Brian, Duncan, and Iain from Strong Coffee Marketing are back with another edition of the Strong Coffee Drip! This week, we’re talking breadsticks, living a hash-free life, and getting paid to leave social media.
☕️ The Agenda:
00:00 - Welcome!
00:29 - What is the bigger story of the past week: the OpenAI saga or X’s issues with advertisers?
03:42 - Threads is introducing a new feature that allows users to tag topics using hashtags, a core element of the Twitter experience. Users can tag posts with interests or themes using clickable blue links initiated by tapping a new number button or typing the symbol followed by text. Unlike Twitter, Threads limits each post to one tag to reduce spam. In addition, the number sign will not appear in the post. The test will begin in Australia, with Meta planning to iterate based on user feedback before expanding to more countries.
08:36 - A study conducted by researchers from the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, Bocconi University, and the University of Cologne reveals that most social media users, especially young individuals, continue using platforms like Instagram and TikTok despite feeling unhappy. The study surveyed 1,000 college students in the U.S. and showed that participants would need to be paid $59 on average to deactivate TikTok for a month and $47 for Instagram if their peers continued using the platforms. However, if they and their peers deactivated, they would pay $28 for TikTok and $10 for Instagram. The study suggests a "social media trap," where users experience negative well-being but fear missing out, indicating a strong network effect.
17:09 - At the start of November, false online advertisements circulating on Facebook and Instagram suggested that Olive Garden plans to close all its locations. The ads led users to a lengthy article on Investing.com listing various businesses closing locations in 2023, where Olive Garden appeared at number 191. The article clarified that Olive Garden planned to close 45 locations due to a decline in customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an additional 40 locations set to close within the next two years as part of a broader strategy. The misleading ads were attributed to advertising arbitrage, a strategy aiming to generate more revenue from ads within an article than the cost of the initial clickbait ads that attracted users to the article.
26:52 - We get asked all the time about social media posting and workflow tools. There are a million of them out there, and we’ve tested many of them. The one we keep coming back to is Loomly.
