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Welcome to Volume 69!
The first month of the year has come to a close.
How do you feel? Have you achieved everything that you have planned? Or have you had to adjust your plans due to some unforeseen circumstances?
Whatever the case may be, as long as you are making forward progress in your personal and professional life, you should be proud.
It’s been a crazy two years, and just showing up every day to better yourself is an accomplishment in itself.
So even if you had to completely change your marketing plan or shift a launch date, things will be alright. As long as you just keep showing up and giving it your best.
Here’s a peek at what’s to come in this piece:
- Alphabet Soars, Meta Sinks
- What Are The Top Jobs For 2022?
- Want To Write Better Copy? Learn From LinkedIn News
Alphabet Soars, Meta Sinks
After posting truly incredible revenue growth of 32% year over year, Alphabet’s stock shot up like a rocket. At the time of publishing shares of Alphabet jumped by about 8%.
A lot of this revenue growth was driven by its advertising business which made $15B+ more than the previous year.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the marketing world lately shouldn’t be surprised by that massive growth.
Google has been slowly expanding the number of ads that are running on each keyword and the cost of placement over the past few years. And since there really isn’t another option, it seems businesses are paying more for less.
It’s not all good news for their advertising business though, they were recently hit with a lawsuit that alleges Google misled advertisers and publishers about how much the ads really cost. That lawsuit also claims that Alphabet and Facebook were colluding to crush any competitors in the advertising space.
Surprisingly the only major part of the business that didn’t see significant growth was YouTube ad revenue.
With how essential streaming services have become over the last few years, I expected to see a lot more revenue growth. Especially as Alphabet counties to push YouTube TV onto everyone.
On the back of all the good news, Alphabet also announced that they would be going forward with a 20-1 stock split. This split, which will become official later this year, will bring the cost of each share down from around $2.5k to around $140.
A stock split like this will allow more people to buy shares in the company, without really changing anything about how the business operates.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, posted uninspiring revenue numbers that sent its stock price into a tailspin. Dropping 20% in after-hours trading.
This massive drop was mostly due to missing profit expectations but also concerns over the number of daily active users on the platform.
Predictably, Facebook’s leadership team blamed Apple’s privacy changes and increased competition from brands like TikTok.
This news also sent other social media and tech stock’s into a bit of a downward spiral.
One interesting metric buried in their earning reports was that Reality Labs, which includes the main metaverse projects, lost $10B last year.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Alphabet’s strong revenue growth of 32% year-over-year pushed their stock up 8% and will likely lead to a 20-1 stock split.
- A good chunk of this revenue growth was driven by its advertising business which made $15B+ more than the previous year.
- Facebook’s leadership team blamed Apple’s privacy changes and increased competition from brands like TikTok for the decrease in revenue this year.
What Are The Top Jobs For 2022?
Earlier this week, Glassdoor published their list of the Best Jobs In America for 2022.
At the top of that list was an “Enterprise Architect” followed closely by “Full Stack Engineer” and “Data Scientist.”
To be honest, I have no clue what an enterprise architect does, but it sounds like something right out of Star Trek.
According to CIO, enterprise architects help companies build out and maintain their IT infrastructure. They recommend 5 to 10 years of IT experience before becoming moving into this role. With that much experience, a base salary of $144k sounds correct, but some companies are posting jobs with starting salaries of $175k.
Out of the top 10 jobs on this list, only one job, Strategy Manager, was outside of the world of tech:
Some might argue that a Strategy Manager is a tech job, but there is too much gray area to make a call. Out of all the jobs on the list, only a few were truly outside the realm of tech including Psychiatrists, Dentists, and Physicians.
Funny enough, those jobs were also the highest paid, with Psychiatrists making nearly double the next highest salary.
If you were curious about how marketers landed on this list, Marketing Managers clocked in at #19 with a salary of $90k.
Product Marketing Managers were a little lower on the list at #33 but had a much higher median salary of $125k.
Here are some fun facts about the jobs on this list:
- The median salary for all 50 jobs was right at $100k
- 27 jobs had median salaries above $100k
- Psychiatrists had the highest median salary of $252k
- Realtors had the lowest median salary of $54k
- Software Engineers had the most job openings at 65k+ jobs
- Product Designers had the least amount of job openings at 2.2k jobs
- Corporate Recruiters & Realtors had the highest job satisfaction
- Project Managers had the lowest job satisfaction
LinkedIn recently published a similar list called Jobs on the Rise 2022.
Unlike the Glassdoor list, this roundup focused on the jobs that were seeing incredible demand in 2022.
Hopefully this surprises no one, but Vaccine Specialists was in the first spot on that list.
