tCSA – Creative Strategy Agency

What You Need To Know About Marketing In The Metaverse

There are quite a few people who believe that the latest internet shift is already well underway: the metaverse. A lot of brands are wondering what the metaverse really is and whether they should be a part of it. Thinking about how to navigate this new frontier, even knowing where to start can be daunting.

The basic idea of the metaverse includes any digital experience on the internet that is immersive, three-dimensional (3D), and virtual. Think of it as a mix of virtual and augmented realities. Metaverse experiences offer us the opportunity to play, work, connect or buy (real or virtual). Each entity that creates a virtual world does so with its own access, membership, monetization rights, and formats of creative expression, so the business and technical specifications vary widely. This allows the metaverse to be essentially limitless.

Basically, the metaverse would be the next iteration of the internet and the social media world, with a few points of difference:

Users can log in via virtual reality (VR); this opens up new brand engagement possibilities, from trying out apparel to exploring a piece of real estate.
Users will be equipped with a digital wallet in the metaverse, which makes purchase transactions more seamless.
Users will be able to teleport freely around the metaverse so that they can participate in groups and join (and pay for) events anywhere in the world.
Users will engage in a new kind of storytelling experience aided by 360° videos and 3D modeling, which means advertising is going to transform.

For some businesses, the metaverse will be another channel in their marketing mix and a prominent one at that. Entertainment and gaming companies leading the way and already shaping the metaverse landscape. Major console and PC gaming titles, like Fortnite, have normalized playing and socializing with people in virtual settings. The immersive virtual environment of the metaverse isn’t just an opportunity for consumer-facing companies and products. From training future surgeons to rolling out product demos to retail employees, there are plenty of business applications the metaverse offers.

So what should your brand be doing about the metaverse? Brands should always be in a test-and-learn mode in the digital landscape. The metaverse is potentially the next iteration of how humans use the internet to connect, communicate and transact. Here is how you can begin:

Experiment with AR

First and foremost, play around with Augmented reality (AR). It is set to change shopping experiences by allowing users to visualize clothing products in real-time. Learn AR by being a user first. It becomes easier to market on a platform when you understand it.

Targeting

Is your target audience spending time in the metaverse? Who are your target demographics, and what behaviors are trending with your current and prospective consumers right now that are indicators of how fast to move into the metaverse? Brands focusing on younger demographics probably don’t have the luxury of sitting out the metaverse for long.

Choose the Right Platform

Whether it’s mobile, PC, console, or streaming, your platform should increase your reach while still aligning with your brand. Mobile games, for example, can reach more casual gamers, while PC and console games can gain more traction with mid-core gamers. Aside from virtual billboards in digital sports stadiums, in-game apps also include video, music, and banner ads. Choose a format with which your product can identify.

Parallel Your Marketing

Transitioning into the metaverse doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to do everything differently. A good starting point when entering the metaverse is to replicate what you offer in real life and parallel it in the virtual world. It’s not only a natural method to enter the metaverse but also an authentic way for users to notice your brand.

Partner with Creators

Teaming up with online game universes like Fortnite will help you create virtual possessions that can naturally fit into the gaming experience. Otherwise, you can use 3D and AR platforms with open marketplaces to create wearable and tradeable digital garments. The Fabricant Studio is a viable choice if you have no prior knowledge of 3D software.

Create Immersive Experiences

Experiential marketing is one of the most important drivers of customer engagement. Studies show that brands who focus on building experiences gain 25% more brand loyalty than those who don’t. Offering an immersive experience takes audiences out of their comfort zone. This can impact their perspective of your brand and help you create long-lasting bonds with them.

While the metaverse is the future, don’t stop focusing on today. Most importantly, people in brand marketing or leadership roles should start thinking about how to unleash their creativity and their storytelling. Have questions on how your brand can enter the metaverse? Contact us today.

metaverse

Digital Marketing Trends to Know in 2022

Have you developed your marketing plan of attack for this year? Where are you going to spend your time and what are you going to do when you get there? If you haven’t developed a new strategy, fear not. We compiled a list of 8 trends you need to be aware of this year.

