How Money Buys Happiness, Demystifying the Role of a Creative Strategist vs SMM, Consistent Social Handles, GrammarlyGO, and GPT-4 Reveal from The SUM
Before covering marketing headlines, let's start and end this brief introduction with a tweet that resonated on other social channels.
The power of self-awareness, self-education, and practicing good habits begins with positive self-valuation, a high roll on initiative, confidence in your decisions, and taking ownership of those outcomes: good or bad. Self-realization and preservation have a foundation in all of the above.
Those reflections and insights when shared among peers?will generate an atmosphere and community focused on learning together—and it makes us better as creators and innovators.
Stay educated and make change happen.
Leave a comment at the bottom if you learned something, hated
something, or just want to say what's up.
| Newsletter Summary |
What is a Creative Strategist and Why Are They Important to My Company?
Jack Appleby is a marketing/social mind falling into the influencer framework, but he has experience working with notable marketing agencies and Twitch. Those positions undoubtedly provide loads of credibility when it comes to talking about everything social media strategy.
His newsletter last week spoke volumes about digital marketing and social media positions, and frankly, the misunderstanding of what those positions are. It's crucial for marketing leadership and hiring managers to understand the functions of the positions they're bringing into an organization, so get ready for a blockquote.
Concerning a creative strategist's skillset and personality:
"You need a socially-minded brain who?doesn’t?have social media administrative responsibilities.
"The traditional social media manager role heavily emphasizes that management word. They’re catch-all positions, usually requiring posting, project management, production, analytics, internal politics, and oh yeah, strategy and creative. If you want to make truly great social media, you’ve gotta allow someone on your team whose primary responsibility is to think about content, not the other bells & whistles.
...just make sure they think more than they do."
This is typically where you'd say, "There's a lot to unpack here," but there really isn't. Much of the busy work involved in the life of a social media manager is encapsulated by that quote, it's also why social media management doesn't allow much time for strategy (unless it's extracurricular).
Hiring Internally VS. Hiring an Agency for Creative Strategy
Jack also mentions how hiring someone internally, someone who understands the company dynamics is a smart move—and I could not agree more.
Hiring an internal content (or creative) strategist and/or social media specialist is something I've been preaching for 10+ years. Over time, you'll spend more with an agency over a multi-year relationship, whereas the value an internal employee will possess over time becomes priceless.
Go follow Jack on all the platforms and subscribe to Future Social here. ??
Money Buy Happiness: a New Study Flips the Old Adage on Its Proverbial Head
In a new study, the idea that money DOES NOT buy happiness was redacted. Above the $200,000/year threshold, happiness is shown to rise and continues to rise. This comes from the guy who told us in 2010 that happiness plateaus at $75,000… Daniel Kahneman , Nobel Prize-winning economist and psychologist decided he needed to adjust for inflation.
Key takeaways ??
Jump into the full study from PNAS here. ??
It concludes that not all people are happy, in general, regardless of their taxable income. There’s a threshold for happiness that even Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos cannot break through, so it's better to think in “degrees of happiness” which better depict what you and I face daily.
"Money is not the secret to happiness, but it can probably help a bit." — Matt Killingsworth
Go ask for a raise. ??
As a social media strategist, inconsistent handles are cringeworthy for a handful of reasons. A few issues top-of-mind are:
It doesn't matter where you are in your digital marketing journey. Think of something unique (kudos if the domain is available) and switch everything at once. Then, tell your followers. It's like a mini-rebrand without spending a cent.
Don't make it harder to find you.
领英推荐
GrammarlyGO Steps into the Ring of AI Competitors and First Adopters
There's a new piece of AI in town, GrammarlyGO. ??
If you're a?Grammarly?subscriber, you've been using the software as your virtual editor, but the new generative AI functionality is the next level. You can start fresh, use it for revisions, keep it in the editor box, or let it get creative.
GrammarlyGO allows you to:
From a personal and business perspective, "Reply intelligently" is a game-changing feature. GrammarlyGO interprets the context of an email and drafts a reply instantaneously, significantly speeding up the time you spend in your inbox. The 4000 unread emails are no match. ??
Voice and Style Preferences Make a Big Impact
This newcomer to the AI chatbot world is unique because the AI lets you maintain your voice and style and choose how you want to sound. So if you're a brand manager upholding a public persona or simply using the tool to keep a personal touch in an email thread, the software will adapt and adjust to your liking and specifications.
Like ChatGPT or Bard, this software will speed up your workflow, so you—as an individual contributor—can get more done in an 8-hour window.
Keep your eyes peeled for the release on April 18.
GPT-4 is Live (i.e. the Next-Level of ChatGPT)
GPT-4 has been released into the wild, but it’s “still flawed, still limited” stated Sam Altman,?OpenAI’s CEO in a tweet yesterday.
This AI language model upgrade took the Uniform Bar Exam, LSAT, SAT Math, and SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing exams, scoring in the 88th percentile and above.
Here are the results of 10 major exams GPT-4 was tested on.
GPT-4 missed 1 out of the 170 questions in the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Verbal, landing it in the 99th percentile. That’ll hit home for a wide swath of students.
Also, Microsoft’s been powering the Bing chatbot on GPT-4 the whole time.
Can a Battle Royale Copycat of Fortnite Expand Meta's Virtual Reality Footprint?
Is this battle royale VR game from?Meta?not a carbon copy of Fortnite?
Sure, "Population: One" is a virtual reality game that is not played in a traditional format. It was developed by?BigBox VR—which Meta acquired in 2021—but the direction is clear:
Feed off the "battle royale" hype to draw in players and profit from in-game purchases.
They would've been better off partnering with?Epic Games?straight up, thereby increasing the Oculus user base by leveraging the success of Fortnite rather than trying to create a duplicate. ??
DuckAssist is a New Favorite for Natural Language AI Wielding Chatbots
In name alone, DuckDuckGo 's new DuckAssist AI is my favorite so far.
"DuckAssist aims only to summarize information from reliable sources like Wikipedia to minimize inaccuracies," according to Search Engine Journal .
Keep in mind, it's in beta. ??
More Noise in Your Twitter Feed? Look Up, You're Probably Under the "For You" Tab
The "Why you’re seeing this?" option you're beginning to see appear on Twitter posts. It's a result of the new "For You" feed to piggyback off TikTok.
"Meta has seen a significant increase in user engagement as a result of showing people more things from accounts they don’t follow, on both Facebook and Instagram." — Social Media Today, LLC
Twitter is following suit.
The SUM is derived from industry news and insights related to marketing, copywriting, advertising, branding, web best practices, and more. If you enjoyed The SUM, subscribe for biweekly updates or follow?Zach Burger?for content that doesn't miss a beat.