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 (18) for the week ending Friday, May 6. Today’s podcast is brought to you in part by emailmotivation.com. Get free daily motivational quotes by email. Just signup at emailmotivation.com and start receiving a short inspirational quote every day of the week.
TODAY’S CELEBRATIONS
Today is Friday, May 6, and according to the American Nurses Association, “National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6 and ends on May 12, Florence Nightingale’s birthday. These permanent dates enhance planning and position National Nurses Week as an established recognition event. As of 1998, May 8 was designated as National Student Nurses Day, to be celebrated annually. And as of 2003, National School Nurse Day is celebrated on the Wednesday within National Nurses Week (May 6-12) each year. Today, May 6 is also International Space Day, National Beverage Day, National Public Gardens Day, No Homework Day, and No Pants Day.
Speaking of May observances, May is Older Americans Month and National Bike Month, and May also includes National Teacher Appreciation Week (this week, ending today, May 2-6) as well as Public Service Recognition Week (May 1-7) and Small Business Week (also May 1-7).
Saturday, May 7 is Astronomy Day, Beer Pong Day, Herb Day, Brunch for Lunch Day, National Auctioneers Day, International Drone Day, Pilates Day, National Homebrew Day, and Saturday is also the Kentucky Derby.
Sunday, May 8 is Iris Day, National Have a Coke Day, National Give Someone a Cupcake Day, National Coconut Cream Pie Day, and No Socks Day. Sunday is also Mother’s Day. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Anna Jarvis organized the first Mother’s Day observances in Grafton, West Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 10, 1908. As the annual celebration became popular around the country, Jarvis became the driving force behind Mother’s Day and asked members of Congress to set aside a day to honor mothers. She succeeded in 1914, when Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. And in the words of President Woodrow Wilson’s Mother’s Day Proclamation of May 9, 1914, the Mother’s Day recognition was created “as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”
FEATURED CONTENT
The Power of Story – Significant Objects, a literary and anthropological experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, demonstrated that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively. The project auctioned off thrift-store objects via eBay; for item descriptions, short stories purpose-written by over 200 contributing writers were substituted. The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece on average, sold for nearly $8,000 in total. (Proceeds were distributed to the contributors, and to nonprofit creative writing organizations.) All the project’s stories are archived on the site, significantobjects.com.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TIP
Five Tips to Level Up Your SEO and User Experience Together
The hallmark of a great website is when you visit the site and notice absolutely nothing about it other than what you were looking for. Usability and user experience (UX) design are vital to any site — and not just for your audience’s convenience, but for your overall SEO strategy. You might be wondering: How does UX impact SEO? Well, UX affects SEO in many ways. For example, a slow page speed won’t just get you penalized by search engines, it also frustrates your users and makes them more likely to leave your site. That info comes to us from Go Fish Digital. Find the link to that story for more info at jimperson.com/18.
This tip is just one of the tips provided each week in my TNT Report newsletter. Subscribe at https://jimperson.com/tnt.
IN NEWS
FCC Shuts Down Talk of Blocking Twitter Acquisition
Protocol reports that in a heavily editorialized press release, Federal Communications Commission commissioner Nathan Simington shut down any talk of the agency stepping in to block Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. “The FCC cannot, and should not, block this sale,” he said.
Top Podcast Hosting Companies by Episode Share (April 2022)
More than a quarter of new podcast episodes published in April were on Anchor, according to data from John Spurlock: Spotify’s free podcast host was responsible for 25.8% of all new podcast episodes in April, breaking 25% for the first time. The rest of the top five were Buzzsprout, Spreaker, Libsyn, and at number five, Podbean.
Source: Livewire
Amazon Customers Sue Over Automatic Renewals for Services
Amazon Inc. makes it too hard and unnecessarily confusing to cancel subscriptions for services, some customers claimed in a lawsuit alleging the internet retailer is violating California’s rules on automatic renewal programs.
Source: Bloomberg
65% of Top 1000 and Next 1000 Retailer Traffic is from Mobile
It’s important for retailers to consider mobile traffic, as 65.4% of traffic to Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 and 64.7% of traffic to Next 1000 retailers comes from mobile devices. Mobile is most popular for men and women ages 25 to 44 years old.
Source: Digital Commerce 360
Other Headlines:
- Starbucks Builds Out ‘Third Place’ With Foray Into NFTS
- Facebook’s Pivot to Audio Was Short-lived
- More Mainstream Brands Are Finding Harmony on Discord
- Amazon Ends COVID paid leave for U.S. workers
- Twitter Says It Overcounted Its Users Over the Past 3 Years
- Old People Overly Trusting Fake News … Was Fake News
- CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders
- Twitter Adds Private Circles, Taking a Page From Google+
- Starbucks Customers Have More Than $1 Billion Sitting on Gift Cards
- TikTok Takes First Steps Towards Improved Creator Monetization with Pulse Program
- Apple, Google and Microsoft Team Up on Passwordless Logins
For links to these stories visit jimperson.com/18. And for all the tips, news and featured tools of the week, visit jimperson.com/tnt.
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED TOOLS
- Muzli– Color Palette Generator
Muzli’s Color Palette Generator is a neat color pairing tool that helps you lock down a color scheme for your online business in minutes. Maintaining a consistent color scheme for your website and social media platforms makes it much easier for customers to recognize your business in an instance. But if you don’t have design experience, or any knowledge of color theory, you’ll find it hard to find the right set of colors.
muz.li - QR Code Generators
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qrcode-monkey.com - And in the email newsletter this week that you can find at https://jimperson.com/tnt, I also covered several royalty-free websites for pictures and stock images. Check them out at https://jimperson.com/tnt and be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any of the weeks’ tips, news or tools.
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” – two in fact – is free small-business tools available from Meta. Facebook’s parent company Meta is rolling out free digital tools to help small businesses connect with customers online, including a “quote request” option on Instagram and the ability to send content via Messenger to certain clients who opt in. “With these new capabilities, you can create a really customized form [through a paid advertisement] to automatically ask potential customers about their needs,” says Meta. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that Google is making $100,000 worth of tech training free to every U.S. business. Alphabet’s Google will provide any U.S. business over $100,000 worth of online courses in data analytics, design and other tech skills for their workers free of charge, the search company said on Monday.
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.
Make Your Content Hidden in Accordion Tabs Available for Search EnginesCollapsing content sections, sometimes described as an accordion, are a common UI pattern. However, content hidden in the collapsed sections becomes impossible to search using a find-in-page search; also, it isn’t possible to link to text fragments inside collapsed regions. That’s according to Chrome Developers. The hidden=until-found HTML attribute and beforematch event can solve these problems. By adding hidden=until-found to the container for your hidden content, you make it possible for the browser to search text in that hidden region and reveal the section if a match is found.
Shopify is the platform commerce is built on. Millions of the world’s most successful brands trust Shopify to sell, ship and process payments anywhere. Start your 14-day free trial with Shopify. https://jimperson.com/shopify
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/18. Thanks for listening – have a great weekend, happy Mother’s Day, and let’s all have 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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* 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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