Hi friends! Been awhile since I've sent this. In case you've forgotten who I am or why you're here: You probably know me as @amandanat on Twitter, where I usually write about marketing.

A few weeks ago, Covid finally got me. Though it was fast and furious. On Day 2, my fever spiked at 107 degrees. I was too dizzy to walk straight, muscle spasms felt like a butcher knife stuck in my back, and the chills for 30+ hours had me sleeping in half-hour bursts. But by Day 5, I was already feeling 95% healthy, save for an occasional cough.

I was fortunate to get a Paxlovid prescription which probably helped speed up my recovery. I drank lots of water, Pedialyte and cold-pressed juice, and took several vitamin supplements (vitamin D3; Omega 3; and melatonin) via this post by Justin Mares, which were also recommended by my doctor. I also drank my homemade coldbuster tea with orange and lemon. Recipe is at the bottom of this post.

All in all, a terrible experience that I rate zero stars. 😂 But I sure am glad I caught the milder Omicron variant. My husband and I were lucky that our symptoms were staggered such that we were able to let each other rest during the others' worst symptoms. Our toddler fared well and only had about a day of low-grade fever.

But there is one post-Covid symptom I'm working to overcome. Feelings of depression. I read that in one study, over half of Covid patients experienced depression in the months after recovery. And several friends of mine told me that in their 2-4 weeks post-Covid, they felt a low level of depression and anxiety. Some had unexplainable bouts of crying.

I recall having read about recovered Covid patients having low levels of vitamin D, and even that people with vit D deficiency were 14 times more likely to develop a severe case of Covid. I think it helped that I supplemented with vitamin D, but as I recovered from Covid, I had decreased my intake. When my feelings of depression started creeping up, I reupped my vitamin D (6,000 IU) and also started taking sodium ascorbate (1100 mg of vitamin C). Two days later, I started feeling closer to normal.

📉 Can You Recession-Proof Your Marketing?

April was a slow month for us at SparkToro, and we initially thought our homepage redesign was to blame. While we do think that some of our new copy choices were subpar (we have since re-written), it's more likely that the slowness was due to macroeconomic factors:

• The S&P 500 had its worst monthly decline since March 2020
• Inflation is nuts and we're (probably) heading into a recession
• March is typically the last month for B2B buying cycles
• ... which means April is typically the slowest month in B2B buying cycles

So now I'm thinking about organic marketing. I'm really glad we haven't depended on large advertising & marketing budgets at SparkToro. Instead, our growth engine is largely fueled by modern content marketing (high-quality content, not classic SEO), events (like Office Hours and guest speaking on others' platforms), our free tools (like our Fake Follower audit), and our occasional newsjacking which... has been a little nuts lately. If you've heard anything at all about Elon Musk and Twitter, there's a good chance you've heard of our recent work too.

If I were a marketer in a more conventional environment, I'd be thinking long and hard about how to make my marketing more sustainable. I'd double down on content programs that are doing well, launch one new content channel if I didn't have one already, and I'd be in lock step with my executive team to make sure I'm positioning them well for PR and event opportunities.

I'll likely write about this in further detail sometime this week, but if you have any questions or thoughts on organic marketing, I'd love to hear them. Reply to this email and let me know.

Oh also, my Content Marketing 201 course kicks off on Tuesday, May 24, and I'll teach students how to take a more sustainable, holistic approach to marketing. There's still time to join.

🍰 Petits Fours

Four bite-sized blurbs linking to interesting content.

🔸 A deep dive into the Indexed Finance DeFi hack in October 2021: 18-year-old Andean Medjedovic stole millions of dollars from a crypto platform. But the sad thing is... you could theoretically make the case he didn't actually steal it. Through a series of "flash loans," or borrowed money that's returned within a preprogrammed transaction he bought up nearly all of the tokens, swapped them out for another token, then exchanged them for a third token (and other tokens) that were worth more.

🔹 Normalize c-sections: We preach that moms need to create painstakingly detailed birth plans, but only about half of births occur on time. And 3 in 10 moms will need a c-section. My friend Maria West interviews an OBGYN about this. (As for me, my frustration is when I looked up recovery advice after my own c-section, I was faced with tons of content that said, "Don't worry, you're still a real mom." Yikes.)

🔸 Remember when JLo's "Love Don't Cost a Thing" challenge bombed? (Wait, she did a challenge?) The replies on this tweet are not only hilarious, but they make for a terrific case study on how brands should NOT launch social media challenges. The best part is the lone Twitter user who participated had her video taken down because it violated the copyright of JLo's song.

🔹 A funny tweet that I am still laughing about four days later: "A cooking competition where contestants make whatever they want but my husband wanders around the kitchen and stands in front of the drawer they need"

🫖 Coldbuster Tea

Drink this if it sounds yummy.

• 1 bag Bigelow Lemon Ginger Probiotic Tea​
• Juice of 1 orange
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2-3 splotches honey
• 8-10 ounces hot water

Stir ingredients together in a mug. Let tea bag steep for 5 minutes or just leave it in because you are lazy like me.

(Apologies for the boring, unattractive photo.)

👋 That's all for now!

Hope you enjoyed this week's edition. Chat soon!