Happy Sunday! We're at the end of the first month of the new year, or about 8.3% the way through 2021. What a great first month to kick off the year, and I stayed "dry" throughout the month like a champ — if you were trying, then hopefully you did, too!
This past week was such a long one. The market was overturned by an internet gang. I was in Blueprint's first Monthly Industry Report. People really resonated with the thought that tomorrow's memes come from Tik Tok's comments section. Modern Retail interviewed me about iOS 14 (nothing I haven't already said in my email a few weeks ago). PostScript launched SMS Templates.
Last night, I was in my apartment and opened Clubhouse to find one of my closest friends, Farokh, hosting a room. I joined, and immediately we began talking about back when we first started hanging out I used to sling Hint water like a drug dealer to everyone I knew.
"With Nik, he will bring us creators together, let us have a good time, cover the bill, and sprinkle in whatever product he's pushing. But it always works." - Farokh
As I was looking to find the picture of the time Farokh was describing in the Lower East Side, I found so many great examples of social awareness that I had pushed when I was at Hint, and I wanted to write about it today because it's all free, and anyone can do it.
I'm not talking about the organic social media feed like your own Twitter or Instagram account, but more-so about what happens OUTSIDE your own feed on social media with your brand. When it comes to your own content, aim for 2 things: education and shares. But when it comes to your brand on social outside of your own feed, you need earned awareness.
Why does this matter if you even have the most efficient engine of paid media? You have to remember that paid media is like taking an image and dragging it to expand from the corner. The more to expand it, the more blurry it gets, so bringing organic traffic, new pockets of customer personas, and new audiences to your brand only helps your paid media work even harder for you.
Think about some of the best brands, they mostly had incredible organic marketing, content, and awareness before turning their ads on.
On social media, I wanted to do as much as possible. With our product at the time, Hint water, there was one goal: bottles in hands. We just needed people to try the product and the product was so good, they'd be hooked. So as I took this role, I started trying to figure out how to get products to "Influencers". I got an address, shipped 12 cases of water, and all of a sudden, we ended up in a YouTube video with an entire 90 second shout out from Sara Dietschy (~500k subscribers at the time).
It started with Sara, but happened with so many more like Product Hunt, Justin Kan, Jahannah (The floor is lava!), Casey Neistat, Kendall Dickieson, Alex Medina, and so many more.
The goal was simple: figure out how to get people your product, and if they like it, just always keep them stocked. Never let them run out. Why? Because not only would we see that our influencers were loving the products, but they loved to share with their friends who might also sometimes be just as influential. Whenever Farokh had a friend who he thought might love hint too, he would text me an address and cases would be on their way. It's about taking care of them, not "Hey, can you post a picture for me."
Outside of "influencers", I also focused on finding niche accounts to keep stocked with our product. Handles like @SoYummy, @Foooodieee, @LAEats, @TraderJoesList, @NewYorkCity, @Food, and so on. These accounts are authorities when it comes to Instagram's recommendations.
Not only did we build long-lasting relationships with everyone, but keeping them all stocked with Hint just helped us find new audiences while we were sleeping.
Once you figure out exactly who your ride or die crew of creators are, you start to produce more higher end branded content to do things like reduce your paid CAC by 40%, co-host events together, and expand on it. But it all starts with seeding product to the right people, and you'd be surprised how easy it can be to do so, especially if you have a good product.
I encourage you to go out and just start emailing, DMing, and even finding mutual connections to the people you want to get in touch with and seed product to. You should never ask for anything in return, if they like the product they will post. Will you get some people who never post? Sure. But in most cases if you're getting an address in the first place, you're likely already in a good spot.
On to some more stuff...
Software/App of the Week:
I thought this was a joke when Chris Lu had first emailed me... a robot could write copy with AI really fast?
But, low-and-behold, it was true, and I was blown away. Try it out here for free.
Brand of the Week:
This brand came on my radar in 2020, and I was blown away by the website UX, the branding, the copywriting, and everything about it. The website is entirely built on Shopify, which also shows the power of being able to customize Shopify's experience to a brand.
Check it out here: Starface.World
That's all for this week! Starting next week, this email will be in an entirely new format, new layout, new design. I will be also launching some fun stuff with my website that I can't wait to share with you all.
Hope you have an incredible upcoming week, and get those 9 hours of sleep!