The TNT Report Podcast: Marketing Tips, News, and Tools for Small Business (Episode 16) | Jim Person

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The TNT Report Podcast: Marketing Tips, News, and Tools for Small Business. This newsletter and podcast provides a weekly compilation of curated information for small business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers to grow their business and online presence.

Hello, I’m Jim Person and welcome to the TNT Report Podcast: Marketing Tips, News, and Tools for Small Business. This is Episode (16) for the week ending Friday, April 22. Today’s podcast is brought to you in part by WP Engine. Do you need hosting for your WordPress website? With WPEngine, you’ll get high performance WordPress hosting that just works. And you can improve your conversion rates with a faster site on WP Engine. So if you need WordPress website hosting, get three (3) months free when you sign up for WP Engine with my affiliate link https://jimperson.com/3free — that’s the number 3 and the word free: https://jimperson.com/3free.

TODAY’S CELEBRATIONS

Today is Friday, April 22, and today is Girl Scout Leader Day, Earth Day – which was started on this date April 22, back in 1970, in the U.S. in an effort to raise the public awareness of the world’s environment and environmental issues. Friday, April 22 is also National Jelly Bean Day and Day of Silence Day. Let’s start that one after this podcast is over, okay? Also, on this date April 22, 37 years ago, executives at one of America’s and the world’s most famous consumer brands were expecting good news about a new and improved product. After research, experimentation and extensive taste testing, a reformulated Coca-Cola was launched in 1985. The company, however, was surprised by the negative, noisy consumer reaction, and New Coke became something of a synonym for product failure. The original Coca-Cola was rushed back to retailers by the summer. New Coke staggered on for a time alongside “the Real Thing,” but is no longer available in America. And FYI: 588 American establishments engage in soft drink manufacturing, employing some 65,000 people in the $37.6 billion a year business.

Saturday, April 23 is National Picnic Day, National Lost Dog Awareness Day, National Cherry Cheesecake Day, German Beer Day and Record Store Day. Sunday, April 24 is National Pet Parent’s Day, American Genocide Remembrance Day and National Pigs-in-a-Blanket Day.

And another interesting fact from the U.S. Census Bureau… what might be considered the birth certificate of the home video game industry was issued on Monday, April 25, 50 years ago. That 1972 event was the award of a patent to German-born engineer and inventor Ralph Baer for the first “television gaming and training apparatus,” as the patent office put it. Video games had already been developed, but for dedicated set up in amusement arcades. Baer’s Odyssey System for Magnavox sold only 200,000 units, as many potential customers mistakenly believed it would work only on Magnavox televisions. Odyssey was eclipsed by Atari’s home system in 1975. Today, nationwide, there are some 14,500 computer software publishers, employing 690,000 people, many in application design. This industry earns over $275-billion annually.

FEATURED CONTENT

8 Exciting Video Marketing Trends for 2022

If you’re not already convinced that video has officially arrived as the top form of online content, it’s time to get on board. Video marketing trends are becoming increasingly important to overall marketing strategies. In 2021, 86% of businesses indicated that they were using video as a marketing tool. To boot, 93% of them say it’s a critical part of their strategy. Research has found that 84% of consumers have been convinced to buy a product after watching a video, and they’re twice as likely to share videos than other types of online content. Cisco reported that by 2022, video will account for 82% of all online traffic.
Source: Marketing Insider Group

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TIP

Fix Four Common Accessibility Mistakes

Plenty of people with disabilities will tell you online government services are not accessible to them. Despite being a requirement of Section 508 — a federal law mandating public websites be accessible — most fall short. Alt text needs to be used appropriately so that images have meaningful descriptions, but they are often inaccurate or overly literal. Check out this article to explore three other mistakes to avoid. What are the other three common accessibility mistakes? Check out the Gov Loop article. You can find the link at jimperson.com/16.

This tip is just one of the tips provided each week in my TNT Report newsletter. Subscribe at https://jimperson.com/tnt.

IN NEWS

Facebook Is Pulling Back from Its Foray Into Podcasting
Forbes reports that Facebook’s interest in podcasts is fading, barely a year after it began. Last April, during a hot market for audio, Facebook launched Live Audio Rooms, short-form stories called Soundbites and podcasts for U.S. users. The company signed deals with creators and sponsored one of the industry’s biggest U.S. conferences: Podcast Movement. But nowadays, the company is emphasizing other initiatives in conversations with podcast partners, including events in the metaverse and online shopping, according to industry executives who work with the platform.

