SEVEN ACTIONABLE TIPS TO CREATE COMPELLING COPY

As marketers, one of your most important tasks is to create compelling copy for your users. It’s your content through which you can inform your users about your products and services and inspire and persuade them to meet your conversion goals. This can be to make a purchase, become a subscriber, follow you on social media, etc.

In other words, it can help you drive profit and earn a solid ROI(return on investment) for your business.
Copywriting comes in different forms. It can be in the form of blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, video scripts, press releases, or any other source that you use in your marketing strategy.

Every business uses copywriting for marketing. But the problem is that not all of them are compelling enough to conquer leads.

However, with a little planning and proper strategy, creating compelling copy for your business can be super easy. So let’s look at 7 easy ways to create captivating copy to conquer more leads and increase your conversions.

1. Create Attention

The first major step to write compelling copy is to capture your user’s attention. This should imply in your title as well as your introduction.

As a marketer, your first goal should be to attract people’s attention with a strong headline that compels them to click on it. You can do that by creating headlines that specifically tell your users how they will benefit from your product, service, or offer.

But it doesn’t end there. You need to continue grabbing their attention by making them read one sentence after the other until they reach your CTA(call-to-action) and convert.

You can do that through a killer introduction that hooks your reader’s attention. But how do you do that? A good way for that is to use personal experiences and emotions. This will help your users relate to you and want to read more to find out how you solved the problem.

2. Use Clarity

Most of your users don’t see what you see. They won’t understand your viewpoint unless you make it crystal clear to them. So consider using a clear message to put the prospect in the right position to understand what you want to explain to them.

You can do that through storytelling, personal experiences, sharing facts and figures, etc. But in doing so, remember to be super-specific. The more specific you are, the more possibility you have to convert.

3. Use Simple Words

As a writer, you might be inclined towards using some big fancy words in your copy. Sure, it will make you look smart. But at the same time, it will also decrease the chance of your copy being read. The more fancy words you use, the harder your copy will be to read and understand.

The reason behind this is simple. Your user base might include people from different educational backgrounds, geographical locations, and communities. And not all of them may be equally good at understanding the language you’re using. So the easier it is, the more convenient they will feel reading and understanding your content.

For example, the word ‘use’ may be easier to understand as compared to the word ‘utilize’.

4. Make it Scannable

Do you know that most of your readers never read the entire copy? What they do instead is to scan it to briefly understand the gist of it. So make it scannable for your readers.

The best way to do that is to write short sentences and smaller paragraphs. You should also consider using subheadings to break your content into smaller sections. Use your subheading to summarize the biggest takeaway.

This will not only help skimmers to get a gist of the article without reading it entirely but will also help improve your SEO.

5. Add Social Proof

Most buyers don’t want to make a purchase without ensuring that it’s a safe deal. So as marketers, what can you do to help them know that? A good way to improve your credibility and build trust is to use social proof.

Social proof acts as testimonials for your business. When people see popular businesses or even other customers use your product, their confidence gets a quick boost, and they are more likely to make the purchase. So use social proof in your content marketing strategy. This can be in the form of user-generated content, social media mentions, ratings, and reviews, etc.

6. Use FOMO

FOMO, or the ‘Fear of Missing Out’, is a psychological phenomenon used by marketers to trigger a sense of urgency to boost conversions.

You must have seen marketers running a sale with the countdown timer displayed at the top of the website to highlight that the sale is running out. This is an example of FOMO. Tricks like this increases urgency and work wonders in boosting your conversion goals.

FOMO doesn’t work in every situation, but you should definitely use it whenever possible. If you don’t know how to create FOMO on your website, try using TrustPulse. With this plugin, your can display real-time notifications of activities happening on your website to capture people’s attention and convince them to convert.

7. Use Clear CTA

Your CTA is the most important element of your marketing copy. So adding a strong and clear CTA is extremely important. A well-placed CTA can help you guide your audience on what to do next. This can be to go to the next step, make a purchase, scheduling a demo, or whatever your conversion goal is.

Without the CTA, your visitors will get confused and will not know what you expect them to do. This will increase the friction in moving the user down the sales funnel.

