The TNT Report Podcast: Marketing Tips, News, and Tools for Small Business (Episode 17) | 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 (17) for the week ending Friday, April 29. If you’re a YouTube video creator, you need TubeBuddy, a FREE browser extension and mobile app that integrates directly into YouTube to help you run your channel with ease — advance keyword research, rank higher in search, get more viewers and more! Check it out and download TubeBuddy at www.tubebuddy.com/entrepreneur.

TODAY’S CELEBRATIONS

Today is Friday, April 29, and it’s International Dance Day, National Shrimp Scampi Day, Viral Video Day and Childcare Professionals Day. Today is also Arbor Day, an observance going back 150 years to celebrate nature’s bounty of trees. Arbor Day comes with plenty of flexibility, though, as different states note the occasion on different dates, and even in a different month. According to the Census Bureau, Julius Sterling Morton moved to the tree-poor Nebraska Territory in the mid-1850s with his wife, and while he worked as a newspaper editor and politician, they campaigned for tree planting. On April 10, 1872, it became the first state to celebrate Arbor Day. Nationwide, there are just over 1,000 people in 169 establishments engaged in operating forest nurseries, and gathering forest products. In addition, there are about 13,300 plant nurseries, garden centers and farm supply stores to aid in greening the United States.

Saturday, April 30, is Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, Eeyore’s Birthday, International Jazz Day, Independent Bookstore Day, and Bugs Bunny Day. Saturday is also National Oatmeal Cookie Day, National Honesty Day, Save the Frogs Day and National Mr. Potato Head Day among the many recognitions. Saturday, April 30 is also the 219th anniversary of perhaps the greatest real estate deal in American history — one that doubled the size of the nation, putting it in position to become a world power. The year was 1803, and the deal was the Louisiana Purchase. The young United States bought nearly 830,000 square miles from France at the cost of four cents an acre. The land stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. The sale encompassed all or parts of 14 of today’s states. Appropriately enough, Louisiana became a state on this April 30 in 1812. At the time, just 77,000 people lived there. Now, Louisiana is home to nearly 4.66 million.

Sunday, May 1 is May Day, Global Love Day, Lemonade Day, School Principal’s Day, and National Chocolate Parfait Day.

FEATURED CONTENT

Podcasts Will Account for More Than One-fourth of Digital Audio Ad Spending

eMarketer forecasts that U.S. podcast ad spending will surpass $2 billion next year and $3 billion by 2026. Podcasts will account for over a quarter of digital audio services ad spending in 2022 and will be more than a third of spending by the end of 2026. Most digital audio monetization will come from recorded music for the foreseeable future, but podcasts’ share of the market has grown so much — and will continue to do so—that it cannot be ignored by marketers. Once relegated to experimental budgets, podcasts are becoming a crucial component of multimedia ad campaigns. More than half of advertisers said they planned to increase their podcast ad budgets in 2022, according to a poll of 255 US advertisers conducted by Advertiser Perceptions in August 2021. Nearly half (46%) planned to keep their budgets the same, and just 1% planned to reduce podcast ad spending. These shares were in line with what advertisers expected of their digital audio budgets. Most advertisers did not have dedicated podcast budgets. About half used their digital audio budgets to fund podcast campaigns. As podcast ad spending increases and accounts for a greater share of total audio ad dollars, expect more advertisers to break out podcast-specific budgets. Having dedicated budgets could help centralize campaign planning and measurement for advertisers committed to podcasts over the long run.

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TIP

Push vs. Pull Marketing: Differences and How to Use Them
Pull marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting your target customers to discover your brand, products, and services. Examples include SEO, word of mouth, and social media marketing. Push marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on placing your products or services in front of your target customers. Examples include cold emailing, direct mail, and advertising. The best businesses use both pull and push marketing to complement each other. Here are some ways you can combine both pull and push marketing together:

Generate leads with pull marketing and close them with push marketing – This is the core idea behind inbound marketing: create content that ranks high on search engines for the target queries (pull marketing), get prospects to sign up for the email list and, finally, request sales teams to reach these prospects via email or phone (push marketing).
Run social ads to promote your content – Get people to consume your content by running ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Quora, and more.
Target your ads to lookalike audiences built from your “pulled” audience – Since your “pulled” audience is made up of people who are actively seeking out the type of content you’re creating, they’re perfect as your “source audience.”
Send outreach emails to boost awareness of your existing content – This is the idea behind link building.

Source: ahrefs

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

IN NEWS

Twitter Locks Down Product Changes After Agreeing to Musk Bid
Bloomberg, Media Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others, all reported this week that Twitter Inc. locked down changes to its social networking platform through Friday after accepting a $44 billion bid from billionaire Elon Musk, making it harder for employees to make unauthorized changes. Meanwhile, according to a Reuters article, Republican lawmakers welcomed news that Musk, who calls himself a free speech absolutist, was purchasing Twitter Inc, but Democrats slammed it as a sign that more needed to be done to rein in Big Tech.

