The Social Roast - Issue #5
Hey folks!
This time around we're going to be talking about all things social media that happened in May. Usually I do these at the start of the month, but this time I just couldn't be bothered!
I was going to try and blame the weather. I was going to explain that it was too hot to type or that I was out enjoying the heat or something. But honestly, every time I found myself starting to do my write-up I couldn't find the energy.
So I would just turn on my PS5, load up Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and kill some orcs. Tremendous fun!
But I really should be getting my act together. A new social marketing newsletter launched this week and it's got me a bit worried.
The Diary of a Social Media Manager is the new newsletter from the excellent @workinsocialtheysaid account. And it's already got some big backers behind it (Hootsuite as a sponsor??).
Then again, my newsletter has always been but a pale imitation of Matt Navarra's Geek Out. Just gotta find my own niche I guess.
Before we jump into it, a quick review of last time
We're now on 78 followers, up from 64 last time. That's good growth, though I wish I could understand it a bit better. The main "referring domain" for new subscribers is apparently "Unknown". COOL REVUE THANKS A LOT VERY HELPFUL. So if you've come to this via a friend or colleague... maybe lemme know directly?
Feedback was 90% positive, so thanks! Keep those thumbs up coming. Some of my favourite comments included:
I really look forward to reading these!
I am not even close to the world of social marketing but I really enjoy your content and these emails!
It’s funny and informative, and generally spot on. Keep at it. You’ll get a book deal before long.
Some of my least favourite comments included:
i still don't understand why ur emails are so long that i have to go to extra effort to thumbs it down
And I'll quickly address this, which came up a few times:
Unfortunately the way you link tweets doesn’t pull through very well on mobile! The copy often gets cut off and images in the tweet don’t pull through at all
This is great feedback, thanks! I assumed that since Twitter bought Revue, it might play nice with embedding tweets. It does out it does but you have to embed them as Media > Tweets rather than just links. So they should be nicer from now on!
If you're reading this, and you work at Twitter - maybe one to look at?
Onto the content!
This month we're taking a look back at May on social!
My favourite thing I did in May was this wild thread of brands hand-drawing their logo to add to a virtual gallery space.
It didn’t get much pick up. But it was incredibly fun, and we got some great submissions. Thanks all.
Oh, and you can also read this interview I did about Shrek. I was meant to be talking about the film’s cultural legacy, but it turned into a bit of a deep dive about my own relationship with social media and meaning in a post-irony online landscape!!
A Cultural Evolution of 'Shrek', from Blockbuster Hit to Historic Meme — www.vice.com On the 20th anniversary of the original film, mega-fans, academics and 'Shreksperts' weigh in on its even more curious existence online.
You can also now listen to my terrible voice talking about my job in this episode of the fun Brand Wars podcast. Enjoy!
16 | Monzo Bank Special with Richard Cook - Brand Wars | Podcast on Spotify — open.spotify.com Listen to this episode from Brand Wars on Spotify. This week we're delighted to welcome Richard Cook, Social Media Manager at Monzo for a good old chit-chat. If you didn't already know, Monzo Bank launched in 2015 as one of the first neo or digital-only banks, offering a mobile-first experience and coral-coloured debit cards. It became the darling of crowdfunding when it raised a record-breaking £1 million in just 96 seconds. We chat to Richard about the early days of Monzo, why did it become a cult brand amongst North London tech types and how does he get people engaged in conversations about finance? We really enjoyed this one so hope you do too! Follow us on Instagram @brandwarspod
Now let’s chat May.
Wise get social with their roadmap
I love a good roadmap.
One day I’ll write a blog post about why it’s hard to have a public roadmap at scale. (Spoiler: it needs constant attention and universal buy-in from a million stakeholders). So fair play to Wise to actually getting one up at this stage of their growth.
My only criticism is that a big flat graphic isn’t the most accessible way to share what you’re working on. But hey, any roadmap is more accessible than no roadmap.
What I love about this is that they’ve also opened up the roadmap to their community. In this Twitter thread, they’ve asked their followers what they think is missing.
