#i know neil said he would continue the story if it doesnt but

[naarvio]

You know that a series is amazing when even though you got the ending spoiled, it still hits you hard as if you were seeing it for the first time

[5a-alf]

I have been obsessing over this perfect court!AU and have literally like one irl friend to talk about it with. So.

The thing about Riko is that he never ever ever could have been anything different. He has at least one but probably two personality disorders (narcisism and antisocial i'd argue), which are the result of the abuse he endured. From a young age he was only an object, a spare, or the embodiment of an idea.

Others are redeemable because they are people, but he never really was a person in his own right. So he got worse and worse and worse, and we all know what he did.

I wanted a story where he could have something different, for i feel there is no universe in which he ends in a different way: everything he has is a childish dream, and that would have failed at some point anyway. And with failure comes death. I think his brother would have killed him even without the whole clusterfuck of the last game, just because without Kengo the main line was now only one adult and the 'branch' one was 2, which is one too many. Between Riko and Testuji, killing Riko made the most sense because Testuji had no interest in power, he just liked his dolls; also he was already an expert at his job, while Riko would have to learn/train to fill that role. And obviously age is also a factor, Riko is young, Testuji is middle-aged: for ichirou, a young man, the second is less threatening.

I could go on for hours guys im not even joking

For him to have a different future, he is not even the only thing that needs to change. If he was a good person, he'd have been dead earlier. If he was an okay person too. Maybe as morally gray he'd have the same exact life with a little less enemies.

What needs to change with him is the people he has around, his safety net. He has zero people on his side in canon (And he shouldn't have them, mind, he's horrid. But still, out of every bad person in aftg he is the only one who no one loves), he only has followers and pawns. So for an AU to work, he would need to change in a way that would affect the people he surrounds himself with enough to once again reach the show down with Ichirou and "win" against Testuji.

To do that, i think he needs Neil on his side. Kevin is great dont get me wrong, but he doesnt get it the way neil does. Neil gets the mafia, its way of thinking, its deals and the way power moves. Neil know how to be vicious and how to read people and how to push just enough.

To have a 'good' relationship with neil something needs to go differently during the selling, so that his mom doesnt run away with him. But he'd also need to have a good relationship with kevin first. For him to have a different relationship woth kevin i dont think he'd necessarily need to be better morally, he'd just need to be a better manipulator. In canon he controls people with fear/violence/money, but the best way to control people is actually through love/favors. To train a dog, you better give it treats than beat it. I think this way they would end up with a better relationship but also, the better relationship would in turn make him a better person, and the two things would continue to feed each other.

Neil comes in now. He is 10, Riko and Kevin are 12. The thing with Neil (aside from all i've already said) is that Riko would quite literally own him at this point, the same way he then owns Jean. The main difference between the two situations i think would be 1) their personalities 2) their age. At 16 (Jean 14) Riko is already off the deep end. Waay too deep. But at 12? Different story.

For the first point, mostly i'd say that Neil grew up in an abusive household like jean did, but he knew his father as the butcher, as a mafioso, and he was taught how to use knives ecc as a kid. He knew the drill, he knew the life. Jean was completely uprooted, brought into a different country, told to play a game i dont think he knew anything about. Much more jarring. Neil already loved Exy, he wanted to play it all the time; the sport itself would be a good motivator for good behaviour. Jean was just angry angry angry (fair.) and alone in a different country. So. Not the same. I think Raven!Neil would be the one person on the team not afraid to tell Riko off, but also not afraid of his violence (much more restricted in this au guys), and riko is also not scared of Neil's violence (a bit more than in canon, he grew at castle evermore; he is nathaniel) so they find solace in each other. He'd know when to listen and when to mouth off [Riko saying "nathaniel" vs "neil" and things like that]

Second point is their age, because at 12 riko is more susceptible to change than he is at 16, so building a rapport with neil would prove more beneficial, for all i've said in point one.