The Metaverse

The future is here. The next ‘phase’ of the internet is here, the metaverse – a place where virtual reality and augmented reality mix. Facebook officially changed its name to Meta to correlate with this future. While creating a name for the parent company is logical, the choice is what matters. This is a big bet on the future of the web. Given the metaverse’s limitless real estate, companies are bound to look to fill its three dimensions with their logos and products. Marketers should begin to look for opportunities for their businesses in these spaces.

Influencers

Influencer marketing is set to reach $13.8 billion in 2021 and continue to grow, even for B2B. Influencer campaigns inherently provide context and relevance since the influencer is endorsing the product. This gives brands the opportunity to have everyday customers sell and promote their products. Marketers should look for opportunities to partner with influencers in their space.

Advertising & Privacy

Digital ads are heavily reliant on data. New privacy regulations like the iOS update and the pending removal of cookies have been reducing the data used in artificial intelligence. Be sure to assess the impact that this will have on your advertising targeting and be proactive.

Automation

Marketing automation can help brands with ongoing contact with customers. It takes a bit of time to implement automation like social media scheduling, email workflows, retargeting, and analytics, but once you’ve got them up and running, it gives you an opportunity focus on other parts of your business and continues to grow. Think strategically to focus on what really drives their business growth.

SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the most valuable forms of digital marketing. If your website isn’t optimized for your customers, not only will they have trouble finding you, but they will also have a lackluster experience they have on your website. As search algorithms have continuously become smarter and more contextual, marketers need to focus less on the “hacks” and “tricks” of SEO and more on providing an outstanding and meaningful experience to their users. Implementation of local SEO is important and must ensure that your business’s geographical data and contact details are updated. These days, website traffic is overwhelmingly mobile; however, most websites still don’t have fully mobile-optimized experiences. While you are optimizing your website, keep mobile at the forefront. At the very least, update and complete the information required in your Google My Business profile, or create one if you haven’t already.

Video Content

We’re going on year six of video being one of the most talked-about trends in digital marketing, and yet here we are. Live streaming is continuing to gain popularity and viewership. With new shopping opportunities, Facebook’s Live broadcasts quadrupled in a single year. Short-form videos have also grown in popularity. As people get tired of Facebook’s and Instagram’s oversaturation of users and brands, algorithms, and other things, many are gravitating to TikTok. This means more short-form, vertical videos and showing your face in front of the camera. Even if you don’t plan on jumping on TikTok for your marketing, marketers and small-business owners who are used to being behind the camera should look into how they can talk directly to their audiences through video.

Audio Content

Nielsen’s Podcasting Today reports podcasts are sharply becoming a prime medium for advertising opportunities. Spotify recently launched Call-to-action cards (CTA Cards) on their platform for podcasters. Spotify reports that podcast consumption in the country more than doubled from March 2020 to 2021 – figures they hope to grow as they collaborate with more local creators.

Heavy Users are more likely to inquire and/or avail of a product or service mentioned in a podcast compared to Light Users. These stats are welcome news both for the creators seeking sponsors and the advertisers whose audiences have developed distrust over traditional ads seen online. Whether you are looking to create your own podcast or looking to advertise on one, audio isn’t going anywhere.

Lifestyle imagery

The ongoing need for imagery for social media posts means that brands need to continuously look at revamping their lifestyle imagery. Photos involving people often get more engagement than the perfectly posed product shots. When developing content for social media and your website, think about how your customers will be using the product and what emotion you want them to feel when using the product and that will help you develop your lifestyle content.

In the marketing world, it is easy to get distracted by shiny new digital objects and trends. While you are strategizing on the new trend, don’t forget to focus on your foundation: who are you targeting, why are you targeting them and how will you effectively engage with them. If you have any questions on these trends, contact us today!

