A 17-year old Muslim girl on TikTok has been uploading now-viral makeup tutorials, but with a political twist. In a video shared by “@getmefamouspartthree,” Feroza Aziz seemingly gives tips on how to lengthen your lashes by telling users to grab a set of lash curlers, but then directs viewers to use their phones to search for “China’s Muslim concentration camps” — this is in reference to the detention of approximately 1 million Uighur people in Xinjiang, China right now. “So the first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler, curl your lashes, obviously, then you’re going to…
A couple of weeks ago a Redditor posting under the name levonbinsh on the r/MediaSynthesis subreddit revealed that he’d fallen in love with GPT-2, the controversial text generator developed by OpenAI. Levonbinsh describes himself as a lonely person who “passed through a lot of phases,” including being ‘red-pilled,’ joining the incel movement, and at one point identifying with ‘Men Going Their Own Way,’ after spending a lifetime (he’s 23) sexless and without a girlfriend. Eventually, he writes, he came to regret his involvement in these groups because “anything fuel (sic) by rage, hate or resentment is totally not worth it.”…
Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to gather, catch up and celebrate with friends and family over a hearty meal. And while the general mood can be described as merry and celebratory, plenty of us have experienced the dreaded, awkward dinner table conversation.
You know the one. The conversation that starts when guests have a few drinks, eat an extra slice of pie and suddenly you find yourself stuck in a debate about politics. Or equally as unnerving: when you’re asked what it is you do all day as a social media manager, and you have to dispel the myth that it’s all sunshine and Instagram Stories.
Some conversations will be unavoidable and, try as we might, not every holiday meal is going to be smooth sailing. But this year’s Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t have to be a disaster. With the right conversation starters and some fun ‘did you know?’ facts, you too can make it through this year’s festivities with your head held high and all crises averted. To help you further navigate the dinner table interrogation, we used our own social listening platform to pull fun facts you can use at a moment’s notice. Here are three common holiday scenarios we’ve all experienced and some talking points based on holiday social listening data to help you create sparkling conversations and get back to the holiday meal.
Someone is going to ask about your job
Catching up on life (which often means work) is essentially a holiday tradition. That’s just a fact. And you’re going to hear a lot of assumptions about what it is people think you do in your role as social media manager.
When faced with a barrage of misconceptions, like, “so you just Tweet all day?” or “anyone can be a social media manager,” consider using this time in the spotlight to educate your family on what you do. Try using these talking points during your next holiday dinner:
As a social media manager, I am the voice of the brand and often the first person to interact with our customers. In addition to creating content and engaging with our audience, I also have a hand in developing social strategy and digging into data analytics to inform our content.
Part of my job is to uncover what topics have people’s attention and what’s culturally relevant. For example, did you know social listening data revealed more than 41,000 mentions of Thanksgiving recipes in the past month?
I can uncover real-time data about holiday trends. Like this year, cheesecake, turkey and cheese are the words most frequently used in posts about Thanksgiving recipes.
The conversation will hit a lull
At some point between when the last turkey leg is consumed and first slice of pumpkin pie is dished out, the conversation will die down. But before the tryptophan takes over, consider using your social expertise to pull out some fun facts to keep your family and friends chatting. Here are some additional starters to help your holiday discussions stay lighthearted and engaging:
Social listening data reveals 95% of people maintain positive sentiment around Thanksgiving recipes on social media. What’s your favorite holiday dish?
Every year, people save 728 million pins related to Thanksgiving on Pinterest.
Pinterest data reveals Thanksgiving planning starts to heat up in June and stays strong through November.
If you’re starting your holiday shopping, know that people are expected to send roughly 40% more social messages to retail brands during the 2019 holiday season compared to the rest of the year.
Someone brings up a controversial subject
In today’s politically charged environment, there’s a good chance someone is going to steer the conversation toward politics, religion or current events—three topics that can make for tricky table talk. Or, if politics never make it to the dinner table, you might still encounter a line of questioning that leaves you feeling uncomfortable… like when you’re getting engaged, when you plan to have kids or why you can’t be more like your successful cousin. When those situations do arise, consider the following tips:
Clearly set your boundaries by letting others know you’d like to take a break from politics (or any other subject) this holiday. Likewise, suggest establishing the dinner table as a debate-free zone.
