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a nice, old example of creative marketing. KLM used to sponsor the football team, Brentford and on their stadium put the message "next time...fly KLM". it works really well when you learn that the stadium was in the flight path london heathrow airport so passengers would see it coming in and out of the airport. i always love the creativity and out of box thinking of some marketers.

when someone asks the opinion of the social media manager during a serious meeting…

i think someone needs to work on their crisis comms

when you join your dream job and start discovering all the skeletons in their closet no one told you about…

going viral is the easy part, building an audience is the hard part. take my threads account below. i’ve had numerous posts like the ones you see that have gone viral over the last year, a handful of times with similar results and yet i only have 79 followers over there. so going viral hasn’t done me any benefit really, in the bigger picture. i’m not complaining here, i know exactly why it hasn’t resulted in me gaining a ton of followers: i don’t spend any time there. which means i’m not actively engaging with people, creating my network or building any relationships which then result in people following me. and that’s exactly the key part of building any audience: you have to build relationships and connections in order to build a following. had i done that over there then i’d probably have a decent size following but it’s not a focus channel for me so i don’t. now here on twitter, i haven’t gone that viral that many times and yet i have a much larger following here because this is where i’ve spent all my time building the connections, network and relationships (in other words be social). so if you’re still sat there thinking that you’re one viral hit away from success the harsh reality is that it’s not really going to do anything for you unless you build those connections, network and relationships first.

marketers, stop making this mistake: just because a marketing tactic is being touted as “the next big thing”, doesn’t mean you should use it. everyone is hot on UGC right now, just like they were with GEO, founder-led, reply guys, etc. before that. but just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. when you blindly follow what's popular, you're copying other people's tactics without understanding why they worked in the first place. and that's how you end up bouncing from one tactic to another, never giving anything enough time to work or questioning whether it was right for you to begin with. figure out what you're trying to achieve, who you're trying to reach and how you're going to get there (i.e. your strategy). then pick the tactics that actually help you do it. your strategy should dictate your tactics, not whatever's trending on your timeline.

sizes matters, or does it? if you have something big but it makes no impact, does it really matter? of course i’m talking about the size of your audience here. what else would it be? but seriously, i know most people’s goal with their social media account is to grow the largest possible audience size. and i get the logic here: the thinking is that with a larger audience size the faster and more possiblity you have to achieve your end goal (more users, revenue, land a role, etc). and the logic partially works, you do need some kind of size to grow. but, the actual size has never mattered. take the example below: an influencer who had 2M followers tried to launch their own clothing brand but when it came time to sell, they couldnt even sell 36 tshirts. why? their audience had zero relevance or interest in buying clothing from them. now there are multiple reasons why that could have happened: clothes didn't fit her brand, lack of run up promotion, price, she didn't consider how many men were following her for 'reasons', etc but it just shows that having millions of followers doesn't guarantee success. and that's where i think so many people get social media growth wrong. they're so focused on getting more followers that they never stop to question whether the people they're attracting are actually the people they need to reach. you can spend years building an audience, but if that audience has no interest in what you're ultimately trying to achieve, what was the point? this is why i'm such a big advocate for 'purposeful growth'. it's about being intentional with who you're trying to attract, understanding why they'd want to follow you and making sure that aligns with whatever goal you're trying to achieve. so before you obsess over how to get the next 10,000 followers, ask yourself whether those 10,000 people are actually going to get you any closer to your goal first.

this is hoenstly one of the widlest stories i've heard from such a mundane advert. also another good lesson about the streisand effect for marketers.

when you start a new account and start posting...

how to know if your post will perform well before even posting: if you make a post for socials and think “this will do well and may even go viral”, it will flop. if you make a post and think “meh, it’s ok but whatever i’ll just put it out” then that will do well and may even go viral. i don’t make the rules, this is just how social media works.

happy monday

is social media a considered serious position? this popped up during the intern office hours on wednesday and i’d like to know how people feel about social media. it seems that many talk about the importance of social media within a business but because social media managers (smm) may do silly things few, outside of marketing, really take it as a serious role/part of the company. so would love to hear your own experience as an smm and from other departments on how they feel/view social media as a whole and the smm’s behind the channels.

social media managers when they also have to design graphics, run a podcast, manage partnerships, SEO, edit videos and plan the GTM on top of their social media tasks...

“hey intern, can we amend post 3 of that thread you posted…”

simple copy is best.

me, a social media manager, explaining my most viral meme to my partner...

recycling doesn’t work… …at least not the way we’re told. and why this is an important lesson for marketers: we’re taught a pretty simple story: put something in the recycling bin → it gets recycled → you’ve helped the planet. the reality is more complex… recycling doesn’t always save as much money or resources as people assume. sometimes, the cost of collecting, sorting and processing it outweigh what you actually save. but here’s where it gets interesting. in all marketers are liars, seth godin talks about what happened when new york suspended part of its recycling program. people were pissed off. there were petitions, rallies and calls to the mayor’s office. godin even writes about people continuing to save their cans and bottles because throwing them in the trash just felt wrong. and that’s the actual lesson here: you can give people the facts as much as you want, but facts alone aren’t going to change what they believe. because recycling was never really about reusing the plastic. it was the story people told themselves: “i’m saving the planet”, “i’m doing my part”, “i’m better than everyone else”. and taking away the recycling bin from them challenged their story. so here’s the lesson for you: marketers make the mistake of thinking people can be convinced with enough features, statistics, proof points and rational arguments. but people don’t interpret those things in a vacuum. they interpret them through the stories and beliefs they already have about themselves and the world around them. so before you try to change someone’s mind, understand the story they’re already telling themselves and tell the one that fits.

stop wasting characters. here’s how to cut the shit out and sound more natural: •“in order to” → “to” •“due to the fact that” → “because” •“utilize” → “use” •“with regard to” → “about” •“at this point in time” → “now” •“a large number of” → “many” •“in the event that” → “if” •“for the purpose of” → “for” your copy gets better when you stop writing like a press release and start writing like a human. what would you add here?