And more than that, a few lucky folks will actually get to come and sit with the Product teams at some special Wise ‘Mission Days’ and chat about the ideas.
The cynic in me wants to scream about what a soul-crushing experience that’s gonna be for the customers. Hearing all the regulatory reasons their ideas aren’t possible, would scale poorly, or wouldn’t make sense to prioritise against other business priorities… sounds like fun.
I’ve written before about why user feedback isn’t always the best way to go for product development. But hey, maybe Wise are onto something. It’s probably an excellent way to launch something you’ve already decided to build. One to watch!
Twitter open verification back up
Now we can all get blue ticks… right?
Actually, no. We can’t all have blue ticks. You need to be in one of quite a few restrictive categories. Just being a “person who has tweeted a lot more than is healthy for over a decade” isn’t enough, apparently. Even if you’ve been featured as a global Twitter moment in the past, apparently.
I’m desperately trying to get verified for… some reason? But I’m not having any luck. Supposedly, I don’t have enough followers or mentions to count as a genuine person. So if you fancy boosting my numbers a bit, please reply to me.
They also, um, paused verification requests because they got so many. So I’m not holding my breath.
Signal pulled a weird stunt
Honestly, I’m still not sure what happened here.
In short, Signal tried to run some hyper-specific ads to try and highlight the data privacy creepiness that Facebook allows. They claim that FB then stopped the ads from running and suspended their ad account.
However, Facebook themselves clapped back, saying it’s all a stunt, and the ads were never run in the first place. And then, Signal clapped back the clap back.
So it’s all ended up being a bit post-truth, which I’m sure wasn’t the point of Signal’s original campaign (but might actually be a bit more interesting).
iPlayer does a funny
Anyone who thinks this wasn’t deliberate doesn’t really get social media.
Ziglu give away free nuggs
I’ve honestly never even considered using chicken nuggets for a social media promotion.
I guess it makes a good alternative to just giving away a fiver every time someone signs up. But it feels a bit… odd.
And it’s not really doing any favours for the legitimacy of Bitcoin as an investment. I’d probably swerve the whole “hey students, stop studying and buy bitcoin” language too. Oh, to do marketing in an unregulated industry.
Instagram broke and then unbroke carousel posts
This is one of those things that I think we’re just desensitised to now. A major app completely changes a core bit of functionality without notice, and everyone has to adapt.
Although in this case, it wasn’t actually a feature change but a bug. And it’s since been restored.
Still, it highlights something important. We’re essentially all at the mercy of these platforms. If Facebook decides they want to completely change how the feed works or deprecate that one page you use to get that particular thing you care about, there’s not much you can do.
Podcast recommendation: The Content Mines
How Do We Fix Online Advertising? - The Content Mines | Podcast on Spotify — open.spotify.com Listen to this episode from The Content Mines on Spotify. We've made it this far into the show without talking about ads. But this week we're finally diving in. Luke explains this week why online advertising is bad and how we can fix it. TL;DR — ending targeted ads. Also, we talk a lot about Prince Philip. Also also, Ryan has a lovely story about Pokémon. But, mainly, we're talking about ads.
This is my new favourite podcast. It’s all about modern digital marketing and social trends, or in other words: my absolute toxic lifeblood.
This episode is basically a micro-history of targeted ads and the problems modern marketers face with attribution. If you’re looking for a primer about how Performance Marketing works or the differences between brand advertising and direct response, this is a great place to start. I learnt loads!
One story, in particular, I found fascinating was the experiment eBay ran in 2012 by turning off search ads for a third of the US. They found it had no impact on sales.
The moral? Probably not that online ads don’t work, but more eBay is so big and famous that people go there anyway. There’s something interesting there in the value of brand marketing (say, um, organic social) vs direct response. But I’m not unpacking all that here and now.
Basically, I love this podcast, and if Ryan or Luke ever fancy having another white male on as a guest, I’d be thrilled!