So these are some of the easy and actionable ways to create compelling copy for your marketing strategy. Now it’s your turn to use them to your advantage to grow your sales and increase your profit.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS STAND OUT IN A CROWDED MARKET

Funny enough, the baby space is very dog-eat-dog. Back in the days of launching my first company, Happy Family, that pioneered the organic baby food revolution and now with my new business, Healthybaby, that's advancing developmental health, I have seen things that feel like they're out of a spy movie when it comes to competitive activities. The truth is many of us entrepreneurs have vision to identify unmet needs in the marketplace, but we are not always first to market, and if the market is meaningful there will be others launching concurrently, nipping at your heels or trying to eat your lunch. It's the nature of capitalism. The competition can be fierce, and for us obsessive entrepreneurs losing is not an option. How can you differentiate your business when there are many brands vying for your customer's attention?

Authenticity can make all the difference.

You either have it or you don't, and you really can't fake the funk with today's savvy consumers. It's undeniable that we all support brands and businesses whose values align with our own. I personally only invest in companies that have mission-oriented founders because I know they are committed to more than a return and go the distance for their beliefs. Similarly, build teams of purpose driven individuals who will always keep your ideals at the heart of every decision. For us, the mantra is babies before business.

Be three steps ahead of the market, but meet consumers where they are with products they adore now.

At Healthybaby, we are redefining what it means to be safe. Internally, when we were developing our diaper, we used to say, "A diaper so safe you could eat it." But in all seriousness, what it means in practice is manufacturing in a world class facility in Europe, eliminating thousands of ingredients that can be harmful to healthy development, going the extra mile to test for even the most trace levels of contamination, and being 100% transparent with our ingredients. We don't expect consumers just to take our word for it, everything we do is third party certified. My personal parenting journey gives me a unique perspective on why these are the right investments to make for our future generations. However, in the real world of parenting, we can never sacrifice performance for safety or sustainability. Our diaper leverages plant-innovation and multiple patented technologies that work like the big guys while we are moving towards more plants than plastic, one change at a time.

Get creative and throw models and handbooks out the window when it comes to driving awareness.

You should know your audience as well as you know yourself, so when Apple OS changes, it's absolutely an opportunity to find the new frontier and create a competitive advantage. Great brands don't just focus on how efficiently you can generate the next click. The one thing that has remained constant over my years as a Founder is the power of meaningful connections. We don't operate as a faceless brand. When you join Healthy baby, you are automatically introduced to your personal concierge. We know that when we take care of parents, word spreads quickly. Find ways to actually connect because it's what we all are craving.

Commit to constantly improving.

Ideally you are building something meaningful with staying power, so keep your perspective and remember the long game. Ask what you want to be known for and keep building towards that. I've yet to find a more rewarding space to be in than baby, and being a part of a baby's wellbeing and trust is something that comes with hard-fought experience pivoting and improving. When your customer appreciates your dedication to doing better, it will pay meaningful dividends with loyalty.

Grow the pie, not just your share of the pie.

I've always believed that the best businesses have a net positive impact on our society and the world. With Happy Baby, we were committed to making organic food accessible to everyone, and we lobbied state by state to be included in the WIC program. We know that during the first 1,000 days of life, every $1 invested in improving infant and maternal health returns $35, which benefits us all in a myriad of ways from paid parental leave to a healthier and better educated society. Both of the companies I've built are Certified B-Corps, which means that our governance goes beyond revenue growth and profitability and thinks about that social piece as the prize. When we are trying to create a better future for baby, we are inherently responsible for preserving our planet. Find your way towards impact and you may see your competitors' success as a win someday too.

BY SHAZI VISRAM, FOUNDER AND CEO OF HAPPYFAMILY@SHAZIV

HOW TO ENCOURAGE REPEAT BUSINESS (6 TOP TIPS)

Compared to first-time customers, returning customers spend around 70% more money on products. The key to creating a successful business is encouraging customers to return and develop loyalty to your brand.

As easy as this may sound, getting them to come back is one of the biggest challenges companies face. So in this post, I’ll share my 6 top tips to encourage repeat business and build loyalty to your brand.

But first, let’s look at why repeat business is crucial to growing your business.

Why Is Repeat Business Important?

Repeat business or customer loyalty is crucial in building a successful business in more ways than one, including:

Helping to drive more sales Saving your business marketing costs Increasing the word of mouth promotions Encouraging customers to spend more money Assisting in defending against the competition Making customers more likely to try new products

 
When customers develop a sense of loyalty to a brand, they’re often willing to spend more money or even wait for their favorite products to restock. So, with that being said, let’s look at my 6 top tips to encourage repeat business:

1. Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Research shows that 60% of millennials have shared their experiences on social media. Providing exceptional customer service isn’t only a proven way to get customers loyal to your brand, but it can also encourage them to share their experience with their network.

