Pinterest meets Reddit, then the Instagram boycott thing. What's up?
Friday Review: Everyone coming for reddit and Pinterest. Instagram annoying users and more insights. 🧃
On LinkedIn, I ranted about every marketer creator breaking down the same brands and creators. Only to remember I used to do the same. Sharing some of them for you to read, judge and comment on.
Hi, writing the newsletter takes time and efforts. If you do like to support my work. You can by choosing the option below to join the paid newsletter + discord. (It’s your decision, I’m not your boss).
What did Internet say?
People, including some advertisers aren’t happy about unskippable ads on Instagram.
A new study from Pinterest is making marketers thirsty to join the platform. Why? It shares the platform generates 170% more total attention than other platforms.
I love Pinterest but the platform gaslights you a lot. First, they need to highlight engaged audience on profile instead of total audience. The Total metric is similar to X’s post views. Having more total audience aka views means nothing if people aren’t engaging.
About the study, Pinterest talking about a passive and active attention is important. Most marketers are only after attention as we discussed in a previous post, understanding attention theory is a must.
Yes, People enjoy content on Pinterest as they claim in the study. But people aren’t happy about your ads, the study shows biased in that part.
Most brands aren’t Pinterest-first, A lot of repurposing going. Making people hate the ad experience, Pinterest needs brands that follow more rules of creativity than performance.
Departure of Virginie Viard from Chanel is kind of being celebrated by fashion lovers.
GQ’s Article ‘Merch is dead’ is getting roasted by Internet’s best newsletters, short answer: Merch is very much alive. My Reads:
Why is wearing merch so embarrassing? by
.Everything is Merch from
and .
Protests against AI training: Adobe and Meta are getting called out for their new terms of use.
First a little rant: INSTAGRAM SUCKS FOR RESEARCH.
There is a viral ‘add yours’ template where creators are sharing their anger against AI. I saw it once in a random story, I can’t find that story or template because there is no feature to do so.
Hashtags no longer show the layout to see recent posts or stories.
#metai #creatorsagainstai and few other hashtags highlight how artists are leaving Meta over AI terms.
Part of the problem is opting out of AI training is not easy. EU’s Noyb has already filed complaint against AI, let’s see what happens in US.
Brand Collaborations getting love: Dunkin x Scrub Daddy and Vacation Sunscreen x Erewhon Smoothie.
Meta Advertisers: Music on Image Ads is a no + Meta’s test to have multiple objectives under 1 campaign is kind of useless and cash grab.
Against the Trend:
’s 20 minute-long video summary of Flight MH370 felt like a 5-minute video. A masterclass in engaging video storytelling.🍲 Chipotle: I feel bad for Chipotle’s marketing team, they created the perfect social media post. Only to have their CEO’s interview mess things up, people are now trolling his interview.
Recommendations:
’s podcast with copywriting legend, Vikki Ross + A mega post sharing e-commerce funnel creation and examples.Updated Insight: The TikTok guide shared duets and stitches can help your content reach more relevant audiences, as the link juice travels from one video to other.
This recent post from Joanna Williams hinted at another use-case, using amount of organic stitches and duets with creator’s video as a metric for Influencer selection.
The Worst: Spotify’s CEO tweets about cost of content being zero. The Online Community didn’t like that, probably because content isn’t free.
Because of CEOs like him, the word ‘content’ is becoming meaningless.
P.S. The News Recap goes out on Sunday but you can read some of the main headlines in the discord chat and reddit.
1. Ranking search features of social media apps and the best use-cases.
X and Reddit: The first position is tied, while reddit provides you with trustable anonymous answers. Twitter search is better to discover answers with credibility.
Reddit’s Internal search doesn’t deliver you the most relevant posts, using google with reddit at the end is better. The In-app search is the best to find relevant comments.
X’s problem is NSFW content and moderation. A lot of search terms are filled with unrelated spam posts. You need to be specific and using advanced search is the best.
TikTok: I love the search experience and it always gives something new and relevant. But TikTok has this search feature if you stay too long, you start seeing random videos.
It is the best to search tutorial content, pop culture trends and random takes from Gen-Z and millennials. Every social marketer should have 2-4 accounts as their are many niches you will never discover from your main feed.