Hide the Pain Harold returns… as a Fintech influencer
Lots to unpack here. So quick primer: Hide the Pain Harold is a Hungarian man who found fame as a viral stock image model used for sad memes. Lanistar is “a polymorphic payment card for those who know influence is the only currency that matters”.
They’ve also had various run-ins with the FCA. But this isn’t about that.
It’s just… weird, right? Lanistar’s whole thing at launch was basically a mega influencer-led thunderclap. Footballers and Love Islanders were raving about it in their #ad posts on Instagram. So what on hell is a weird-looking Hungarian man doing flogging them?
Is Lanistar even available in Hungary? What audience is this for?
I guess they’re trying to do some social media play, like tapping into things that are cool/trendy on social. But it’s just a weird fit. Like if Grumpy Cat (RIP) started flogging MeUndies. What’s the relevance here?
For an excellent read about influencers in fintech, check out this from Sifted:
The “Fin-influencer” boom: Why Instagram and TikTok are the new battlegrounds for digital banks — sifted.eu Forget tube ads or expensive TV campaigns — it's influencers on Instagram and TikTok that have captured digital banks' marketing budgets.
At Monzo, we’ve never really done influencer marketing (and this isn’t an invitation to ask us to do so) for a few reasons. But it’s obviously quite an interesting strategy. I just don’t think we’d be going with obscure meme people.
Twitter launches uncropped images
FINALLY.
This was a pain for so long. Unlike other platforms, which were totally FINE with squares, Twitter insisted on this weird horizontal format. You could upload images in different formats, but they’d be cropped to horizontal but some mysterious (and possibly racist?) algorithm.
So you’d typically making a whole different crop of an asset just for Twitter. But those days are now gone! Sort of! On mobile, at least!
I’m still not entirely sure what works where and what doesn’t. But it seems like you’ll get cropped a lot less on Twitter on mobile. Which is great.
I used the opportunity to break all our brand guidelines and post a long version of Hot Chip — Monzo’s brand mascot:
It still cropped for some people on mobile, though. So I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe just keep cropping assets to that weird horizontal shape if you want to make sure everyone can see them everywhere.
Twitter launches a tip jar
For some people, somewhere.
I don’t have this, and I haven’t actually seen anyone with it yet. Is this another indefinite rollout?
Would I use it? Probably! More money isn’t a bad thing. Would anyone actually tip me? No way! Why would they? It’s hard to see what value there’d be in tipping someone on Twitter. Anyone regularly adding value typically has other ways to monetise their content, like a Patreon or paid-subscription newsletter. But still, it can’t hurt!
Amazon remind us all why ‘brand banter’ sucks
Ok, this was actually the start of June. But I feel May was a bit light overall, so I’m including it as bonus content. Plus, it might just be the worst thing ever.
Like… who is this for? Who enjoys this? Certainly not anyone following the accounts.
Sure, this was fun and impressive back in 2015 when we were all young. It was fantastic to see all the Disney properties chatting back and forth. But now we’re all very jaded, and it’s lost every ounce of its charm.
It’s made worse by the fact that you suspect many of these accounts are the same person/team. And that solipsistic interpretation of events makes it a very depressing read indeed.
Brand banter isn’t always bad, though. When all the brands jumped on to the Weetabeans thing in February it was fun because it was spontaneous. These were brands that didn’t usually speak to each other or had absolutely no reason to. And that was fun!
But this from Amazon is just… nothing. It doesn’t make me care about their big announcement (the dates for Prime Day), and it somehow makes me dislike Amazon more than we already do.
Sometimes I wish I could blast myself into space, Jeff Bezos style. Dude has the right idea.
Tweet of the month: why TikTok’s duet is the best feature ever
So that was May. Thanks for reading my thoughts about it. You’re still the best.
If you enjoyed this, feel free to let me know. Or better yet: tell a friend. You can read more of my monthly reviews and other thoughts here 👇
Confessions of an Anti-Social Marketer – Medium — medium.com I’ve worked in roles across Customer Service, Community and Marketing for the best part of a decade. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.