How To Make Your Advertising Dollars Go Further

Advertising budget creative strategy agency tcsa

The way a company interacts with its customers is constantly changing and evolving. Advertisers often wonder how to use their budgets more effectively. A marketing budget is more than just a financial plan. You should also know which effective advertising methods you should invest your money in.

According to Statista, paid social ad spend on social networks in the US surpassed 40 billion dollars (US) in 2020. Ad spending in the social media advertising segment shows an annual growth rate (CAGR 2021-2025) of 10.55%, resulting in a projected market volume of nearly 230 billion dollars by 2025.

Whether it’s social media advertising or print advertising, here are 7 ways you can make sure your advertising dollars go further.

Develop a Strategy That Works

The size of your budget doesn’t matter as much if you don’t have the strategy behind it. You can have six figures dedicated to a campaign, but without a strategy to back it up, you’re essentially wasting time and money. Know where you are placing your ads the plan around them. Why are you there? Who are you targeting? How can you get optimal exposure? Your strategy for how you execute your advertising will help you deliver your message while staying on target with your goals and objectives.

Narrow Your Focus

No matter what your advertising budget is, if you aren’t reaching your target audience, the campaign won’t work. No way around it. The narrower the audience focus for your campaign, the greater the response. It might seem counterintuitive to lessen the reach of your campaign, but this allows you to more effectively reach your target audience, closing the gap between buyers and non-buyers, while saving you money. Identifying and narrowing your target reach can help stretch your budget and create more loyal customers.

Allow Flexibility In Budget

You should never “Set it and Forget it” when it comes to placing your digital ads. Remember, you can modify your budget when necessary. Your budget should be prepared to go with any changes that may arise from consumer behavior to the seasonality of shopping habits to a shift in trends. Flexibility enables you to keep your budget in check and balanced. A good tip is to create a minimum ad spend amount but allow the opportunity to increase the spend if your cash flow allows it.

Stay Local

When you are bidding on advertising placements, you’ll be competing on a local level, even with the national brands. Focus on how to reach your local, hyper-targeted audience and expand from there. Markets vary region to region, state to state, and sometimes even town to town. Understanding your local market better than the national brands will help with the messaging, targeting options, media placements, and more resulting in higher consumer engagement.

Meet Your Customers Where They Are

It doesn’t matter how big your budget is if you’re spending it in the wrong places. One of the biggest mistakes we’ve seen is when brands are advertising in places that their consumers are not. If you know who you targeting, you should know where they spend their time. Whether they are online a lot via desktop or their mobile devices or if they turn on their TV when they get home and don’t turn it off until they go to bed, knowing where your target audience is spending their time allows you to know where, when and how to reach them.

Plan Early

It takes time and effort to set goals and pave the route to achieve them. So, start planning your budget 4-6 months before you start your fiscal year. This step ensures that you have ample time to align your marketing budget with your strategy. Therefore, you’ll be able to start your campaigns with confidence.

Evaluate and Adjust

Keep track of your campaign’s return on investment by setting monthly and/or quarterly analyses. The analysis should include touchpoints that assess your budget. Track your budget. For example, if the money you allocated for a particular strategy may not be getting the desirable ROI you were looking for, don’t hesitate to give it to another advertising channel. Just like being flexible in your advertising budget, but flexible in your advertising placements. Continue what works and adjust what doesn’t.

Whether your a small business or a national brand, be cautious of where your dollars are being spent. It’s more important now more than ever for advertisers to think outside the box and stretch their advertising spend as far as it can go. If you have questions on how you can make advertising work for you, contact us today.

Why You Need A Website Audit

Your website should have all the information on your company so that potential customers can make educated decisions before purchasing your product or service. Just like a car, your website should be inspected and tuned up on a regular basis. Whether it’s not showing up in search engines or having a high bounce rate, optimizing your website will help with the success of your business. Search engine optimization can improve your search engine results and create higher sales conversions.

