Graphic design: Exaltus

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Hi, friend.

Let's jump right into it today (and cheers to a new year, by the way...) and look at 2024 trends shaping marketing, writing, our lives.

This is my annual list of What's In, What's Out for a new year. (The 2023 version is here if you'd like to check the rear view mirror.)

There's a lot I left out for this year: A continued focus on mental health. More time outside. More reading. Less scrolling. My whim to try 12 new fruits in 2024 because why do resolutions have to be so serious?

But life is about choices. So here we go.

✅ IN: Attention
❌ OUT: Reach
Earning and keeping the attention of an audience is zee name of zee game now. List size? Follower count? Who cares? Not us! This year is about an engaged audience who does care whether you show up. (Or not).

Does that make our content more niche and focused? Does that make our craft more critical? Yes! You are so smart.

✅ IN: Connections
❌ OUT: Transactions
Are you truly connecting with your audience... or just counting dollar bills from your basement lair? Yes, yes... dollars are important. But a focus on one-off transactions without a buddy metric of long-term relationships is profoundly disappointing for your customer. And in the end... makes our jobs harder.

✅ IN: Collaboration
❌ OUT: Silos
This is for the leaders in the room: We need to support collaboration across our organizations. Activities/activations. Tech/marketing. We are seeing more of it (Sales/Marketing teams integrated as Revenue Teams, for example). But to paraphrase Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens's classic story of orphaned and lonely silos: More, please.

✅ IN: People
❌ OUT: Segments
Write to one person. (Who is your Doris?) Market to someone you can visualize in your head. A simple shift... But it changes the way you unfurl your fingers on the keyboard.

✅ IN: Creators
❌ OUT: Influencers
The root of the verb "create" is embedded in the noun "creators," which is the kind of creativity and action 2024 needs. Creators have expertise and voice and point of view. Often, their audiences are smaller—yet focused.

Seek out the former, especially in the B2B world, for a richly paved path into the Land of Longer-Term Collaborative Co-Creation. That's a world in which you both have a voice and a stake.

✅ IN: Newsletters
❌ OUT: Social algorithms
This was on my 2023 In/Out list. Repeating it here... because newsletters have not peaked. Not by a long shot. New ways of growing and monetizing audiences have emerged.

You can fight for attention with a social media algorithm that is not your friend. Or you can use social platforms to grow your own list of people who care.

✅ IN Open-to-Write-Back rate (OWBR)
❌ OUT: Click-thru rate (CTR)
Click-thru is an increasingly unreliable metric. But even without that, encouraging subscriber engagement through direct feedback and interaction is a much better metric for your email program. I wrote about that in detail here, so I won't waste time in this sentence rehashing things.

✅ IN: Optimizing From line
❌ OUT: Optimizing Subject line
There are a jillion tools that help you optimize your email Subject line. There are zero tools that help you optimize your From line. That's on you, and your relationship with your audience. (Whispered aside: Do we see how these trends all relate in a kind of Killer Marketing evidence board?)

✅ IN: Threads
❌ OUT: X
After a splashy launch in July 2023 and then a sputter... Threads is finally gaining some momentum in both downloads and activity.

It's not a direct replacement for X. ("Talking business at Threads feels like I'm talking shop at a dinner party," my friend Carole said to me this week. Fair nuf.) But it looms as an alternative for the troubled X platform. My heart is full of hope. (Follow me there. We can talk about writing. And Taylor Swift.)

✅ IN: LinkedIn
❌ OUT: The LinkedIn pitch-slap
Listen, I have long said that LinkedIn would still be standing tall in the smoke of social rubble. I still love connecting with new people there.

But sometimes you connect with someone and they hit your DMs immediately with a Calendly link. Ugh. Somewhere in the distance, a kitten mews a deep, troubled sigh.

✅ IN: AI
❌ OUT: Metaverse
Is the Metaverse dead? Or still under construction? IDK. But the hype is dead. On the other hand, AI went from having a *moment* to rolling with real momentum.