LinkedIn: The feature to see reactions of your connections and search through content posted only by your connections is quite useful. It isn’t perfect enough to show variety when you search a query. But you get something relevant.
Facebook: Joining the groups and searching through them is my favourite tasks. Besides queries, searching names ‘Jake’ in groups to see how every Jake or Amy is acting.
The post search on facebook is useful but the results are usually dominated by pages and random users. The Credibility part like X isn’t there as much as you want. FB is best for local queries and user search.
Instagram & Pinterest: They have the same problem, the results either never change or take long time. Both platforms have queries where the same content is ranking from months or even years.
The best use-case for Pinterest and Instagram search is taking branding and topic ideas to rank on explore. The posts that generally rank on those queries have the factor you need.
It is good to find new accounts, searching different keywords regularly.
Youtube and Threads aren’t part of the list because one recently got search. The other is search-first and social second platform.
How would you rank search functionality of each social media platform?
2. Reddit & Google can’t win with current moderation systems
No Community Management: Reddit’s moderator work for free, while many are good at their job. Some aren’t and only few are trained to encourage community discussions.
Taking r/socialmedia and r/marketing as an example, both communities are growing faster than ever. But the community activity is untouched. The amount of upvotes an average post gets has declined despite user growth.
Reddit needs to play a role in Top 1-4% communities.
There should be a way for members to examine community moderators. There are many instances where moderators are biased in decision-making.
Reddit can learn from X and launch community notes.
They can conduct member surveys about content that was taken by moderators.
Better incentives and tools for moderators. Most of them are doing the moderation on the side.
Reddit’s anonymity and trust of users in each other leads people to trust what redditors recommend. But it’s not that simple, reddit knows their problems and users too. Moderation is one of the problems they need to fix.
If you are a brand planning to add reddit in your strategy, we can chat about in our discord or comments.
What this means for marketers:
Biased Take: Most sub-reddits aren’t a democratic space. What you believe is valuable to community isn’t what moderators believe. Check the moderation culture or you will get banned quick.
Yesterday, I was temporarily banned from r/marketing for adding credit to my newsletter. The post in question got 180+ upvotes and positive feedback a day before. Even a small change can cost you a ban, no matter how much you contribute. The members protested against the ban, but the post got removed.
This isn’t limited to one sub-reddit, certain mods from r/PPC and few other communities were exposed for asking money to post and adding their own affiliate links.
Your reddit needs internal community management or mini-influencers to scale your sub-reddit, learn from communities like r/ObsidianMD and r/Notion.
Comments are much safer for brands to engage and promote their offers.
Additional Readers: You can read about the moderation experience of r/AskHistorians. They published a research paper on it and it’s worth reading if you are into Internet moderation .
P.S. Most of this was written before I got banned, tried to keep it as unbiased as possible.
3. Mr Beast’s Title writing strategy
Not to forget Mr Beast’s main audience is kids and teens. His strategies are quite simple but applicable.
1/ Use of I & You in Your Title happened later, brand awareness first.
If you watch Mr.Beast’s early content, he is using “Pewdiepie” & “Logan Paul” in context to steal their audiences because he was relevantly small compared to them.
Using borrowed context for his channel growth. Later he switched to use of ‘I’ and ‘You’ to build community and brand.
Mr.Beast’s most viral videos with 250M views include “I” in them putting him in context with something crazy. That builds the relation with his audience because MrBeast = crazy stuff.
The importance of borrowed context/exposure is highest on YouTube. That is why Mr Beast is paying thousands for thumbnails and title ideas, trying to find the identities and topics that lend him the most attention.
Only focusing on his personal brand could result in Pewdiepie numbers, he gets on average 1-3M views. Mr Beast is perfect example of brandformance marketing.
Fun Fact: Research shows using ‘You’ instead ‘I’ can help you feel more confident. Or doing self-talk using your name instead of ‘I’ generates a similar effect.
2/ Using Factors In Youtube Title Endings.
The ending of your title is the most important because when title ends. They click on your video. That emotion maters.
There are many factors used in Youtube video titles to build that hype to click & watch:
First is Time frame, mentioning a time frame in your title gives people an idea of what they will find in the video.
Like “I survived 50 hours buried alive” that gives context about they are going to watch a time lapse of how the hours went during that time.