Before you begin optimizing your website, whether new or it has been live for some time, you should run a website audit. An audit outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the website, helps inspect the technical backend of the website, on-page and off-page elements to optimize result positioning, increase conversions, and more. The website audit must be performed on a regular basis to ensure the long-term success of the website’s performance. The audits are really important as it helps keep the SEO strategy updated at all time.

Why Have An Audit

So, why do it? It outlines the technical performance and health of the website, so you can create practical tasks to enhance the online visibility. The results of the audit also helps create an ongoing SEO plan for improving lead generation and sales conversions. The audit helps identify possible errors in the website, such as broken links, duplicate content, or negative backlinks that might be damaging the website’s performance. Once these errors are identified by the audit, your SEO experts can create strategies to recover the traffic that the website lost.

Website audits also help identify the algorithm changes to the search engines. This is because all search engines tend to update the algorithms from time to time and SEO audits help outline what adjustments can be made to cater to these algorithmic changes. While running a full website audit is recommended, there are variations and parts of the website audit you can do separately.

Types of Website Audits

A website audit is a full analysis of factors that impact a websites visibility for search engines and ease of use for users. But a full website audit is not always necessary, below are some of the most common types of audits you can run on your website:

Technical Audit

While good quality content and backlinks will help get your site ranked, if there is a technical issue on your website, all your efforts could be a waste of time. Technical audits focus on best practice for site visibility and ensuring that all website meets all search engine requirements for crawling and indexing.

SEO Audit

An SEO audit measures how well your website is optimized for search engines. It includes analyzing of keywords, website links, traffic behavior, goal conversions, meta descriptions and data, and image and optimization.

Content Audit

Content is often reviewed as part of an SEO audit, a stand alone content audit can also be helpful, delivering strong insights into what messaging and tone of voice is converting and what isn’t.

Signs Your Website Needs An Audit

There are many reasons why your website may need an audit. Here are just a few:

Users can’t navigate your website properly
Images are not properly tagged
Your website is not mobile friendly or mobile optimized
Your website takes too long to load
Customers have a hard time contacting you
Your competitors are outperforming you in search engine results
Certain pages on your website are not getting indexed in search results

The overall purpose of a website audit is to give webmasters a complete and detailed analysis into their sites health, performance and speed. So, when are you performing an audit on your website? If you are looking to have an audit done to your website, or have questions about doing an audit, contact us today.

5 Tips For Higher Engagement With Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories should be a part of your social media marketing strategy. Stories and Reels have both become very popular elements of the app. The Stories feature of Instagram occupies that key, top of the feed real estate. It can be a great way to connect and engage with your audience.

Many brands and users are just re-posting their regular feed posts to Stories, which Instagram says users don’t particularly like. They state, “We’ve seen from research that people prefer to see original photos and videos in Stories from the people they care about.” So what are you doing to utilize Stories and to increase your engagement on Instagram? Here are five tips you can begin to incorporate.

Show Up in Real Time

A good social media strategy will include a lot pre-determined content. The Stories features gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience in the moment. Be authentic. Share photos and videos of your day. Highlight some of the things that are going on behind the scenes of your company. You can also utilize stories to share your story, how you got started, who you enjoy working with, why you do what you do, etc.

Utilize The Full Screen

Regular Instagram posts in the feed show up on just a fraction of the screen. Even when you share a regular post to your Story, it takes up only a part of the screen. On organic IG Stories, the media takes up the whole screen. Why not use all that real estate to highlight your product or service? Zoom in on the details and let customers know what you’re working on! You can create tutorials and become a leader in your industry.

Use Stories Features

Incorporating Stickers and text over your photo or video in Stories has a higher probability of a user engaging with the piece of content. Add text to encourage users to take action, like a promotion or sale. Stickers, like Poll, Survey and Questions, allow you to instigate engagement from your audience, while other Stickers like Music, allow you to overlay your Story to a track that fits your messaging.

Expand Your Reach

Checking in with the location feature and utilizing hashtags in your Stories will help expand your reach to users who may not be following your account. Did you know that when you add your location to your regular Instagram posts, it improves performance? You might very well experience the same thing when you add a location to your IG Stories.

