Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Week of July 14, 2023 Marketing and Business News: Thread Lightly - Ryan Shares His Opinion on the Latest App

Starting point is 00:00:00 I said hallelujah to the 16th oil fields. You're getting down on your knees. He said it's time for you to get down. Cause I'm not doing what you need now. You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's Friday, July 14th, 2023. Our weekly marketing and business news of the week. And you've numero uno my friends solo for the first time your monologue host i'm ryan alford the host your regular host of the radcast christina's made her way to new york we talked about this last week she's making it to the big time so here alone we'll see how it goes i kind of i don't mind talking um i don't mind being the center of attention but we'll see how it goes. I'll listen back. I'll get your feedback.

Starting point is 00:01:09 Somebody will do me and go, man, that was awesome. Or you won't be afraid to tell me, hey, you need some breaks in there. You need some, I don't know, some either lighthearted female-like voices like to break up my deep voice monologue or otherwise. But I hope everybody's had a great, I don't know, we're getting mid through July here. But I hope everybody's had a great, I don't know, we're getting mid through July here. I was taking Nash to a couple appointments today, burning her asses off here in South Carolina, where it's 90 plus, and got to thinking how fast they're going to be back in school. So we're midway through July, halfway through summer. It feels, even though I feel like I was just talking about summer kicking off, but the kids are active. Let me tell you, we're headed to camp this week. We're actually camping,

Starting point is 00:01:46 I should say, in Deep Creek in North Carolina. So going up, doing some tubing. I don't know if you've ever done any tubing before. This is a great activity. You get in the tube, you get, you got to put a cooler of beer in there next to you. It's the only way you kind of float down the river and drink beer as you go. I don't know who made this up, but I'm here for it. We're going to be doing it this weekend with all the kids and get some good news. We talked last week a little bit about this release, but now that I've had time to spend time with, I do want to spend a majority of today talking about threads, Facebook slash Instagram slash meta, who can keep up, latest app release, the Twitter clone as I'll call it. And I actually wrote a newsletter. This

Starting point is 00:02:27 is fresh on my hit list here of how I feel about it, my perspective on it. What does it mean for marketing? What does it mean for business? What's the user experience like? So it's fresh in my mind. I've used it for probably, I don't know, five or six hours now in the last week, maybe an hour a day, just trying to get perspective. Like, what do I feel about it? Is this going to be a game changer? Should brands that we're working with be going heavy on it? Should I be heavy on it with my personal brand, with the Radcast? And so I've got some perspective on it and I'll give you a little hint. I titled my newsletter. And if you want to, I do encourage you all to go to RyanAlford.com and sign up for the newsletter. Doing one drop a week, as I like to say.

Starting point is 00:03:07 Rad, Ryan Alford drops. One topic a week. And this week it is about threads. And I titled the subject was Thread Lightly. And here's my thought. Number one, really polished experience for a first-time app. What would you expect from a billion dollars of Facebook and meta? They obviously have the developers to make the overall experience very polished.

Starting point is 00:03:31 So the biggest thing that you'll notice is how easy it is to transfer from Instagram directly into threads, because I think there was some strategy here. I think Zuck knows that Instagram is the hipper, cooler app. And so it's called Instagram Threads, if you dig far enough to get that far, using the at logo that's very uniquely designed. I like the simpleness of the design of the logo. But once you get into the experience, it's really easy to transfer your username immediately from Threads into Instagram. I think this has played into why you've seen 100 million users already on the platform, because they've made it super simple for everyone already using Instagram

Starting point is 00:04:11 to move and to transfer immediately into that, which allows for a couple of things. One, it allows for really simple signup. It was super easy. It was like you download the app, it's three clicks and you're in. And if anybody knows, the biggest thing with signing up with new apps or new anything is the friction of signing up. So that friction is really low if you're already on Instagram, which most people are. Even if they don't use Instagram much, that transfer is super easy. So I think that's why the numbers. But there's a couple of things that have me pausing. a couple of things that have me pausing. First and foremost, there's no new features here. If you use Twitter and you know that experience and you know the thread and conversation experience that exists on Twitter, you know exactly what you're going to get with threads. Very similar

Starting point is 00:04:58 experience. You have that text messaging type thread going on to back and forth dialogue. And so it's very text based, but you can also obviously upload images and videos depending on how you want to start the message or thread or dialogue. But there's nothing, there's no new ground broken here. It's an exact kind of copy of what's happening on Twitter. And so why is that important? I think in the short term, it's not important. It makes it easier to use the app. It makes for Twitter people that might be coming over an easy experience. But here's why that's a problem. It's because, is it going to keep you there? And here's the problem. The biggest problem at hand is you have a mismatch of users.