For this reason, it’s crucial to provide exceptional customer service, so customers share their positive experiences with your brand instead of negative ones. In addition, this will also make them more likely to return and do repeat business with your company.

For instance, responding quickly to inquiries is one of the best ways to increase customer retention. Other factors, like providing a good user experience on your website or sending personalized birthday messages with a special deal or discount coupon, are also excellent ways to get them to come back for more.

2. Create a Customer Loyalty Program

Creating a customer loyalty or rewards program is another great way to encourage repeat business and boost sales. Not only do loyalty programs promote repeat purchase behavior, but they also tend to make customers spend more money.

To get started, all you need to do is gather customers’ information and then reward them with special discounts or freebies when they make a second purchase or after collecting a certain amount of points.

For example, 7 Eleven’s customer rewards program (7REWARDS) encourages customers to earn and redeem points in exchange for free snacks and drinks. The ability to work up points to redeem a freebie can motivate existing customers to buy more.

Also, remember to offer special rewards for members who refer customers to your business. These are your most loyal customers vouching for your products, which you should nurture a bit extra. You can do this by developing a so-called referral or affiliate program.

3. Hand Out Incentive Coupons

Handing out coupons for future use is another excellent way to get customers to do repeat business with your business.

This helps you capture people who might not have returned for a second purchase. The simple act of offering them a coupon with 10% off on their next purchase, can motivate them to return and buy more from your business.

In other words, this gives them an incentive to return when they otherwise might not have a reason to.

4. Leverage Personalized Email Marketing

Email marketing is the best strategy for building long-lasting relationships with existing customers and prospects.

Research has shown that conversions from email marketing outperform both social and organic search traffic. One reason is that you can segment your email list based on interest and purchase history and send highly targeted offers. And you can also approach prospects several times and build trust for your brand.

As your relationship grows, you can promote more products and offer incentives to encourage repeat purchases.

5. Eliminate Registration Barriers

Just like email marketing, encouraging customers to register for an account on your website is an excellent strategy to boost repeat business.

When requiring customers to register for an account during checkout, you get access to all the personal details you need to create personalized marketing campaigns.

However, the downside of forced account registration is that some customers may see it as a barrier and leave your site before making any purchase whatsoever. To fix this, you can enable guest checkout on your site for people in a hurry that don’t want to sign up just yet.

6. Ask for Customer Feedback

If you want to succeed and grow your business, you need to know where you’re lacking and what you can do to improve in these areas. For instance, 94% of online shoppers reported that a negative review made them avoid visiting a company, which makes it crucial to avoid negative reviews at all costs.

The best way to avoid negative reviews and figure out how to better serve your customers is simply asking them what they think about your products or services and give recommendations on improvements.

A simple and effective way to ask for feedback is by setting up an automated email including a customer satisfaction survey that goes out a few days after the purchase. Also, adding an easily accessible section to leave reviews on your website works well too.

Remember to keep track of your online reviews and respond to them, even if some are negative. Responding to reviews shows existing and new customers that you care about them and are committed to improving and serving them better.

Finally, providing a good answer to a negative review, where you take responsibility and trying to solve the situation, can make customers choose your products over others despite the bad review.

Wrapping Up

Getting repeat business is about building trust and nurturing existing and new relationships. You need to make sure you’re doing the right things by listening to your customers. In addition, developing a loyalty program that gives customers an incentive to purchase more from you will also make them stay around for longer.

BUSINESSES SHOULD EMPLOY ETHICAL PRACTICES WHILE MINING AND USING DATA

Many organizations use data mining and web scraping techniques to gather data for research or advertising purposes. Sometimes, they need to understand how their brand and/or products are performing in the market. If they are on the declining trend or not receiving the expected response in the market, businesses rethink their marketing or development strategies based on the analysis that is conducted on mined or scraped data. 

Businesses are legally required to ask the user’s permission before using their data for any type of research. And as site owners and bloggers, this is something we see on a daily basis as we log in and navigate through different sites and services online.

However, there are certain organizations that illegally scrape user data from websites without their permission. Therefore, users are advised to use a Facebook proxy even when surfing Facebook, this masks their identity by directing their traffic through secure servers with the help of Smartproxy. 

