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It’s 🐈 🐈‍⬛ Cat Herders Day, Reader... We see you wrangling all those metaphorical kitties. Great job!

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for marketing strategy

• ⚙️ Reporting tools that tie marketing efforts to 🛒 business outcomes

• Instagram's AI-powered Stories 🏞 background tool

• 🧵 Threads moves into decentralization 

• 📣 More news from Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, and YouTube

Wondering when to stop marketing your business on a particular social network?

4 Considerations to Evaluate Before You Leave a Social Channel

First, manage your presence consistently for at least six months before abandoning a network. It takes time to build an audience and train algorithms. Jumping between platforms means starting that process over each time. 

Second, examine your mindset. If you go into social media marketing believing it will work, you’ll persist despite small setbacks. If you’re negative about the chances of success, obstacles will feel insurmountable.

Third, ensure you’ve tried every reasonable strategy before quitting. Understand how each platform works and commit to consistently testing different approaches.

Finally, compare results across networks. If your strategy succeeds on one platform but fails on another, the issue likely lies with your content and messaging rather than the network itself.

Today's tip is inspired by Jerry Potter, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World. Source: YouTube

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Are you able to establish the value of your marketing activities? Looking for a way to deliver data anyone can understand?

Use Google’s Looker Studio Visual Reports

Looker Studio is a free business intelligence and data visualization tool from Google. It allows you to connect to different data sources like Google Analytics, Google Ads, social media platforms, CRM systems, and more to create visual reports and dashboards. The key benefit over just using Google Analytics is that Looker Studio enables you to build customized reports focused on the unique metrics and KPIs that matter for your specific business. 

For example, you can create visual funnels tracking how many people visit a page, engage with your content, and convert. You can break this data down in different ways like by traffic source, campaigns, landing pages, products, dates, and more. With easy drag-and-drop tools and pre-built templates, no coding or advanced technical skills are required to start creating insightful reports in Looker Studio.

Marketing analytics skills are essential to prove and communicate your value. Looker Studio makes data accessible for all skill levels so you can use compelling data stories connected to business outcomes, building trust and confidence with both bosses and clients along the way. 

Identify Relevant Metrics To Track

When deciding what data to track in Looker Studio, first clearly identify your business goals and what defines success. Common goals include increasing revenue, generating more leads, lowering cost per acquisition, improving conversion rates, etc. Then, determine the best metrics to measure progress toward those goals. 

For most businesses, baseline metrics include number of site visitors, engaged visitors, email subscribers, demo requests, free trials, purchases, and revenue per visitor. You can also track micro-conversions like video views, PDF downloads, comments, clicks, and time on page. Build customized conversion funnels with the metrics unique to your business model and offerings. The key is to only focus on data you actually know how to interpret and act upon. Adding vanity metrics just to impress stakeholders leads to information overload.

Use Data Stories to Convey Value

Once you build clear reports and dashboards in Looker Studio tracking your key performance indicators, use the data to convey your value and impact as a marketer. Explain your experiment methodology and tie marketing activities and spending to business outcomes. 

Compare the performance of different campaigns and platforms to highlight successes but also identify poor-performing areas ripe for optimization. This shows your ability to drive growth tied to hard revenue and conversion data. 

Even negative data has value if you have a proposal or hypothesis for how to improve it. For example, you could find TikTok ads drive lots of traffic but low conversions. You could test sending that traffic to different landing pages or only show certain products. Overall, learn to tell visual data stories showcasing your strategic plan, real marketing impact, and revenue outcomes.

Today's advice is provided with insights from JJ Reynolds.

