Tag: digital marketing

Threads vs. X – Competition in the Social Media Sphere

Posted on by CMPR

With the complete rebranding of Twitter, now known as X, it’s a ripe time for some competition in the social media sphere. Meta has eagerly jumped at the opportunity and created Threads in hopes that previous Twitter users will migrate over to their new platform. Though both platforms look similar on the surface, there are some key differences with Threads vs. X.

The most notable difference is that Threads is linked to your Instagram account. You log in using your Instagram, and any Instagram followers will be notified when you make a Threads account. However, this also means that once you make a Threads account, it can’t be deleted without also deleting your Instagram account. Unlike Twitter, Threads is intended for longer discussions. The character limit of the initial post is 500 as opposed to Twitter’s 280, and posts can be linked together as threads, hence the name. This means you have to think things through before posting on Threads to make sure the narrative is cohesive.

Interestingly, Twitter and Threads share a similar gender distribution. According to this article, 70% of Twitter users are male. Another article states that 68% of Threads users are male. Threads’ demographics is unexpected because Instagram and Facebook are used primarily by women. Potentially, the style of content appeals more to men and thus more male Instagram users are joining Threads.

Inactive Users

Unfortunately for Threads, despite the high user count, not all of them are active. The app’s use peaked on July 7th at the time of writing at only 45% of Twitter’s daily use. This is due to a combination of factors.

First of all, Twitter users don’t want to lose the followings they’ve amassed over the years. It can be discouraging to have to build yourself up from nothing, so people are reluctant to switch platforms.

Secondly, Threads doesn’t have the activity of Twitter. There’s less happening on Threads because people aren’t as active on it. That makes scrolling through the activity feed less appealing because there’s less content to see.

Lastly, Threads just isn’t complete yet. Meta has been planning to release Threads for a while, but recent backlash against Musk and Twitter’s rebranding is likely why it has been released at this point. It doesn’t have all of the expected features of an app of its type just yet. There’s no direct messaging, no search function, no hashtags, and no access to trending topics. It feels more like an open beta than a completed app.

Potential

Threads does have a lot of potential, but it currently isn’t in a state worth investing in. When more features are released and its active user base grows, it certainly has a chance to overcome Twitter. For now, it’s good to keep an eye on it as it progresses.

References

Why is Twitter called X now? Elon Musk’s rebrand explained and where it’s going next | TechRadar

PSA: You Can’t Delete Your Threads Account Without Also Deleting Instagram (makeuseof.com)

23 Essential Twitter Statistics You Need to Know in 2023 (thesocialshepherd.com)

Threads App Statistics 2023 – By Country, Sign-Ups, User, History (enterpriseappstoday.com)

Threads Usage Drops By Half From Initial Surge | Similarweb

AI Art and How it Affects Design

Posted on by CMPR

With the rise of AI such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, people are forgoing hiring artists and designers to instead use AI to create art for them. However, AI art has many flaws that make it pale in comparison to hiring human artists, greatly affecting the world of art and design.

 

One of AI art’s biggest flaws is the moral and legal conundrum that comes with training it. AI art has to be trained on human art, which is usually used without permission or credit. Artists may not even be aware their art is being used by a learning model, which can make legal claims even more difficult. This also means the AI models that are intended to replace human artists are using those artist’s creations to learn.

 

Nowadays, artists have the ability to opt-out of their work being used to train AI on most platforms. This is especially prevalent on DeviantArt, a site created specifically for artists to showcase their work, which has its own AI art software. As more and more artists opt out of including their work in AI data sets or use specific watermarks that are not AI-friendly, the amount of original works to learn from are hopefully dwindling. Without human art to train AI, it could eventually be forced to learn from other AI art. This would theoretically cause a negative feedback loop where the AI art gets worse and worse due to only learning from itself.

 

Since AI is limited to only training from pre-existing art, the result is typically unoriginal and uninspiring. AI can’t come up with unique concepts. This creates the risk of anything using AI art ending up with a repetitive style and design. This can be very bad in a field where you want your work to stand out and catch people’s eye.

 

Another flaw of AI art is that it is incredibly difficult to explain what you want it to do. If it gives you something you like, but have some issues with, you can’t ask it to make edits. You either have to accept what it gives you or have it completely redone. This is unlike an actual, sentient artist who can make adjustments to the piece as it’s being made. You can also request far more specific details from a human artist, such as color palette, character design, and specific font. An AI art generator that will accept any of those parameters is currently unheard of.

 

None of this is mentioning the controversy surrounding AI art. Not only is it not popular with human artists, there have been lawsuits due to its derivative nature. In January of this year, artists sued Midjourney, a well known AI art generator, for using their art to train the program. Midjourney was able to mimic the specific art style of these artists, which helped prove how derivative it truly was and provide evidence against them for the lawsuit.

 

While using AI art may seem appealing because of its time and cost effectiveness, the final product and how AI affects design might not be worth it. Hiring a human artist to create the art and design for your product or brand is overall the better choice.