To be Ethical or Not

Businesses are often faced with the dilemma of whether to employ ethical practices or not. Clearly, they have to remain ethical for their own benefit as it saves them all the hassle of going through the legal proceedings in case they are caught. 

Data ethics concern numerous analysts and IT professionals and worry about how their organization collects, stores, and lets them use the data. Even when they might not be responsible for deploying the web scraper that extracts and builds a database, they are responsible for asking their organization to follow ethical procedures to gain access to data. 

Ownership

Every individual has ownership of their personal information. It is unlawful and unethical to obtain someone’s personal data without consent. Therefore, organizations should insert written agreements and digital privacy policies. These present the users with the organization’s terms and conditions which they are required to sign. And through the use of business intelligence tools, such tasks can either be improved or fully automated in nearly all niche markets and industries.

Certain websites include pop-ups that have checkboxes. Users are required to check them before using their website. This gives the website permission to track the user’s behavior through the use of cookies. Organizations should never assume that the customer or user is comfortable with them collecting their data. They should always ask for permission so that ethical and legal dilemmas can be avoided. 

Transparency

Users have a right to know how the organization is planning to collect, store and utilize their data. Therefore, these organizations should make their process transparent. For example, if your organization made a decision to deploy an algorithm that personalizes the website experience by analyzing and working on the user’s behavior on the site. 

For this, a clear comprehensible policy should be written that explains that cookies will be used to track users’ behavior. All collected data will be added to a secure database and will only be used to train an algorithm that will provide users with a personalized website experience. 

If users want to provide false cookies to websites and social media platforms, they should consider using Facebook proxies. 

Privacy

Ensuring the user’s privacy is another ethical responsibility that comes while handling data. Regardless of their consent of letting the business collect, store, and analyze any Personally Identifiable Information (PII), it is still the organization’s responsibility to keep it safe and not make it publicly available. 

Some examples of PII are: 

• Full name
• Birthdate 
• Street address
• Phone number
• Social Security Card
• Credit Card information
• Bank account number
• Passport number

 For privacy protection, organizations need to ensure that they are storing the collected data in a secure database to save it from falling into the wrong hands. Employing the use of specific data security methods also help protect privacy as they include features such as dual-authentication and file encryption. 

Intention 

The intention of the organization matters whenever a discussion on any branch of ethics happens. Before organizations start collecting data, they should know exactly why they need it, what they will be able to gain from it, and what changes will occur after analysis. 

Even if the organization’s intentions are pure and they will generate a positive outcome from the analysis, then they should use the data. 

Outcomes

Even with the right intentions, certain data analysis outcomes exert unintentional harm to the users who have contributed to the database. This effect is known as a disparate impact, which is ruled as unlawful. This harm can happen due to bugs in the algorithm or due to inputting wrong variables into the algorithm itself.  Either way, there is a possibility of spreading false information generated through the algorithm itself. Therefore, special care should be taken to ensure that there is no possibility that disparate impact could occur. 

Ethical Use of Algorithms

Since algorithms are written by humans, there is a possibility that a bias can be left in the code intentionally or unintentionally. To use the algorithm ethically, it should follow the data science principles, which are: 

Training

Data is used to train machine-learning algorithms, therefore an unrepresented dataset can cause the algorithm to prefer certain variables over others. 

Code

There is a possibility that the back-end code of the algorithm itself is written with an unintentional bias.

Feedback

There is a chance the algorithm learns from biased feedback provided by the users. If an attribute is added a number of times, the algorithm will automatically start preferring the specified attribute over others. 

Conclusion

Businesses should consider ethical practices while doing data mining or web scraping as sometimes, they are able to unearth sensitive data that can potentially harm the users who contribute to their research and analysis. However, to protect themselves, users should mask their digital footprint by using proxies.

THREE A.I. HIRING TOOLS TO MAKE RECRUITING EASIER

When Amazon scrapped its artificial intelligence hiring tool in 2018 after the program demonstrated signs of sexism, many founders learned that A.I. has the potential to introduce bias into recruiting. 

"A.I. is only as good as the humans that designed it, and we inherently have bias," says Henry Tsai, vice president of product at Greenhouse Software, a job applicant tracking software company. Founded in 2012, Greenhouse's platform is designed to prevent bias by keeping A.I. out of the decision-making process when evaluating candidates. 

