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Article's Content
Welcome to Volume 71!
Most people talk about how big a distraction social media can be.
I believe social media can be both good and bad, but it all depends on how the user chooses to consume.
You can make your social media experience a great one by optimizing your feed, impacting others with valuable content, and engaging in meaningful conversations.
You are, after all, what you eat.
If you let your newsfeed run wild, attracting all sorts of negativity, you’ll soon find your life being shaped by negativity.
However, if you optimize your feed and watch what you consume, you’ll be better positioned to thrive in your career and other areas of your life.
So, it’s all up to you: how would you like your life to be shaped?
Before we dive into today’s stories, here’s a peek at what’s to come in this piece:
- Live Audio Wars: Who Is Losing?
- Where B2B SaaS Brands Put Their Eggs in 2022
- Do This To 2x Your Conversion Rates
Live Audio Wars: Who is Winning?
In April 2020, Reddit launched Reddit Talk, a Clubhouse competitor, a few months after Twitter launched Spaces.
The Reddit team has worked hard to keep its 430 million users engaged in talk sessions happening on the platform, more than anywhere else.
Since launching Reddit Talk to empower moderators to host live audio conversations in their subreddits, Reddit Talk has seen more than 250% growth in daily active listeners. There have also been tons of live sessions in over a thousand subreddits.
To build on its successes, Reddit rolled out the web version of Reddit Talk earlier this week. I believe this is a smart retention move, especially because most Redditors use desktops to access the platform.
With the latest update, as well as its many interactive features, Reddit now stands a better chance of keeping more of its users engaged on the platform.
Twitter has also done pretty well for itself with Spaces.
Although there are no recorded stats of how many people use Spaces, it’s fair to say that a good percentage of Twitter’s 186 million daily active users use this feature.
In comparison to Reddit Talk, I believe one of the things that makes Twitter a safer bet for live audio sessions is its wider reach.
When you host a Spaces on Twitter, anyone can join in the conversation, whether or not they follow you.
Also, when your followers share your post about an upcoming Spaces, their audience can set reminders and join in without necessarily following you. Anyone can then share and retweet your recorded spaces with their audience as well.
For Reddit, everything happens within the subreddit, not publicly like Twitter. So, you have to be a part of that particular subreddit to participate. That can be somewhat limiting if your goal is to create awareness for your brand and grow your audience.
In comparison to Clubhouse, both Twitter and Reddit Talk have invested heavily in making their audio features more interactive.
Twitter, for instance, includes live captions for those who have difficulty hearing or want to follow along without needing headphones. Both platforms allow users to interact in real-time using emojis and chats.
Also, most of Clubhouse’s hosts already have an established, sizable following on competing platforms like Twitter. So, it makes sense for most users to invest in a platform where their audience spent the most time instead of moving them over to another platform.
Clubhouse thrived when there were no alternatives. However, with Twitter and others on the scene, moving feels like such an inconvenience.
Clubhouse’s poor product-market fit makes this even worse. Its current positioning offers live audio broadcasts to its users. Let’s be honest, there are only a few groups of users who want to broadcast live to hundreds of people every single day.
You can’t successfully build a new social media network on a few thousand people. Especially when you’ve got some serious competition from the industry’s biggest players.
If Clubhouse doesn’t beef up its acquisition and retention strategy, they might become another Blackberry. They likely have already lost a good chunk of their 10 million weekly users to a better-positioned competitor.
That’d be such a shame, considering Clubhouse was the first on the scene.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Reddit rolled out the web version of Reddit Talk earlier this week, to reach a higher percentage of its audience.
- Reddit Talk has seen more than 250% growth in daily active listeners since launching the feature in April 2020.
- Twitter and Reddit appear to be outshining Clubhouse in the space, as they make their platforms have more interactive features and an established user base.
Where B2B SaaS Brands Should Put Their Eggs
Most B2B SaaS marketers limit content marketing assets to landing pages, guides, lead magnets, and blog posts.
However, a lot still ignore the power of engaging API Documentation.
As a B2B SaaS marketer targeting a technical audience, combining SEO and documentation is an excellent way to invest in your user.
Great documentation presents an opportunity to educate both prospects and users on the value of your product while showing that product in action.
API documentation can also serve as an internal sales tool for your B2B SaaS brand. When you arm engineers and developers with the info they need to do their job well, you increase the chances of them upselling your product to the decision-makers and stakeholders.
Stripe has some of the best API documentation we have seen in recent times.
While Stripe’s blog generates less than 10K organic sessions every month, their technical documentation attracts over 200K monthly sessions and over 1 million backlinks.
Stripe doesn’t just create random documents either, rather they base their documentation on common user problems and frequent questions.
For example, a keyword like “3D secure” has 54K people searching for it monthly:
The article solves a common pain point users have when it comes to online banking: the problem of security. It quickly shows them how they can use a Stripe solution to tighten up loose ends and reduce fraud.
Over 8K people land on this page every month to learn how to use Stripe for secure payments. Right now this page is worth $29.3K in traffic value!
Ross has already written extensively about the value of API documentation a few times before.
