COMING AT YOU THE WEEK OF 2.28.23
THIS WEEK’S MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING NEWS
TIKTOK WILL OPEN MORE OPTIONS FOR CREATORS WITH CREATIVE PROGRAM BETA
To access you have to be at least 18 years old, meet the minimum follow / video view requirements and don’t have your account banned. To start making money, you need to publish original videos longer than one minute. It’s going to replace their current Creator Fund in the “coming months”.
TIKTOK RELEASED TRENDING PRODUCTS FOR THE WORLD TO SEE
This is where you can spy on your competitors. In their Creative Center you can see how popular products are, along with impressions, view-through rate, comments, likes and more. Very useful to keep up with the latest product trends.
LINKEDIN ANNOUNCED AN “INTEREST TARGETING” UPDATE
Inside of LinkedIn Campaign Manager you can now target based on interests, categories and subcategories to be more specific. They’re segmenting interests into three main categories and over 500 specific attributes. Definitely worth looking into updating your campaigns with this new targeting feature.
GOOGLE LAUNCHED NEW WAYS TO MULTIPLY YOUR AD RESULTS
Performance Max opened up in Nov 2021. Since then advertisers have seen over 18% more conversions at similar cost per action. They’re bringing AI to their ad platform and rolling out new features like account-wide negative keywords, simplified video ad campaign set up, keywordless URL expansion and even an A/B split test option to compare Performance Max against standard campaigns.
META IS REFORMING ‘FACEBOOK JAIL’ IN RESPONSE TO THE OVERSIGHT BOARD
They’re still removing content that violates their policies but they’re going to focus more on helping people understand WHY their content was removed. Essentially they’ll be much less strict in the future to policy violators, more than likely in an effort to win back more advertisers to their platform.
PODCASTS ARE COMING TO YOUTUBE MUSIC
Yes you can listen to them with your phone locked and yes there will be ads. Probably time to start your podcast up again. You’ll also be able to upload podcasts and videos directly from RSS feeds. YouPod here we come.
USEFUL LINKS
THE CURIOSITY CHRONICLE NEWSLETTER
You need to learn how to be a productive, fulfilled person to be good at your job (and everything else). Sahil discusses how to do just that. For instance, he recently discussed how some stress, called eustress, can be positive. He talks about how eustress differs from other kinds of stress and what we can do about it. Click the link above to check out his newsletter.
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HOW TO CANNIBALIZE YOUR OWN PRODUCT WELL
Apple cannibalized the iPod with the iPhone. Netflix cannibalized their mail-order DVD rentals with streaming. Google is cannibalizing search with their AI chatbot Bard. Progress is all about continual innovation and doing that effectively means turning off the old and replacing it with an updated, better new.
TIKTOK OPENED DATA TO US RESEARCHERS TO IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY
We all know TikTok has been on the chopping block for some time now. They’re trying to prove to US officials that they’re not a threat. Several states have already banned TikTok on government-owned devices. Opening up their API to US researchers might buy them some time, but we’ll see if it’s enough to stop them from being banned completely.
BOOTSTRAP YOUR LINKEDIN FOLLOWING
This short article is pure GOLD for growing your LinkedIn followers. Best part? It’s free. (No this isn’t a sponsorship haha.) I mean the strategy doesn’t cost you anything to implement. And it doesn’t involve spamming people through chat.
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📚 High-quality book club
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WHY YOU SHOULD (AND SHOULDN’T) PANIC ABOUT THE NATURE OF WILLPOWER
Both you and I are wishing it was already our holiday vacation. So it’s taking extra willpower to get through our work day. Which has made me wonder, is it possible to find extra willpower?
Sorry, but the research points to “no.”
Roy F. Baumeister—a PhD holder and social psychologist at Florida State University—has been hardcore researching self-control. His research has convinced him that…
Willpower is a limited resource
For instance, in one study, his team invited some students to eat a few cookies. They asked another group to resist the baked goods. That poor second group was given radishes instead, which feels extra harsh. Like, why not give them carrots or something?
Anyway, after their snacks, they gave all the students these impossible geometry puzzles (again, harsh). The cookie eaters found the gumption to work on the puzzles for a whole 20 minutes. But the radish group gave up after an average of eight.
Our guy Roy says, “Many studies have found that people perform relatively poorly on tests of self-control when they have engaged in a previous, seemingly unrelated act of self-control.”
Watch out because decision-making in general can deplete our self-control
“After making decisions, people perform worse at self-control,” Dr. Roy says. He’s also observed that after using self-control, people make poorer choices or avoid decision making altogether.
Are you catching the moral of the story? You gotta use up your will-power and decision-making juice strategically. Here are some ideas.
Work on the biggest, baddest willpower item for an hour or two before the real day hits
Maybe your typical routine involves working out or getting your kid to daycare before you even start work. If those things dip into your willpower jar, then you might struggle with that big work project you wanted to tackle. Plan to work on that big, bad project for a bit before you hit the gym or before your kid wakes up. Or at least first thing in your work day.
Keep your glucose levels steady
Baumeister and his former student accidentally found a connection between glucose levels and self-control. Their tests ended up proving it. He says, “Acts of self-control reduce blood glucose levels. Low levels of glucose predict poor performance on self-control tasks and tests.”
So, don’t skip lunch to get working on that big, bad project. Don’t pre-game for the big, bad project with a few donuts (and then crash a while later). Go back to the basics and eat a balanced meal with whole grains, veggies, and some protein.
It’s worth pushing through the pain
While your day’s worth of willpower is a limited resource, you can work to increase your typical day’s willpower supply.
Just keep training those self-control muscles. The more you work ‘em, the bigger they’ll get. (This is not my uninformed guess, it’s what the PhD’s research has shown.)
It’s not easy work, but Dr. Roy makes a case for it.
“Psychology has identified two main traits that seem to produce an immensely broad range of benefits: intelligence and self-control. Despite many decades of trying, psychology has not found much one can do to produce lasting increases in intelligence. But self-control can be strengthened. Therefore, self-control is a rare and powerful opportunity for psychology to make a palpable and highly beneficial difference in the lives of ordinary people.”
– Hayley
INTERESTING STUFF
🛑 DON’T BE FOOLED, META ISN’T ABANDONING SOCIAL COMMERCE – AND HERE’S WHY
🪄 ELON MUSK SUGGESTS TWITTER COULD OPEN SOURCE ITS ALGORITHM ‘NEXT WEEK’
🔒 META VERIFIED WON’T LET YOU CHANGE NAME, USERNAME OR PROFILE PHOTO FOR NOW
📲 TWITTER WILL LIMIT USES OF SMS 2-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR USERS?
⛳️ GOOGLE’S QUANTUM ERROR CORRECTION MILESTONE
🔥 SPOTIFY WILL LAUNCH A TIKTOK-ESQUE, VERTICALLY SWIPED FEED