Are Taking Repurposing Content to the Next Level

Repurposing content means to get multiple uses out of one piece of content. For instance, it could mean writing a long blog post, then repurposing that blog post into a white paper, or a podcast episode, or an infographic. Repurposing content is especially important for companies with a smaller content team, where every piece of content needs to achieve maximum results.

For the last couple years, I’ve been watching how streamers on Twitch are building their communities. It’s been fascinating to watch these streamers leverage smart marketing tactics to create and build engagement around their streams. In fact, they really aren’t calling themselves ‘streamers’ anymore, they are now ‘content creators’. Whatever you call them, they are smart, and there’s a lot you can learn about how they are building their channels and brands, that you can apply to your own company’s content strategy.

For example, I recently started watching one streamer, excuse me…content creator, called NickMercs on Twitch. Basically, here’s what Nick does; He plays video games on Twitch most every day for about 8-10 hours a day.  So he has 8-10 hours a day of content he has created. He then takes that content, and distills it down to about 15-20 mins of the ‘best’ content (think of it as a highlight reel), then creates a new video from that content, and posts it on YouTube. Typically, the videos he posts on YouTube get 300,000-400,000 views in the first 24 hours!

This is a wonderful example of the power of repurposing content. Nick is able to monetize his Twitch content, then he takes that content and repurposes it as a shorter video for YouTube, and he can make ad revenue off it as well. So in essence, he’s found a way to monetize the same content, twice.

Now I can already hear many of you asking “That’s great, but you’re talking video games on Twitch and YouTube. How does that relate to my business and my content?”

You’re right, the odds are your business can’t create a video a day for YouTube that gets a few hundred thousand views. But what you can do is learn from what’s working for Nickmercs, and apply it to your own content creation efforts.

Nick is doing two things with his content that your business can and should replicate:

1 – He’s creating content for his audience where they are. The primary age group for Twitch viewers is around 18-24 years old and mostly male. This same audience that watches Twitch channels will often consume similar content on YouTube. So by taking his Twitch content and repurposing it into shorter YouTube videos, he’s getting a chance to reach a similar audience, but on a different platform. This is a smart content play, because if the people that watch his videos on YouTube enjoy them, he has a great chance to convert them into viewers of his Twitch channel.

You can do the same thing for your content. Whatever industry or space your content serves, there’s bound to be at least 2-3 main sites where your audience goes to get its content from. Think about how you could take your content and use it in multiple ways to reach a similar audience on different platforms. For instance, let’s say you’ve identified that your audience wants to consume content from blogs, and Twitter. You could post informative content on your blog, then turn around and have a Twitter chat around the same topic on Twitter. The end result is that one form of content helps promote and push people toward the other form of content.

2 – He’s customizing the content for each platform. On Twitch, Nick’s streams can last for several hours. But most people won’t watch an 8-hour stream on YouTube, in fact it may not even be possible to republish the Twitch stream on YouTube due to Twitch’s TOS. So what Nick does is, he changes the content from Twitch to make it more in line with what the YouTube audience wants.  He takes an 8 hour stream, and cherry-picks the ‘highlights’ or best plays, and condenses it down to a 20-min video, and posts that on YouTube. This results in content that’s better suited for YouTube, plus the content itself promotes Nick and the content he creates on Twitch. He is able to not only monetize the videos on YouTube, but he uses them to drive the YouTube audience back to his Twitch stream, and hopefully convert them to viewers or subscribers there.

Now if you think about what Nick did here, he basically took long-form content (his Twitch stream), and condensed it down and shared the ‘highlights’ as a YouTube video. So he got two very effective pieces of content from one. I like this idea of taking ‘highlights’ from your content and using that as new content or to promote other content. Think about the applications; You could take a series of blog posts about the same topic and condense them into a shorter white paper, and offer that as a freebie to newsletter subscribers. Speaking of your newsletter, you could publish an issue where you give pull quotes or highlights from multiple blog posts as a way to incite subscribers to read your blog. You could use those same pull quotes to promote the posts when you share them on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The end result for Nick is two standalone pieces of content that he can very effectively monetize, but that also work well together as one serves as promotion for the other. When you are looking at your own content, think about how you could take your long-form content and break it down into smaller pieces of new content, focuses on your ‘highlights’ or best content, and how could that content be used to build an audience for your business, but also push that audience back to your long-form content.

Now, speaking of pushing back to long-form content. There is one thing about Nick’s content strategy that I don’t like. Notice that in this example, the content he is creating and repurposing is going on two platforms that he does not own. I would much rather see the main content be on a platform that Nick owns, like a website, but I do understand that Twitch as a streaming platform is currently a much better alternative than any tech that Nick or another streamer could use on their own site. But the thing I’m always stressing to clients is to own the platforms where your content lives. Too many businesses even in 2020 feel that they don’t need a website as long as they have a brand page on Facebook.