✅ IN: AI utility
❌ OUT: AI gimmicks
AI until now has felt a bit like magic and sorcery. Fear ("Let's fire the writers and outsource to AI robots!"). Apocalypse. Party tricks. Buzzy interactions (that odd conversation a year ago between the NYTimes reporter and Bing).  Last year was also a year of experimenting and one-offs.

But 2024 takes a more level-headed approach to AI tools and platforms. 2024 is when we quit arguing about AI and start figuring out how to operationalize AI to make us more effective and efficient and (yes) accountable. Tools become integrated... not bolted on. Fear scatters on the wind of robot song.

✅ IN: Writers
❌ OUT: AI cut-paste
You can't give a generative AI tool to a terrible writer and expect ridiculously good results. Is AI powerful? Yes. But is it magical? No.

But you know who is magical...? Writers. We writers fueled with AI is why I call this period in history the Great Writing RenAIssance.

✅ IN: Prompt literacy
❌ OUT: Prompt engineers
AI prompting is the act of figuring out how to query a machine to deliver the output you want. And while prompt engineers might've been in demand in some corners of 2023, the evolution of AI interfaces to be more intuitive and easier to use is going to make Prompt Engineer as a job role go the way of the Blockbuster Store Manager.

Plus, we should all be responsible for our own literacy. Around AI... and otherwise.

✅ IN: Authentic experiences
❌ OUT: Slick marketing
A natural counterpoint to AI everywhere will be great authenticity in marketing (and in life): analog, artisanal crafted experiences that are sticky with human imperfection and that sing with craft.

✅ IN: Relatable brand voice
❌ OUT: Buttoned-up brand voice
AI makes it easier to create mediocrity at scale. So content in 2024 has an opportunity: Signal clear human voices. Elevate the leaders behind your thought leadership. Hone and evolve your brand voice... FINALLY. 

✅ IN: Long-term brand
❌ OUT: Short-term growth
Both are important. But long-term brand-building has been too often sacrificed at the altar of shortermism.

✅ IN: Showing
❌ OUT: Telling
Should the "In" here be storytelling? Maybe. Because storytelling shows. Stories make your products and services come alive. They put them in the context of people's lives. They intrinsically answer the question: Why should I care? 

Make your customer the hero of your story means you show how you help.

✅ IN: Nuanced thinking
❌ OUT: Either/or mindset
With the always-on dopamine hit of likes and shares propelled often by outrage... our world rewards black-and-white absolute thinking and a partisan mindset.

But most things up close are rarely all black or all white. There are a million shades of gray, from gunmetal to dove. (Sherwin-Williams says its best-selling shade of paint is called "Agreeable Gray." Do with that what you will.)

We are complex creatures capable of seeing those shades of gray and holding seemingly opposing ideas at the same time, aren't we? I have to think yes.

✅ IN: Slow strategy/Fast execution
❌ OUT: Speed
Speed at all costs makes you careen off the road. Speed (in business, writing, life) matters. But let's slow down and create a solid strategy first... then run at it, pedal to the floor. And now I've exhausted my supply of Formula 1 metaphors for all of 2024.

✅ IN: Kind
❌ OUT: Nice
Kind is telling someone their fly is open.
Nice is not telling them because it's uncomfortable.

Kind people are willing to speak up.
Nice people are afraid to speak up. They want to be liked.

I overheard that breakdown recently from two women behind me in line at the post office. And I can't stop thinking about it.

❌ OUT: 365 days
✅ IN 366 days
Happy Leap Year!

DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS

Then.. and only THEN... can you make lemonade.

SELECT EVENTS

📅  Jan 10: Key Trends in Marketing.. and Where AI Fit In I'm moderating this presentation by Salesforce's Martin Kihn at MarketingProfs. [FREE]

📅  Jan 31: AI Shopping and Intelligent Content Sitecore, Microsoft, Avanade, and I will chat about the new retail experience.

📅  Feb 20: Social Media Marketing World I'm back this year in San Diego on the main stage. Join us?
 

Thanks for reading this far.

Thanks for your kindness and generosity.

Stay healthy.

Breathe.

🫡 See you January 21!