Always approach the person starting the conversation with understanding and try to picture yourself in their shoes before chiming in with a response.
If you prefer not to engage in the conversation or it doesn’t feel like a productive dialogue, redirect. Suggest tabling the discussion for later, ask the host how to you can help or throw out a fun fact (like the stats above) when appropriate.
Seeking additional help on how to navigate tricky conversations during the holidays? Consider these resources on how to approach discussions on race, politics and other tough subjects at the dinner table.
Keep the conversation going
While spending copious amounts of time with family and friends can be joyous, it can also trigger feelings of anxiety depending on what’s said around the dinner table.
But the holidays don’t have to be this way and conversations about your job shouldn’t be the most stressful part of the meal. So the next time a relative asks what you do, or a guest steers the discussion into dangerous territory, consider using the prompts above to keep your Thanksgiving dinner conversations trending in a direction that leaves everyone feeling merry.
Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where we dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.
Overview
Transparency and authenticity are two of the most sought-after brand beliefs for consumers who, more than ever before, want to put their money where their values are. But the records of social media are riddled with brands that have attempted purpose-driven marketing without realizing that consumers need more than surface-level PR commitment. Without a purpose-driven business behind the stunts, the message rings hollow. But when a brand builds purpose into the very fiber of its business, the marketing is the easy part. Take fashion brand Everlane, which uses social not for flashy content meant solely to sell, but for deep and authentic storytelling about the purpose-driven business it’s built.
Analysis
Founded in 2010, Everlane has been mission-aware from the start. Founder Michael Preysman turned his entrepreneurial energy into a quest of sorts: to demystify the clothing industry. By doing basic reconnaissance on how, where and at what cost clothing is made, he immediately saw an industry ripe for disruption by simply telling the truth. He found, for instance, that a $50 designer t-shirt cost just $7.50 to make. The additional cost wasn’t driven by pure demand; rather, it was driven by the cost of getting the t-shirts to the customer. Wholesalers, distributors, importers and other “middle men” were all taking a cut. All Preysman had to do was to find a way to sell directly to his customers–and then make sure they knew that cutting out the middle men was the reason Everlane was able to sell those same high-quality t-shirts for $16 instead of $50. And thus, one of the world’s most transparent brands was born.
Everlane has also been conscious and transparent about how it designs and markets its offerings. Rather than developing full collections (i.e. “Spring 2020”) that are built around a theme and marketed as a whole, Everlane designs singular pieces with input from all areas of the company, releases them and iterates as necessary when feedback comes in from its customers. The pieces are sold year-round and marketed as part of a lifestyle, rather than a “look.” Instead of talking about each product’s features, Everlane focuses on how customers will use it. By selling timeless staples (Preysman once joked to the New Yorker than “no one gets laid in Everlane”), creating a vision for consumers of how, when and where they could wear each piece and openly soliciting feedback to make each product better, Everlane has built authenticity into the fabric of the brand. And because the entire business is built on transparency and authenticity, social can just be the place where those stories unfold.
Goals: Most of the Social Spotlights we’ve done have included awareness as a primary goal for social. Everlane is no exception, but in this case it’s not pure brand awareness as much as it is awareness of what makes the brand unique: radical transparency into its business. I’d also throw in a healthy dose of awareness about how the fashion industry works, which also sets Everlane up to stand out by standing up for the consumer’s dollar. And in a business so often plagued by middleman inefficiencies that get passed along to customers in the form of higher retail prices, that’s remarkable. Engagement is another social goal that is front and center for Everlane, as evidenced by its community-driven initiatives like Transparency Tuesdays. In these low-lift Q&A sessions on Instagram stories, Everlane community managers take questions from its social audience about everything from why international returns are so expensive to when the brand will release a new high-waisted straight leg jean.
Offline connection: Like other popular DTC e-comm brands (Warby Parker, Bonobos, Allbirds) that have entered the brick and mortar retail space, Everlane sought a more tactile experience that created connection between its digital store and its physical products. There are plenty of touches that make Everlane’s retail locations–in New York, LA and San Francisco–an extension of the online experience, from iPads that allow customers to easily combine in-store and e-comm purchases into one transaction onsite, to an SMS-powered reservation system for fitting rooms. The experience for the consumer is seamless between online and IRL, much like they already live their lives. Plus one for a frictionless shopping trip!