Own your platform, own the experience. Then when the day comes that Facebook and even Twitch goes away, you’ll be ok cause you’ll still have your own platform where you can create all the content you want.

by

BMW Pulls ‘Reverse April Fool’s Prank’, Teaches You About Digital Marketing

On April 1st, a BMW dealership in New Zealand ran a newspaper ad.  At the bottom, it added an ‘April Fool’s Day Special’ coupon.  The coupon said that the first person to bring the coupon in and ask for ‘Tom’, would be able to trade their old car in for a new BMW.

Here’s what happened:

Now, let’s look at this giveaway as being a marketing campaign.  First, let’s consider the costs.  There’s the cost of the BMW itself.  Then add on the cost to create the video you just watched.  Let’s assume there were also some costs associated with PR efforts around the giveaway.  Add in any miscellaneous costs and let’s assume a total cost of say….$60,000.00.

Now, what did this BMW dealership gain from the giveaway?  Let’s look at earned media generated:

First, there’s currently over 1.3 million views of the above video on YouTube.  The odds are it will eventually approach 2 million views, if not pass that.

Next, we have earned media in the form of articles written about the giveaway.  I googled “BMW new zealand april fools” and found 143,000 results:

BMWThen you have to consider the coverage that this giveaway got on television and radio shows.  This is just the type of giveaway that morning radio and television shows love to cover.  “Hey did you hear about the woman that answered the April Fool’s ad and won a free BMW?”

Additionally, it’s going to drive an increase in foot traffic to the BMW dealership, and will likely result in increased sales from this giveaway.  Many people will appreciate the fact that this dealership did the giveaway, and it will make them at least consider doing business there.  Also, if the dealership wants to do something similar in the future, it can expect a much higher response rate for its newspaper ad call-to-action!

So for $60,000, here’s what this business got:

  • A video on YouTube with over 1.3 million views
  • Over 140,000 positive articles about the dealership and its giveaway
  • Any negative articles or posts about the dealership will be completely buried by the avalanche of articles about this giveaway
  • A ton of free coverage on television and radio shows, and likely some newspaper column mentions as well
  • Increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales

I think most businesses that could afford to spend $60,000 on its marketing would consider this to be a good investment.

The key to the success of this campaign has been spreading the story via online channels.  And the story spread online because it focused on the customer.  If this dealership had created a video promoting the same BMW it gave away, that video would have generated a small fraction of the exposure that this giveaway created.  Instead, this BMW dealership found a way to put the focus on the customer, and in doing so. made the video far more interesting.  Putting the customer at the center of the giveaway and video makes the video more relevant to other customers.

Customer-centric content spreads further and faster than company-centric content.

 

by

Google Recruits Nine Businesses as YouTube Marketing Ambassadors, Turns Them Into Teachers and Mentors

There’s no shortage of businesses and organizations that have smartly leveraged YouTube as a channel to grow their business, launch a new product or create brand awareness.  Recently, YouTube identified nine of the best examples of businesses that are using the video-sharing site smartly as a marketing channel, and made them their first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors.

The nine businesses were chosen based on their ability to leverage YouTube as a channel to perform one of the following marketing functions: Launch a new product, Spark a conversation, or Find new customers.

From Google’s blog: “To recognize these businesses and their work in fostering a culture of entrepreneurship on YouTube, we’re introducing our first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors—a group of outstanding organizations that have used YouTube to drive sales and grow operations. We’ve invited nine businesses from across the country to participate in this program, and last week our YouTube Ambassadors joined us at our headquarters for a two-day summit to meet with executives and learn more about online tools for businesses.”

Here’s the part I absolutely love about this program: Inclusion in the program means the ambassadors will now begin teaching other businesses and organizations how to use the same strategies on YouTube that they did.  Upon joining the program, each of the nine businesses picks a non-profit and immediately begins mentoring them on how to get set up on YouTube.  Throughout the year, the ambassadors will contribute to a special YouTube for Marketers page on Google Plus, as well as participate in Hangouts designed to teach other businesses and organizations how to correctly use YouTube to reach their business goals.

This is why it is such a smart move for companies to embrace and empower their advocates.  Everyone wins here:  Nine deserving non-profits now will learn how to use YouTube from a business that already has a proven track record of using the site to grow its business. The YouTube Marketing Ambassadors besides feeling awesome about being able to Pay It Forward, get a ton of additional exposure from their involvement in this program.  YouTube not only gets a lot of additional exposure for the program, but it also gets to better identify some of its members that are best using the site, which means it can better encourage other businesses to join the site.  Plus, it now has a way to bring future members of the YouTube Marketing Ambassador program into the fold, so the program becomes self-sustaining.

Everyone wins.  Which typically happens when businesses and organizations Think Like a Rockstar and reach out to their biggest fans.