“When all succour seems to be lost, Heaven unexpectedly presents the silver lining oſ a sable cloud to the virtuous.” – Thomas Warton
Looking for that silver lining? In the current crisis, many people are proving what we instinctively want to believe about ourselves, which is that we are fundamentally good.
From artists and musicians giving away their works to entertain us, to people stepping up and volunteering however they can (such as donating supplies, sewing face masks, etc.), a crisis presents a time for generosity. As serious and important as the crisis is, it’s also a wonderful stimulus for creativity, for comedy, for finding ways to look at the situation in a new way.
We are more honest and open about how they are feeling – professionalism is still important but the “buttoned up emotionless” vibe is on hold. Humans are emerging as real. Everyone is the BBC reporter with the child running around in the background. That’s honest and real life.
We are re-discovering this magical world of “outside” – putting down devices and getting fresh air. I’ve seen more people (from a distance) on my daily dog walks in the past week than I have in the past 8 years of living here.
Restaurants have been able to rethink their business models – businesses that never considered delivery are thriving by doing so. Social media is keeping them connected to their customers.
The number of people who have given away courses, classes, livestreams is so large that we have a literal glut of great content to enjoy while staying safe, like the Together At Home concert series.
Pets have an unprecedented amount of time with their humans.
Parents are finding creative ways to keep their kids entertained, from indoor activities to free classes with world-renowned experts.
Gyms, fitness centers, yoga studios, etc. have all moved online with Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom workouts – and some may discover entirely new customer bases in doing so.
An English sports commentator, with no live sports to commentate, has taken to shooting videos of everyday life and adding the same high-intensity commentary to them, then posting them online.
Even music legend Neil Diamond got in on the fun, with a contextually appropriate update to Sweet Caroline.
What’s the takeaway for your business? Be bold and generous in a time of crisis. What can you do to make the lives of your community better? How much can you give, without expectation of return, in order to make each day a little brighter for the people you serve?
This week’s Bright Idea is an explanation video of what kinds of microphones you should be using for live-streaming and video creation – and how to use them properly. Watch on our YouTube channel, and please share with anyone who’s going live but sounds… not as good as they could.
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This week’s Rear View Mirror looks at YouTube viewership during the COVID-19 situation by YouTube views. How much has viewership changed during the crisis? We analyzed the top 500,000 videos on Youtube since February 24 and found:
YouTube viewership of the top videos has decreased slightly and is trending slightly downward. At first, this seems counterintuitive. Why, in a time when the world is fully digital due to circumstances, would top video views decline? There are several possibilities:
- Share of eyes is more diffused than ever. With everyone home, services like Netflix, Hulu, etc. are all competing for the same eyes – and people working from home may be accessing video services they typically wouldn’t at work. Adult entertainment site Pornhub reported substantial increases (11.6% daily) in traffic as more shelter-in-place orders were distributed.
- Nearly every company with content or collaboration capabilities announced they were opening up their content – videos, livestreams, Zoom rooms – to the world for free during the crisis. Every minute someone’s in a Zoom room, they’re not on YouTube watching something.
- Share of eyes on top content is also more diffused. With all content marketing being forced to digital, more content is available on YouTube, and thus the same audience could be diving deeper into their respective niches and away from the big names.
The key takeaway here is that there’s currently a massive content glut. Reach out to your audiences and create content that solves specific problems for them, but expect potentially lower performance as people have more, better options than ever before.
Methodology: Trust Insights used Talkwalker’s media monitoring software to extract the top videos each day with the top 25 English language stopwords such as “a”, “and”, “the”, etc. in video titles and descriptions. We selected 594,972 total videos in the study period. Due to the selection method, there is a bias towards English language content in the data. The date of the study period is February 22, 2020 – March 22, 2020. The date of extraction is March 24, 2020. Videos were de-duplicated by post URL, sorted by views with the highest view count and date selected. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.
- {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Preparing Your Career For An Economic Downturn
- Marketing Analytics, Data Science and Leadership via March 23, 2020 Week In Review
- Business Analytics 101: How To Monitor Business Trends
- {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Predictive Analytics for Unpredictable Events
- How Many People Watch Instagram Stories Daily? The Latest Research
- Quarterly Predictive Calendars
- Proving Social Media ROI at SMMW20
- Instant Insights: The Video-First Transmedia Content Framework
Shiny Objects is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.
Social Media Marketing
- Adapting to More Digital and Social Ways of Being in a Time of Crisis
- The Biggest Takeaways From Social Media Marketing World: Tips from Experts via Agorapulse
- Best Discord Bots of 2020 via Boost your Server & Communication!
Media and Content
- [Free Writing Lessons on Instagram with @kellyyanghk via Teacher Tech](https://trustinsights.news/q7x6m)
- Content Marketing Tips for Hospitality Companies Facing Slowdowns
- 7 Free Ways to Get Original Data for Your Content
Tools, Machine Learning, and AI
- Hilary Mason – The Future of AI and Machine Learning via Data Science 101
- AI Risks Losing Trust If It Does Not Offer Explanations via insideBIGDATA
- Hybrid AI systems are quietly solving the problems of deep learning
Analytics, Stats, and Data Science
- Data Science Papers for Spring 2020 via Data Science 101
- Call for Code: Water sustainability data sets IBM Developer
- A Beginners Guide to Data Integration Approaches in Business Intelligence
SEO, Google, and Paid Media
- How Often Does Google Rewrite Meta Descriptions? (New Data Study)
- How Page Speed Affects SEO & Google Rankings
- How to Query the Google Search Console API via Moz
Business and Leadership
- Marketers concerned about impact of remote working on creativity & performance management: study Econsultancy
- How Creating and Then Reducing Cognitive Dissonance Can Effect Behavior Change via Institute for Public Relations
- 10 Things you Can Do to Stay Sane During the Quarantine
Got a “Silly” Question?
One of the things we’ve found with friends and colleagues is that you have questions you don’t feel comfortable asking in front of your peers for fear of appearing less knowledgeable. We all have those questions – they start with phrases like, “I really should know this but…” or “I’m so embarrassed to ask this, but…”
So we’ve put up a page where you can ask those questions anonymously, and we’ll answer them here or on our blog, podcast, YouTube channel, newsletter, etc. without ever naming names.
If you’ve got a question that you want to ask privately/anonymously, go ahead and ask it here!
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Upcoming Events
Where can you find us in person?
Important: events in Q1/Q2 are likely to be postponed due to the pandemic.
- MarTech West, April 2020, San Jose, CA (postponed)
- ContentTech Summit, August 2020, San Diego, CA (postponed)
- HELLO Conference, October 2020, New Jersey (postponed)
- MadConNYC, May 2020, New York City
- Women in Analytics, June 2020, Columbus, OH
- MAICON 2020, July 2020, Cleveland, OH
Going to a conference we should know about? Reach out!
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Stay In Touch
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Required FTC Disclosures
Events with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, Trust Insights receives financial compensation for promoting them.
Trust Insights maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Talkwalker, Zignal Labs, Agorapulse, and others. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which we may receive indirect financial benefit.
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