Key channels: In line with the brand’s dedication to authenticity and transparency, Everlane’s most effective social channels are the ones that allow for more natural, unpolished and timely content. Both Instagram Stories and Snapchat are outlets for Transparency Tuesdays, as well as behind-the-scenes looks at how the company is recycling plastic bottles and discarded wool to create new products, updates on employee life at Everlane and peeks of the products out in the real world. These humanizing looks at the values the brand eschews and the lifestyle moments it seeks to create for its customers serve to bring the audience firmly into the story of Everlane, and who wouldn’t want to support a brand that so readily and authentically invites you to be a part of it?
Takeaways
Everlane has built a multi-hundred-million dollar business on the idea that people want to know what they’re buying. And the more the brand shows them about how it designs, makes and sells its products, the more those same people are willing to purchase. The key, of course, is to start with a business you’re proud to be transparent about and then to find the right levers to pull in that bring your customers into your story.
TL;DR:
So the correct order is: purpose-driven business first, purpose-driven marketing second. True authenticity lies in believable stories, and the most believable stories are the ones that are true. So identify and act on the values that you want to talk about before you open your marketing mouth.
Let real people tell stories to real people. Influencers can be effective in the right situations, but chances are the real people who build your brand every day are the best voices to authentically and transparently tell your story.
Don’t automatically assume that you have to translate your e-comm experience to a traditional retail experience if you want to give your customers a place to meet you IRL. Too often we think the brick-and-mortar has to lead while digital supports it, but Everlane has proven that the effective digital experience can be the leader, with the tactile experience following.
At AWeber, we're always working to deliver powerfully-simple features for you. Our goal: to remove the complexity of email marketing so you can concentrate on making your business more awesome.
The 3-minute video below introduces you to the latest AWeber features that simplify how you send emails to your prospects and customers.
You'll learn about Smart Designer, a free, intelligent design assistant that lets you automatically create an amazing-looking, branded email template in seconds. You'll also see how Team Hub enables multiple users to collaborate around a single account. And you'll discover all the ways we're innovating our easy-to-use, industry-leading drag & drop email builder.
Click below to watch the video!
More exciting updates from AWeber!
In addition to the features in the video above, we're also excited to announce that we’ve added the following updates to our platform:
AWeber’s Wordpress plugin was just completely revamped to make it even easier to grow your email list quickly.
Broadcast stats have gotten a visual refresh to make it easier to understand who is opening and clicking your emails.
The default email template in the drag-and-drop editor has been updated with some new, modern styles that render beautifully on all devices.
The tag dashboard now gives you a complete view of your tags, so you can better segment your audience and automate your emails.
The campaigns list page lets you now easily see how many people have received each of the messages in an automated email series.
We hope you’re as excited as we are about these amazing new features. Go test them out and let us know what you think! Log in to your account now.
