It’s been a wild two weeks of news (even just the last 36 hours, wow). I saw Crazy Rich Asians on opening day. I wasn’t truly prepared for the emotional shock of being in a majority Asian-American audience and watching a majority Asian cast on the big screen. I’m glad I watched it, I’m happy it succeeded at the box office, and I can’t wait to see more movies with diverse leads so we can look back on this weekend and marvel at how it was back then.

I also started working on my store for selling photo prints. Gotta love/hate Wordpress/WooCommerce! [insert desperately crying emoji]

Hope you enjoy this issue!

– Jenn

P.S. I’m stuck in a creative rut of marketing topics, so if you have a burning question or topic you’d like me to address in a future issue, please reply with the idea!

Perfectionism in Marketing

As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, I want to address perfectionism in marketing. When you’re constantly learning about new social media features or tricks, perfectionism can be a monster to deal with. My general motto is “done is better than perfect,” which is not a blanket approval to wing your next campaign. But instead, it’s realizing that the best way to really see if something works is to execute and put it out there. If you find yourself saying things like “But what about this copy here” or “We should ask this fifth person what they think,” then you might be thinking too much.

Here are some common occurrences that I observe:

How do I use this new X feature in Instagram? Let’s take the questions sticker as an example. If you don’t want to test this out on your business just yet, use your personal account to try it out. Follow some large brands and see how they’re using the feature. Stories do expire after 24 hours and if it’s a really horrible experience, you can delete the post.

I don’t know what copy works in the ad. What if I waste money? If this is a social media ad, the major networks do offer A/B testing. You can also set budget limits to give yourself some control. If it’s not performing well (define “well” before starting), then pull it.

What if X, Y, and Z happen for the product launch? It all comes down to the planning! I’m not saying scrap all of your planning. I’m saying plan it and if it’s necessary, keep it. If it’s unnecessary and the dotted line doesn’t absolutely match up to a photo but you’re the only one who’s noticing, then move on.

Part of marketing requires anticipating your customers’ needs but the other part is responding to their feedback. You’ll never have a perfect campaign, so it’s probably best to accept that as fact and move on to creating the Next Big Thing.

Facebook is in the process of redesigning their Pages in their app to make small businesses more accessible to users. In the next few months, I recommend checking your Page from the Facebook app to see how it might’ve changed. They’ve also added a new authorization process for Pages with large US audiences. Finally, they’ll be removing over 5000 ad targeting options to prevent discriminatory ads.

Instagram added the ability to tag a profile on a photo & location tag for some third-party clients. I’ve seen this roll out in both Later and Sprout Social, so hopefully it’ll be introduced to others, as well!

Twitter is continuing their bot and suspicious account removals. If you’ve noticed a significant drop in followers in the last month and you’ve already ruled out anything you did, then it’s probably due to an account cleanup. They also removed a bunch of API endpoints, leading to some anger from third-party client users (I’m one of them).

10 Ways to Make Your Website Accessible

To make your website accessible for everyone, it should be correctly designed, developed, and edited. Here’s what you can do to easily make your site welcome to all visitors.

How to Use an 'Ask Me Anything' to Grow Your Brand

An AMA is a great way for a public figure to connect with the public. It allows the internet community to get to know your brand on a personal level.

How to Improve or Restore Your Online Reputation

Has your business suffered from negative reviews online? Learn how to respond to unhappy customers on social media and address negative content that affects your online reputation. Note that this is not to be done as a PR spin for things your company still has to apologize for.

Why Opening Up at Work Is Harder for Minorities

[AUDIO & TRANSCRIPT] Katherine Phillips, a professor at Columbia Business School, discusses research showing that African-Americans are often reluctant to tell their white colleagues about their personal lives — and that it hurts their careers. 

[Infographic] The Science of Sharing: Who, What, Where, and Why

How can you encourage your audience to share your social media content? First, understand who they are, what they want to share, which platforms they share on, and why they share.

Four Barrel has not yet shifted ownership to employees as promised

How quickly customers forget and don’t care… “Yet neither of the two remaining owners plans to divest from the company in the foreseeable future, they said earlier this month, though they say they are not ruling out the possibility further down the line.”