Another example would be “Learn basics of Marketing In 10 Minutes only” that gives users a lot to consider watching your videos.
Second is List structure, To mention a list of things they will learn in the video. This framework used by some of the biggest channels like watchmojo, nectar, jubliee & many others. Mentioning a number factor about X amount of things in the video makes people feel they get more in less time.
Third is possession factor, what they will get out of the video. Used by fitness coaches, finance related channels and many others.
It’s about mentioning in your title what the audiences gets out of the video or your content. Will they do better at finance, business or marketing?
Will they have a better understanding of X topic? You have to mention these factors in the video to make them understand the value the video holds.
For example: “10 YouTube Tips to make you a better YouTuber” - You will be better at YouTube at the end of the video.
Context like this in video plays an important role in building trust. But remember don’t overpromise in a title!
News Break: The Stage is ready, US Justice Department reaches a deal for antitrust probes into Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia
4. Rise of Shitposting; Why Brands, Elon & Creators do it?
When Internet gets sick of professionalism, shitposting becomes the lazy language to express the emotions.
Shitposting
You can define it how you want. Shitposting is low-effort media or text that generates conversations in one way or another. It can be relevant to one audience but seems worthless to another.
Using words of Julia Fox:
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But I do it all for her pleasure.
One person’s sh*tpost is another user's treasure. But I do it all for the attention.
This (Lego) isn’t sh*tposting, the brand is experimenting to find what sticks. Plus, You don’t have millions of followers to go viral with no value.
Reddit & TikTok: Engagement Baiting
A Shitpost to a Redditor is a piece of content with low effort & literally no value. But it might provoke a huge discussion why because internet loves to mess with shitposters.
In r/entreprenuer, every month a post with no-value gets published but it becomes the most upvoted post of the day. By being the conversation starter for XY topic.
How: Internet/Users feel like they need to educate the audience and fix the issues in that post. The Chain starts!
Another version of shitposting on reddit & TikTok where the post isn’t a shitpost. But to provoke the audience like a shitpost, the creator makes a mistake. An example is below, Lala sadi always pronounces “hummus” incorrectly and makes people engage more often with her video. Internet loves to correct others and be smart.
The urge to correct never dies and the community engages in a discussion, sometimes meaningful, sometimes funny.
X & TikTok: Message Baiting
Shitposting isn’t limited to being you or building a funny persona.
On Political Twitter, Shitposting is to build a message about that post or your identity. Showing an intent and purpose helps to either generate a feeling or to make the user act.
Elon Musk is know for his regular shitposts about different political issues & tech world. A lot of people hate those posts and many love it. Why?
First, once you identify as a shitposter to an audience. You will have people that resonate with this style of content and those who hate or ignore it. For Example, Wendy's is known for their funny twitter content. What if by a mistake an Instagram Gen X user sees that Wendy's tweet. They might find that tweet strange, as they have never seen the brand post content like that. They will have a hard time grasping the humour. And that's okay.
Because sh*tposting on X and TikTok is tailored toward a different audience, which is probably unknown to X person.
The Second reason is hidden messages behind sh*tposts. One of my favourite TikTok creators is cities by Diana, she creates content trolling American cities and compares them to European cities. The videos aren’t making fun of American infrastructure, it’s EU getting roasted. TikTok is filled up with that type of S**tposts. Posts with absolutely no contextual value, only lore and topics that get people going.
Confusing Humour for Shitposting
A bunch of TikTok videos highlight what brands like Wendy's, Duolingo & RyanAir do is called Shitposting. These brands aren't the examples of how shitposting works or what it means.
These brands are building humour based content around different personas of their business.
On other hand, Shitposting isn't all humour, it is opinionative and could make your boom or doom. It is extremely good for fan engagement if done right.
Last: Should you do it or not?
If you have the freedom as a brand to do so, you should totally do it. If you don’t, learn from Diana, Reddit & other niched spaces to make in-direct sh*tpost.
This type of content is much better than brands in comments under viral reels. That generates no value and is annoying.
5. What Barbie’s Marketing teaches about future
1/ Experience first, Product second.
Generally movies are built on product-first strategy where the users experience it and then buy into merchandises, Games & much more. The history of Barbie & existing products around barbie like dolls & dresses make this movie rely on experience-first strategy where consumer is living in the barbie world. With all the elements around it.