Startups are still finding other ways to enhance the hiring process using A.I., however. Here are three companies that have developed new tools designed to promote inclusion while helping employers navigate the changing hiring landscape.

Inclusive 

Founding year: 2020

Headquarters: Seattle, Washington

Inclusive bills itself as a startup that can improve diversity and inclusion and reduce the time it takes companies to hire new employees. The company's software takes video footage from virtual job interviews and edits them down to 65-second clips, removing the interviewer's comments to eliminate potential instances of bias. The clips of candidates who aren't hired get shared with other employers that might want to hire them.

The downside: While Inclusive may be able to help increase diversity in companies' ranks, it doesn't ensure that practices to uphold DEI are supported within the organizations that use the program.

Cost: Inclusive offers a free three-month trial, after which the cost depends on the recruiting volume planned for the following year.  

Paradox

Founding year: 2017

Founding year: Scottsdale, Arizona

Paradox offers a virtual assistant named Olivia that's similar to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri and can perform automated tasks during the recruiting process. Clients can even customize the language Olivia uses to make it represent the voice of their brand. Olivia can gather basic information from job applicants, schedule interviews, and answer questions during the onboarding process. Paradox clients include Unilever, Nestle, and 3M. 

The downside: Natural language can be hit or miss with A.I. products, and while Olivia offers a voice function, the feature is not widely utilized by clients. "Trying to catch more voice in the future for us," says Paradox chief product officer Adam Godson. "We're waiting for societal adoption to catch up."

Cost: Implementing Olivia can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, depending on what clients want the software to do.

Joonko

Founding year: 2016

Headquarters: New York, New York, and Tel Aviv, Israel.  

Joonko creates a pipeline of underrepresented applicants and helps connect them with companies that are hiring. The software's algorithm is trained to eliminate instances of bias from the hiring process by not disclosing the personal information of applicants, such as race or gender. Joonko's mission is to increase the visibility of underrepresented applicants in the candidate pool and connect them with companies that are working to improve their workforce representation. Their product focuses on women, People of Color, and service veterans. Clients include Adidas, American Express, and Nike.

The downside: The platform does not yet serve LGBTQIA+ or neurodiverse professionals, though this is a stated goal for the company. 

Cost: Joonko's rates are dependent on the size of the business, but the average cost is $70,000 per year. 

THE SECRET TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL AND LASTING BUSINESS

"How useful is what I do?"

It's a question that is so simple on paper, yet so freaking difficult to answer in real life. 

The usefulness of your product or service is a metric that's difficult to quantify. As a result, a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders don't bother trying to measure it at all. Instead, they'll substitute a backward-looking statistic like revenue, or worse, they'll rely on vanity metrics that don't mean anything.  

Then they'll find that revenue can suddenly evaporate one day with no explanation. Or they'll use false positives as justification for poor decisions on spend. Either way, the money goes net negative real quick.

Let me assure you that in more than 20 years building and growing companies, I've learned that there is no single answer to any other question that's going to more accurately predict the success of your business.

So how do you answer it?

The Question Is Really About Your Business Mission

Last week, I talked about mission startups versus machine startups. This is my own terminology, but basically a machine startup is one that builds or buys growth around a product, usually by raising money from outside investors. A mission startup follows a more organic path, and grows step by step from a solution. It's slowly built into an ever-improving product, and delivered to an ever-expanding market.

While mission startups and machine startups are two completely different beasts, all startups -- even machine startups with shedloads of money -- should be built around a single, unwavering mission. It's the reason their solution exists, and therefore also their product and their company. 

While a machine startup requires venture investment to survive, its product doesn't have to be very useful out of the gate. In fact, a machine startup doesn't even require a working product in the beginning, just the funding to design and build a grand machine that will eat a large portion of a market, including all its competition. 

On the other hand, to be successful, a mission startup's product has to score a nine out of 10 or greater on the utility scale. Without all that rocket fuel of funding, a mission startup's product demand has to be perpetually increasing, its market has to be large and addressable, and its margins have to be thick. 

Whether you're building a machine or carrying out a mission, none of that good stuff happens without a product that is maximally useful to a growing number of customers.  

Ask Your Customers About Your Mission

In that same post, I also gave an example of a couple of mission startups I've founded, including the one I'm founding now, Teaching Startup. Its mission is to make more and better entrepreneurs by delivering startup advice affordably. 

