30 June 2022 | Marketing
Inside man reveals IG best practices…
By
NEWS BITS
<aside> 💡 relevant platform updates and/or social media news, with your take on how it will affect the day-to-day of the typical social media manager.
</aside>
1) Instagram insider reveals 5 platform best practices 🔎
TLDR: Will Yoder is on the sports partnerships team at Meta + Instagram. According to Will, here are the top 5 Instagram best practices he repeats over and over again to brands using the platform:
- Posting cadence depends on the account. For example, “NBA/SportsCenter can post 20+ times per day,” but your brand might only get away with once per day.
- Pay attention to earnings calls. Yawn. Right? Will agrees, but advises to pay attention — earnings calls reveal the top priorities of the app going forward.
- Stop caring so much about your grid. It’s not an art contest.
- “External forces drive more growth than content.” Will used the example of NFL teams and the Super Bowl. No matter how talented the social pro behind the Ram’s account is… that Super Bowl win drove more growth than any content strategy ever would.
- No two people use Instagram in the same way. Will says “Some spend an insane amount of time in Explore or the Reels tab. Some spend most of their time in Stories, etc.”
Read the full thread here.
Tommy’s Take
Listen to Will. Lol, but really — fundamentals matter. And Will’s thread confirms that sentiment.
For example:
- Posting cadences are largely overrated, and depend on your brand. Post as often as you can maintain sustainably, without sacrificing quality.
- Optimize for consumer behavior on the platform, and don’t get caught up trying to create marketing that impresses other marketers.
Matt gets it…
The right way? Optimize or performance in feed as people are scrolling.
- What’s going to stop the scroll?
- What’s going to generate watch time?
- What’s going to prompt engagement?
All of those are more important than how aESthEtIC your grid looks. Sorry not sorry.
- Will’s last point is perhaps the most important. To unlock social for your brand, you need to understand YOUR consumer.
Sportcenter’s audience isn’t consuming your content. Duolingo’s audience isn’t consuming your content. [Insert brand name here]’s audience isn’t consuming your content.
So stop trying to copy them. Sure — draw inspiration.
But focus more on understanding what your audience wants to see, and how they use Instagram (or any social platform). Then engineer your content.
2) Are Twitter threads dead? 💀
TLDR: Twitter just announced Notes — their take on long form content, in platform.
According to the official release:
“Notes will give people the ability to go over 280 characters on Twitter in a single piece of content, with the inclusion of photos, videos, GIFs, and Tweets. Notes can be written, published, and shared on Twitter, and read all across the Internet.”
So… articles. Lmao.
Twitter wanted to give creators a way to create long form, without the limitations that threads pose — 280 characters per tweet.
Writers will also be able to edit Notes post-publish. Closest thing to an edit button we’re getting for a while.
Tommy’s Take: Can I be honest? This might be blasphemy to admit as an SMM… but I usually ignore new platform features.
With a few exceptions, they usually get scrapped as fast as they were launched. Or, even worse — they exist with no clear purpose.
My thought process is to wait for multiple proven examples of brands succeeding with new features before jumping on the train. Early enough to take advantage of the favorable algorithm for new features — but not so early that you waste scarce resources on pointless sh*t.
Ok, so Notes… do I feel the same?
Are they going to kill Twitter threads?
The jury is still out. Notes are promising, but I don’t think they’ll kill threads unless the algorithm massively favors discoverability for notes.
One more problem:
For some brands and creators, the goal is to acquire email subscribers from Twitter.
If Notes are un-gated, how do these brands collect those emails?
I think they’ll continue to just send people off platform to their own email lists (unless the algo is insane).
Just look at LinkedIn. Articles in-platform exist over there, too. When’s the last time you read one?
They’re kinda just there. Most brands and creators still push to collect emails off-platform.
I don’t want to make a prediction due to the risk of looking like one of those NBA analysts that predicted Steph Curry was the next ‘bust.”
BUT, if I had to bet… I don’t think this will change your day-to-day a whole lot as a brand SMM.
Carry on. And I hope I’m wrong so I get roasted for this 6 months from now.
Yeah, I saw you take a screenshot.
WHY IT POPPED OFF
<aside> 💡 Breaking down a viral meme or post and why you think it did well. Could be a good conversation starter as well, generating replies to the email
</aside>
This is perhaps my favorite meme I’ve made. It also performed well, relative to our account baseline.
So I thought I’d try to break down the messed up stuff in my head that lead to what you see here.
The ideation: this is a play on a format popularized by an Instagram meme account called @entrapranure. It’s a parody of the hyper-motivational, hustle p*rn content you see all over Instagram (#sigmagrindset bro).
Here’s an example:
So I decided to take that format and apply it to our target audience at Triple Whale: ecommerce marketers. Here are 3 reasons why it worked. Steal these for your next meme:
1) I adapted an already popular meme format. I wish I came up with this format from scratch. I’d be rich if I did.
2) I put in the extra effort to make it visually appealing. Honestly? If you’re an SMM, get have decent at photoshop. Canva is fine, but Photoshop is where the magic happens.
- The Triple Whale color palette
- The Comic Sans font
- The ✨stellar✨ photoshop job of my CMO’s head onto jacked Jeff Bezos’ body
…all make the meme hit that much harder.
3) I highlighted pain points and humor that only my target audience would find hilarious.
- The stress wake-up
- The Twitter hot takes
- The word ‘attribution’ (iykyk)
I even managed to get a podcast plug in there without making it too salesy 😉
Bonus tip: Use your copy to guide the reader to the meme.
“Read that again” is both a play on the meme format, and functions as a hook to get the reader to look at the image. It creates curiosity (read what again?). See?
