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It’s International 🥁 🪘 Drum Month, Reader! Thanks to all the musicians who keep our favorite bands on beat.

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for Instagram

• Creating YouTube Videos That 🤝 Market for You

• X launches new 🗣️ AI assistant, Grok

• New 🧵 threads features for the web

Heading into the holidays, you are likely to have time-sensitive announcements about sales, events, shipping details, and shopping hours. 

How can you give them every chance of being seen by your Instagram followers?

Use Black Story Mode

On an otherwise colorful Instagram profile, an all-text Story of white copy on a plain black background will stand out. It signals important, must-read info. Even better, it takes seconds to create without advanced graphic design skills!

Today's tip is inspired by Manu Muraro.

The goal of using YouTube for marketing isn’t merely to produce a bunch of videos and get them ranking on YouTube search results. Your goal is to get in front of the right people who will become customers. How? By showing them you have solutions to their problems.

More than 65% of people go to YouTube to solve a problem or find an answer, and every business solves a problem or provides an answer. So it’s a natural fit for your business to place those solutions on the very platform where people are asking their questions.

Although YouTube is a search engine, it’s not strictly search-based content. It’s more intent-based content. Here’s how to tap into that intent.

Get Into Your Customer’s Headspace

Take a moment to review the last 10 or 20 videos you posted on YouTube and ask yourself, is this what my audience really cares about? Are these actually the topics they want to hear about from me?

These are some of the most powerful questions you can ask in marketing. A lot of marketers spend significant time and energy making and posting videos but they’re not really talking to those pain points that their audience cares about.

There’s some value to making videos to answer those more generic questions. If you’re a coach who teaches email messaging, for example, a more generic video on how to build an email list could be valuable without poking at a particular struggle. But you can reach a whole other level when you can understand the true frustrations and pain points of your target audience.

Get inside their heads and understand who they are. If you’re creating how-to videos, are they beginner, intermediate, or advanced? Who’s on the other side of the camera? When you match your message with your audience from a place of authenticity—and add some value—that’s how you start to build momentum on YouTube.

How to Find Video Topics Your Customers Care About

There are several resources you can use to draw inspiration for video topics. For starters, you should stay up to date with the latest news in your niche or industry. You can head over to Google News and type in your topic to find new articles and announcements for things that are coming out.

Also, talk to your existing audience—your customers. Find out what’s getting them stuck or some of the things that are on their mind. You can do this by getting on the phone with some of them or sending an invitation to your email list to do a Zoom with you. If you have a Community tab on your YouTube channel, you can publish polls to get feedback.

You want to pay more attention to your audience than to your competitors, especially if you’re just starting out. A lot of businesses jump onto YouTube and start immediately focusing on what their competitors are doing and then trying to react to what they see. But if you serve your customers and address the things keeping them up at night, those pain points, your YouTube channel, your business, and your customers will all benefit.

Of course, you should check out your competitors’ channels too. In fact, you can learn a lot about your audience from reviewing your competitors’ channels and analyzing the videos that are still performing for them even several months after being published.

How to Choose the Video Topics to Produce First

Hollywood production studios often use loglines to help them decide from thousands of pitches which movie will receive their energy, funding, and resources to be greenlit for filming.

A logline is a brief, one-sentence summary of what the movie is about. For example, “A science-fiction fantasy about a naïve but ambitious farm boy from a backwater desert who discovers powers he never knew he had when he teams up with a feisty princess, a mercenary space pilot, and an old wizard warrior to lead a ragtag rebellion against the sinister forces of the evil Galactic Empire.”

Of course, you don’t have to write out a complete logline for every single YouTube video you make. But if you have 100 different video ideas and aren’t sure which one you should create first, try writing out your ideas in this way to see which ones should get your energy. If the idea feels like it’s the easiest one or one that has maybe already been done before, still go for it!

Today's advice is provided with insights from Sean Cannell, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World.

Why Consider Attending Social Media Marketing World?  

Thousands of marketers travel to San Diego each year to attend Social Media Marketing World. Here are three reasons why:

Learn from the best: Discover the latest strategies, tactics, and tools from experienced marketers who are excited to help you succeed.  

Networking: Share ideas and gain insights from marketers who “get you”. Leave with friends, partnerships, collaborations, and even new clients.  

Get ahead of trends: Marketing is rapidly changing. Stay ahead of the curve by discovering emerging trends and shifts in user behavior.

Isn't it time you got your ticket?

🗞 X.ai: Grok is a new AI assistant modeled after the witty and rebellious Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is designed to answer almost any question with some humor and suggest questions users may not have thought to ask. Grok has a unique advantage over other AI systems in its access to real-time world knowledge via the X platform. This allows it to answer questions typically rejected by other AIs. Grok is currently in an early beta phase after just 2 months of training, so it is still improving rapidly each week. Users should expect some limitations initially, but can help Grok improve by interacting with it. The goal for Grok is to be an entertaining and knowledgeable AI guide, able to have thoughtful conversations on nearly any topic. Source: X

🗞 New Threads Features: Threads introduced some new features to enhance the posting experience on the web. Users can now adjust the alt text for videos and photos before publishing a post. It is also now possible to copy, paste, or drag and drop media attachments into a post. Another update allows users to add multiple posts to a thread before publishing the thread. Additionally, users can now easily see quotes and reposts of a post by clicking on the likes or views on that post. Source: Threads

TOGETHER WITH YOUR BRAND

What makes for a great newsletter ad? 

Do you have a useful resource for marketers? For example, a report, guide, or ebook? Is it gated behind an opt-in form so you can collect leads? If so, you might be a perfect candidate for a newsletter ad in this very publication. 

If you want more brand exposure OR to bring in qualified leads for your sales team, why not chat with us and see if you're a good fit?

Contact Emily to place your ad here.

Did You Know?

A group of bunnies is called a Fluffle. It’s fun to say!