Joe Rogan Claims Massive Subscriber Boost Due to Recent Controversies
During a recent episode of his Spotify podcast, Joe Rogan said he gained 2 million subscribers after controversies over his alleged spread of COVID-19 misinformation and past use of the N-word. While Spotify does not release subscription numbers related to “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan reportedly averages roughly 11 million listeners per episode, according to a recent estimate, though sources clarified that Rogan has seen consistent growth since joining the platform. That story comes to us this week from both the Hollywood Reporter and Techcrunch.

YouTuber Deliberately Crashed His Own Plane for Views, U.S. Aviation Agency Says
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has revoked a YouTuber’s pilot license after it concluded that he intentionally crashed his plane for the sake of gaining online views. On Nov. 24, 2021, Trevor Jacob was flying over California’s Los Padres national forest in his small single-engine plane when his propeller stopped working. Jacob filmed the whole incident and uploaded it to YouTube in a video titled “I Crashed My Plane.” Since being posted online in December, the video has racked up 2.2m views. In the video, the empty plane is shown speeding towards the mountains before crashing into the wilderness. On April 11, the Federal Aviation Administration concluded its investigation into the incident and determined that Jacob had crashed his 1940 Taylorcraft BL-65 as a stunt.
Source: The Guardian

Panera Expands Unlimited Subscription Program from Coffee to 26 Drinks
Panera says the success of its monthly $8.99 unlimited-coffee subscription program is incentive to expand the recurring-revenue concept to 26 beverages. As with the unlimited-coffee program, the Unlimited Sip Club is available only to members of the My Panera loyalty program and can be used every two hours. Unlimited Sip Club is priced at $10.99 monthly but is free until July 4 for loyalty members who sign up by May 6. It’s available on-premise and via pickup and delivery orders. Panera is expanding its beverage offerings beyond Pepsi to include Bubly Lime and new Panera Charged Lemonades energy drinks.
Source: Media Post

Other Headlines This Week:

For links to these stories and more news of the week, visit jimperson.com/17.

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TOOLS

Clip Champ
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Loudness
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Now those were just two of the four tools I covered in this week’s email newsletter. See all of the tools in this week’s 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 about free Zoom backgrounds. While the pandemic certainly increased our use of Zoom for virtual meetings, many companies and individuals still use the platform. Why not “spice” up for background with professional looking photos or even a video background. Head down the rabbit hole of options with a Pexels search – https://www.pexels.com/search/zoom backgrounds.

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.

Best Font for Online Reading: No Single Answer
Among high-legibility fonts, a study found 35% difference in reading speeds between the best and the worst. People read 11% slower for every 20 years they age. The study of the best fonts for online reading is ultimately disappointing, because it doesn’t answer the most burning question: What font should you use for your website? But it still provides many intriguing findings, including the striking conclusion that there is no single answer to this question. Shaun Wallace from Adobe and colleagues conducted a reading-speed study with 352 participants. The participants were asked to read several short passages of text; each passage had 300–500 words each (by comparison, the average web page contains 593 words). The test stimuli were at an approximate 8th grade reading level, which matches a recommendation for web content targeted at a broad consumer audience. On average, any given participant read 35% faster in his or her fastest font (314 WPM) compared to that same person’s slowest font (232 WPM, on average). This is a huge difference, considering that each user was only measured on 5 fonts. If reading speeds had been measured for all 16 fonts for each user, the difference between the fastest and slowest font would have been likely even bigger. And it would have been bigger again in a hypothetical (but impossible) experiment that measured people reading texts in all available fonts with sufficient legibility to be considered for practical business design. With this big difference in reading speeds within users, you would expect that the study would have identified a font with the highest overall score. Well, it did: Garamond had the highest average reading speed at 312 WPM; it was 6% better than #2 (Oswald, at 295 WPM) and 23% better than the worst font of the 16 tested (Open Sans, at 254 WPM). But Garamond was only best on average. It wasn’t best for all users. There were substantial individual differences. The main conclusions of the study were:

Even among fonts with good legibility, reading speeds differ substantially, so it really matters to get the font right.
Unfortunately, no single font is best for all users.
Reading speed declines substantially with age, even among middle-aged users. We’ve always recommended to cut the words for digital content, but now we should recommend cutting 11% more words if large parts of your audience are 50 years or older.
There are age-related differences in what fonts are best, with people younger than 35 (most designers) being different than people older than 35 (most users). Oh, well, you are not the user, as we always say.

This information comes to us from the Nielsen Normal Group. You can dive deep into their research and read more about the best font to use on their website. Find the link at visit jimperson.com/17.

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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, visit jimperson.com/17. And for more stories and news, check out this week’s email newsletter at www.jimperson.com/tnt. Thanks for listening – have a great weekend, and a profitable week ahead.

* 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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