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It’s National ☕ Hot Chocolate Day, Reader! Pro tip: Add a splash of vanilla… you’re welcome.

In today’s edition:

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

• Attracting and nurturing fans on 🤳 social media

• Horizontal video 👀 incentivized on TikTok

• 📊 Meta rolls out engaged-view attribution

• 📣 Additional industry news from TikTok, YouTube, and Yelp.

Struggling to make TikTok ads work? Wondering why your ads do well initially, then quickly stop performing? TikTok ads have a very short shelf life compared to ads on other platforms. However, TikTok ads make up for their brief effectiveness window by providing incredible reach and low costs per ad.

This means advertisers need to frequently refresh their TikTok ad creative, launching new videos every 1–2 weeks to maintain peak performance. 

Having to create new TikTok ad videos so often may seem intimidating. However, there are ways to make this workload more manageable:

Maintaining Fresh TikTok Ads

• Use Content From Collaborators: Work with a network of content creators and collaborators to develop fresh videos, instead of producing everything in-house. 

• Recycle Successful Formats: Reuse video formats and content topics that have proven successful while varying the actual video clip.

• Focus on Authenticity: Concentrate more on getting real, authentic content out rather than worrying about high production quality. Authenticity is highly valued on TikTok.

Today's tip is inspired by Chase Chappell.

Is Content Part of Your Strategy? 

92% of the marketers we surveyed said they want to learn more about content marketing. That's a really big number. Based on this data, we've recruited some well-known content marketers to speak at Social Media Marketing World next month, including:

Joe Pulizzi: Founder of Content Marketing World

Ann Handley: Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs

Robert Rose: Chief Strategy Advisor at the Content Marketing Institute

These are just a few of the many content marketing pros who will show you what you need to know to thrive in 2024. 

I’m ready to embrace content.

An Organic Social Framework to Turn Casual Followers Into Brand Evangelists

Not getting the results you want from your organic social efforts? In today’s crowded digital landscape, simply having social media channels is not enough. To stand out, brands need an intentional organic strategy that fosters genuine engagement and loyalty.  

Ground Your Team to Organically Nurture Fans

Step 1: Mission & Goals 

The first step is to define your mission—your social media goals. You must clearly articulate why you use social channels and what you aim to achieve. Next, outline how to leverage social media tactics to support your broader business goals. State the goal first, then explain your social media game plan to drive it. 

You could say: Our goal is to generate $50,000 in revenue in Q1 from our new product launch. To support this on social media, we will:

• Post 1 Instagram story per week

• Conduct early product reviews with fans

• Record and post fan reactions weekly

• Launch a micro-influencer campaign

• Reevaluate performance at the end of Q1 

If your mission is to create loyal brand evangelists, your organic social media strategy could be to lift up your customers so that they actively promote your products and services. Your tactics could be to do a weekly giveaway or amplify your customers' special activities—interact with your customers so that they develop a deep loyalty and love for your brand.

Whatever your mission, it serves as your guiding “North Star” for evaluating future opportunities and requests. Simply posting whatever, whenever, dilutes your impact. So, anchor on your purpose before creating anything. Then, if someone asks you to promote some random event, you can easily say no if it doesn’t align with your stated mission. 

Step 2: Messaging 

Each piece of content on social media contributes to the broader story you tell followers about your brand. People are going to scroll through your content three times before they decide whether they want to follow you or not. Having diverse posts that map back to your goals and resonate visually creates a memorable, high-impact social narrative. 

To assess your overall brand story, ask yourself these questions:  

• What story am I telling potential new followers in my first three scrolls? 

• Am I showcasing diverse facets of my brand? 

• Is my content entertaining and engaging?

You don’t need an elaborate story with every post. The key is having an overarching unified story that aligns with your goals. Rather than getting fixated on single posts, look at your entire body of work and evaluate whether the collection clearly reaches your social media objectives.

Step 3: Process Management 

To consistently execute an organic social strategy, outline your steps from ideation to post-publishing that work for your team.

Detailing your processes enables smooth handoffs if you're unavailable and sets expectations with internal partners. If someone requests you "quickly post this", you can point them to the process guide detailing when and how to submit content ideas. 

Pro Tip: Create an official playbook to educate partners on ideal timelines for pitches and content needs. A playbook can also scale your operation by allowing others to follow the blueprint easily.

Step 4: Monitor Mentions, Comments, and Conversations 

The work doesn’t end once you hit “post.” Continual monitoring builds on your metrics by directly surveying social conversations, comments, and mentions. This real-time feedback lets you keep a pulse on your fans’ needs and evolving perceptions.

Carefully review comments on your content and notice who replies to each one. Then, visit those profiles to see who is a customer and community member and prioritize their feedback accordingly.

Jenny also suggests checking broader discussions on Reddit and Google searches. For example, if you’re creating a new hashtag, Google it first to ensure no unintended meanings exist. 

Today's advice is provided with insights from Jenny Li Fowler.

Are You on the Fence?

If you’ve considered attending Social Media Marketing World (February 18–20), but don’t think your boss will say yes, we’ve got you covered.

We know how hard it is to persuade your employer to send you to an event like this. That's why we’ve created tools and resources to help you make your case. Discover a script and pre-crafted email that many attendees say was the reason they got a “yes”.  

Help me convince my boss.

🗞 Engaged-View Attribution From Meta: Meta is introducing a new attribution setting called "Engaged-view" to help advertisers measure the performance of their video ad campaigns. Engaged-view counts a conversion when someone watches at least 10 seconds of a video ad (or 97% of ads less than 10 seconds) and then converts within 1 day. It is available for all ad placements except unskippable in-stream video ads. Source: Meta

🗞 TikTok’s Push for Horizontal Video: TikTok has prompted some creators with a message saying it will "boost" horizontal videos over a minute long within 72 hours of posting. This viewership boost will be available to creators who have been on TikTok for at least 3 months, as long as the videos are not advertisements or from political parties. Source: The Verge

🗞 TikTok Shopping Feature in Early Testing: TikTok is testing a new feature to transform user videos into shopping opportunities, as part of its plan to grow its eCommerce presence in the United States. The technology automatically identifies objects in videos and then prompts viewers to explore similar products for purchase on TikTok Shop. This diverges from TikTok's previous method of only letting certain influencers/brands tag items. TikTok incentivizes creators to promote shoppable products, but this new feature links products more organically in regular users' videos for a better browsing experience. Early testing accuracy has been inconsistent though—unrelated items have been tagged as "similar" in some cases. Source: ReadWrite

🗞 AI-Powered Summaries on Yelp: Yelp is releasing new features to enhance visual content and discovery in its iOS app with plans to later roll these out on Android. This winter release includes AI-based features that highlight relevant reviews for search queries and generate summaries of businesses based on recent reviews. Source: Yelp

🗞 YouTube Content Creation Updates: YouTube has launched several creator-focused updates including expanding content gaps to desktop Studio to help identify video ideas, enabling creators to showcase top community clips on their channel pages, improving playlist analytics to understand performance within playlists, and the ability to schedule members-only videos to automatically go public later. The content gaps feature now on desktop helps creators identify topics that lack quality videos so they can get video ideas. The top clips feature lets creators showcase fan-made clips from their content to encourage more community interaction. The playlist analytics provide insights into how much viewership can be attributed to playlists themselves. Finally, creators can now schedule members-only videos to go public later, automatically notifying members first and then the general public upon the scheduled public release date. Source: YouTube

Did You Know?

The city of Milwaukee was formed on this date in 1846.