That said, 5.7% of those jobs offered a remote work component, which seems VERY high.
Customer Marketing Manager was on this list at #3 and Search Marketing Manager at #7. Out of all the jobs posted for those jobs, 30% had a remote component.
I find that number to be really low actually! Almost every marketer that I have talked to over the past few weeks was working remotely full-time.
So as you can see, it’s never been a better time to be in the tech industry. And for my marketing comrades, things are looking pretty great for us over the next few years as well!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Glassdoor named Enterprise Architect, Full Stack Engineer, and Data Scientist as their top jobs for 2022.
- The median salary for those top jobs was right at $100k, but 27 jobs had median salaries above $100k. Psychiatrists had the highest salary of $252k!
- Marketing Managers were ranked #19, and Product Marketing Managers came in at #33 but had a slightly higher salary.
Want To Write Better Copy? Learn From LinkedIn News
Yes, you read that headline correctly.
LinkedIn News puts on a copywriting masterclass almost every single day. But no one seems to be paying attention to the brilliance.
Every headline that they publish in the LinkedIn News box is perfectly positioned to get someone to click and hopefully share it with their network.
After studying hundreds of these headlines over the past few months, I have cracked their copywriting code. And it breaks down into four simple concepts:
1. Embrace intentional vagueness
A lot of content creators give away too much info in their headline, copy, or share.
Now if you tell someone everything they need to know about a topic, why would they want to click?
They could just read the headline or share and move on with their day.
The team at LinkedIn News are masters at crafting headlines so they are vague but still will drive a click or share:
In this example, the team is hoping that by leaving out the executive’s name, people will think it’s Elon Musk or some other famous executive. But since that info is not given up in the headline, the only way to find that out is by clicking!
I have found that the practice of being intentionally vague actually is most effective when applied to social shares. Especially when you are writing a Twitter thread:
At the end of the day, you want to drive engagement with your shares, ads, or blog content. So stop giving away too much information!
2. Cut the unnecessary words
As Kevin from the Office said, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick.”
When it comes to copywriting, you should always try to remember those wise words.
Taking the time to eliminate unnecessary words can tighten up your copy and make it a lot easier to consume as well.
The LinkedIn News team has perfected the art of brevity, without losing any important context.
This makes a ton of sense, the LinkedIn News box is TINY. But I think this limitation makes them better copywriters.
For example, take a look at this headline:
This simple headline could have been written as: “In 2022, Apartment living is trending at an all-time high of 97% occupancy.”
But does including all of that extra information actually make the headline stronger?
Not really.
And you would likely have to read the entire headline to get the same point that apartment living is at an all-time high.
As you can see, sometimes having strict limitations will lead to better content.
Want to see what the other two copywriting rules the LinkedIn News team swears by? Check out the full article here!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- LinkedIn News team puts on a copywriting masterclass almost every day, but no one seems to notice.
- They can craft hundreds of headlines that are intentionally vague but still will drive a click or share.
- The team also has perfected the art of brevity, without losing any important context.
💡 Product management tool ProductBoard raises $125M & plans to go public in the next few years.
📰 NYT buys the popular word game Worlde for an undisclosed sum
🥤 Ollipop, one of my favorite drinks, raised $30M in funding from a ton of famous investors
HIRING BRILLIANT B2B MARKETERS:
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
A few weeks ago, I published an essay about setting better content goals in 2022 and beyond.
It was built on the idea that publishing more content in 2022 was a flawed goal from the beginning.
One of the key points from that essay was that content creators need to stop publishing just to publish.
So many content creators are measured on their output, as well as their impact.
That impact could be helping your company rank on more keywords, driving more downloads, and converting more customers. These things can be directly linked to business success and growth.
But a lot of content marketers get led astray when they try to tie marketing success to output as well.
Goals like “create 50 blog posts this year” or “share 5 times per day” are very common in the marketing world.
They think that just by publishing more content, shares, or video year they will automatically reach their goals!
If your goal is to push your team towards burnout, then you’re set with this approach.
Additionally, those goals are flawed because they don’t measure the quality or impact of the content.
If you publish 50 bad blog posts over the course of a year, you technically hit the goal. Even if it didn’t lead to any new customers or revenue.
If you truly want to grow your business, start looking at how your content can drive impact instead of just publishing more content.
You will be surprised by how much you can do with just a few pieces of well-written content.
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
22k Views On A Post With No SEO by Amanda Natividad
IN CASE YOU MISSED SOME OF OUR GREATEST HITS:
You’re Wrong About The Backlinko + Semrush Acquisition
Why API Documentation Is Content Marketing Gold
Stop Publishing Just To Publish
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧
