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It’s Great 🛶 Lakes Awareness Day, Reader! Can you name all five?

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for customer acquisition

• Optimizing ▶️ YouTube content and strategy

• TikTok 🚀 launches new offerings to its Pulse ads suite

• 4 more 🤳 Instagram stickers

• 📣 Additional industry news from X, YouTube, and more

Are you looking to find more clients or customers for your business? Is paid lead generation not working for you? Consider a demand generation strategy instead.

Lead generation is about getting a phone number, email, or form filled out and then figuring out what to do with it. Demand generation is about laying an organic foundation and then using ads to scale.

The 4-Step Demand Generation Process

Step 1: Send cold emails or LinkedIn messages to prospects.

Step 2: Regularly post organic content on LinkedIn from your personal profile (not your company page).

Step 3: Create searchable content like YouTube videos, blog posts, or podcast episodes.

Step 4: Scale with ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Today's tip is inspired by Philip Ilic, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

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How to Improve Your YouTube Video Strategy

Are you looking to reach a broader audience on YouTube? Want to make sure the content you create resonates with your target audience?

Growing a successful YouTube channel takes time, effort, and a strategic approach guided by analytics.

Track These 3 YouTube Metrics

When you first dive into your YouTube analytics, seeing all the numbers and graphs can be overwhelming. However, not all metrics are equally important. Focusing on these three metrics can help you make data-driven decisions:

Traffic Source: Understanding where your views are coming from is crucial for creating content that reaches more viewers. Do most of your views come from YouTube searches, suggested videos, or external websites? 

If a significant portion of your traffic comes from search, people actively seek the content you're creating. In this case, you should double down on optimizing your titles, descriptions, and tags for search. 

If most of your views are from suggested videos, YouTube recommends your content to viewers who are watching similar videos. To maximize this traffic source, focus on creating engaging content that keeps viewers watching until the end.

Click-Through Rate: Your click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on your video after seeing it shown somewhere on YouTube, such as in search results or suggested videos. 

A high CTR means your title and thumbnail are doing a good job of attracting viewers and enticing them to click. 

If your CTR is low, experiment with different thumbnail styles and titles to see what works best for your audience.

Watch Time: Watch time is the total time people spend watching your video. It's a key metric that YouTube uses to determine how well your video is performing and how often to recommend it to other viewers. The longer people watch your video, the more valuable it is in YouTube's eyes. 

To improve your watch time, use storytelling techniques, add visual elements like b-roll footage and graphics, and include clear calls to action that encourage viewers to watch more of your videos.

4 Tips to Optimize Your Older Videos

If you have videos that aren't getting many views or have low engagement, don't give up on them!

You can breathe new life into your old content and attract new viewers with a few simple tweaks:

Update the Title and Description: Your video's title and description are the first things people see when they come across your content. Make sure they accurately reflect your video and include relevant keywords that people might be searching for.

Pro Tip: Avoid using clickbait titles that don't deliver on their promise, which can lead to high bounce rates and lower watch times.

Design a New Thumbnail: Your thumbnail is like a mini movie poster for your video. It should be eye-catching and visually appealing and give viewers a clear idea of what your video is about.

Use high-quality images that are in focus and avoid using too much text, as it can be hard to read on smaller screens, and consider adding a human element, such as a face or an expressive pose, to create an emotional connection with potential viewers.

Add Custom Timestamps: If your video covers multiple topics or has distinct sections, adding timestamps to your description makes it easy for viewers to jump to the specific parts they're interested in and can help improve overall watch time. Timestamps also make your video more scannable and can improve its search ranking for specific keywords. 

To add timestamps, start with 00:00 and then list the different sections of your video along with their corresponding times (e.g., "1:30 - Tips for creating engaging thumbnails").

Today's advice is provided with insights from Justin Brown, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

Want the Latest Social Marketing News? 

If news is your thing, check out the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. Hosted by Jerry Potter, it’s the longest-running weekly talk show dedicated to social media marketing. Each week, Jerry covers the latest news across all social platforms. 

Discover what’s happening now in social marketing so you can boost your reach, engagement, and sales.  

I’m ready for the latest social marketing updates.

🗞 TikTok Pulse: TikTok has introduced new offerings in its TikTok Pulse ads suite, including Max Pulse, which allows campaigns to run adjacent to the top 4% of trending content across all categories; Pulse Lineups, which enable brands to associate with specific content genres and seasonal or cultural moments; and Pulse Premiere, which places ads alongside content from premium publisher partners. Source: TikTok for Business

🗞 Instagram Stories Stickers: Instagram introduced four new stickers for its Stories feature, aiming to provide users with creative ways to connect with friends and share their interests. The "Add Yours Music" sticker combines the popular "Add Yours" feature with the music sticker, allowing users to share their favorite songs and discover their friends' top tunes. The "Frames" sticker turns photos into instant prints, requiring followers to shake their phones to reveal the content inside. The "Reveal" sticker enables users to post hidden stories that can only be uncovered when friends send them a direct message. Lastly, the "Cutouts" sticker allows users to transform parts of any video or photo into a unique sticker that can be added to their Stories or Reels, with the cutouts being saved for future use. Source: Instagram

🗞 Threads Quotes Controls: Threads has introduced a new feature that allows users to control who can quote their posts. As of Saturday morning, the quote limiting feature was not yet visible on the desktop web browser version of Threads, but it is accessible through the mobile app. The quote and reply controls are integrated into a single dropdown menu, where users can choose to open the conversation to "Anyone," restrict it to "Profiles you follow," or limit it to "Mentioned only." Source: TechCrunch

🗞 X’s New Blocking Feature: X has announced an update to its blocking feature. Under the new system, if a user who has blocked you replies to one of your posts, you can now view their reply. Source: @XEng via X

🗞 YouTube GenAI Content Inspiration: A new AI-powered tool on YouTube’s Studio desktop platform aims to help creators generate content ideas more easily by providing suggestions based on their audience's preferences and the creator's past content. The AI tool will surface ideas for topics and content that the creator's viewers are interested in seeing more of, new creative angles for content that the creator hasn't explored before, and outlines and talking points to help creators kickstart their video creation process. The experimental tool is currently being rolled out to a small group of English-language channels. Source: YouTube

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Did You Know?

Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario cover more than 94K square miles, holding nine-tenths of the United States' fresh water supply and one-fifth of the world's.