Question of the week: What was your favorite post of the week? Reply to this email and link me your best work — I might feature it in next week’s send 🙂
NEWS BITS
<aside> 💡 relevant platform updates and/or social media news, with your take on how it will affect the day-to-day of the typical social media manager.
</aside>
1) Instagram insider reveals 5 platform best practices 🔎
TLDR: Will Yoder is on the sports partnerships team at Meta + Instagram. According to Will, here are the top 5 Instagram best practices he repeats over and over again to brands using the platform:
- Posting cadence depends on the account. For example, “NBA/SportsCenter can post 20+ times per day,” but your brand might only get away with once per day.
- Pay attention to earnings calls. Yawn. Right? Will agrees, but advises to pay attention — earnings calls reveal the top priorities of the app going forward.
- Stop caring so much about your grid. It’s not an art contest.
- “External forces drive more growth than content.” Will used the example of NFL teams and the Super Bowl. No matter how talented the social pro behind the Ram’s account is… that Super Bowl win drove more growth than any content strategy ever would.
- No two people use Instagram in the same way. Will says “Some spend an insane amount of time in Explore or the Reels tab. Some spend most of their time in Stories, etc.”
Read the full thread here.
Tommy’s Take
Listen to Will. Lol, but really — fundamentals matter. And Will’s thread confirms that sentiment.
For example:
- Posting cadences are largely overrated, and depend on your brand. Post as often as you can maintain sustainably, without sacrificing quality.
- Optimize for consumer behavior on the platform, and don’t get caught up trying to create marketing that impresses other marketers.
Matt gets it…
The right way? Optimize or performance in feed as people are scrolling.
- What’s going to stop the scroll?
- What’s going to generate watch time?
- What’s going to prompt engagement?
All of those are more important than how aESthEtIC your grid looks. Sorry not sorry.
- Will’s last point is perhaps the most important. To unlock social for your brand, you need to understand YOUR consumer.
Sportcenter’s audience isn’t consuming your content. Duolingo’s audience isn’t consuming your content. [Insert brand name here]’s audience isn’t consuming your content.
So stop trying to copy them. Sure — draw inspiration.
But focus more on understanding what your audience wants to see, and how they use Instagram (or any social platform). Then engineer your content.
2) Are Twitter threads dead? 💀
TLDR: Twitter just announced Notes — their take on long form content, in platform.
According to the official release:
“Notes will give people the ability to go over 280 characters on Twitter in a single piece of content, with the inclusion of photos, videos, GIFs, and Tweets. Notes can be written, published, and shared on Twitter, and read all across the Internet.”
So… articles. Lmao.
Twitter wanted to give creators a way to create long form, without the limitations that threads pose — 280 characters per tweet.
Writers will also be able to edit Notes post-publish. Closest thing to an edit button we’re getting for a while.
Tommy’s Take: Can I be honest? This might be blasphemy to admit as an SMM… but I usually ignore new platform features.
With a few exceptions, they usually get scrapped as fast as they were launched. Or, even worse — they exist with no clear purpose.
My thought process is to wait for multiple proven examples of brands succeeding with new features before jumping on the train. Early enough to take advantage of the favorable algorithm for new features — but not so early that you waste scarce resources on pointless sh*t.
Ok, so Notes… do I feel the same?
Are they going to kill Twitter threads?
The jury is still out. Notes are promising, but I don’t think they’ll kill threads unless the algorithm massively favors discoverability for notes.
One more problem:
For some brands and creators, the goal is to acquire email subscribers from Twitter.
If Notes are un-gated, how do these brands collect those emails?
I think they’ll continue to just send people off platform to their own email lists (unless the algo is insane).
Just look at LinkedIn. Articles in-platform exist over there, too. When’s the last time you read one?
They’re kinda just there. Most brands and creators still push to collect emails off-platform.
I don’t want to make a prediction due to the risk of looking like one of those NBA analysts that predicted Steph Curry was the next ‘bust.”
BUT, if I had to bet… I don’t think this will change your day-to-day a whole lot as a brand SMM.
Carry on. And I hope I’m wrong so I get roasted for this 6 months from now.
Yeah, I saw you take a screenshot.
WHY IT POPPED OFF
<aside> 💡 Breaking down a viral meme or post and why you think it did well. Could be a good conversation starter as well, generating replies to the email
</aside>
This is perhaps my favorite meme I’ve made. It also performed well, relative to our account baseline.
So I thought I’d try to break down the messed up stuff in my head that lead to what you see here.
The ideation: this is a play on a format popularized by an Instagram meme account called @entrapranure. It’s a parody of the hyper-motivational, hustle p*rn content you see all over Instagram (#sigmagrindset bro).
Here’s an example:
So I decided to take that format and apply it to our target audience at Triple Whale: ecommerce marketers. Here are 3 reasons why it worked. Steal these for your next meme:
1) I adapted an already popular meme format. I wish I came up with this format from scratch. I’d be rich if I did.
2) I put in the extra effort to make it visually appealing. Honestly? If you’re an SMM, get have decent at photoshop. Canva is fine, but Photoshop is where the magic happens.
- The Triple Whale color palette
- The Comic Sans font
- The ✨stellar✨ photoshop job of my CMO’s head onto jacked Jeff Bezos’ body
…all make the meme hit that much harder.
3) I highlighted pain points and humor that only my target audience would find hilarious.
- The stress wake-up
- The Twitter hot takes
- The word ‘attribution’ (iykyk)
I even managed to get a podcast plug in there without making it too salesy 😉
Bonus tip: Use your copy to guide the reader to the meme.
“Read that again” is both a play on the meme format, and functions as a hook to get the reader to look at the image. It creates curiosity (read what again?). See?
Question of the week: What was your favorite post of the week? Reply to this email and link me your best work — I might feature it in next week’s send 🙂