Hayley's baby, the beach and Bard

COMING AT YOU THE WEEK OF 2.7.23

THIS WEEK’S MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING NEWS

GOOGLE AI UPDATES: BARD & OTHER NEW SEARCH FEATURES

Google’s ChatGPT competitor is here. They’re calling it Bard (no idea why), a lightweight chat search that piggy-backs off of Google search and their huge AI engine. It’s currently only available for testers but will be released to the public “soon”.

TWITTER’S FREE API IS GOING AWAY

Twitter has announced that on February 9th, it’s cutting off free access to its API, which is the access point that thousands of apps, bots, and other tools use to function. Might want to let your devs and social teams know… your social media managing apps could go down for a time.

INSTAGRAM ADDED A NEW CTA OPTION ON BUSINESS PROFILES

We’re not sure if this is a permanent new feature or something they’re testing. However, this could increase conversion rates on your IG business profile. People are much more likely to click on a specific CTA than a generic one. Definitely try testing customized calls to action.

GOOGLE RELEASED THIS NEW AD FEATURE: ACCOUNT-LEVEL NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

Basically this allows you to select keywords and NOT show up for those. This is useful if you want to avoid appearing in searches that may damage your reputation or might be confusing similar to your brand. You could do this at a campaign level before, now you can apply this to your whole account.

NOTES JUST LAUNCHED WORLDWIDE FOR INSTAGRAM

Notes are short text and emoji posts up to 60 characters that show up at the top of your IG inbox for 24 hrs. This is great if you want to send a quick update to all your close friends or followers.

TIKTOK ADDED A NEW VIDEO INSIGHTS TO DIG DEEPER INTO CONTENT TRENDS

These new insights allow you to dive deep into video performance, industry ranking, audience, comments and more. If you’re big on TikTok, this could help you get a lot bigger faster. Stop guessing and look at the stats to find out exactly what content to create next.

USEFUL LINKS

YOUR NEW AI MARKETING ASSISTANT

Contlo.ai has taken a new AI-led approach to get your marketing done. Instead of writing emails, pulling analytics, and posting to social media MANUALLY, just have Contlo do it for you. Using an AI-powered conversational chat interface you can ask Contlo to do things like…

🚀 Send an email or text to my list
⚖️ Create a split test of my campaign
🔥 Update this ad creative on Facebook Ads
😍 Show me sales from last month
📢 Post this update on LinkedIn
📝 Write a blog post for me about my latest product

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE WAITLIST & STAY IN THE KNOW

HOW TO AUTOMATE TWO SUPER BORING SEO TASKS

Building out high-quality SEO processes takes an enormous amount of time and energy. If you’re anything like me, you’re short on both. The more you can automate the better. This article outlines two useful tips to speed up your SEO buildout.

HOW TO STOP CHATGPT FROM USING YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT

AI’s are constantly scraping website content for useful information. Especially if you rank on search engines for your keywords. Is it possible to stop bots from scraping your website? Kind of. Here’s how…

BRANDS ARE PROMOTING AFFORDABILITY IN THEIR MARKETING DUE TO INFLATION

Inflation has hit a 40 year high and buyers are responding by doing their research and being more thrifty in their purchases. Following this trend, companies are not necessarily lowering prices but increasing their affordability messaging to increase sales.

NEW BOT DETECTS HUMAN VS AI WRITTEN CONTENT

ChatGPT and competitors are really going to change the content and marketing playing field in the next few months. OpenAI just launched a bot that can distinguish between human and AI written text.

HOW TO GROW YOUR SALES ON INSTAGRAM

Did you know that you can set up an IG shop? How about track orders, payments and chat directly with customers? Learn how to make money from your followers with this handy dandy guide to IG sales.

META OFFERS BUSINESS CERTIFICATION TO SHOWCASE YOUR MARKETING SKILLS

There are currently five different certifications and they are all free. Taking the exams and getting the certifications does cost but not more than $150 per course. You even get an actual trophy to show off to your coworkers. Pretty cool.