Starting point is 00:05:41 You have a very casual crowd on Instagram that looks at videos, watch reels. It's a very casual experience. It's a passive experience in many ways. You're not truly active, engaged in it in the way with which Twitter users are the news and debate crowd. This is a very passionate crowd about what's the latest news? How are we debating it? What are we talking about? What's my opinion on it? How can I troll you? And on Instagram, you have a user base that's more creative, typically a little more laid back. And so you may be bringing all these users over from Instagram, but you're going to have an immediate clash of personalities for people that have been on Twitter with all this Instagram crowd

Starting point is 00:06:25 and no real new functionality to keep you there beyond the dialogue that's happening. And I think you're going to see a lot of users, but I want to see the engagement rates. So pay close attention to what the engagement and use rates are over the next 30 to 60 days. And here's the punchline. So basically you're going, okay, do I need to be invested in this? Do I need to get involved in this? Am I missing out? FOMO is real. Here's the deal. I'm on it. I'm going to stay semi-active on it. I think you should dabble in it, but here it is. If you're a business or you're an influencer or you're someone that's trying to gain traction or get your name out there, sure, dabble in it. But the reality is there are real marketing opportunities that exist on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. So where am I going to

Starting point is 00:07:18 spend my next minute, my next dollar, my next hour of real-time developing content and trying to build an audience and trying to gain business and dollars and cents from this. I don't think Threads is where that's going to be today. Now, don't get me wrong. I really like first mover advantage. That's why I am on there. I want to gavel up a few more users, a new audience, someone playing the long term. Hey, sign me up. I'll play the long game. I'm trying to build audience over time. I'm not trying to monetize that audience today. If you're trying to monetize audience today, threads is going to be very difficult other than super low hanging fruit if you just totally have a niche that you're going after.

Starting point is 00:08:04 But there's not ad products there yet. There's not ways to even see your engagement levels. There's not way to even see the analytics of what you're doing. So you're purely going to be playing the game of organic reach, which is very high right now. But I do think there are better ways to spend your time and money if you need an immediate business outcome from what's happening? And that's really what I touched on the newsletter, which is, look, it's a great app. They have tons of advantages being meta and having all of the user base that already exists on Instagram. And you have a moment in time where everyone's pissed off at Elon Musk. Oh, Musk, that crazy son of a bitch. He's pissing me off. He's made me mad. And now I'm going to

Starting point is 00:08:53 leave Twitter. And I'm gonna go over here to threads for a little less of an experience that has no real new users experience. And that's fleeting. If your only reason to move to threads is you hate Elon Musk, you're going to be sorely disappointed in the next like 30 to 60 days when the audience dies down. All those core Instagram users use it less. And then the Twitter users go, wait a second, this isn't even as good as Twitter is now. Twitter is now. So if Elon Musk follows through on what he said he's going to do, which is ultimately get out of the way, let his CEO run the company, go back to doing what he does best, then I think you're going to see a little bit of this noise die down. I think more of those Twitter users will go back using a platform that's more established with a user base that more aligns with that audience. And thus, you'll see threads start to mellow out. At the end of the day, I do not see threads being a core platform. What do I mean by that? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, I think those are core platforms. YouTube, if you

Starting point is 00:10:00 want to consider that a social platform, Those are core platforms where people spend a large majority of their time and there's core audiences there. I do not think Threads will be one of those core four, core five over time. I don't think it's going to go away the way of certain music apps and other apps that kind of come on hard and then disappear. I don't think that's going to happen. I think threads will stick around. It's just too big not to. And I think you'll see people and they'll find audiences and they'll have ads and it will get better. But in the short term, I do not see this as a play for marketers or businesses or personal brands to do more than just dabble a bit. See if you can pick off a few more audiences, a few more people and just watch where it goes.

Starting point is 00:10:48 But you're better, I still believe, hardcore in the 80-20 rule. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your users. Where are those users at? If you're in B2B, they're still at LinkedIn. If you're a consumer, they're still on Facebook. No matter what people say, Facebook's dead. No, it's not. It's actually better.

