Raisin Bread by MarketerHire - A haunting paid Twitter test 👻

Last week’s Facebook outage was “the incrementality test you were too afraid to run,” as Incredible Health’s head of growth Garrison Yang put it.

“Test” “results” were all over the place. At MarketerHire, they were… good?!

“Our predicted loss in volume was pretty much 100% accurate,” director of paid media Marc Barraza said.

In this issue...

• September 2021 hiring trends

• A new way to use paid Twitter 

• Should your brand partner with a college athlete?

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EXPERT Q&A

Can promoted tweets boost your personal brand?

Promoted tweets are… controversial. In last week’s poll, Raisin Bread readers were split roughly 50-50 on whether they work for marketing teams.

Do they work for individuals trying to boost their Twitter followings?

Relationship Hero founder and CEO Liron Shapira is finding out. He promotes tweets from his personal account that say things like…

• “Hey” (high performer!) 

• “Hey Arnold was a solid show.” 

• “By the time you click this tweet it'll already be deleted.”

We took a peek inside his experiment.

His core KPI

Shapira mainly tracks price per new follower, but also sees value in raw impressions. 

His results to date

A few months into his experiment, Shapira is spending $50 per new follower.

His goal: to optimize his creative further and get that down to $10.

How he targets his Twitter campaigns

Shapira goes after “a lookalike audience of people that I like on Twitter” — people like Paul Graham, Robin Hanson and Pomp. 

“I figure those will be quality followers,” he said — a.k.a. not crypto bots. 

What he’s learned about promoted tweet creative 

From testing various concepts, Shapira has learned…

• Images stop the scroll. “A picture of my Frenchie on his leash… was reasonably popular,” Shapira said. 

• Unexpected creative grabs attention. Promoted tweets that don’t look like ads — with no branding or CTA — spark curiosity. 

• Funny promoted tweets get an organic signal boost. There’s a Twitter account with 170K followers that highlights weird promoted tweets; Shapira’s have been featured multiple times, he said.

Why he’s still investing in promoted tweets

It’s more valuable to target future mutuals on Twitter, Shapira noted, than on other social platforms. 

It’s a hub for important discourse: Why else would CEOs spend so much time there? 

(Worth noting: Elon Musk has a verified Twitter, but no Instagram.) 

What he’s testing next

Shapira has plans to try two new creative approaches… 

• Uncanny targeting. Think ad creative aimed at only five people, that sparks a “How does he know?!” reaction.

• A cash giveaway. “The people that I try to target tend to not get that excited about five bucks,” Shapira said. But “I'm still optimistic that... I can deploy $10 per follower to create some value.”

Our takeaway? 

To get the most out of promoted tweets, stand out from the crowd creatively, try Twitter’s lookalike audiences and test, test, test.

TWEET TREAT

Is mayo the new oatmilk?

People love to be outraged on social media — and this week, Hellman’s gave them a reason to be with this Helltweet. 

It got 2.5K+ quote tweets and 1.5K+ replies. 

It’s risky to make your product sound disgusting, but there was historical evidence — if the Hellmann’s team looked for it — that the tweet would perform. 

A brief history of drinking mayo

• 2021: In May, a user posted in r/unpopularopinion that “[w]atered down mayo is better than milk, in a hot chocolate drink” — and got 4.3K comments and 20K+  upvotes.

• 2017: A Philadelphia sportswriter admitted to trying mayo in his coffee. His tweet gets 450+ QTs, 80+ replies, and coverage in Food & Wine, Today, and (somehow?!) Business Insider.

• 2011: A Reddit post about mayo tasting “awesome” in coffee got 22 replies — all negative. The original poster deleted their account, but arguably started this trend.

Our takeaway? 

Social posts about drinking mayo have been doing numbers for 10+ years. 

They hit that perfect, unbearable-yet-plausible note that sparks major engagement. But also… 🤮.

SMALL BITES

TikTok 3 ways, tortilla crystals, and Tesla in Texas

Shoppers are skipping the consideration stage because #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. 

Today in brand synergy: Spencer Pratt, Taco Bell and a tortilla chip crystal. 

Brands beware: launching NFTs can get legally tricky.

One TikTok strategy: work with “thousands” of influencers per month.

Around 10% of UK consumers shop for clothes on TikTok. 

Google to creators: no more monetizing content that questions climate change.

What can James Bond teach brands about music and memory? 

Tesla’s move to Texas could be an “appeal to Middle America.” 

YouTube creators can now visualize the most engaging parts of their videos. 

The Squid Game promo machine even includes merch at Walmart. ​

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FROM OUR BLOG

Traditional influencer or NCAA athlete: which one is for you?

The NCAA made a change to its rulebook this year, and brands can now partner with student athletes — all 500,000 of them. 

But working with student athletes isn’t quite the same as working with an established influencer, like the D’Amelio sisters or Emma Chamberlain. 

So which one should you work with? Let’s assess — give yourself 1 point for every (a), and 2 for every (b).

Do you want to be associated with hometown heroes? 

1. Yes, our customers love our local athletes.

2. No, our customers don’t respond to that. 

Do you want to promote alcohol, tobacco, or CBD? 

1. No, we’re PG-13. Max.

2. Yes, that’s important to our brand.  

Do you want to get highlighted on local news? 

1. Yes, we want our t-shirts at press conferences.

2. No, we want national coverage only.

If you scored < 5, you might want to connect with an NCAA athlete. 

How, though? We talked to three experts and published a deep dive on collaborating with student athletes.

DATA SNACK

September 2021’s most-hired marketing roles

When brands hired marketers in September, they had one eye on iOS updates and the other on the holidays, according to MarketerHire’s data. 

What did that mean for specific roles? Well… ​

📈 Paid social media marketers’ slice of the hiring pie grew after shrinking in August. 

📈 Email marketers saw rising demand … 

📈 … and so did content marketers, for the second month in a row. 

Paid social media marketing grew 50% MoM

Since iOS 14.5, we’ve seen brands upping their content and email marketing hires — and hitting pause on paid social. 

But in September, paid social media marketing hires spiked. Here’s why, according to our sales team: 

• iOS workarounds: The savviest paid social media marketers have figured out how to work around iOS 14, like dropping personalized ad creative for a general-interest approach. 

• Lead gen: Brands hired paid social media marketers to generate leads for email subscriptions and drive traffic to new landing pages — all in preparation for higher November/December CPMs. 

Our takeaway? 

To prepare for Q4, brands invested in a tripod strategy that includes content, email marketing, and paid social — despite its iOS-related challenges.

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