Marketing Letter - 🤖 Weekend Update: Defining AI ROI

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that is so back rn:

stick around for recovery services fr fr.

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ Defining ROI in AI 🤖

→ March Update Wrapped: Making Sense of the Wreckage 👀

→ Back Off or Double Down: Is TikTok’s Time Ticking By? 🤔

→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​​This Week's Pod 🗣️🎙️​

In this episode, James and I cover our recent activities, Instagram Reels, YouTube strategies, Twitter growth, and community management challenges. We discuss the value of attending conferences and the lack of value in conference talks. We also address Reddit marketing challenges, local business partnerships, review impact on rankings, SEO course quality, and how content and user experience affect Google rankings. Come through.

​YouTube​

​Apple Podcast​

​Google Podcast​

​Spotify​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ It took over a week for the overlords to let us know, but the March Update is officially wrapped up, and things are looking post-apocalyptic af. FWIW, this article on how to “Debug drops in Google Search traffic” just came straight from the belly of the beast.

Word is the causes of loss of Search traffic are: "Large drop from an algorithmic update, site-wide security or spam issue," "Seasonality," "Technical issue across your site, changing interests," or "Reporting glitch ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

Yeah, you read that right. These MFs really said “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” and then dropped a “feedback form”-- go ahead and fill it out, even though we all know where that’s going:

→ Anyway, now that the update is complete, here’s an article on 6 things you should know:

1. Assess the impact on your site: get a visibility overview, monitor traffic and rankings, and analyze GSC data
2. Evaluate the market and gain industry insight: review changes in SERPs, monitor your competitors, and stay informed
3. Isolate the bad and the good: segment data, check URL directories, and compare and contrast
Click through for the rest.

→ Here are some vital stats from the update, in retrospect:

- Lasted 45 days
- targeted all types of content
- doesn't penalize, but "promotes or rewards great web pages" (lmao)
- "Google said it will result in a 45% reduction in low-quality unoriginal and unhelpful content in its search results"

→ Here’s a bizarre choice that doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose other than making publishers’ lives more difficult (other than massive major publishers, of course)... (aka a signature Google move)...: the Google Publisher Center is no longer letting you add publications manually. Now, Google says it will “automatically add eligible publishers and get around to removing ineligible publishers.

→ ICYMI:

AI Insight 🤖

→ If you’re wondering how marketers are thinking through ROI in terms of AI, this MarketingCharts analysis is pretty interesting.

Efficiency, Improved Customer Relations, and Effective Data Analysis are all slightly ahead of Improved Financial Gain, according to 1,200 marketers surveyed by Wakefield Research.

→ In case you’ve got any doubts that Perplexity is legit— Microsoft just banned its employees from using it. Welcome to the big leagues, Perplexity.

→ Adobe-heads rise up— Photoshop just added a “Generative Fill” function that you can use for instant custom image creation.

Social Media Round-up: TikTok Edition📲

→ According to the “Taking Stock With Teens Report,” Instagram has officially overtaken Snap for the silver medal re: the most popular app for young people. Once the USA nukes TikTok, gold may be up for grabs. Until then, TikTok reigns supreme, with 1 of every 6 teens on the app “almost constantly”-- society had a good run. Cash in while you still can.

→ On that note, here’s a piece on how to s-e-optimize your content for TikTok. Not only does this article unpack how to tailor your hashtags, keywords, thumbnails, and content to maximize engagement, but it also examines the sorts of KPIs that suit the platform best. Basics, like how to use the TikTok search bar to determine keyword ranking, are also explained. Good article.

→ A vital part of TikTok’s growth strategy in light of a potential US ban has been more focused on Europe— and it’s not off to a hot start. The new “Lite Rewards” pay-for-usage program has already been shut down on the continent, due to EU investigation.

→ FWIW— the word out of China is that ByteDance will go down fighting, and would rather TikTok be shut down in the USA than to sell off to an American bidder. In the meantime, expect them to “exhaust all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S.”

Jacky Chou​
Founder of Indexsy
hello@indexsy.com
Let's Connect on Twitter👇

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