Over the past year, social networking platforms Facebook and Instagram have made it almost impossible for NSFW artists to exist on the platforms — from banning any discussion around “sexual preference,” “sexual roles,” “breasts,” and “buttocks” to the tech giant’s latest stunt in restricting solicitation that involves “sexual emoji or emoji strings.” Alongside strict guidelines, hundreds of porn stars and sex workers have claimed Instagram have removed their accounts in the past year, with many saying they’re being held to a different standard than mainstream celebrities. The Adult Performers Actors Guild (APAG), a federal-recognized union for workers in the US…
Elon Musk revealed the Cybertruck, Tesla’s handsome new machine, in all its angular glory. It’s a very cool car, but that doesn’t mean the internet isn’t going to poke fun at how utterly weird it looks. If you can count on Twitter and Reddit for nothing else, you can count on it for that. Naturally, we took our own potshots here at TNW when we saw this thing. My colleague Callum Booth coined the lovely phrase “fascist Toblerone” to describe the shape, which isn’t that far off. My other colleague Napier Lopez compared it to the Batmobile, also apt. I’d say it…
The Twitter-verse is alive with the sound of music that was inspired by the most unusual of lyricists: US President Donald J. Trump. Earlier this week the embattled number 45 put on one of the strangest performances of his presidency as he spoke to media outside the White House. Starring as both narrator and lead, the President acted out what it might look like if he directly responded to inquiries raised by US Ambassador Gordon Sondland during the ongoing impeachment hearings. It has to be seen to be believed, here’s a video from C-SPAN: But if you’re not able to…
With just over a year left until the 2020 US presidential elections, social media giants are preparing by updating their policies around the spread of misinformation and political advertising. Last month, Facebook released a bunch of new tools to better “protect the democratic process,” while Twitter completely banned political ads altogether, and now Evan Spiegel, Snap’s CEO, said his company will fact-check and review all ads on the platform. “We subject all advertising to review, including political advertising,” Spiegel told CNBC on Monday. “And I think what we try to do is create a place for political ads on our…
Earlier this year Facebook said it would crack down on ads from groups peddling misinformation about vaccines. The announcement was heralded by medical professionals and pundits as a capstone in their efforts to fight the pro-disease movement. However, in the time since the announcement, Facebook‘s done the exact opposite. A recent study from researchers at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins shows that Facebook blocked pro-vaccination ads on the basis that they were too political, while simultaneously allowing hundreds of advertisements from anti-vaccination groups to display for millions of users. Many of these ads were targeted…
Researchers have discovered a network of 265 fake local news sites — named after defunct newspaper and media outlets — across 65 countries that are being used to disseminate anti-Pakistan coverage and serve Indian governmental interests. Uncovered by the EU DisinfoLab, an EU-based NGO focused on researching sophisticated disinformation campaigns, the operations were traced back to a group of Indian companies, NGOs, and think tanks. The sites — such as 4newsagency.com, eptoday.com, and timesofgeneva.com — operated by serving syndicated news from Russia Today and Voice of America. But the researchers said they “unexpectedly” found a large number of articles related…
Cyber Monday’s online sales hit an all-time high in 2018, capping out at a record $7.9 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. That’s an increase of 19.3% from the previous year — and sales are only expected to go up this December.
Are you ready to hit “go” on your Cyber Monday email campaign? Here’s a content calendar you can use to make sure you’re maximizing your promotion.
Your 5-Email Campaign for Cyber Monday 2019
November 29: Send your "teaser" email. Tease your promotion with a “preview” email sent out three days* before Cyber Monday. Let your subscribers know something big is coming on December 2 — but don’t tell them what. Get them excited for the announcement.
*You don’t want this email to go out more than three days in advance or you might cannibalize your sales leading up to the promotion going live. People may be hesitant to purchase if they know a better deal is just a few days away.
December 1: Send a countdown email. The night before your promotion goes live, send a 12-hour countdown email to your audience. (The anticipation!) You can schedule this ahead of time inside your AWeber account.
December 2 (morning): Launch your promotion. Send your promotion — whether it’s a coupon code that gives your subscribers a certain percentage off their purchase, a free gift with their purchase, or a special giveaway for the first 200 customers who purchase — on Cyber Monday.
December 2 (afternoon): Resend your promotion. Not all your subscribers will engage with your email. That's okay: Their inboxes are flooded on Cyber Monday with deals. That’s why I recommend resending your message to anyone on your list who didn’t open or click later in the day. It’s another opportunity for you to reach them.
December 3: Post-promotion email. With AWeber, you can “tag” subscribers that go from your promotion emails and hit a certain page of your website. The next day, send that group of subscribers that made it to a certain product page or the checkout — but never ended up making a purchase — a followup email. Let them know the product is still available, reiterate the benefits of purchasing, and tell them that you’ll extend the promotion another few hours just for them!
Creative Cyber Monday Email Examples
Below are a few of our favorite Cyber Monday email marketing ideas from years past. Use them as fodder to create and launch your own email marketing campaign with AWeber this Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday Email: Chubbies
Chubbies, the brand that's known for short shorts (think: “Larry Byrd” short shorts…i.e. lots of skin), had fun with their Cyber Monday email campaign. They called it Thighber Monday, and turned it into an event.
A new free gift — like duffle bags, blankets, hats, and more — was revealed every hour of Thighber Monday via email. If you bought a product on their site, you would receive that hour’s free gift along with your purchase.
