What’s Up THIS WEEK: WORDS that Boost Everything? Facebook Update! Bridgerton? | Ep. 452

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, not that podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life, and then we still have our other ones later in the week. So what's going on? So first I saw on X, they are now offering, as of this week, $1 million to whoever writes the best article on the platform this month.

Jay Schwedelson: The article needs to be, uh, a thousand words. It has to be original content and they're judging it based on the amount of impressions it gets, uh, on their feed or whatever. And the reason they're doing this, which is really interesting from a marketing perspective, it's the same thing that's going on with LinkedIn.

Jay Schwedelson: LinkedIn is prioritizing long articles now too, 'cause that's what AI is picking up. In their, uh, citations. But overall, when you see two major platforms trying to prioritize people writing long articles, like thousand word articles, which is what X is doing, and now what LinkedIn is also doing, that is something that we all need to be aware of.

Jay Schwedelson: It doesn't mean that short form is going away, but this idea of long form original. Non AI written content. It's almost like, uh, 10 years ago or 15 years ago when blogs were the hot thing, blogs basically now on social are a hot thing in this very moment. I'll tell you something else that's hot, although I don't still think it's hot.

Jay Schwedelson: This is wild to me. SimilarWeb just reported, okay, that threads, you know, that's Meta's version of X. That threads is now seeing more daily usage on mobile than x. That's wild. They're showing data that Threads is seeing 141 million daily active users on mobile devices as compared to X. Seeing 125 million now X, whatever old Twitter, whatever you wanna call it, is still crushing threads on the web version.

Jay Schwedelson: But even so, I mean, every time I go on threads, it's like almost like a ghost town to me. I know I must be missing something. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Whatever. A little more data about Super Bowl email marketing tactics. Talked about this on a recent episode, but there's some other data I want to share, and this applies for business to business marketers, consumer marketers, nonprofit marketers.

Jay Schwedelson: People forget this is the Super Bowl is something that the entire country. Pays attention to culturally. It's not that, who cares that the Seahawks are gonna play the Patriots? Like four people care. All right? But it doesn't matter. We all gather around the tv, we eat a lot of garbage, whatever, and that whole week leading into it, our minds are, we don't realize it or looking for certain things.

Jay Schwedelson: From a marketing perspective, whether you're a boring B2B brand or a cool consumer brand, doesn't matter. So for example, world Data Research released that. These words, if you put them at the start of your subject line, or very close to the start of your subject line. The week leading into the Super Bowl, it will actually boost your email open rates by about 15%.

Jay Schwedelson: The words are touchdown, big game qb, super win, and MVP, you know, score touchdown with our latest SMB guide. Big game, boring question mark. Check out this, blah, blah, blah. Are you the QB of blah blah? This is what we are looking for, whether we realize it or not. And if you really wanna lean in the actual Super Bowl emoji, if you use that emoji in your subject line 24 hours before or 24 hours after the Super Bowl, you will see a significant open rate lift.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't care what your target audience is, it's gonna lift over 20% just by using that Super Bowl emoji. I know. I know how silly that is. Who cares what else is going on? This was really an under the radar thing that I saw that the newsletter pretty little marketer put out, which is super valuable. So now it's not rolled out to everyone, but it's starting to roll out for Facebook Live.

Jay Schwedelson: If you do any Facebook Lives, and if you don't, you should. If you do Facebook Live, you can now do paid boosting to target audiences that you want for your Facebook Live. This is kind of huge. And as this rolls out more, I think more and more, uh, all sorts of brands are gonna leverage this 'cause it's an awesome way to build up a live audience.

Jay Schwedelson: So that's kind of cool. Um, so there was a lot of, you know, heated rivalry was that, um, hockey, hockey. Show, show whatever about relationships on hockey, on Netflix, heated rivalry, super popular, and what came out this week, which is kind of cool and wild. It was on, not on Netflix, it was on HBO Max, whatever, heated rivalry.