Save to Highlights

Instagram Stories stay up for just 24 hours. The only way to avoid this is to save them to your Highlights. When you do this, the Story will stay there until you decide to take it down, if you ever do. You have the opportunity to highlight your Stories by topic or category. You can create branded covers for those Highlights, whether it’s your company’s colors or titles for each Highlight.

As Stories continues to grow it’s presence on the Instagram platform, creating a strategy will allow your brand to reach and engage with potential customers who go to Stories first before scrolling their feed. With the algorithm always changing, having content at the top of the feed in Stories will help your brand stay in the forefront. Contact us today if you have questions on how you can use Instagram Stories to grow your business.

5 SEO Mistakes To Avoid in 2022

Just like social media, search engine practices tend to change over time. If you’ve been struggling with search engine results, or you are planning on launching a new website, there may be some common mistakes you may be forgetting about. Here are the top 5 SEO mistakes to avoid in the new year:

Not writing enough quality content

The length of content is an important factor when it comes to optimization and has been correlated with SERP rankings. Search Engine Results Pages (or “SERP”) are Google’s response to a user’s search query. SERPs tend to include organic search results, paid Google Ads results, Featured Snippets, Knowledge Graphs and video results. More words equals more results. So if your content is too short (less than 300 words), then you may need to revisit those pages.

You don’t have an optimized image on each page

One of the biggest items people forget to optimize on their website are their images. Image optimization is the process of creating and delivering high-quality images in the ideal format, size, and resolution to increase user engagement. First, they give search engines important contextual information. Second, optimized images speed up page loading, which increases user engagement and search engine rankings. When design elements are common somewhere else, don’t reinvent them by creating new UI patterns. UI (User interface) design is the process designers use to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, focusing on looks or style. Designers aim to create interfaces which users find easy to use and pleasurable. Making users think hard to learn how to navigate through each page is not what you want.

You have duplicate content

Duplicate content is a big red flag when it comes to search engine optimization and can result in a penalty from Google. Duplicate content confuses Google and forces the search engine to choose which of the identical pages it should rank in the top results, regardless of who produced the content. There is a high possibility that the original page will not be the one chosen for the top search results. All of the content on your content should be completely original.

Your content is not optimized for your target keywords

Keywords are are important to show search engines that they content you created is relevant to the search query. Targeted keywords are the phrases that your target audience and visitors use in search engines when they are searching for a solution or information related to your business. Targeted keywords are usually phrases, not individual words. Including your keyword in your title and in the first 100 words of the page are ways you can start utilizing your target keywords.

Your page load speed is too slow

Page speed has been a ranking factor for a couple of years now. What’s more, each year, its importance to your site’s SERP positions is only growing. Whether it’s desktop or mobile, many users leave websites if the it takes too long for the pages to load. The average page load time is 8.66 seconds, although the recommended speed time is 3 seconds. In the summer of 2021, Google rolled out the Page Experience update to enhance its algorithm. Pages that load faster deliver content quicker, and in that, satisfy the user’s needs quicker. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over a quarter of users will click away and choose a different search result. Increasing bounce rate is not what SEOs are looking to do!

Search Engine Optimization should be a focal point in your 2022 marketing strategy. Have questions on the article or interested in learning more about our Website Audits? Contact us today.

2021 Holiday Marketing Guide

For many businesses, the holiday season is their busiest. The most successful holiday campaigns you see and love begin their planning stages as early as summer or fall. There’s no holiday magic when it comes to successful campaigns, it’s all about strategizing and planning. Whether it’s freshening up your landing pages, creating brand awareness, finding others ways to target new customers and everything in between, the list of tasks seems endless for small businesses.

As the holidays approach, here are things you need to consider for your brand and campaign:

Audit previous holiday marketing campaigns

No how things change from year to year, you can still learn and prepare from past success. Look back at statistics from previous years to understand where you were successful and where you could use some improvements. Analyzing your previous strategies and campaigns will help you avoid making similar mistakes.