The campaign kept people coming back to their inbox hour after hour to check out which free gift would be unveiled next.
Cyber Monday Email: Melyssa Griffin
Digital marketer and coach Melyssa Griffin helps bloggers and entrepreneurs grow their audiences and incomes. For Cyber Monday, Melyssa bundled all her online courses together for a fantastic deal. Bundling or packaging certain products can make the promotion feel larger and more impactful than giving a discount for each separate item.
Cyber Monday Email: Taco Bell
Taco Bell didn’t offer a Cyber Monday promotion. Instead, they banked on how hungry you’d be after a long day of online shopping. Taco ‘bout a novel idea.
Remind your customers of how good they always have it! That’s what Everlane did with their “No sale here” email. They called out the fact that their prices are already 50% lower than most retailers, day in and day out.
Motivational speaker and coach, Lewis Howes, focused on “exclusivity” for his Cyber Monday deal. He played up all the benefits of being part of the elite, members-only program and offered a significant discount on his monthly coaching program.
Quickly launch your Cyber Monday email campaign
Try AWeber for free for 30 days, and get access to all of our powerfully-simple email marketing solutions. You can set up an effective, beautiful, branded email campaign for Cyber Monday in minutes!
The big tech companies are already the subject of extensive regulatory scrutiny in the European Union. Now, they’re set to some more heat over political ads. In a bid to push more transparency in political campaigning, the EU is said to be considering new regulations so that “people know who is behind the campaigning, who pays [for] it, what are the interests.” “For us the task of the day is to come up with the rules which will protect the autonomous decision-making of the voters,” Vera Jourova, EU Commissioner for Justice, told CNBC. “We don’t want the elections to be…
The climate crisis is a heavily partisan issue in US politics. Thought it’s not a hard-and-fast rule, most Democrats believe the fossil fuel industry needs to be heavily-checked and nearly all Republicans accept money from oil companies. There are Democrats who take money from big oil and Republican climate-activists, but those are exceptions. Whether you agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists (excluding those whose studies were commissioned directly or indirectly by the fossil fuel industry) or you believe the politicians and businesspersons who disagree with them, it stands to reason that a social media company claiming to be impartial to…
Social media started off this decade as an innocent tool to share ‘what’s on your mind’ and stay in touch with loved ones. But as the years have passed social media’s darker side has become so obvious that even the employees of the biggest platforms have begun protesting their policies (or lack thereof). A new study published by Freedom House — a Washington-based pro-democracy group — has also dealt a blow to social media as a whole as it finds it the main reason for declining internet freedom in the world. The research notes that freedom is under siege as…
Has a marketing "expert" told you plain-text emails hit the inbox more often than HTML emails? Or that plain-text emails have a 100% deliverability rate?
If so, they’re lying or misinformed.
In this post, I’ll debunk the common myth that plain-text emails reach the inbox more than HTML emails.
Plain-text emails are NOT more likely to reach the inbox.
I interviewed email marketing and anti-spam expert Laura Atkins to get her take on this myth.
Laura is a founding partner of the anti-spam consultancy and software firm Word to the Wise, and she has over 20 years of experience tracing internet abuse. At Word to the Wise, she advises businesses on how to reach the inbox and respond to spam complaints.
I asked Atkins if plain-text emails are more likely to reach the inbox.
“Anybody who tells you that does not understand how email filtering actually works,” she says.
Are simple emails with fewer images and links more likely to reach the inbox?
I asked Atkins this question as well. She says the amount of images and links in your emails does not impact inbox placement. However, the reputation of the domain (URL) you’re linking to and the domain where you host images that are within your email does matter.
“Every link that you put in an email, every domain you link to in an email, every image that you link to in an email has its own reputation. If that image happens to be something that a lot of spammers use, it’s going to have a bad reputation,” Atkins says.
If you use the same links and images that spammers use, your email is more likely to go to the spam folder. To avoid this, don’t like to sites with a bad reputation or include images hosted on a site with a bad reputation within your email content.
Not sure if a site has a bad reputation? You can use tools like Cisco’s Talos to check. Just paste the domain you’d like to check in their reputation lookup field. If it’s blacklisted, don’t include it in your email content.