Now, earlier when I said the utility level of a mission startup's product has to be nine out of 10 or greater, well, after more than two years of building Teaching Startup on the foundation of its mission, I surveyed my customers about its utility. My first question was to be scored on a scale of 1 to 10. That question: 

"Teaching Startup has helped me or will help me build and grow my startup."

And the result was 8.95 out of 10. Close enough.

This question was not worded arbitrarily. I'm not asking if they're selling more product, because there are already solutions out there for that, solutions that offer an entirely different value proposition. I'm not asking if my customers feel better about themselves or their leadership, because I'm not trying to make happier and more confident business people. Again, coaching already exists, and it's a completely different value prop. 

No, Teaching Startup exists to advise entrepreneurs on how to build and grow their startups. That's the mission. That's my thesis. 

You should constantly ask your customers how useful your product is. And you can only get the answer you need by asking the question in a way that speaks directly to whatever mission drives your solution. 

Use Engagement to Back Your Mission Thesis 

When asked properly, the utility answer is a more important metric than NPS, because brand loyalty rarely moves the revenue needle. And in my opinion, the utility question needs to be answered before measuring engagement, because that engagement might not be engaging for the right reasons. 

I'm sure you've spent plenty of time using products and services for no other reason than you weren't inclined to make a change. Yet. But then when that change became inevitable -- think flip phone to smartphone, or cable to streaming -- there was no going back. 

The cable company I left five years ago still sends me an NPS survey.

Once you've established usefulness, measuring engagement takes on a whole new meaning. Not only will your results tell you where to make your product better, faster, and stronger, but you'll also know why -- which leads to lighter spend for more customer value. You won't be adding features they don't want, or selling to customers who don't care. 

BY JOE PROCOPIO, FOUNDER, TEACHINGSTARTUP.COM@JPROCO

INSTAGRAM IS WALKING BACK ITS CONTROVERSIAL CHANGES

For the second time in a week, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, addressed the controversy around some of the recent changes to the app. The company has faced intense pushback over its shift to showing users content from outside of the group of accounts they follow using an updated recommendation algorithm. That came along with a push to compete with TikTok by highlighting Reels, Instagram's copycat short form video feature. 

On Tuesday, Mosseri posted a video (on Instagram, of course), addressing the changes and the criticism. In it, Mosseri doubled down on Instagram's shift to video:

I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time... If you look at what people share on Instagram, that's shifting more and more videos over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that's also shifting more and more than video over time, even when we start changing anything. So we're going to have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos.

Mosseri also talked about the new recommendation algorithm, suggesting that Instagram is making the change "to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not know even exist." That's a part of a broader shift at Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. During the company's second-quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said to expect the percentage of content you see on Instagram as a result of recommendations from outside your social graph to continue to increase.

The reason is simple--both Facebook and Instagram are losing to TikTok in terms of user attention and advertising dollars. And, so, Meta says it's just adapting to the way people want to use its apps. It sees recommendations and Reels--the company's TikTok-style video feature--as key to its future. 

Personally, I find Meta's assertion that Reels is a hit to be a bit misleading, at best.

"Reels engagement is also growing quickly," Zuckerberg said on Wednesday." I shared last quarter that Reels already made up 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram. This quarter, we saw a more than 30% increase in the time that people spent engaging with Reels across Facebook and Instagram."

I mean, I'm sure it's true that usage is up "30 percent... across Facebook and Instagram." It's the most prominent thing you see when you open either app. Even Mosseri admitted as much. "We design the app, and that means that we can affect how the app is used," he said. 

Now, however, Mosseri is walking it all back--at least, for now. "For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn't great," he told Casey Newtown in an interview for Platformer. "So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward."

Or, said another way, not only do people not like the changes, they weren't working. That's not great, but Mosseri's response highlights something every business should learn. 

"I'm glad we took a risk--if we're not failing every once in a while, we're not thinking big enough or bold enough," Mosseri said. 

There is a lot you can say about Instagram's attempt to copy TikTok, but you have to give Mosseri credit--he's right. No one wants to fail, but the truth is that if you never fail, you're just not trying hard enough at anything that matters. 

And, you should be doing things that matter. You should be trying new things that might fail.

Sometimes it will work. When that happens, everyone will be happy and you'll be seen as a huge success. Sometimes, however, it won't work. Sometimes you'll try things and it will fail. Make no mistake, as painful as that can be, failure is not your enemy. 