HOW TO KEEP A PULSE ON YOUR WORK WITHOUT RELYING TOO MUCH ON OTHERS’ OPINIONS

I did great in school. I was in honors programs, skipped a grade, took advanced classes. I ended with a C in one class my entire school experience (including college). At least, I don’t remember another C. And I think I would remember it because—obviously—I was motivated by getting high grades. I like to learn, but my love of learning wasn’t the fuel for those grades. It was that outward, obvious sign of praise and accomplishment that came from seeing As on my papers, tests, and transcripts.

It was all good and dandy those years I was getting a formal education in public school and at university (…kind of…). But then I started my first salary job. How was I supposed to get high off of all As on my report card when there was no report card?

Here’s what I’m getting at: I like clear, obvious signs that what I’m doing is good. I like feedback. I like to hear over and over again that what I’ve done was done well, was even above expectations. I know it isn’t super healthy, but I like to have proof that my work is amazing. That I’m amazing. So sue me!

And I know I’m not alone. I know that so many of those kids who sat next to me feverishly studying our anatomy flashcards before test day have felt similar pains to me since leaving school and entering the real world.

And I also know that revealing my uncensored thoughts here also shows off some problemental patterns and tendencies. And that’s really my whole point here.

The point: Sooo many of us crave proof that we are “brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous” (Nelson Mandela anyone?). So many of us were brought up to look outside ourselves for that. To look externally for someone else to judge both our work and our worth. And it’s not serving us.

So instead let’s figure this out. How can we keep a pulse on our own work performance without relying too much on the opinions of others?

DEFINE WHAT SUCCESS MEANS TO YOU

I’d make a bet that few of us have formally written down what career success looks like to us. Here are some reflection questions to help you define this for yourself.

How do I know that my career is serving me well?

Here’s my response for reference.

It’s giving me the ability to put my family first. It’s giving me a platform where I feel I’m helping people. It makes me proud, like I want to tell the people close to me about my projects. It allows me to financially live the life I’m comfortable with.

What are the signs I use to gauge if I’m fulfilling my work responsibilities?

Write down all kinds of signs. Ones you’re paying attention to but shouldn’t. Ones that aren’t working but you care about. Feelings. Metrics. Anything you can think of.

What about my career am I proud of? What am I not proud of? Why?

This is straightforward, but tells a lot about what success means to you.

CHOOSE WHOSE JUDGMENT MATTERS TO YOU

Now that you’ve set up a foundational definition of success for you, let’s talk about other people. While we shouldn’t use people’s judgment as our primary indicator of success, we still need to navigate relationships to function. Seems to me that the key is being selective and intentional about the judgment you put stock in.

Here are some questions and exercises to decide this.

Who’s opinion of me affects my work?

Write a thorough list here—don’t filter it based on who should or shouldn’t affect your work. Here’s my answer for reference.

My team members, my mentor, my husband, my parents, my brothers, my readers, my social media viewers and commenters, my peers.

Decide if you’re willing to alter your work to keep those people’s opinion of you positive

Ranking the people (or groups) on a scale of 1-5 helps.

1 – I am not willing to alter my work based on their opinion

3 – I will situationally consider their opinion

5 – I will frequently prioritize their opinion

Rank them based on how you hope to behave, not on how you’re currently acting. If you’re bending over backwards to keep a coworker happy but you realize that’s not important to you, give them a 2 or something. I felt a little savage while ranking people, but the power of setting boundaries coursed through me. 💪😆

Make a short list of whose judgment is a 4 or 5

Vet your short list. Ask yourself why you’re willing to prioritize these people’s opinions. Check if they should really be here.

An example of a good reason

If my manager doesn’t think I’m a valuable employee, I will lose out on raises or lose my job.

An example of a bad reason

If social media commenters leave negative comments, our brand will suffer.

Apply boundaries to the judgment you will heed from your shortlist

Here’s what this might look like