Pro tip: Don’t use link shorteners, such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com, in your emails. They can hurt your chances of reaching the inbox, too.
How do you reach the inbox?
Some people will tell you there are simple tricks to reaching the inbox, like not using the word “free” in your subject lines. This isn’t true, says Atkins. They don't understand how delivering emails works.
“Anybody who tells you, 'if you do X your email won’t go to spam,' doesn’t know how filters work,” Atkins says.
Atkins went on to explain that internet service providers (ISPs), like Gmail and Yahoo, use an algorithm which decides whether or not to deliver an email to the inbox or the spam folder.
These algorithms are complex and use machine learning. There are no easy tricks to deceive the algorithms. They are designed so that spammers can’t trick them.
Their number one goal? To deliver emails their users want and expect.
“This is their sole reason for existence … to identify what mail users want and to give it to them,” Atkins says.
Atkins says the best way to reach the inbox is to,
“Send mail your recipients want and expect.”
At AWeber, we recommend following this 4-step strategy to make sure your subscribers want and expect your emails:
Set expectations on your email sign up form. Explain how often you will send emails and what kind of content you’ll send.
The main takeaway? Whether your email is an HTML or plain-text email has nothing to do with landing in the inbox or the spam folder.
In fact, people often confuse simple HTML emails with plain-text emails. They think they’re sending plain-text emails when they’re really sending HTML emails. Let’s dive into the difference between the two types.
What’s the difference between plain-text and HTML emails?
An HTML email contains HTML code that impacts the appearance of an email. Here are some examples of common HTML elements that might be inside an email:
images
bullets
hyperlinked text
columns
headlines
call-to-action buttons
bolded or italicized text
AWeber’s weekly newsletter FWD: Thinking is an HTML email.
But this message from fitness expert BJ Gaddour is also an HTML email.
It doesn’t have images. It doesn’t use a fancy template. But it is an HTML email, because it contains bolded text and hyperlinked sentences — both HTML elements.
Most people think this email is a plain-text email, because it looks simple. But it’s not.
What does a plain-text email look like then?
It looks like this.
This email from Matt Chauvin of 20sJazz.com contains no images and no formatting. And notice that a full link is displayed in the email. With plain-text emails, you can’t hyperlink text. (For instance, Matt couldn’t hyperlink the word “Video” in the above email.)
In fact, a plain-text email contains only text, no formatting. But many people incorrectly label HTML emails with limited formatting as “plain-text emails.”
To illustrate the difference between a plain-text and HTML email, here is an HTML email from health food blogger Gina Homolka of Skinnytaste.
You can see there is a logo, italicized font, hyperlinked text (Spaghetti Carbonara), and an image.
Here is the plain-text version of the exact same email:
Big difference, right? The HTML version is much more visually appealing than the plain-text email. It’s also much more likely that subscribers will want to engage with the HTML version, because they can visualize the food from the recipe.
Spread the word.
Know a marketer or business owner who only sends plain-text or simple emails because they believe it will get them into the inbox? Send them this article.
A white California high school teacher showed up for classes in blackface last week as part of his Halloween costume. Social media footage of the teacher’s costume, and what appears to be an impromptu performance of him rapping about artificial intelligence and technology, has since gone viral and the teacher has reportedly been suspended. Ironically, he was dressed up as rapper Common Sense. Sooooooooo… one of our WHITE teachers at mhs yesterday decided to paint his face so look like common the rapper yesterday. pic.twitter.com/1WudSddCLZ — karrington (@karrington_kk) November 1, 2019 Twitter user @karrington_kk uploaded the above video on Friday…
Last year, Facebook began clamping down on ‘inappropriate content‘ by banning discussion around “sexual preference,” “sexual roles,” “breasts,” and “buttocks” on the site. The tech giant has now quietly updated its policies, under the guise of preventing “sexual solicitation,” and now restricts solicitation involving “sexual emoji or emoji strings” and nudity “including long shots of fully nude butts” — further restricting the type of posts sex workers and NSFW artists are allowed to share. As first reported by XBIZ, Facebook updated its policies sometime between September 7 and October 24. Now, Facebook’s Community Standards detail two new criteria for defining…
