✅ Weekend Update: Why Meta Still Matters For Marketers

GM dorks,

Welcome back to the weekend edition of that newsletter you know isn’t written by AI bc it didn’t wish you a happy “juluary”

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ Q2’s Top 5 Content Formats 👀

→ Why Meta Still Matters For Marketers ✅

→ Optimizing For AI Overviews— Worth It? 🤔

→ Are Consumers Cool w/ AI in Marketing Yet? 🤖

→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

As someone who is constantly testing and experimenting with different SEO strategies, I recently decided to spend $60 on 2500 backlinks to see if they were worth the investment. Unfortunately, the links turned out to be of poor quality and my rankings immediately dropped. However, I believe there may be a way to salvage these backlinks and use them in certain processes. Tune in for more details.

​YouTube​​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ Here’s the latest on AI Overviews btw…

- Google's AI Overviews are showing up less often and citing more sources, after Google “dropped AIOs across almost every industry by an average of two-thirds,” showing 50-66% fewer AIOs in general. Also, the AIO leans heavily on the top web search result(s) for its content.

- Worth noting that AI overviews rollout “coincided with” a significant drop in mobile searches. Hm. Coincidence. For sure. ICYMI, this comes from SparkToro’s 2024 Zero-Click Search Study, which is worth a look-over.

- Who knows how its future will evolve, but many think it’s worth optimizing for AIOs. I mean— why not, right? Some highlights include: in general, using an authoritative tone of voice, quotes, and statistics; for shopping queries, focusing on “your merchant feed, product reviews, subreddits, like Reddit and forums where people are talking about your product, or classic affiliate listicles”; and for local queries “directories, proximity, making sure that you're actually in the area, and then showing up in places like geographical subreddit.”

For more (including some caveats) click through.

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ If you need a reminder that Facebook still matters for marketers, here are 40+ reasons why. Here are three particularly good reasons:

- “Facebook is the world’s most-used social platform in 2024, with over 3 billion global active users”
- “64.1% of Facebook Android users open the app every day”
- “Among active Facebook users, 53.8% say they use the platform to follow or research brands and products. This ranks the platform second behind Instagram (62.7%) and ahead of TikTok (47.4%)”

→ Sprout’s Q2 Consumer Pulse survey is full of gems, ie:

- for both Millennials and Gen Z, the top 3 content types in terms of engagement are Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, and TikTok posts
- for Gen X, it’s Facebook videos, Instagram Reels, and Instagram Stories
- and finally, for Boomers, you guessed it— Facebook Videos, Facebook Live (lol), and Instagram Reels & Stories (tied for 3rd)

And finally… the top 5 content styles in Q2 of 2024 were:

1. “Edutainment”
2. “Posts using memes”
3. “Serialized content”
4. “One-off video skits”
5. “Interactive content like polls and stickers.”

→ Here’s a use of AI that everybody can agree is pretty cool: YouTube’s updated eraser tool removes copyrighted music without impacting other audio.

→ Ah, how times change. It’s been a while since this section was filled to the brim w/ Elon drama, so here’s a dash for old time’s sake: Elon is denying that his tweets “misled Twitter investors ahead of purchase,” because the accusation “makes no sense…” you see, he “simply misunderstood the Securities Exchange Act when he delayed filing a Rule 13 disclosure of his nearly 10 percent ownership stake in Twitter in March 2022.”

AI Insight 🤖

→ Resistance is futile when it comes to AI, but it’s still worth noting that - according to YouGov data- about 65% of consumers are still not cool with AI “editing product images” and “creating a virtual ambassador.” When it comes to using AI to produce advertising descriptions and taglines and “decide media placements of ads” on the other hand, over 40% are okay with it.

AKA: graphic designers and brand ambassadors, you’re safe for now. But copywriters and advertising pros… watch out.

→ After a rough couple of weeks on the defensive, OpenAI is shooting back at the mainstream media, seeking NYT's "source material" and requesting the paper “show how original its copyrighted articles are.”

→ Oh yeah, and re: the Sprout report mentioned before, this is relevant as well: “83% of consumers agree that AI-generated content will make their social feeds more saturated than they already are” and “80% agree that AI-generated content will add to misinformation on social media.”

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

​​

1238 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 6J3
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​