Sources:

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/midjourney-ai-art-image-generators-lawsuit-1234665579/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gynq/why-is-ai-art-so-bad

https://victorycto.com/ai-generated-art-pros-and-cons/#:~:text=While%20it%20has%20the%20potential,potential%20devaluation%20of%20human%20creativity.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/what-is-glaze.html&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1690213352869221&usg=AOvVaw30uscbZ2bnNdqs_CbFpLhi

How to Build a Community on Discord

Posted on by CMPR

With the use of social media, creators are able to connect with their audience directly. However, there isn’t a good place for the audience to gather and discuss on most social media. The biggest exception to this is Discord, which was built for communities to interact with one another. Building a community on Discord can seem intimidating at first, but it’s actually quite easy. You just need to be prepared for it to take some time and be willing to talk with your audience. Here is a simple, step-by-step guide to get you started with Discord.

 

Step #1: Joining Servers

The first step to building a Discord community is meeting new people and familiarizing yourself with how Discord functions. It’s very easy to search for and join servers. Discord has a search function at the bottom of your server list where you can explore communities. To use this function, open the app and scroll to the bottom of your server list (which may be empty, if you’re totally new) until you see an icon that looks like a compass. This is the “Explore Discoverable Servers” button. You can search for servers in different languages and under specific tags.

 

Step #2: Building an Audience

If you already have an audience, great! However, if you don’t, there are several ways to build one. Other social media platforms, like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok can be useful for this. Discord provides a more up close and personal way to connect, by making friends and getting people interested in your work. Share your process and experience, and chat with fellow writers, and you’ll find people who are interested in a community for your work.

 

Step #3: Making a Discord Server

Once you have a sufficient audience and are familiar with how Discord works, it’s time to make a server. You can create different channels and categories for various conversations, as well as voice channels for group calls. There are different types of servers: private friend servers, and more open community servers. Community servers give moderators more tools and have the ability to be discoverable on Discord’s official search function. You can learn more about the ins and outs of Discord by checking out various resources that explain each function in more detail.

 

Step #4: Sharing Your Server

When your server first starts, you’ll have to share it manually. Doing so is actually quite easy. All you have to do is open your server on the app and click your server’s name, select ‘Invite People’ from the dropdown menu, and copy the link. The link for friend servers will expire in 30 days, however community server links won’t expire. Once you have the link copied, you can share it on any social media for people to join your server.

 

Step #5: Making Your Server Public

This step is optional for when you have a big enough audience. Making a public server isn’t as easy as clicking a button. There are various criteria a server has to meet before it can be made public, to ensure that Discord provides a positive experience for all users. The rules to making a public server are to follow the Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, foster a healthy and positive environment, not host graphic or sexual content, have a server name and description that accurately describes the server, respect people’s intellectual property and other rights, and have a moderator team. However, there are more requirements than just following these rules. A server must also have 1,000 members, be at least 8 weeks old, meet certain activity requirements, and enable 2 Factor Authentication For Moderation Settings. For more details on making a server public, you can visit Discord’s official site. 

Once you’ve completed the first four steps, you’re pretty much done! Making a public server isn’t necessary, especially when there are bots that also make your server discoverable online. However, learning about Discord bots is worth another blog post entirely.

Now, go out there and have fun making your servers!

 

References

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/14078261239831-Clarifying-Server-Types-#:~:text=We%20will%20display%20a%20distinct,server%2C%20and%20the%20Boost%20level.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030843331-Enabling-Server-Discovery

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409308485271

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023968311-Server-Discovery

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us

Color Psychology and Branding

Posted on by CMPR

Why is it Important to Choose the Best Colors for Your Branding?

Color psychology and branding is one of the most important factors in consumer behavior and marketing. Consumers make their minds up about a product, service, or person, in about 90 seconds. More than half of that decision process can be attributed to color alone, so choosing the right color palette for your brand can be crucial to the company’s success. Having a set color palette is not only critical for the consumer’s attraction, but also for the cohesiveness of the brand content on social media and your website. Content that correlates with your company logo and overall image can help with brand recognition and distinguishing yourself from competitors.

Colors evoke different emotions in different groups of consumers, so it is important to reach the audience you desire with the right branding.

What Different Color Tones Mean & How to Choose the Right Ones

Typically, psychologists separate colors into three categories: cool, warm, and neutral. Cool tones include blues, greens, and purples. These colors are more subtle and invoke feelings of calmness, relaxation, and peace. Warm colors on the other hand are more exciting and energizing to the consumer’s eye. Reds, oranges, and yellows catch attention quickly and are used to generate a positive feeling in the audience. Neutral tones like black, brown, and white offer a sleeker and more professional look. Guide to Color Psychology in Marketing | Chamber of Commerce

Knowing this, the first step in deciding on colors is to think about your brand’s values and purpose and how you can make your design choices align with those things.

Who is your target audience?

How is your brand memorable?

What is your company’s value?

These things can be a starting point to determine how you want the audience to feel about your brand.

How Demographics Affect Perception of Color

The demographics of potential customers can affect how they perceive color and what that could mean to your brand. Knowing your target audience is imperative to choosing the right colors to ultimately attract the appropriate consumers.