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🗞 Instagram Engagement Protections: Instagram is rolling out new tools to empower users with more control and transparency around their accounts over the coming weeks. Leveraging improved AI detection of spam activity like fake followers and story views, Instagram can now proactively notify users of unwanted interactions. Users gain the ability to efficiently delete spam followers and tags in bulk, saving time otherwise spent moderating. Instagram will also filter suspected spam comments and hide questionable story views. Additionally, Instagram aims to educate users on content at risk of violating guidelines or reducing reach via in-app nudges flagging potentially problematic posts. Combined, these latest features tackle spam and account issues head-on, providing a streamlined way for creators to understand policies and keep their presence safe. Source: Instagram

🗞 Instagram's AI-Powered Background: Backdrop, a new AI-powered media editing tool available in the United States, allows users to instantly transform the background of any image with just a few taps by entering imaginative text prompts like "chased by dinosaurs." This generates an entirely new background scene for the image, which can then be posted as a Story. Users can access Backdrop by tapping its button at the top when creating a new Story. Once a user shares a Story post created with Backdrop, an interactive "Try it" sticker appears to encourage friends to try the new effect for the first time. Source: Ahmad Al-Dahle via Threads

🗞 Instagram Video Notes: Instagram has launched video Notes, which allow users to post 2-second looping videos to their statuses. Video Notes appear for 24 hours to mutual followers or Close Friends. This new feature differs from Instagram Stories in its brevity and the requirement to use only the front-facing camera and capture footage within the Instagram app. Users can create Video Notes by tapping the camera icon atop their profiles' existing text and emoji Notes tray. They can then record a 2-second video and add text before posting. Instagram has also expanded how users can reply to Notes, now enabling responses through audio messages, photos, videos, GIFs, and stickers. When friends respond to a Note with non-text content, it gets delivered as a direct message. Source: TechCrunch

🗞 Snapchat AI Content Tools: Snapchat has released new features to empower users to get creative and have more visually engaging conversations. Users can now utilize AI to generate Snaps describing imaginative scenes to send friends simply by typing a few words. An AI-powered camera tool also lets users broaden the frame if an image is accidentally zoomed in too close. Additionally, Snapchat's generative AI selfies called "Dreams" now allow friends to create the images collaboratively. Snapchat+ subscribers gain exclusive access to a free monthly pack of eight Dreams. These capabilities aim to inspire more meaningful connections between friends through innovative visual storytelling tools and effects. The features are rolling out globally now, though regional availability may vary. By leveraging AI in creative ways, Snapchat continues building products to spark visual self-expression and deeper conversations. Source: Snap

🗞 Threads Decentralization Experiment: An active test is making posts from Threads accounts available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol. Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact, and it will help content reach more people. Source: Mark Zuckerberg via Threads

🗞 Threads EU Expansion: Threads, the private messaging app owned by Meta, is expanding to more European countries. People in the European Union can now create a Threads profile connected to their Instagram account to access full functionality, including posting and interacting with content. Alternatively, they can use Threads without a profile, which allows browsing posts, searching accounts, and reporting content but does not allow creating posts or commenting. Source: Meta 

🗞 Fact-Checked Threads: Meta will empower third-party fact-checkers to review and rate false information directly on Threads starting early next year. Currently, fact-checkers can only extend ratings from Facebook and Instagram to identical Threads posts. New controls will also allow US Threads users to choose how much fact-checked or sensitive content appears in their feed, consistent with settings recently launched on Facebook and Instagram. Settings carry over across apps—so reducing sensitive content on Instagram also reduces it on Threads. Source: Meta

🗞 YouTube Ad Revenue Sharing: YouTube recently removed a snippet of code that publicly disclosed whether a YouTube channel is receiving payments from advertisements and subscriptions through the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). While ads appear on many YouTube videos and channels, only those creators who are part of the YPP receive a share of the ad revenue generated. The code that was removed allowed third-party services, such as the "Is YouTube Channel Monetized?" Chrome extension to detect which channels were enrolled in the YPP and benefiting from video monetization. Without the code snippet, there are no clear alternative methods available for third parties to identify which channels are earning ad and subscription revenue through YouTube's partner program. Source: Wired

Did You Know?

The most expensive spice in the world, saffron, comes from crocus flowers.