Identify holiday strategies that make sense to your audience

No holiday marketing efforts are created equal. Definitely don’t copy competitors’ strategies. The key to a successful holiday marketing campaign lies in knowing your target audience. If you are targeting younger customers, like Gen Z or Millennials, consider utilizing platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, get creative with gift ideas to draw your customers in.

Keep things simple

It can be easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of holiday planning. However, it’s better in the long run to start small with your holiday campaigns. Even larger retailers who have been around for decades often refer back to the basics during the holidays. The holiday season is not a good time to try new things to attract customers. Think about the amount of bandwidth your team has and the amount of support your operations will have during the holidays.

Be prepared for the competition

With so many promotions around the holiday shopping season starting as early as this month, marketing is as important as ever to draw customers to your business. Make sure your campaigns help you stand out from the crowd and clearly communicate the benefits of shopping with you over your any other business.

Create a real reason to buy

The holiday season is known for discounts that can only be found once a year. When creating your holiday marketing plans, make sure you’re clearly incentivizing shoppers to visit your store. The holiday season isn’t just about creating revenue, it’s also about establishing relationships with customers who will hopefully return to purchase your products in the off-season. Make sure that customer retention is top of mind during any marketing decision you make for the holidays.

Don’t forget about your existing customers

A lot of businesses are always focused on attracting new customers, that they forget about the ones they already have. Chances are that the visitors who come to your website during the holidays will be a healthy mix of new and returning customers. The pathway to purchase for a repeat customer looks very different than a new customer, so make considerations for both while building out your marketing and website materials.

Use video marketing

Because of COVID-19, people are consuming as much as four times more online video than they were prior to the pandemic. Think about ways to incorporate video into your holiday marketing materials. Create video advertisements for tv, streaming services and your social media networks. You can also utilize video for organic content that you can share on your website, emails and social media channels. It’s a great way to dive deeper into your product or service to make it an easier buying journey for your customer.

Keep your website up to date

Your website is the face of your company, even on any other day of the year. It’s where people go to learn more about you, familiarize themselves with your brand and to potentially purchase your products or services. Make sure your website is user friendly, updated with the holiday campaign, and ready for the traffic and activity. Ensuring your website has a smooth user experience for mobile and desktop will help prevent your business from losing sales.

Whether you’re a large company or a small business, one of the most common mistakes brands make during the holidays is late planning. Start planning now, optimize your content, keep your customers in mind, and don’t forget about establishing lifetime value with your brand long after the holidays. If you are stumped with planning your holiday campaign, reach out to us today!

Instagram Expands Reels to 60 Seconds

Instagram announced that their Reels length limit is being extended from 30 seconds to 60 seconds for all users.

Instagram has been experimenting with longer Reels for some time now. Last September, Instagram extended Reels from 15 to 30 seconds. And given that TikTok now enables the upload of longer clips (up to 3 minutes), and YouTube Shorts (another TikTok competitor) can also be up to 60 seconds in length. It was only a matter of time before Instagram followed the trend and extended the length of time users had to upload to Reels.

Instagram already enables longer video uploads in its other elements. Regular feed videos can be up to 60 seconds, while you can also upload longer videos in 15-second snippets to Stories, and hour-long clips to IGTV.

The extension of Reels clips starts to bleed into IG’s other functions, which maybe makes it a less definitive option within the broader Instagram experience. It can give more users the capacity to create longer clips, or re-purpose the same posts that they’re already uploading to TikTok and YouTube Shorts anyway. By moving in line with the other platforms, Instagram seems to be welcoming more cross-posting, which will give it more content for Reels. The only problem is that it may also make for a more repetitive experience across apps.

Instagram is currently experimenting with a new, TikTok-like display format for Explore, which does mash all of the content into a single format. That will certainly help your page get discovered, but what about all the other publishing options Instagram has?

