Good morning, Marketers, and let’s talk digital events,

So many marketers — even we introverts —  are ready for the return of in-person events. Traveling to new and favorite places was the best part for me as well as that “a-ha moment” feeling when I learned something I knew I’d take back to work and implement immediately. We’re so close to being back in-person that I can almost hear the chatter of a full expo hall again, but until then, there are still plenty of a-ha moments to be had in virtual conferences too.

As we’re counting down the final weeks to SMX Create, I’ve gotten a sneak peek at what’s coming, and I can’t wait to share these insights, actionable strategies, and mind-blowing presentations with you. While I’m VERY ready to see you all face-to-face again, I hope to see you virtually on April 13 to deep-dive into content strategy, ad copywriting, landing page optimization, A/B testing, and writing for intent.

“See” you there,

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

How to tell stories using data

“Some have said data is the new oil,” said Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Inc., the largest communications firm in Silicon Valley. “The findings [from the data], though, will stay buried without the help of a communicator.”

Her keynote launched the second day of MarTech and gave all those who listened a sense of what the data world is missing – effective communication.

To make an impact on an audience, your data story has to mean something. For Duarte, meaningful communication is achieved by these five strategies:

1. Visualize data for your audience. The visuals are a part of a holistic strategy to present the important parts of a study to the audience.
2. Structure insights as a story. Telling a story opens up neural pathways in the audience that gets everybody more engaged, triggering more memories and sense perceptions than dry charts and graphs.
3. Choose the best action. The verbs, or actions, are the most crucial part of speech in data-related stories. The verbs represent the recommended actions that result from the data insight.
4. Attach data to something relatable. As Duarte pointed out, translating important figures into these basic, relatable units will communicate the magnitude of the problem or opportunity.
5. Humanize the data. Remember who you’re talking about, and also make sure to remind your audience. This allows the audience of the presentation to visualize an outcome based on what the data indicates or recommends.

Read more here.

Cash rules everything around me (C.R.E.A.M. get the money)

Even an international pandemic couldn’t stop unprecedented growth for digital marketing in 2020. Online sales and advertising increased by 18.9% from February 2020 to 32.8% in May.

This is great news for businesses. But do digital marketing professionals have a working environment where they can prosper? Or is there unreported wage inequality and workplace dissatisfaction?

These are the questions PPC Protect hoped to answer when they asked over 1,000 marketers across the world about how much they make and if they thought they were underpaid.

Key highlights from the report include the following:

• Men earn 20% more than women & those who identify as non-binary
• On average, men earn $11,539 more per year when they have the same level of experience as women
• The majority of men feel they are paid fairly for their role
• The majority of women feel they are underpaid for their role
• Big surprise: Those who exited education after high school earn $20,268 more per year than those who hold a master’s degree

Social media ad spend through the pandemic, Reddit goes to Canada, and search marketing Twitter chats

Facebook ads reach grew by 30% worldwide during the pandemic. Data published by SocialBakers in the report “State of Social Media Marketing a Year After COVID” found that businesses had to reinvent their customer journeys, find new opportunities, and adopt new marketing tools to succeed in a changing environment. Social media played a key role in this wave of digital transformation and as a result, social media ad spend skyrocketed to record highs.

Reddit goes to Canada, eh? Home to Reddit’s third-largest user base after the U.S. and U.K. — and growing by 40% year-over-year — Canada is the natural next place for Reddit to establish a new, on-the-ground presence. “Our team (of very nice, polite people) based in Toronto is already partnering with local entities, establishing programs for community engagement, servicing local Canadian brands and marketers,” said the announcement. Brands like Tim Hortons, Lenovo, General Mills, CDW and Call of Duty: Mobile are among those already working with Reddit’s team to engage Canadian Reddit audiences.

Chats, chats, chats, chats, chats, chats, EVERYBODY. If you’re on Twitter this week and want to join the search marketing communities, mark your calendar for #PPCChat at 12pm ET today for a conversation all about Google Shopping in 2021. If you’re on the SEO side, save time at 1pm ET on Thursday for #SEOChat with our very own George Nguyen to talk zero-click searches.

GPT-3 now “writes” 4.5 billion words a day

Can we call it “writing” if a machine is doing it?

GPT-3 is a type of machine learning model that uses AI to create text passages that can pass as human-generated. It stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, and was created by OpenAI. Essentially, it’s content written by robots.

As search marketers are always focused on the searcher, it may seem like machine-generated copy goes against what we’re trying to achieve. However, you may be reading more AI-created content out on the web than you know.

OpenAI recently announced that GPT-3 is now being used in over 300 apps and produces 4.5 billion words a day. So how are companies using this NLP technology?

“One startup named Viable is using GPT-3 to analyze customer feedback, identifying “themes, emotions, and sentiment from surveys, help desk tickets, live chat logs, reviews, and more”; Fable Studio is using the program to create dialogue for VR experiences; and Algolia is using it to improve its web search products which it, in turn, sells on to other customers,” wrote James Vincent for The Verge.

Search Engine Land Editor George Nguyen and I will be talking more about GPT-3 and automation in search marketing for our keynote at SMX Create in April, but we want to know if you’re already using it for ad copy, blog content, or writing code. Let us know: clyden@thirddoormedia.com.