Jean would be a harder case. Bringing him to heel is much more complicated, because riko doesnt have anything to leverage against him nor offer him, the guy has nothing to lose anymore and now is not enough of a person to desire anything (well. Anything obtainable. He'd like to be free for sure). I think again a lot of the work would be done by neil (and kevin too obv, but neil mostly, as his partner) because they are the same age, play the same role, are partners. Neil would be a centainty. And this better riko wouldnt be violent to destroy his spirit, he'd be "forgiving" (when useful) and bandage his wounds when the Master beats him, and be generally kind to a kid who is so starved for kindness he'd kill himself to at least get the touch of death. That + group mentality and i think jean would be on board too.

Andrew also factors in all of this, but i'll go on later this has gotten SO LONG and i wont even reread it gosh i hope it makes sense.

Basically this whole thing ends up in: take the insanity that is andreil as a couple but that somehow is the sanest couple out there but extend it to the perfect court 5.

[leynaeithnea]

Oh yeah good call doing this song by song becase our essays are getting so long it's illegal at this point haha

Before we get into it, one of the chorus is "kill for love"? DAMN , that's totally not gonna ruin me at all, nu-uh I'll be super fine for sure

Okay let's go

This song is literally my fave of the saga, stuck in my head on repeat because of the melody and the beautiful vocals but also the story?? She is actually a siren trying to trick him but he pulls out a uno reverse card and tricks her even harder ??? Once again LYING CUNNING CHARACTERS FOR THE WIN AJSKSNBSB

Also I'm so jealousy of you bc I did not have it in me to wake up in the middle of the night for the stream but I wanted to see it so baaad, I would have been even more confused than you at 5am don't worry your wild theories are valid

Their little banter is impeccable "answer some questions for me please ?🥺" " Of course babe 🤭🙃" let's say I was on the run from Poseidon that big meanie 😔" " Oh nOo pookie poor you 🥺" They are so unserious !!! And then the vocals in her reply keep me up at night " sailing where he's scared to roam" is done so majestically akdmndns

Can't fight you on this , Ody saying he's shy and terrified is so fuckin funny and random hahahah

Oh good gods don't let me think about it because I know ,I KNOW HE'S PRETENDING A LITTLE BIT THIS IS REALLY HIS PENELOPE AND IT HURTS SO BAD the way he says he'd die for her and he misses her so much , "more than you know "because the siren actually doesn't know , she has no idea how much he misses his wife asakkksnns free my boy he deserves some smooches from his wifeee

( I love how you keep slipping Neil in the conversation and I do not fault you for it bc liars= Neil-Josten-hiding-his-whole-ass-murderer-father-with-ties-to-the-japanese-mafia-like-it's-nothing )

ALRIGHT I have a bit energy again

I agree with everything u said moving to the next song now!

22. Different Beast

the arrow followed by this ear piercing screaming (good think they all had beeswax in their ears fr)

ODY IS SO MAD "lets cut the charade you are no wife of mine" I almost feel like he hates the Siren even more for DARING to pretend to be Penelope, and making him yearn for her even more

the music in that one is also soooo sinister and creepy

and how his voice changes with "i know underwater theres packs of you hiding, yeah i know exactly what you are, a siren" its so vicious and cunning iTS soo good

Then the siren hiss seigsegj

AND THEN THE DRUMs when he starts singing "my real wife knows im not scared of the water, and my real wife knows i dont have a daughter" like the drums rise when he speaks and between the lines and when the strings or whatever they are come up again, the drum gets quieter again for a moment only to rise up again when he speaks...its so cool, i love this drum beat, which continues while he tells his whole big-brain plan (love how we see Odys hubris in this one, he gets so smug about his plans with the sirens that he spends a whole song explaining it to us, on one hand its exposition and him just recalling what happened for story purposes but also it fits the character for his pride - which in the myth is also his fatal flaw - takes over)

also "we are a different beast now" chorus: basically is just "we are the monsters rawr rawr rawr"

"we've been away from home for ABOUT 12 YeARS OR SO" JORGE; JORGE WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID HERE

I've also been wondering, i kind of feel like the ryhtm of the music doesnt fully-align with the lyrics bc theyre shifting between singing and sing-talking, and ive been wondering if thats maybe like a suble sign that acutally Ody and the crew dont hear a thing rn? kinda? idk, i dont have enoguh knowledge about music theory to actually explain the sort of dissonance i feel is happening, it could also just be done like this to showcase how theyre the different beasts now