Here are some key points from the article to help you get started:
- Create for people first, then optimize for search.
- Embrace simplicity while creating your documentation.
- Make the home page easy to navigate so users can find what they need easily.
- Make each key section a linkable URL so users can link to it when necessary.
- Create documentation that helps users uncover why certain things don’t work.
Creating API documentation for your technical audience shows how well your brand supports users throughout their whole journey. It also increases your chances of converting prospects into users, and users into loyal customers.
Perhaps, if you jump on the opportunity to create documentation, like Stripe, a user might leave a glowing recommendation:
To learn more about creating API documentation for your brand, you can read Ross’ full article here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- API Documentation is content marketing gold for B2B SaaS marketers targeting a technical audience.
- Creating detailed API documentation shows how proactive your brand is in supporting users through their journey. It boosts your chances of converting prospects into users, and users into loyal customers.
- One best practice for creating great API documentation is to create for people first, then optimize for bots later. Use simple, clear language with lots of in-product screenshots to help users understand the value of your product.
Do This To 2x Your Conversion Rates
I stumbled upon an insightful tweet from Ryan McCready earlier this week.
He shared how B2B and B2C companies can double their conversion rates by embracing the idea he calls, “one path of success.”
One path of success means eliminating unnecessary distractions from your conversion-driven landing pages.
This strategy isn’t about trying to get users to see the full value of your product. Rather, it focuses more on creating a tighter conversion funnel that ensures the action you want a prospect or user to take is impossible to miss.
While Ryan was at Venngage, the team had been using a landing page like this:
They observed that users weren’t converting at a high rate, likely because there were way too many options. The variety of templates, which was supposed to help them, overwhelmed users. So, they quickly bounced from the page.
However, when they tightened up the page and eliminated distractions, the story changed.
Instead of getting distracted by a ton of buttons and templates to click on, this page only had one. The conversion rates doubled almost instantly because users now had one path to success.
Wrike also applies the same “one path to success” strategy with their landing pages. The hero section of Wrike’s project management landing page, for instance, is focused on converting users who need to create a Gantt chart.
Notice how there are no distractions or barriers to block someone from signing up.
Just lots of white space, compelling copy, and a simple sign-up form, all targeted at teams interested in trying out Wrike.
So, if you want to double your conversion rates, you should start embracing “one path of success.” Ryan shared 10 other examples of this idea in practice here, you should check them out.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- B2B and B2C companies can double their conversion rates by embracing the “one path of success” idea.
- The strategy focuses more on creating a tighter conversion funnel that ensures the action you want a prospect or user to take is impossible to miss.
- A best practice for building your landing pages is to give each landing page a defined goal and stay on course. Avoid letting unrelated CTAs and content distract your readers from taking the intended action.
OTHER NEWS OF THE WEEK:
📇 After more than 15 years, Facebook rebrands its news feed.
💰Intel plans to acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4B to provide foundry services for other chipmakers.
👩🏽💻 Asana rolls out new workflow tools to boost collaboration between teams.
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
Everyone loves to feel valued and appreciated.
Whether it’s a coworker, employee, or leader in an organization, no one likes to feel like their efforts and contributions don’t count.
Survey Monkey found that 82% of employees are happier when they are appreciated. This means employers, managers, or supervisors stand a better chance at retaining top talents when they show appreciation for employees or direct reports.
So, how do you show employees you value and appreciate their efforts?
First, find out how they’d prefer to be appreciated.
If you’ve read the book, “5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, you should know that everyone has a primary way they’d prefer their partner expresses love to them.
Just as knowing and communicating appreciation in your partner’s love language is a critical ingredient for a thriving relationship, knowing your employee’s appreciation language is important for effective team communication and collaboration.
The best way to find out your direct reports’ or employees’ preferred appreciation language is to ask them directly.
You can ask questions like:
📍Would you prefer to be appreciated through positive verbal or written compliments?
📍Would you feel more valued if we offer to reduce your workload or add special perks?
📍Does team games, more time with loved ones, or other quality activities help you feel more valued?
📍Do you consider bonuses, gift cards, or something tangible enough appreciation?
It’s important to ask these questions.
Give room for employees to select the option that appeals to them, and they should describe the option they select in detail so you can learn how best to express appreciation to them.
Little acts go a long way in communicating value to employees.
WE ARE HIRING BRILLIANT B2B CREATORS, MARKETERS, AND LEADERS:
- Director of Content
- Director of Strategy
- People & Culture Lead
- Senior Digital Account Manager
- Content Marketing Strategist
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
7 simple tips non-designers can use to look like a PRO by Ryan McCready
IN CASE YOU MISSED SOME OF OUR GREATEST HITS:
- Ahrefs Built A $10M Acquisition Channel By Giving Away Their Best Features
- ShipBob’s Billion-Dollar Social Proof Formula
- Questions Make People Uncomfortable—Here’s Why You Should Ask More
- Ross Simmonds on Content Marketing and Hustle Culture
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:
These round-ups are brought to you by me, Jessica O., every week ✌!
