🗞 What's New: WeWork is planning to go public (again)

The global coworking giant is currently valued at $9B:

• Although this is a significant decline from its 2019 valuation of $47B, WeWork’s recent merger will provide it with roughly $1.3B. With tech giants planning to return to work in-person as early as this week, investors believe that WeWork is primed finally to achieve profitability.
• Influencer marketing will hit $13.8B in 2021, according to a new report. But with influencers coming in nano, micro, and macro, what size is best for you? This expert says that influencers with smaller audiences tend to be more influential and cost-effective for founders.
• Coder and YouTuber Jessica Chan went from 4K YouTube subscribers to 140K in less than a year. One of her top tips? Watch your own videos before uploading them. If you're bored at any point, know that your subscribers will be extra bored. Time to add that beautiful B-roll footage!

Want to share your ideas with over 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🗄 WeWork is Planning to Go Public (Again)

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Global coworking giant WeWork is planning to go public.

After merging with SPAC BowX, WeWork is currently valued at $9B, down from its 2019 valuation of $47B. Though diminished, WeWork's 2021 debut may have apt timing.

Path to IPO

The no-background: Following Adam Neumann’s scandal-ridden tenure as chairman, WeWork is under new, belt-tightening leadership. New WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani slashed the company's headcount by 2/3s, cut administrative expenses by $1.1B, and reduced operating expenses by $400M.

The reopening bet: WeWork’s public offering arrives as vaccinations ramp up across the US and large tech companies (including Facebook and Microsoft) make plans to return to the office. Despite losing $3.2B last year, WeWork claims to be well-positioned globally to capitalize on the return of in-person workdays.

The IPO: WeWork’s merger with BowX will provide it with roughly $1.3B, including a fully committed $800M private placement investment, according to BowX chairman Vivek Ranadivé:

Big tech office plans: While planning is fluid, Facebook, Uber, and Microsoft may be bringing back some staff on a voluntary basis starting as early as this week. Other companies, including Salesforce, Pinterest, Google, and Zendesk, are looking at August or September as a possible timeline for staffers’ return.

Silicon Valley’s back-to-the-office outline will likely hearten WeWork investors, as enterprise clients are now more than half of WeWork's clientele. But that hasn't stopped some Redditors from predicting a WeWork downfall.

WeWork by the numbers:

• WeWork reported $3.2B in revenue both in 2019 and 2020.
• WeWork closed 106 locations in 2020 but still operates 851 offices in 152 cities.
• WeWork has a $4B total sales pipeline and $1.5B in committed 2021 revenue.
• WeWork has raised more than $20B in venture capital.

The scandal: It’s been about 18 months since WeWork was embroiled in scandal.

Founder and former chairman Adam Neumann allegedly maintained a toxic workplace and indiscriminately burned through cash (exhibit A: forcing the company to pay $5.9M to use the trademarked word "We"). A new documentary details the odious culture allegedly fostered by Adam.

WeWork investor SoftBank, which owns more than 80% of the company, paid Neumann a whopping $1.7B to step down. While SoftBank has placed billion-dollar bets on the likes of Uber, Grab, and Didi Chuxing, WeWork's upcoming IPO is a meaningful development for bank as it hopes to recoup its nearly $16B WeWork investment.

What are your thoughts on the future of WeWork? Share in the comments.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🍎 Apple's new software update will allow users to disable data-tracking, which will massively impact the digital ad industry.

🌊 Facebook and Google are building build cables under the sea to boost internet connection.

🎭 Twitter is testing a new range of emoji reactions to tweets.

🏦 The Union Bank of Switzerland says central banks must start issuing secured digital currencies, as cash may become outdated and irrelevant.

📵 This company is offering $2,400 for doing a 24-hour digital detox.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🗣 10 Ways to Successfully Use Influencer Marketing

from the Demand Curve newsletter by Julian Shapiro

Influencer marketing is expected to hit $13.8B in 2021, according to a recent report. This is an increase from $9.7B in 2020. With companies large and small seeing major returns from influencer campaigns, here's a cheat sheet for founders on successfully utilizing influencer marketing.

1. Seek relationships with fast-growing influencers: They'll likely charge less than inflated, slower-growth accounts, and they’ll get you in front of their rapidly growing audiences.

2. Work with creators, not "influencers:" Creators are craftspeople. They are writers, photographers, artists, etc. They put more value into the content they create than legacy social media celebrities do.

Simply put, they care more about the quality of their craft than their follower count, which can mean more engagement and commerce.

3. Seek long-term relationships over one-off campaigns: Brands that are repeatedly shown to an influencer's loyal following build deeper affinity over time.

Find influencers who want to be a true representative of your brand. This leads to more consumer trust in the long run.

4. Start with nano- and micro-influencers: Most startups should start with nano- or micro-influencers rather than macro-influencers. What's the difference?

• Nano: ~10k followers or less
• Micro: ~10-100k
• Macro: 100k+

As influencers grow, their audiences become more diverse. When this occurs, it's harder to deliver personalized messages, which causes a decline in engagement and conversion.

Influencers with smaller followings are more accessible and trusted than their celebrity counterparts. You’ll also get better targeting (higher conversion) for a lower fee since they have less reach.

5. Create campaigns aligned with your influencers' values: Brands that win with influencer marketing have figured out that they get a higher ROI when they create campaigns that make their influencers feel like they're promoting themselves. Here's how:

• Start small: Run giveaways with your influencers. Let them provide value (free product) to their audiences.
• Then scale: Create products with your best, long-term influencers. They're brand ambassadors. Run a collaboration. Get them to invest in your brand.

6. Offer creative control: Rather than providing word-for-word scripts, give influencers creative control over content.

Why?

• The content needs to be authentic.
• The influencer knows what resonates with their audience. Their creativity and perspective can mean a better chance of going viral and getting good engagement.

7. Use a hybrid pricing model: Brands are tired of wasting money on campaigns that lack a clear return, so some are moving away from paying lump sums for creator posts.

Instead, they compensate influencers based on the conversions they drive (like an affiliate model).

It doesn't have to be one or the other, though. Try a hybrid approach:

• Pay some money upfront for the creator's content.
• Then, also pay a percentage of each sale that comes in through their affiliate link.

This can lead to long-term, win/win influencer partnerships.

8. Influencer marketing = designing a community: You’re working with humans, not dashboards.

Each influencer is a relationship. Put in the work to find the right influencers. Once you find great long-term influencer partners, incentivize them to activate other great influencers.

Here's how:

• Create a referral system for them to sign up other influencers.
• Give them a percentage of sales generated by influencers they activate.

9. Know when to gift: Gifting = sending influencers products for free.

This often works best for nano-influencers who usually aren't "full-time" influencers. If they like your product, ask them to post about it.

Brands get low-cost exposure since their cost is inventory (not cash).

10. Use a survey to improve attribution: Attribution is notoriously difficult in influencer marketing.

You can try to see how much traffic/sales come in through influencers' URL or discount codes. But this doesn’t always tell the whole story. People may hear about you from an influencer but decide to purchase later.

The workaround?

Add a post-purchase attribution survey. Figure out how many people first heard about you from an influencer.

Do you work with influencers? What are some of your best tips on building relationships with the right people to represent your brand?

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Demand Curve for more.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

Copywriting tip: Replace adjectives with data.

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

📹 This Founder Went from 4K to 140K YouTube Subscribers in a Year

By Jessica Chan

I'm Jessica Chan, founder of Coder Coder, a blog that helps beginners learn frontend web development.

Going viral on YouTube

I launched the blog in summer 2017. I also started a YouTube channel alongside the blog, and published one video that year. I ended up leaving the channel mostly dormant for the next year or two, only posting every few months.

In March 2020, when I got back into creating YouTube content more consistently, I had nearly 4K subscribers.

By January 2021, I hit 100K subscribers, and I'm currently at over 140K. I typically get ~300K views/month.

What happened in that year? I had three videos go viral:

The first video was "Learn web development as an absolute beginner." It was published in 2019 and didn't grow much at first. However, when I started posting more consistently in March 2020 (you can see the gray squares for each upload), the YouTube algorithm randomly decided to show it to lots of people. That video now has just over 900K views, and I'm anticipating it will hit 1M in a couple of months.

You can also see in that graph that I didn't upload any videos between July and November. I was taking care of a family member that summer and fall, and just didn't have the bandwidth to think about content creation during that time. (Everything is fine now, by the way!)

A few months after I started making videos again, I had two videos go viral at the same time. They were both time-lapses of me building a website. The first video was only 90 seconds long, and was actually a clip of the second, longer video.

Here are my takeaways for growing on YouTube!

Pick a niche and game the algorithm

The most important thing is to know what your channel will be about. Don't mix in random vlogs on gardening with technical SEO videos. It will only confuse YouTube and annoy your audience.

However, you can be flexible within your general category. For example, in the coding niche you can mix in coding tutorials, gear reviews, and career advice.

Know your audience

Knowing your audience is super important. If you're going for the educational angle, find out what pain points they struggle with the most. Spend time where your audience hangs out online and see what questions they ask. Slack channels, Reddit, Facebook groups, Quora, and message forums are gold mines of information.

Also, be sure to read your comments to see what resonated with your audience and what didn't. Responding to comments also helps with engagement!

The first 30 seconds are the most important, as the majority of viewers will click out of the video as soon as it starts. Don't waste time in the intro of your video. Get into the meat of it as quickly as possible.

Another tip is to watch your own videos before uploading. If you notice your own attention dropping at any point, that's a good bet that your audience will click away during those moments too.

Good writing and editing > fancy video effects

My videos have lots of animations and a pretty high production value. Spoiler alert: I'm married to a professional video editor/animator, which helps! However, while fancy video effects can help keep things fresh, the most important part of the video is the content itself.

You can still create an engaging video even if you're not experienced in production. Try to cut out long pauses and make sure your intro is brief and to the point. Also, experiment with background music that adds energy to your videos. YouTube has an audio library with tracks that you can safely add to your videos without the risk of getting a copyright strike.

Also, try adding in B-roll, which is secondary video footage that enhances your main footage. B-roll could be shots of the location, objects, or stock video. One popular place to get stock video is StoryBlocks.

Ad lib speaking or scripted?

I'm a terrible off-the-cuff speaker. It doesn't really come naturally to me at all.

One way around that is to script out videos before recording. It does take a lot of time to write out exact word, but it makes the recording process a lot quicker and less painful. There are reasonably-priced teleprompters that hook onto your DSLR camera. I use one called the Padcaster Parrot that works really well.

Whether you're reading from a teleprompter or speaking naturally, always keep things moving. Know what your video will be about before hitting the record button and keep things focused on that.

One writing technique that helps is to use open loops in your writing. This means posing some sort of question or problem and resolving it at the end of the video. Your audience will keep watching to see what happens.

Quality over quantity

People often think that to succeed on YouTube you have to keep feeding the algorithm as many videos as possible. They may try to create something like 3-5+ videos per week, but that's a recipe for burnout.

I've found that most of the YouTubers in my niche stick to 1-2 videos per week. I personally do one video per week, and I don't anticipate changing that anytime soon.

While it is good to have some consistency on YouTube, quality is more important than frequency. Mediocre videos won't keep viewers around, and therefore have a much lower chance of getting picked up by the algorithm.

Be sure to study successful channels and adapt techniques that may be relevant to your own content, and take advantage of all the analytics provided by YouTube Studio.

I hope this has helped you if you're interested in getting into YouTube. AMA!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Julian Shapiro, Harry Dry, and Jessica Chan for contributing posts. —Channing