Men and women often have varying preferences when it comes to color. Studies have shown that women are generally more drawn to softer colors, whereas men prefer bold ones.

Generational differences also have an impact on color preferences. Gen X and Baby Boomers tend to gravitate more towards colors that are viewed as mature and classic such as yellows, whites, blues, and dark reds. Millennials and Gen Zs typically prefer colors that are soft and neutral, like pastel pinks and greens, as well as browns and whites. Generational Colors: How to Attract Various Demographics Via Color (amywax.com)

Knowing that demographic factors can influence how one perceives colors, identifying your target audience is important to determine your brand’s colors.

Next Steps

After learning color psychology, play with various color schemes to see what you like for your branding and marketing. Free resources like Coolors and Canva are excellent tools to help you in your designing process. Once you begin posting, take note of how others respond to your beautifully crafted posts and use this information to keep what works and fix what doesn’t in your marketing strategy.

Additional References

View of Color Psychology in Marketing (jbt.org.pk)

Color Psychology: How Colors Influence the Mind | Psychology Today

AI Threatens What Makes You Unique

Posted on by CMPR
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is like a new shiny penny in a world where we expect technology will make our lives easier. I would say that some things are definitely better with the speed of tech. However, when it comes to implementing AI in content planning, I am concerned. I think it is a good idea for businesses to be wary of AI, because AI could threaten their ability to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Business Goals

To explain my rationale, I’m going to start with some of the steps we take to create a content plan. First we start with business goals and marketing objectives. Usually business goals are to 1) earn revenue, 2) profit, and 3) grow. Marketing objectives are determined by your goals and they usually revolve around customers and converting them into sales. It is a lot easier to set a revenue goal than to achieve it. The huge number of businesses competing on the Internet of Things creates many challenges.

What Makes Your Product or Service Special?

Every marketing class or book will tell you to figure out what makes your service or product unique. Doing that will make it easier to stand out on the internet. In marketing we call what makes you special, your differentiator. Your differentiator is composed of what you provide, why and how you do it and the customers in your target market. You may think that you have the coolest and best product or service in the world. However, if your customers don’t see it or need it, then nothing else matters. You need to know who your customers are and that process digs deep. It involves research, understanding what their pain points are, and what you can do to solve their problems. Once you know what makes your business the best one for them, you start your digital marketing plan. Everything that happens next is reliant on how well your content communicates your value to your audience, and how successfully it reaches them.

Enter AI for Content Marketing

Content marketing is a primary part of any digital marketing campaign. Newsletters, emails, websites, landing pages, blogs, posts, videos, podcasts, books, whitepapers, and ebooks are all content. Any of these components can be sliced, diced, and formatted for the appropriate online platforms. The issue that most business owners (especially small businesses) have is a lack of staff and time to do what needs to be done. Enter AI for creating content and your time and budget constraints are solved, right? A Fortune article on February 17th, 2023, explains that Elon Musk, the founder of OpenAI (the parent company of ChatGPT), publicly walked away from his creation. Musk indicated that “(OpenAI) no longer resembled anything like what he had once co-founded in December 2015. According to Musk, it was designed to be an open-source nonprofit, which was the very reason why it was dubbed OpenAI.” The article states that Musk’s concerns arose out of the launch of ChatGPT. He says it has turned the concept he intended into a blockbuster moneymaking endeavor for Microsoft. I’m sure everyone knows about ChatGPT by now. The software has been in the news and online thanks to the marketing muscle behind Microsoft. However, the claims it makes of creating original content, based on your prompts, reside in a gray area.

The Origins of AI Content

ZDNet provides a simplified explanation of what ChatGPT is. They say that, “ChatGPT runs on a language model architecture created by OpenAI called the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), specifically GPT-3. Generative AI models of this type are trained on vast amounts of information from the internet including websites, books, news articles and more.” The content your are getting “customized” for you, is an aggregate, pulled from a variety of existing sources. These sources are available to everyone including your competitors. They also are a part of the language of the internet. See how AI could reduce your effectiveness?

AI Could Threaten Your Unique Differentiator

So we know that using AI to create your content means accessing the same keywords, phrases, and overall language that anyone else using the software is also doing. How long will your content maintain any orginality? Furthermore, does AI understand your customers and their pain points? Can it relate to human emotions? Here is an example of my experience with AI that stems from the inability of Google to answer my questions. Have you tried searching for something on Google lately? The SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that come up have tons of ads that are more and more unrelated to my question. The organic results are often not really what I am looking for either. I tend to abandon at least 75% of my search attempts as a result. Guess what? Google runs on an algorithm that is based on language. If we create generic language or encourage it, how does that affect our differentiators? Can you be unique in a world where technology delivers sameness? We are at the beginning of the AI marketing story. Like any new toy, everyone wants to play with it. Here’s a thought: If a metaphor for the internet of things is a haystack and an entity selling something is a needle that needs to amplify its differences to get attention. What happens when the haystack becomes a needlestack?