Starting point is 00:11:11 We're getting some of the best return on ad spends than we've ever had for certain clients. So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, still growing, still booming, and still becoming more than a 13 to 23-year-old platform. Still becoming more and more mainstream, and the ad platform's a ton better. So spend your time, energy, and efforts in growing there if you want immediate business. And spend 5% of your dabbling budget on threads, but thread lightly. That's my perspective on threads. More to come. We'll be talking a lot more as they develop new features, opportunities, ads as they start to come out. I joked. I'm actually using it more for memes,

Starting point is 00:11:45 like posting memes from different things. So I think, enjoy it now till the ads come. So there you have it. I thought this was really fun. Burger King has released its real cheeseburger. This is pretty hilarious. I looked on, I go to Google Trends a lot. So if you want to know where we get some of the news

Starting point is 00:12:00 for the Radcast, we go to Google Trends quite a bit. And this popped out. So it's a real cheeseburger. And you might be going, OK, it's real meat. It's the not so the lab grown meat. No, it's actually 10 slices of cheese in between a bun. Google the real cheeseburger. You'll see a picture of it.

Starting point is 00:12:21 It's hilarious. We'll have a picture here on some of the social media feed, I'm sure. cheeseburger. You'll see a picture of it. It's hilarious. We'll have a picture here on some of the social media feed, I'm sure. But no meat and up to 20 slices of cheese, depending if you get extra cheese. So fun. Burger King always does great marketing. I don't know that it always translates to market share because no matter what, my kids still want to go to Burger King or excuse me, to McDonald's. So no matter what Burger King does, my kids still ask me for happy meals. It's like I never get, hey, dad, let's go to Burger King. But the marketing is always fun, so we'll see.

Starting point is 00:12:49 And then Truly Hard Seltzer is launching a zero-gravity pop-up bar. So essentially, they're going to have a bar on a Boeing 727 where you get zero gravity. I want to see how you drink a drink with zero gravity, though. I guess somehow you can get it flowing into your mouth, holding it upside down. I don't know, but it's going to be like drops in the air. So their tagline is lightly fantastic. So fun. I can never really get behind the Trulies.

Starting point is 00:13:19 I did graduate to Bud Light Next, but the problem with Trulies is I always get an aftertaste. I feel like you get an aftertaste with these things. I don't know. Like I can drink like one of them and I'm like, the first like four sips are really refreshing. And then when I'm tasting it the entire night, I'm like, ugh, I don't know. That's just me. Today's podcast brought to you by Truly. Never.

Starting point is 00:13:42 They will not be sponsoring us. But who does is vacay. I actually put on vacay before the podcast today. My tennis elbow has been flaring up. I call it that. I don't even play tennis. It's more for working out. So rolling on the roll off the pain.com, our CBD roll on from vacay really works.

Starting point is 00:14:00 Actually, I have dubbed my wrist that I hurt lifting. I've dubbed it cured partially from rehab. And I'm going to say the CBD definitely helped. My doctor said it did. So go to rolloftopain.com where you can buy our latest product. This is our latest product. We've got a couple of new lines coming out as well. But I did work.

Starting point is 00:14:24 I go to a chiropractor who's actually been working on my plantar fasciitis. And I gave him some of our product. And he's been raving on it. I'm actually going to post some videos on my social media that he's done. So if you go to takeofak.com, you'll see our full lineup. And you can go to rolloffthepain.com for a quick and easy way to get the CBD roll on. for a quick and easy way to get the CBD roll on. And if you saw our latest Radcast news this week,

Starting point is 00:14:51 we launched digital platforms that are shaping the future. Some past episodes where we had some bigwigs, Areva Ravichandran from one of the biggest and best. I know you hear Zoom and you think that, but before there was Zoom, you had Adobe. And they make the best video conferencing platform on the planet. So we talked with Aruna about this and several other CEOs in the digital platform space. So check that episode out. Launched on Tuesday.

Starting point is 00:15:25 platform space. So check that episode out launched on Tuesday. And then next week had a really fun episode recording this week with a good friend, Spencer Crandall. We're going to play a couple of his latest hits on the promo video. You'll see that, but really thoughtful guy. Like sometimes I talk to people and it's like, I feel like they're answering questions because they've been interviewed a lot, but I feel like Spencer's like super thoughtful. Like he, I felt like he was thoughtful in his responses and what he talked about i felt like even if you weren't interested in like the music business you're going to take something away from this from a thoughtful guy and you're probably going to want to download his music because he's just a fun guy down to earth lives in nashville now from denver originally had a lot of fun talking with spencer crandall and i do think his latest song is going to be a hit.