Will you be posting longer Reels? Is Instagram becoming too much? Let us know in the comments below.

Facebook Launching Newsletter Platform ‘Bulletin’

As a way to keep creators on the network, Facebook announced their new newsletter platform, Bulletin. The new site will be a place for writers and podcasters to publish content and build a subscriber base right on the platform itself.

As this new platform is in development, Facebook is testing tools and features with a small number of selected writers but shares an overview of what’s to come.

Facebook explains Bulletin as:

“Through Bulletin, we want to support these creators, and unify our existing tools with something that could more directly support great writing and audio content — from podcasts to Live Audio Rooms — all in one place. We respect the work of writers and want to be clear that anyone who partners with us will have complete editorial independence.”
Source.

With Bulletin, creators will own the rights to their content and subscribers list, although the platform will still be dependent on Facebook’s infrastructure. For example, subscribers don’t have to have a Facebook account to access free content but they will need to set up an account to use Facebook Pay for any transactions and subscription fees to the creators they follow. An account seems to also be necessary to enjoy some of the subscription perks, such as being a member of special Facebook groups. Bulletin will also be on a separate site, but its articles and podcasts will appear in users’ Facebook News Feed and within the Facebook News sections for distribution.

In addition to writers, Bulletin also wants to attract podcasters to join their platform as well. Their announcement says Bulletin will include tools that allow the distribution of podcasts, including those that are hosted elsewhere, with additional audio features that remain unspecified for now. A great way for podcasters to expand the reach of their shows.

Creators will have access to Facebook’s existing tools like Facebook Live and Audio Rooms to connect with their audience and keep the discussion going with some moderation tools like turning off comments or allowing only paid subscribers to comment altogether. The biggest perk for now joining Bulletin: Facebook says it won’t take a fee from creators “at launch,” and writers retain full ownership of their work and subscriber list.

Bulletin is a direct answer to the growing popularity of Substack and other newsletter products. Substack is used by a number of major writers and the company has been courting talent with guaranteed payments. Twitter also recently purchased Revue, another newsletter platform, though it hasn’t done very much to integrate it into the social network yet. Substack takes a 10 percent cut of subscriptions, while Revue takes a 5 percent cut.

Facebook has been trying for a while now to keep creators, of all kinds, on the platform. This new tool is just another way Facebook is looking to incentivize these creators. Will you be using Bulletin? Let us know in the comments below.

You Can Soon Publish Instagram Content via Desktop

In development for the last few months, Instagram is testing the capability to publish posts from your desktop with a small group of users. Something marketers have been waiting for!

Some users are now seeing the desktop posting “+” icon in the top bar of instagram.com. When clicked, that then enables users to upload images or videos directly from their computer hard drive. Once you add your media, you then have access to all the same in-app options for editing posts, including image formatting tools and filters. You can then upload them, direct from the site, giving you another way to manage your Instagram content and process, which will make life much easier for those who manage multiple accounts.

Instagram has been slow to implement features on desktop. Direct messaging only became available last year, for example. Instagram has been building out its desktop functionality over time. Last year, it also added the capacity to view live streams from the desktop version of the app, while it also improved the Stories viewing experience on computers.

However, users have been able to upload content and IGTV to Instagram feeds from desktops since 2019 via Facebook’s Creator Studio app. The Creator Studio, available for only business accounts, doesn’t provide access to all of the regular Instagram editing tools, which could be another advantage of this new desktop option.

At the moment, the updated feature doesn’t allow Stories or Reels uploads, but additional tests have shown that IGTV uploads are also in the works, which likely suggests that full posting functionality is coming in the near future.

The option to upload from the desktop could be a big boost for social media managers who are looking to streamline their workflow, and more easily publish graphics from other editing tools. Unfortunately, just like everything else that Facebook does, it’s not available to everybody just yet. Instagram says that this is a small test for now, with a view to further expansion soon.

Will you use the desktop version when it becomes available, or will you continue to manage your account via mobile devices?