It's the latest *irregular newsletter from Julia @ spacebarpress. Dig in. 🕳️
Hey <<First name>>,
Welcome to the latest edition of the *irregular newsletter.
April 2019
Over the last week or so, I've spent a lot of time scrolling through my Twitter feed as I keep up with NHL playoff games, the Grand Slam of Curling event in Toronto, the Masters, and various tennis tournaments going on around the world.
That's one of the ways I use social media in my personal life, to keep up with my sports teams. Many of these posts had videos attached or embedded in them. Cool, no problemo.
It became a problem when I would click a link and I was taken to a video.
Whaaa?
I thought I was just going to read an interview from a journalist at a tennis tournament or to hear the latest updates on tonight's injury report for the NHL playoff game.
Nope. Instead, I was taken to a video on the topic ... that would then autoplay. That's just adding insult to injury, IMO.
While I'm not a big fan of video in general, for sports things, it makes total sense. WHEN I KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO SHOW ME A VIDEO.
If I click on your link and am presented with something else, I feel let down. Will it impact that brand's reputation or decrease sales? Probably not when it comes to a sports news outlet. It might lose them a few followers, however, which could be concerning if it becomes an avalanche of people leaving.
For B2B tech brands, however, this kind of switch can have a lot of negative impacts. To start, you lose a contact point in your target audience/company. Since it takes an average of 7 people to make a B2B buying decision, that's one less person in the decision tree championing your brand over others.
You lose a channel with which to influence your audience because that one person will tell everyone else in that organization about your faux pas. Whoa. That means you've lost not just that one person, but ALL. OF. THEM. Meaning you have to start relationship building with them all over again. And with 68% of B2B people preferring to do their research online, if you're shut out by everyone, you've just lost that prospect completely. You'll have to work extra hard to gain them back.
What to do instead
To save yourself the extra work you'll have to do to recoup your lost audience, tell people you're sending them to a video, infographic, or article.
By signaling it with the words you use in your message, you ensure they'll read it when they click through (or wait for a more opportune moment when they can watch your video/listen to your audio).
Try prefacing your link with a signal word like watch, read, or listen.
"Watch our interview with ..."
"Discover our latest tips in our infographic..."
"Read how we solved our clients' problems through strategy".
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Content from the Interwebs
I've been trying to do more reading this year, so here's what's caught my attention lately.
Not only have I been reading a lot, but I've been trying to write more regularly too. I'm hoping to get this newsletter out to you more regularly so I can change the name from *irregular to something more fun. 😀
In case you're interested in reading some of my other writing, check these out:
Sinnerman (Live in New York 1965) - Nina Simone
From The Blacklist Spotify playlist
Any excuse to listen to Nina Simone is a good one, right? I've been listening to The Blacklist's Spotify playlist while working lately and it's got such an eclectic mix I wanted to share it with you.