Starting point is 00:16:05 I've been listening to that called Didn't Do. So check it out. That'll be next week, wherever you listen to our episodes, or it might be in the past, depending on when, where, and how you listen to this episode. The other thing I wanted to mention, purely like functional, this was in our news, our team that puts the notes together. We spent a lot of money on Calendly. And there's been a lot of these launches lately. There was Linktree that's been around forever. We had to pay to use Linktree. Now Instagram built it into the app. I always wondered when this was going to come. But now Gmail has built the Calendly style functionality

Starting point is 00:16:39 right into the app. So literally, you go into Gmail, it's checking this out right before the episode, and you can send a link just like you can in Calendly. I don't know how these apps that build on top of others ultimately stay in business. They made probably millions, if not billions in the short term to try to add on functions and then the apps themselves launch it. And so I'm going to play around with this. We'll see, but Calendly might be in a little bit of trouble, but I do think it's cool to have it built right into Gmail app. And just for the record, we use Gmail, but it's the business version. So no at Google email addresses. I think I've gotten on that soapbox before.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Do not use at Gmail for your business account. You must buy your URL if you want to be taken seriously. And finally today, I did want to bring back an oldie, but a goodie. Never gets too old. It's time for another absurd holiday. There's no shortage of dumb things to celebrate. A Radcast social media holiday segment. Yeah. Yeah. I never gets old. Even if I'm juvenile, Yeah, I never get sold, even if I'm juvenile, the most juvenile 46-year-old man. Every time I hear it, it's funny. In all seriousness, there were too many good social media holidays.

Starting point is 00:17:54 I know, look, a lot of people listen to you in marketing and advertising. You've got your social media calendars out. You're like, what are we going to talk about? Here you go. If you're really listening to us topically, then you can get ahead. If you're listening to us like three weeks in the future, you may be a little behind on a few of these. That's always the asterisk caveat. But today, July 14th, we've got three days of note.

Starting point is 00:18:16 Today is National French Fry Day. I'm telling you what, folks, between potato chips and french fries, if I was left on like a deserted island, it'd be like a close one-two, which one I could eat the most of, and it's still hard to beat mcdonald's mcdonald's should be blowing this out they still got the best fries national french fry day today and you know what you can win these two my kids love this there's at least a seven year supply in the offered house it's called mac and cheese folks national mac and cheese how did mac and cheese and french fries have to share a holiday? That's what I want to know. You get all these holidays made up, and they're having to share the day.

Starting point is 00:18:49 Let's just blend them. I think Kraft and McDonald's need to do a mashup. Kraft mac and cheese with some macaroni or some McDonald's french fries. And lastly, National Tape Measure Day. Not real sure about that, but we'll see about it. And I couldn't miss this one. Saturday, July 15th, National Gummy Worm Day. If you go to Ryan's like house and you go to like my secret drawer where I keep, I really need some candy and I got to hide it for my kids. You will

Starting point is 00:19:18 find some gummy worms in there. So this is, I had to mention it. That and today is also, or the 15th is I Love Horses Day. All you horse lovers out there. National Give Something Away Day. You know what I'm saying? Saturday night, give something away, folks. Let your imagination go there. Sunday, National Personal Chef Day.

Starting point is 00:19:38 And finally, this I couldn't go without missing. I had to mention. It's National Ice Cream Day. It's the middle of summer. Sunday, July 16th. You need to get some ice cream. The Offord's house has seven gallons at all times because every one of our kids likes a different flavor. So National Ice Cream Day.

Starting point is 00:19:56 There's your weekend social media holidays. Even if you didn't enjoy the holidays, you know you enjoyed the song. That's all I got, folks. Your National Social Media Holidays. and enjoy the holidays. You know you enjoyed the song. That's all I got, folks. Your national social media holidays. Don't forget about theradcast.com where you'll learn about everything. Got a short, tidy 20-minute episode today. I really wanted

Starting point is 00:20:14 to get my input on Threads because I get a lot of questions about it. Friends and family ask me, what's this Threads thing? I'll get a text message. It's just another app. I don't want another app. Here you go. I want to give everybody my perspective on it, whether you should be involved in it, where you should be spending dollars on developing content specifically for it. So there you have it. We'll be talking more

Starting point is 00:20:36 about it in the future. But you can find all the highlight clips from today at theradcast.com. Search for me at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms. And get on my newsletter at ryanalford.com. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.com. Search for me, at Ryan Alford, on all the social media platforms. And get on my newsletter at RyanAlford.com. We'll see you next time on The Radcast. To listen and watch full episodes, visit us on the web at TheRadcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, The.Rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Week of July 14, 2023 Marketing and Business News: Thread Lightly - Ryan Shares His Opinion on the Latest App

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