Jay Schwedelson: Anyway, it got reported by Bloomberg. The National Hockey League actually saw a significant boost in reseller ticket share, uh, ticket sales from first time buyers, first time people going to hockey games. They saw a significant boost directly tied to the heated rivalry show being aired on HBO Max. This was on both SeatGeek and StubHub, so that's kind of cool and kind of interesting.

Jay Schwedelson: I'll tell you what's not cool and not interesting. Lululemon, right? Lululemon was it right? For like a few years, everyone just wore Lululemon. That's where it was. And then all these other brands came out like, you know, aloe and ri and this athletic leisure category exploded in every direction. Well, Lululemon just kind of botched it, right?

Jay Schwedelson: They just released this new, uh, whatever pant or whatever they were pumping, it was called get. Low. It's these yoga pants. The problem is they're getting crushed because apparently if you use them to do squats, like you bend your legs, your butt, whatever they're see-through, come on. How are we not testing that?

Jay Schwedelson: How are we not at lulu Limbic? All right. These are for working out. Let's put them on somebody and see what happens when they work out. What are we doing? Like, come on, you can't have see-through pants when you're doing a squat. First of all, squats are terrible, but who wants to do that? Oh my goodness. So the weirdest story this week, so Edward Norton.

Jay Schwedelson: That's the dude who was in the movie, the Hulk. He was in rounders with Matt Damon. He's been in like a hundred movies. Well, who knew, but Edward Norton. I didn't know this. Maybe you knew this. He has a digital ad measurement company for like digital ads. Okay. It's called Eddo, EDO. Well, anyway, Edward Norton's Company, Eddo, who knew he was in this business?

Jay Schwedelson: They got sued by this company called Ipot. Okay? 'cause Ipot says that they're using their data and their technology wrong. Fast forward, a judgment just came out against Edward Norton's company where they're saying he owes $18.3 million 'cause he was doing stuff that wasn't okay with his video management measurement firm, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: Who knew Edward Norton was in this world? Anyway, uh, what else is going on? It's totally ridiculous. So. I know it's over. I know nobody cares, but I have to get it outta my system. I was not on board with that dude who climbed the tower in Taipei. Alex, uh, Honnold, however you pronounce the last name, first of all, I watched Free Solo a while back.

Jay Schwedelson: That movie freaked me out, but I really don't think, I don't under I, I'm sure a lot of people watch that are listening. Great. Good for you. I couldn't even watch like the five second clips that, that were on my social feed. I don't know what it says about somebody if they're like, oh, I'm really excited. I wanna watch this guy climb this tower.

Jay Schwedelson: Taipei Tower, a zillion feet in the air with no harness, no nothing. What are we really doing? We're watching to see if something bad happens. I don't think that's good. I think that's weird. He got paid about $500,000 to do it. Um, he must be missing some part of his brain or something that doesn't make him scared.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know. I couldn't watch it. I was not into it. I know you don't care. Um, the other big, uh, pop culture thing this week, which you'll see if I care about, I don't think I do, is that Bridger tin. The latest season is finally coming out. In the next few days, and basically they're chopping up into two part premiere.

Jay Schwedelson: They're gonna release the first part on January 29th, and then the second part on February 26th. And I tried Bridger Tin. I just don't care. I don't know. And I care about a lot of tv. That stinks. I really do. So I know everyone's gonna be watching it. I feel like I gotta get back into it. I'm gonna give it a shot.

Jay Schwedelson: I know I'm gonna get heat for not being a huge Bridgeton fan, but I'll, I'll try. I will try. I'll step it up. And, uh, speaking of trying, um, I, you know, I haven't talked about a lot, but I'm gonna be talking about, I have a book coming out. All net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. I wanna kick cancer's butt, that's why I'm writing this book.

Jay Schwedelson: You can go to Amazon today and pre-order it. It's called stupider. People have done it and it's a lot of nonsense for me. It's whatever's floating around my small brain, but hopefully you check it out. Let's kick cancer's butt. It's called stupider. People have done it. You can get it anywhere you buy a book.

Jay Schwedelson: Amazon's great, whatever. And uh, appreciate you all. See you at the next one later.