TikTok is changing the marketing landscape. And yet, most businesses are still not using the platform. Today, we're going to break down why TikTok isn't just a playground for teenagers but a stage that businesses are weirdly...
The Popularity Mirage – Don’t fall for unrelatable brand marketing examples
“Can you make it look more like Apple?” When I first entered the agency world in 2006, there was this running joke that everyone wanted to look like Apple. Just 30 days into my first agency job, it happened. A rebrand client asked me to make their website look more...
Who’s Winning The TikTok vs. Instagram Battle?
The answer is complicated. And Meta thinks they have a plan. If social media were a person, it would be graduating college soon and looking for a job. Actually, social media would skip college, become a creator on TikTok or Instagram, and launch their own fashion or...
The Full History of Social Media Innovations: 1997-2023
Updated January 25, 2023 We tend to think of Facebook, or maybe Myspace, as launching “social media” into the mainstream. And from there the social network was a fully formed concept that we’ve all used for the last couple of decades to stay in touch with friends and make new connections. To swim in […]
The Social Media Technology Pyramid
What makes each social network different is the type of content created, how that content is created, and why that content is created. Consumers share a large variety of content for different reasons on different social networks. And social media platforms are evolving, which changes what we share. Snapchat and TikTok have been big drivers […]
How To Adjust Your Social Media Marketing During Coronavirus
Marketing in the age of coronavirus can feel like shouting into the ether. It’s an unprecedented time for many folks (and their business models) to say the least. Fear, stress, and uncertainty is a universal tax on all of us. And yet, there is still work to do. So, as marketers and professionals, how do […]
Seek Surprises in Your Instagram Data
At our 2015 conference, I talked on stage about the large shift we were seeing in Instagram becoming the most important social network for brands going forward. In large part, that is still true today. On recent episode of The Social Toolkit podcast, I got to speak with Bob Gearing, who is the Global Head […]
Facebook Is Testing Two Rows of Facebook Stories
Facebook has been very clear. They see stories as the future of social media. In 2017, Facebook added stories to the top of the app’s home screen. And every day since then, they’ve worked to get the app’s mainstream user base to adopt and love stories. And it’s working. Earlier this year TechCrunch shared numbers […]
Are “stories” really the future of social media?
Snapchat launched to the world in 2011 as a weird sexting chat app. Remember that? Then in 2013, Snapchat gifted the world with stories and changed social media forever. Last quarter Zuckerberg and company reported that Facebook “stories” had 500 million DAU (daily active users). That’s a really big number. It also means Facebook’s main […]
The MAU – A Dying Social Media Metric
MAU, or Monthly Active Users, has been the main metric by which we measure the health and growth of social networks since before MySpace thought Facebook was just some college fad. It’s been the best shortcut for Wall Street and advertisers to gauge which social networks are engaging the most people and which social networks […]