Sirens singing "spare us" is eery and pretty

Odys embracing the lesson people have been trying to teach him throughout act 1 finially "why, so you can kill the next group of sailirs in this part of the sea, nah you wouldve spared me"

"cut of their tails we're ending this now, throw their bodies back int he water let them drown" HE IS THE MONSTER RAWR RAWR RAWR

AND THen the CHOIR LYRIcs shift to "HE is a different beast now, he is the one to feast now" (i lowkey imagine him just snacking on some Siren tail in that line ngl, the only way the lyrics "the ones to feast now" makes sense is if they literally feasted on these tails, it would also explain why Ody specifically wanted to cut of their tails)

also Ody plss "Kill them all"...ow, but fair i suppose, but you couldve just slit their throats

ADN THEN The last lyrics being "Odysseus" omg gsiejgisejg love it

Also i dont know when this shifted from "my favorite lines in the musical" to "my reaction and analysis to every song" but by now im just vibing with it

[tonydaddingham]

to be fair, i think its probably because they never anticipated to make beyond s1 anyway, so the necessity to incorporate greasy was superfluous to the story at the time, and took up space that the screen couldnt afford (whereas in the book, it doesn't take up much room, but the planting of it is there if you want to take it up in a sequel which terry and neil both discussed doing).

in terms of re-introducing jesus though*, and him being on a plane descending from the sky, it stands to reason that heaven would have god's great plan written down with a flight number etc., and the person that gets off is... warlock, who aziraphale knows is not jesus. which gives him a headstart to find the actual jesus by re-engaging with crowley to trace over the tadfield steps once again, and find the third baby that was meant to be on the plane (before it all got messed up in s1).

*i agree with what op said about it not being necessary to use the exact lore in the show (ie jesus is resurrected not reincarnated). i get why people stick to scripture in parsing out s3 speculation, and why the representation is important, but don't think it's beyond belief that neil might look to reimagine this for GO - it's literally fiction, it doesn't have to be a facsimile of any religious text. he played around with multiple scripture stories and accounts in GO story, and i potentially don't think this will be any exception.

s2 showed repeated scenes from s1 to allow the audience to recalibrate before continuing that aspect of the narrative, so i don't think it would be too far a jump to hark back to the baby swap. imagine: they bring back the last nun scene, god voiceover saying "maybe he wins prizes for his tropical fish" --- boom, hard cut to greasy (kid or adult, latter most likely to be in-keeping with scripture) staring at some fish. there doesnt necessarily need to be a whole narrative about adam vs. greasy, the show can just simply pose greasy as a bit of a dick, and the audience will get the narrative irony from that.

i think, however, that bringing in greasy would need to rely quite heavily on reintroducing god as a narrator... but i do also think that that may have been the plan for s3 anyway.

Some Christian Lore I think will be important for GO S3

I don’t think there is gonna be a baby Jesus y’all… theories that Maggie is the new Mary or Aziraphale will show up with a baby on Crowley’s doorstep fail to take into account the actual Christian myth and lore

Jesus rose from the dead and ascended BODILY into Heaven. According to the Gospels and Revelation that same embodied Jesus is returning to Earth.

And Neil is like A SCHOLAR for religion, he knows these stories.

So I’m just throwing out there, while we are all theorizing, that we are probably getting a 33 year old Jesus coming to Earth and having NO IDEA how Earth works since he was last here >2000 years ago. (I could be wrong)

So im thinking more like George of the Jungle film where Brendan Fraser is Jesus and Leslie Mann is Aziraphale; a fish out of water / man outta place comedy