Web Scraping Is Legal, U.S. Appeals Court Reaffirms
Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: Scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling. Techcrunch reports that the landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals is the latest in a long-running legal battle brought by LinkedIn aimed at stopping a rival company from web scraping personal information from users’ public profiles. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year but was sent back to the Ninth Circuit for the original appeals court to re-review the case. In its second ruling on Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, which governs what constitutes computer hacking under U.S. law.

Meta and Spotify are Shifting Resources Away from Their Clubhouse Competitors
Clubhouse, like many other breakout stars of the early COVID-19 era, is losing its luster. With public spaces opening back up, there’s less interest in digital chat rooms, and the company known for providing those rooms is experiencing growing pains as a result. Clubhouse’s downfall is affecting other companies as well. When the app was in its heyday, several tech giants launched their own copycats of it, and those copycats are starting to fade into obscurity. Specifically, Spotify has shuttered the Creator Fund for its Greenroom platform, and Meta is moving its resources away from the Clubhouse competitor known as Live Audio Rooms. That news comes to us from Tubefilter.

Amazon Targets Rival Shopify with New ‘Buy With Prime’ Service
Amazon.com Inc. will allow merchants to sell directly to consumers on their websites via its new “Buy With Prime” feature as the e-commerce giant looks to slow the rise of competitor Shopify Inc. Consumers will be able to use their Amazon Prime membership for purchases to ensure fast shipping, an area where Shopify has had difficulty. It’ll be invite-only, and merchants will pay Amazon fees for the service, which were not disclosed.
Source: Bloomberg

In other headlines of the week:

For links to these stories and more, visit jimperson.com/16.

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TOOLS

Slido– Your go-to interaction app for hybrid meetings. Engage your participants with live polls, Q&A, quizzes and word clouds — whether you meet in the office, online or in-between.
https://www.sli.do/
Butter– The best way to plan & run highly engaging sessions. Whiteboarding. Polls. Breakouts. Agendas. Integrations. And so much more. Oh, and you can plan everything before you start!
https://www.butter.us/

Those were just two of the four tools I covered in this week’s email newsletter. See all of the tools in my newsletter at https://jimperson.com/tnt.

FRIDAY FREEBIE

If you’re a subscriber to the TNT Report, you know it’s more than just tips, news, and tools. Since the newsletter is published on Friday afternoons, I also include a “Friday Freebie.” And today’s “Friday Freebie” is from Wistia on how to dig into free video data taken from 600+ businesses.
Video content is a huge part of a successful marketing strategy. In the 2022 State of Video Report, Wistia shares data and trends from over 42+ million videos hosted on the Wistia platform — helping marketers inform and drive their 2022 strategy.

And he’s a “bonus” freebie for you … if you’d like to start the day feeling motivated, why not sign up for my new “Daily Motivational Quotes” email. It’s seven-days-a-week and delivers short inspirational quotes to your email inbox every day at approximately 6 a.m. so you can start the day energized. Love to have you join. And did I mention, it’s free! Sign up at www.emailmotivation.com. That’s www.emailmotivation.com.

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please subscribe at jimperson.com/tnt-podcast. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart and numerous other podcast apps.

BONUS CONTENT

Now for some “bonus content” for you as a podcast listener. This is something not included in the weekly TNT Report newsletter. And this week’s bonus comes from Think With Google about creating marketing that positively represents “plus-size” people. Inclusive marketing should involve positively representing people of all body types. Discover five key insights for plus-size inclusion that companies can act on right now. As companies have begun to see the social and economic benefits of reaching consumers with messages that reflect diverse demographics, fat representation continues to lag behind. Even in today’s media landscape — where body positivity is a buzz phrase and we occasionally see big bodies on billboards — most advertisers act like fat people don’t exist unless we’re being sold diets. Fat-positive representation in marketing requires an understanding that anti-fatness is a serious social justice issue, one that intersects with many other issues of equity that socially responsible companies aspire to tackle. And there are five basics for plus-size inclusion that marketers can start tackling today.

Examine your language
Start behind the camera
Show fat people of all shapes and sizes
Include all kinds of big people
Throw out the stereotypes

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Alright. I think that’s going to do it for this week’s TNT Report Podcast. You can find links to all the resources and news stories mentioned in this podcast on my website, jimperson.com/16. Thanks for listening – have a great weekend, and a profitable week ahead.

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* Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that if you click on an affiliate link and then decide to purchase the product or service, I will earn a small commission. However, it does NOT affect the price you pay. In some cases, using my affiliate link may even save you money or offer additional benefits. And by using my affiliate link, you’re providing support to me and The TNT Report Podcast. So, thanks in advance!

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