That's not just true for Instagram, by the way. It's true for every business. I don't agree with almost any of the changes Instagram is making, but I do give Mosseri and the company credit for trying, failing, and having the self-awareness to admit when they are wrong.

 

THE PARKINSON'S LAW

Why People Succeed or Fail

Parkinson’s Law is one of the best known and the most important laws of money and wealth accumulation. It was developed by English writer C. Northcote Parkinson many years ago and it explains why most people retire poor.

The Way the Law Works
This law says that, no matter how much money people earn, they tend to spend the entire amount and a little bit more besides. Their expenses rise in lockstep with their earnings. Many people are earning today several times what they were earning at their first jobs. But somehow, they seem to need every single penny to maintain their current lifestyles. No matter how much they make, there never seems to be enough.

The Key to Financial Success
The first corollary of Parkinson’s Law says: “Financial independence comes from violating Parkinson’s Law.”

Parkinson’s Law explains the trap that most people fall into. This is the reason for debt, money worries and financial frustration. It is only when you develop sufficient willpower to resist the powerful urge to spend everything you make that you begin to accumulate money and move ahead of the crowd.

Slow Down Your Spending
The second corollary of Parkinson’s Law is: “If you allow your expenses to increase at a slower rate than your earnings, and you save or invest the difference, you will become financially independent in your working lifetime.”

This is the key. I call it the “wedge.” If you can drive a wedge between your increasing earnings and the increasing costs of your lifestyle, and then save and invest the difference, you can continue to improve your lifestyle as you make more money. By consciously violating Parkinson’s Law, you will eventually become financially independent.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, imagine that your financial life is like a failing company that you have taken over. Institute an immediate financial freeze. Halt all non-essential expenses. Draw up a budget of your fixed, unavoidable costs per month and resolve to limit your expenditures temporarily to these amounts.

Carefully examine every expense. Question it as though you were analyzing someone else’s expenses. Look for ways to economize or cut back. Aim for a minimum of a 10 percent reduction in your living costs over the next three months.

Second, resolve to save and invest 50 percent of any increase you receive in your earnings from any source. Learn to live on the rest. This still leaves you the other 50 percent to do with as you desire. Do this for the rest of your career.

YOUTUBE AND INSTAGRAM JOIN TIKTOK WITH NEW SOCIAL COMMERCE TOOLS

If you haven't brought your retail business into the world of social commerce just yet, consider this your cue.

This month, both Instagram and YouTube unveiled new tools that aim to help users make sales directly on their social media platforms -- removing the need to shop at a brand's own website or retailer's online store. With the more seamless check-out options, presumably consumers will have fewer barriers to buy, and that can lead to more sales. 

On Instagram, customers can now place and track orders in direct messages, and sellers can request and receive payment in the same thread using Meta Pay. This feature aims to simplify the purchase process, especially for custom orders that might require back-and-forth communication between buyer and seller, according to Meta, the Menlo Park, California-based owner of Instagram and Facebook. Previously, businesses could sell items on Instagram through the app's shop function, but shoppers could not place orders through direct messages. Businesses must have an Instagram storefront to use the new tool. 

Through a new partnership with Shopify, YouTube creators can now directly link their products across their channels and content, including in livestream videos. U.S.-based users of the feature can enable onsite checkout, which can allow shoppers to make purchases directly on YouTube. To use the new shopping feature, YouTube creators must have more than 1,000 subscribers and must have their channel approved for monetization. "I predict that this will heavily impact my conversion rate, which will help more people give my products and my brand a chance to become part of their everyday life," Cassey Ho, founder of the Pilates brand Blogilates, said in a press release announcing the Shopify partnership.

These updates are just the latest in a growing trend towards social commerce. In November 2021, Pinterest launched a live shopping series dubbed Pinterest TV. And last summer, TikTok unveiled in-app shopping integrations through Square and Shopify. In 2021, sales made through social media hit an estimated $492 billion -- and experts predict that number will grow to $1.2 trillion, according to a report from Accenture.

The best way to capitalize on the trend is to start now and skip the hard sell. While options will vary for different kinds of products, demographics, and social platforms, one thing remains consistent across platforms: authenticity. "It's really about making it feel organic and not trying to tell people to buy the product -- it's more about presenting the option for them to do so," Maria Wilkes, founder of the London-based brand Candid Beauté,  about using Shopify's integration on TikTok.