[butchniqabi]

slavery tw, rape tw, and pedophilia tw just thinking on something that i once wrote about and to this day am appalled and angered by

so probably like 5-ish years ago i got so furious with my history textbook's "good slave owner" angle that i willingly wrote an entire paper (which i turned into my teacher to look over) about the dynamics between slave owners and the enslaved. title was "Romanticization of Slave Narratives: Why Slaves Couldn't Consent to Their Masters." looking back it wasnt the most comprehensive but doing the research for it was so fucking miserable because of how ubiquitous the belief that there were good slave owners is. the most fucking anger and rage inducing is the recorded life and depictions of Sally Hemings, a woman owned by thomas jefferson (yes the "i oppose slavery" thomas jefferson who btw at one point owned over 500 people). like the reality of her position and status as an enslaved girl to an increasingly more politically powerful man is so often fucking ignored? theres an instance where jefferson sent for Sally (who i should mention is also his wife's half-sister) to accomopany his daughter to see him in france. at the time slavery was illegal in france, which left a great many idiotic white people to ask "well why didnt she leave? 🤨 if she really didnt want to be with him she would have left and not gone back to america with him". conveniently forgetting that at the time she was 14 years old and returned to the states pregnant.

a child who has spent her entire life enslaved, who now finds herself pregnant is supposed to run away in a foreign country to "prove" that she wasnt okay with being regarded as fucking property? like the narratives around this are so fucking disgusting because so many sites and books and biographies say "was this rape? who knows..." in regards to her "relationship" continuing until his death. but how is it not fucking obvious that it was rape?? we have like. laws and stuff (maybe youve heard of them) where we say that a child cannot legally consent to intimate relations with an adult even if they say they were willing because of the power dynamics at play. a 14 year old supposedly can consent to having a relationship with a man 30 years her senior (who legally OWNS her) that would result in multiple pregnancies and being essentially confined to one room in a house for the rest of her life?

like even IF he didnt legally own her (which shouldnt be ignored considering even if she was an adult at the time he first assaulted her my argument is the same that she could not consent) their dynamics would obviously be considered grooming. she had no fucking agency at any point and the question of "did they love each other" DOES NOT MATTER! it doesnt matter if he loved her or she loved him, because at the end of the day she was his slave! she couldnt actually consent because her safety was no guaranteed if she refused. she also couldnt consent because once again she was a child. white americans want sooooooo desperately for the image of the founding fathers to be squeaky clean and their faults minimized that they just ignore obvious evidence that suggests the contrary. and theyll rewrite history to have people believe that they were good, moral men. did you know that there was a miniseries called "sally hemings: an american scandal" that used to be called "...an american love story"? real great stuff, thanks for that sam neil

like for gods sake the fact that is still to this day even a debate as to whether or not it was consensual is getting tiring because it views consent in this context as just whether or not Sally said "yes" to him. viewing consent as just a "yes or no" situation is 1. an enduring part of rape culture and 2. so incredibly, astoundingly ignorant of the true nature of slavery. many historians and creators of media are so willing to let their adultification bias shape their view of the situation. a white girl in her position would undoubtibly be viewed today as a victim, but a black girl? she was mature enough, surely. and then to add insult to injury she gets victim blamed for not leaving or ending the relationship! god! the misogynoir is astounding really!

the lies white people tell themselves about chattel slavery have just become tiring at this point. how did i, as a black child, have a better understanding of the dynamics of slavery better than a white historian?

(the question is rhetorical, we all know why)

[nancylou444]

I tried to be nice

Replies to this post:

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Became this:

THEM:  hi! thanks for the answers I really appreciate the discussion. normally if someone ships something I don’t like or something like that, I’ll just leave them alone but.. just to be clear I completely respect all of your opinions, even agree with some of them, even if we might disagree on the incest and Castiel haha. So I don’t mean any disrespect with this at all, please let me know if I’m out of line though!  

 But... I saw some things you said, and they come across to me in a way that I don’t think you intended? I feel really awkward sending this haha, you’re very nice and I don’t think you said anything on purpose, but I just.. wanted to let you know that some of the things regarding your opinion on certain characters come across not very well? I don’t think it’s intentional or anything, and I don’t mean to call you out at all which is why I didn’t want to point it out in the replies y’know?  

 Don’t get me wrong though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with not liking castiel or destiel. I’ve been watching the show for a while with my dad, and he isn’t a huge fan either, I don’t think that’s a problem :) 

I’d continue without waiting for a response but I don’t want to say something you’ve already been told, or continue without knowing if I’ve said something out of line already 😅

ME:  I'm kind of distracted dealing with my Mom's rehab center. But you can keep going.