Freemium Plans on SAAS is an experience strategy. A McKinsey Newsletter for a new startup is an experience strategy.
With too many options in the consumer market. The more easier you make it for people to experience what you have, easier it is convert the potential buyer.
2/ OOH’s reliance on Social Sharing
A research from Insider Intelligence reveals TikTok & Instagram users encounter OOH Ads shared by organic users. Same happened with Barbie, OOH Ads getting heavily shared.
Advertisers, mainly Social Brand are taking their instagram ads to billboards. As they are more likely to be shared on social for Internet references and style.
While this attacks the purpose of OOH advertising and strategy. For Social-focused brands, this is what makes more sense. Social-first OOH to the moon!
Inspiration Break: This brand’s giveaway style earned them over 24,000+ likes.
6. What Atlanta teaches you about diversity in marketing
The Episode ‘B.A.N’, Black Justin Bieber and many other references from Atlanta are all about showing what happens when the tables turn. When the roles are reversed, everything changes.
1/ The Ad Character problem
Diversity in marketing isn’t having a black person do what a white character is already doing. You need to have them play roles that cater to black audiences. Instead, what we see is token black or POC faces in advertising to eliminate White Guilt or to meet the DEI standards.
2/ The problem will never know if you don’t have a black creative in the room.
The Ads from the episode ‘B.A.N’ highlight the advertising targeting problem. The Dodge Charger commercial in the beginning of the show is what gets out of a broken agency or brand. Car Ads are too notorious for showing manufactured emotions, it rarely works.
15 Minutes later, The Commercial meets reality. We are shown two perspectives:
The naked driver represents what car companies subliminally portray in their ads. Give everything up for our product.
The two-talking characters represent the context people have to not react like the first ad in the episode. This is where you need black or POC creatives to fix that context problem.
Even for white audiences, you need people with better cultural context to show the right emotions in your ad campaign.
As a consumer, it feels like you're being talked down to. The worst feeling ever.
You can studying American Fiction, I, Daniel Blake, Atlanta and other media to get better at understand buyer personas and cultures.
Maybe you aren’t the one for diversity or your boss isn’t. Studying what Atlanta is trying to say is worth it. The show’s critique of capitalism is a genius. What you can learn from a critic of capitalism as a marketer is more valuable than anything a marketer would say.
The Art of over analysing and the benefit of it.
What’s the case: Should you over-analysis?
One of the writer from Atlanta says, stop trying to finding meaning everywhere in the show.
Sh*tposting is meant to be meaningless.
Barbie wasn’t that deep.
Mr Beast is for kids. Money is the secret behind his success.
Analyzing sucks; you only get so far trying to analyze the brand/stuff everyone knows. You either need to go further or deeper, beyond the surface to find the true meaning.
Yes, Over-Analysing is meaningless if you force yourself into it. If it happens naturally, you aren’t trying to overdo the analysis, you are trying to find the meaning. That meaning matters because it will eventually lead you to an ideal destination.
The Write-ups came to me naturally, that’s the story. If there is evidence, there is a chance to find a deeper meaning and solution.
The Problem: People are lazy but they care a lot about being right.
Today, Artists, Creatives and Brands get less engagement than ever for creativity. A constant struggle for distribution. Meanwhile a video analysing their creative work goes viral. The over-analysis also hits big, not that deep comments only help with engagement.
Task: Do self-analyse of your content like you do at an Art exhibition. Or have someone do it from an alt-account.
This works because people want to be found on Internet and they like to categorised as a fan of a brand. Even if the interest was a little, when they watch that analysis from an alternative party. They engage.
People often make decisions in a social environment. This culture of analysing brands, products and Art helps the creator/business by building that social environment around their work.
The Right way to do the analyse, insights from the Internet:
Know the difference, Are you being called out for over-analysis or bad analysis? The Idea of analysis is always to draw connection and add meaning, Is there too much meaning or nothing?
Ex: Shitposting is popular on 4chan, a platform known for many racists and extremists, they add hidden meaning to no-value memes and online gestures. (An evil connection to show the meaning behind it)
Choose your side: Either nothing happens without meaning or everything is meaningless.
Ask before you analyse. Or see if the author shared a clear meaning.
Loads of nuggets in this post
Thanks for listening to the podcast and sharing!