Instagram's push for original content, mastering Pinterest marketing, and Notion's meteoric product-led growth

This week you'll learn:

• 📸 How Instagram is pushing for original content

• 🚀 Notion's unconventional marketing playbook

• 📌 Pinterest marketing fundamentals

• ⚡️ Quick Hits: Tesla's marketing missteps, Meta's $5K influencer bonus, and Bumble's brand refresh

Instagram Prioritizes Original Content

Instagram will no longer showcase accounts in its recommendations if they repeatedly share content from other Instagram users without significantly enhancing it. Accounts that post unoriginal content 10 or more times in the last 30 days will be impacted.

When Instagram detects the original creator of a post, it will proactively redirect more traffic to their upload and replace reposts with the original content. However, this approach will only apply to relatively new content and won't affect significantly altered reposts like memes, parody compilations, or remixed reactions.

What It Means

This could significantly boost creator traction and engagement, ensuring that viral content primarily benefits the original creator. All new content will receive more initial reach, with high-engagement posts gaining further distribution. This could help smaller accounts break through to new audiences.

Read More - Social Media Today

Pinterest Marketing Mastery

Pinterest offers a powerful marketing opportunity, even for brands without strong visual content. Let's explore how to make the most out of it.

Invest in Visuals

High-quality images are essential on Pinterest. Ensure your Pins reflect your brand's style and aesthetic. Here are the highest performing image categories:

• Infographics: Condense valuable information into eye-catching graphics.

• Inspirational Images: Evoke emotions and aspirations aligned with your brand.

• How-To Guides: Break down processes or tips into visual step-by-step Pins.

• Typography: Craft compelling text-based images that grab attention.

Focus on Quality and Keywords

Pinterest's algorithm prioritizes quality over recency.

Invest in crafting the best possible Pins, with engaging visuals, useful descriptions, and relevant keywords your audience is searching for.

Research keywords using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush. These keywords will be for Google searches, but they will still give a great window into what customers actually care about and research.

Incorporate them into your Pin titles, descriptions, and image file names to maximize discoverability and reach.

Feature Your Products

Integrate your e-commerce platform with Pinterest to automatically share your products as shoppable Pins. This keeps your product information up-to-date and allows users to purchase directly from the platform.

With a good foundation of pin design, you can also experiment with paid ads on Pinterest.

Sasha Allan from dress brand Cult Mia shared that:

For many, Pinterest serves as a vast well of inspiration. Cult Mia successfully tapped into the platform's wedding inspiration audience by curating carefully selected wedding guest outfits and bridal looks.

This curated approach led to a significant increase in both impressions and engagement for the brand.

Read More - Sifted

Notion's Unconventional Marketing Playbook

From the brink of failure to a $10B valuation, Notion's meteoric rise is a masterclass in product-led growth.

But behind the seemingly effortless virality was a complex marketing strategy spanning community, influencers, and analytics.

The key insight is that Notion followed where its customers led. Every brand should do the same.

Community as the Bedrock 

Notion's community efforts were instrumental in accelerating growth. As Ben Lang, former Head of Community, explains:

"One thing we've done on the community side at Notion pretty consistently is identifying trends within our user base and building on top of that. Templates and 'superusers' were two of the earliest things that were clear to us."

By doubling down on these organic trends, Notion supercharged programs like its Ambassador initiative and template gallery. The key was a bottom-up approach, empowering users to lead the charge.

Influencer Marketing, Reimagined

Lexie Barnhorn, Head of Social and Influencer Marketing, pioneered Notion's influencer strategy. She suggests:

• Cross-Functional Integration: Influencer marketing should be a standalone channel that contributes significantly to the marketing mix, enhancing content visibility and SEO.

• Platform Diversity: Notion's strategy includes leveraging various social platforms, proving that influencer partnerships can thrive across different media, from TikTok to LinkedIn, and adapting to where the target audience is most active.

"Influencer marketing works best with a bottom-up approach. It can contribute to so many arms within a marketing org. It can repost the content we put out on social, and it ups our SEO because we have so many influencers posting about our content," Barnhorn explains.

By letting influencers authentically showcase Notion through their unique lenses, the brand achieved massive reach, hitting 1 billion views on TikTok.

Data-Driven Growth

Underpinning these creative strategies was a complex growth and analytics engine. Rachel Hepworth, CMO, and her team used data to optimize and expand Notion's reach.

Notion built a tight feedback loop between its customers and its marketing team. Marketing in sync with the market is a prerequisite for any brand’s growth.

Read More - First Round

⚡️ Quick Hits

• Tesla's Marketing Misstep follows the firing of its marketing team and coincides with the troubled Cybertruck launch.

• Meta's $5K Influencer Bonus offers up to $5,000 for influencers to boost Threads app engagement, requiring over 10,000 views per post.

• Bumble's Brand Refresh combats dating app fatigue with a global campaign and a new, humorous ad.

• Rethink Content Marketing Metrics to gain specialized insights that better reflect content strategy value.

• Americans Support Social Media Regulation shows a Pew Research study where 51% favor government regulation, down from 56% in 2021.

What we’re working on right now

We are currently reviewing and aligning our customer persona and doing the same for brands we work with.

Keeping your personas updated is a crucial checkin, as customer preferences and needs can evolve over time. So, regularly refreshing your customer persona ensures you're aligned with current market trends and targeting the right people.

It also helps with product development. As your product or service matures, it might attract new customer segments. Updating your personas helps identify these emerging audiences.

A customer persona, or buyer persona, represents your ideal customer. It goes beyond just demographics like age and income. It dives into their motivations, goals, challenges, and even how they communicate. Here's why having one is crucial for your business:

• Targeted Outreach: Imagine throwing darts blindfolded. That's essentially marketing without a persona. A persona helps you understand your target audience so you can tailor your messaging, content, and even product offerings to resonate with their specific needs and interests, helping you build a more effective and efficient strategy.

• Deeper Customer Understanding: You learn what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night, and what they value most.This empathy allows you to connect with them on a more personal level and build stronger relationships – proven to drive more conversions.

• Better Product Development:  Instead of just guessing what features or products might sell, you have data and insights to guide your decisions. This increases the chances your offerings will be a hit with your target market.

• Optimized Resource Allocation: By targeting the right people with the right message, you get more return on your investment in terms of sales and customer satisfaction.

You gain a strategic advantage by dedicating time to creating and updating customer personas. You can make informed decisions about marketing, product development, and overall customer experience.

Are you interested in updating your customer persona? You can download our free exercise to create the ideal customer persona for your business here!

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