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It’s National Bow Tie Day, Reader... Lookin’ at you Leslie Samuel, you dapper soul you!

In today’s edition:

• 💡 Today's Tip of the Day is for new product marketing

• 🤖 Customized GPTs for marketing

• Add text to photos on Instagram

• Threads tests disappearing posts

• 🗞️ Additional industry news from Instagram, YouTube, and more

Do you want to find out if there's a market for a new service? Wondering how social media can help?

The core questions to ask yourself are:

• Is my product or service addressing potential customers' real needs or desires?

• Can I get people to take concrete action to demonstrate interest quickly?

Test Demand With Paid Social

To validate demand for a new product, first decide how many initial sales will signal that people want what you're offering. 

Then, use targeted social media ads to drive views to a landing page where people can pre-order.

If you can get those pre-sales in 48 to 36 hours, you likely have something customers want, and you can move forward with development and a full marketing strategy.

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

Marketing Doesn’t Have to Be This Difficult!

There are lots of changes happening in marketing. If you aren't staying ahead of what's working, you risk being left behind. But there is a solution.

Join thousands of marketers from around the world at Social Media Marketing World and discover the latest strategies to improve your marketing. 

"My goal was just to learn as much as I can and build an action plan. Day one isn't even half over, and I have 24 pages of notes... front and back," said Janine Kraft.

"This is the BEST conference I have attended in over 20 years! I learned so much from quality speakers that I can take back and ramp up our marketing efforts," said Julie Harvey

I’m ready to make marketing easier.

How to Use Custom GPTs to Boost Your Marketing Efforts

Want to potentially triple your productivity? 

Custom GPTs allow you to accomplish the work of a larger team with fewer people, allowing you to work more efficiently and effectively. 

To create custom GPTs, you'll need a paid ChatGPT account. The lowest paid level allows you to create custom GPTs, the team level allows for sharing GPTs within a team, and the enterprise level offers more advanced features.

3 Levels of Custom GPTs for Marketers

Level 1: Tasks You Don't Want to Do

These GPTs handle routine tasks you know how to do but prefer not to. For example, you can train a GPT to understand the structure of webinar-related content and generate multiple pieces of content for a single webinar, such as email invitations, landing page copy, thank you emails, and content for your outreach team to use in their marketing. 

If you train your custom GPT to have opinions about what makes compelling webinar content, it can even suggest topics and provide feedback on subject lines.

Level 2: Tasks You Don't Know How to Do

These GPTs help with areas where you lack expertise. For example:

Revenue and Operations: Train this custom GPT on documentation from tools like HubSpot and Salesloft to provide specific guidance. For instance, if you need help connecting HubSpot to another tool like Zoom Info, you can ask for step-by-step instructions.

Paid Media Advertising: Train this custom GPT on Google pay-per-click advertising, LinkedIn ads, and other platforms. Then, program it to be skeptical of growing ad spend and to focus on key metrics like return on ad spend.

SEO: Train this custom GPT on the work of respected SEO experts and prompt it to help identify SEO optimization and suggest strategies.

Level 3: Strategic Guidance

These GPTs act as mentors or coaches, helping with high-level decision-making.

Virtual CMO: You can train a custom GPT on the works of marketing thought leaders like Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, and Robert Cialdini. Then, when you are faced with strategic decisions, you can discuss the options and ask it to consider different scenarios, potential outcomes, and competitive responses. This will help you think through complex issues more thoroughly.

2 Tips to Create Effective Custom GPTs

Use Credible Sources: When creating GPTs for unfamiliar topics, ask experts or use ChatGPT to identify reliable information sources. Then, train your GPT on these sources. You can also ask the AI for information on the primary issues and controversies in a field and the key figures representing different viewpoints.

Experiment With Different Approaches: To potentially get better output from your GPTs, try including phrases like "take your time" or "do this step by step." These prompts can lead to more thoughtful and detailed responses.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Russ Somers, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.

Midjourney Offers No-Cost Image Creation: Midjourney, a popular AI image generation service, has expanded access to its website, allowing all users to try the platform with a limited no-cost trial. Previously, the service was primarily available through Discord, with website access restricted to users who had generated a certain number of images. Now, new users can create approximately 25 images (at no cost) without an existing subscription. Source: VentureBeat

Instagram’s New In-App Editing Features: Instagram has added new editing features directly in the app. Users can now add text to photos and layer photos as stickers with customizable shapes, all within the post editor. For Reels and Stories, Instagram introduced new fonts, effects, and animations for text. Source: The Verge

Instagram Tips to Improve Content Performance: Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, recently shared tips to improve content performance on the platform. He advised that reposting Reels to Stories can help improve reach, as feed posts generally get more visibility than Stories due to less competition. However, he cautioned against overusing this strategy if it might annoy followers. Regarding Collab Posts, the ranking system currently favors the original collaborator slightly more than the account accepting the collaboration. Adam suggested that having the account with the larger following initiate the Collab Post could marginally boost performance. Source: Social Media Today

Meta Adds New Labels to Messenger Business Chat: Meta has added new labels to business chats in Messenger to differentiate them from personal conversations. A "Business Chat" label and privacy link now appear in these chats, clarifying that they're not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means information shared may be used for ad targeting and marketing. Meta states this update doesn't change their privacy policy or affect personal messages. Source: Social Media Today

Snap Launches iPad App: Snapchat has released an update that adds native iPad support. The app now runs full screen on iPadOS, offering a larger canvas for Snaps and friend lists. However, it's currently limited to portrait mode and may have some glitches. The no-cost app requires iOS 13 or later and is available on the App Store. Source: 9to5Mac

Threads Tests Disappearing Posts: Threads is testing 24-hour disappearing posts with a limited user group. The feature shows a timer and deletion banner on ephemeral posts and replies. Due to technical limitations, it won't be compatible with diverse sharing. Source: Alessandro Paluzzi via X

TikTok’s New AI Voiceovers: TikTok has launched a feature allowing users to create AI simulations of their own voices for video voiceovers. The technology requires minimal input to replicate a user's voice accurately. The AI-generated voice can be used for future clips and translated into other languages. Source: Social Media Today

X Tests Video Conferencing Tool: X is testing a video conferencing tool to compete with platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. Source: Tech Crunch

Sharing Video Timestamps on YouTube Mobile: YouTube mobile has added a new feature to its share sheet, allowing users to share specific video timestamps easily. The update introduces a toggle that, when enabled, generates a link to the current video time. Users can adjust the timestamp by scrubbing through the video timeline. This simplifies the previous process of sharing specific moments from videos on mobile devices, eliminating the need for manual time code additions or use of the limited "Clip" feature. The generated links follow YouTube's standard format and can be edited after copying if needed. Source: 9to5Google

YouTube’s New Q&A Shorts Series: YouTube has launched a new Q&A Shorts series to address common questions from creators about growing their presence on the platform. The series features YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie posting short videos with answers from Todd Beaupré, YouTube's Senior Director of Growth and Discovery. Four videos have been released so far, covering topics such as the importance of video descriptions and filenames, video categories, and keyword tags in relation to YouTube's algorithm. Source: Social Media Today

Did You Know?

On June 1, 1962, jousting became Maryland's official state sport.