Another F%$#& Newsletter Issue!

TikTok moves closer to being an ecommerce platform... he surprising effect profanity has on your product reviews... And more!

June 30, 2022

“Shop” Is the New FYP

TikTok is testing a "Shop" feed tab — which is a lot like Instagram’s, as it lets consumers browse and buy products from a variety of categories in the app. Techcrunch was the first to report this.

The Shop Tab is currently testing in Indonesia and the company says it will serve as a hub for products being sold in TikTok Shop, a shopping feature that lets merchants sell products directly on TikTok.

According to screenshots being circulated, the new Shop feed tab appears next to the "Following" and "For You" tabs. The tab features a search bar with different shopping categories, such as:

  • Beauty 

  • Womenswear

  • Electronics 

  • Kitchen 

  • Foot Wear

  • And more

The tab also advertises perks, like free shipping on select purchases. Other items we've seen include:

  • Orders: This looks like it's designed to help customers keep track of shipments, and returns. 

  • Vouchers: Unused, Used, and Invalid coupons are displayed on this page.

  • Payment: This lets customers manage billing info.

  • Messages: It's unclear what this tab is for, however, it could likely be to let users message sellers. 

TikTok did not specify when or if it will expand the Shop tab to more markets. But the good money is on "soon" and "everywhere else."

Images: Watchful.ai

Profanity is Good for Your Brand

One of the primary functions of a third-party social media platform, like Sprout Social or Agorapulse, is to moderate the comments people post on your brand’s content. You can hide comments, delete them, even ban the person if they’re being a troll.

Sometimes, brand managers hide comments or product reviews that use profanity, because they think seeing those might negatively impact consumers’ feelings about them.

Sometimes, the platforms do that for us — Amazon and TripAdvisor prohibit the use of swear words.

But have we got that wrong? Could leaving profanity in actually help our brand?

That’s what Katherine Lafreniere set out to discover. She is an Assistant Professor at the Dhillon School of Business at the University of Lethbridge. She and her colleagues last month published an academic research paper called “The Power of Profanity: The Meaning and Impact of Swear Words in Word of Mouth” — she spoke with me earlier.

Dr. Lafreniere: We found that the presence of swear words in a review would increase the number of "helpful" votes that the review received. This was studied on both Amazon and Yelp reviews... It also increased... where people liked the product under review a little bit more when there was a swear word present in the explanation of the review.

Tod Maffin: So the "helpful" thing you're mentioning is those platforms have a button that lets people indicate whether or not they perceive that review to be "helpful." So that was your primary measure?

Dr. Lafreniere: Yes, for the field data, it was.

Tod Maffin: Was there a difference between people using swear words positively or negatively? I'm thinking like, "This was a fucking amazing meal" would be positive, but "This dishwasher is fucking loud" would be negative.

Dr. Lafreniere: In both positive and negative reviews, the review was considered to be more helpful. 

  • For an extremely negative review with the use of the swear word, then people would like the product a little bit less. 

  • For an extremely positive review, because of the swear word, people would like it more. 

Under both situations, whether it was negative or positive, they found it to be more useful and helpful.

Tod Maffin: Did that surprise you going into what perhaps you might have expected?

Dr. Lafreniere: (laughs) It definitely did. We're taught about swear words being bad, and yet we're seeing them all around us — not just in our daily conversations, in our daily lives, but online.

Up to 8% of Twitter posts and Yelp reviews contain at least one swear word. 

So it was really important for us to see why it was valuable to readers, what was the point of even having them, to see that it was not necessarily acceptable, but at least helpful in a more business context really surprised us.

My full interview with Dr. Lafreniere is coming this Saturday exclusively to the Premium Podcast Feed. You’ll learn:

  • Whether there’s a difference between reviewing a product vs reviewing a service-based business

  • Whether a community manager should match the language and also occasionally use profanity in brand replies

  • How much the benefits of profanity extends to ad copy and creative

  • And how she recommends you change your brand’s community guidelines to account for this brave new world

You can sign up to the Premium Podcast Feed right now by going to TodayInDigital.com/premiumfeed — you’ll get this full interview PLUS the back-episodes of all our previous deep dive weekend episodes. PLUS the regular daily feed but with no ads, better audio quality, story chapters, story links, and much more.

Pringles Brings In-Game Marketing IRL

If you're looking for metaverse campaign inspiration, here's how one brand is merging in-game and IRL marketing.

Pringles recently launched a contest that will offer one winner the chance to get paid $24K to work inside a video game as a non-playable character. 

The job? A Pringles vending machine re-filler in the game Train Sim World 2.

If you're not familiar with video games, these non-playable characters — known as NPCs — are the other people in the game who are controlled by the game software, and not by players. So, if your game takes place in a city and you see pedestrians walking around, those are NPCs.

Ads promoting the contest show existing NPCs in the game not thrilled about the prospect of a human joining them and getting paid.

To "apply for the job" applicants must take a selfie or a video and post it on social media with the tag #PringlesStayInTheGame, and a comment explaining why they would be the best at the vending machine gig.

Mr. Pringle will narrow it down to 50 applicants, who will then be judged by a panel to select the winner. The winner will be virtually reproduced to become an avatar for the game, and therefore immortalized as a Pringles’ employee.

YouTube’s Plans To Reduce Comment Spam

YouTube is finally taking action against comment spam that impersonates creators. Today, the platform announced three new updates to reduce its comment spam problem:

  1. First, by removing the ability to 'hide' subscriber countsBy the end of July, channels will no longer be able to hide their subscriber counts. Similar to checking if an account is verified, checking subscriber counts is an easy way to prove that they are from a legit source.

  2. Second, by expanding content moderation tools for creatorsAll brands and creators can use the platform's new 'Increase strictness' moderation setting, which will filter out more span and identity abuse comments.

  3. Finally, by limiting the number of special characters used in channel namesThis is because some characters can be used to impersonate and look like other channel names. 

The Lightning Round!

You can now delete Instagram

If you've had enough of Zuck - Instagram now lets you deactivate or delete your account directly from the mobile app on iOS.

Previously, you had to log in through a web browser on a desktop or mobile device to delete your account. 

Facebook launches Creator Collaborations

This feature lets you collaborate with others on content, through a tag, and multiple creators and brands can be listed on a single post.

Similar to Instagram, a brand can invite a creator to a post, and if the creator accepts the content will post on both the collaborator's pages.

YouTube is testing disappearing Community Posts

In the app, select creators can set a time limit on their Community Posts, which will expire after 24 or 72 hours. 

In the community tab, viewers can see when a post will expire at the top, and creators can see expired posts under 'Archived', similar to Instagram Stories. 

Lastly, Instagram revealed its new grant program for Black-owned businesses

The platform announced the next stage of its #BlackVisionaries funding program, which will award $650,000 in grants to Black artists, Black designers and Black-owned small businesses.

The application deadline for this program is July 29.

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