THEM: Alright! I’ve tried rephrasing this a million times but I don’t know how to make it seem not antagonistic. I promise I don’t mean that you’re doing it intentionally, it’s just, uh a lot of your criticism of spn feels like it could be read as homophobic? Again I don’t think YOU are I just wanted you to know it kind of reads that way!

That sounded so confrontational. I really don’t mean it that way 😭

ME: HOMOPHOBIC? Really? A lot of the 'proof' your fellow shippers use border on stereotypes but you think I'M homophobic? Considering my top two ships are Wincest and Malec. Yeah, sounds confrontational.

THEM:  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I guess there’s no other way to say it, but I understand why you feel accused. What do you mean by proof..?

Also I don’t really think having gay ships means you can’t be homophobic. *I* used to be homophobic years ago, and I’m a gay person!

ME:  How old are you? https://nancylou444.tumblr.com/post/154098904136/a-guide-to-dean-winchesters-imaginary-bisexuality

THEM:  yeah this is starting to get frustrating. I’m gonna be real with you, why does it matter if people think dean is bisexual? like, bottom line, that is my question for you

and your answer will determine if your veracity is homophobic. why does it matter that some people think dean is bisexual. not the fans or actors or writers or anything. why does it matter that some viewers will watch, and they will think dean is bisexual?

ME:  My problem isn't that some people think he is bi IN FANON, my problem is that they want CONFIRMATION OF A FANON SHIP. And that some people DENY how the show ended. These same people think that fake weddings are more canon than the FINAL EPISODE.

THEM:  I get what you mean, but how is it a fanon ship when it’s confirmed romantic from one side, and interpretable as mutually reciprocated in Latin America? (I’m going to disregard the bit about the wedding, because I’m a firm believer in Neil Gaiman variety death of the author. Also that’s just people having fun with fanon, who cares?)

ME:  Confirmed romantic?By whom MISHA, who wanted to sell necklaces? Have you never said 'i love you' to a FRIEND or FAMILY member? The dub is not canon, so don't even try using that as proof. Death of the author is just another way of saying MY VIEW OF THE SHOW IS SUPERIOR TO HOW THE CREATOR WANTS TO SEE IT. Jensen has said many times that the ship isn't canon and that Dean is straight. But it's better to believe what Misha says because he agrees with you. You think somebody is bi because of how they sit or the color clothes they wear? That would make YOU homophobe.

THEM:  LOL You know what? I change my answer. I looked through your blog and you ACTIVELY and viscously hate Cas, Charlie, Claire, Kaia and the implication that Jack may not be straight. You’ve said Cas coming out as gay and in love with dean makes the rest of his actions predatory, compared him to a teenage girl, called him creepy, and openly rejoiced in your idea that dean looked ‘disgusted with him’. You said that Claire is awful, that Kaia is a wooden plank, that they ‘shoved them together’ for ‘woke points’ and said that Jody saying Claire was IN LOVE WITH Kaia ‘doesnt count’ and called it ‘lip service’. And it doesn’t end there! After all this, you said that you preferred the old better s4 Claire. Is it because she was ostensibly straight? Are you uncomfortable with queer women? And then you have the audacity to use these characters (Claire and Kaia and Charlie) as reasons to epicly own the Hellers and claim they already have represention. You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling. You are openly hostile to the idea of non-binary jack and were pissed that Alcal endorsed that. You devalue Jack’s value and relationship to Cas who is, textually, his father figure. I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Feel free to explain how you aren’t homophobic. I’m so sorry if I got the wrong impression.

ME: Wow I see your true colors have come out HELLER.

THEM:  Idc if you think I’m mean. Go ahead and make a post about me lol, have fun with it. Give me a moment to respond to your paragraph it’s... a lot to dissect.

I’ll touch on your comments about the dub and the Spanish language in a moment. First though

I ’m gonna be real with you, I don’t think you know what death of the author is. Neil Gaiman’s variety of the dead author principal is that once canon ends, the story belongs to those that consume and engage with it. That’s... also literally the theme of supernaturals final season. Anyway I really recommend you read up on death of the author and Neil Gaiman’s takes on fanon. It’s a fun way to consume your media, and in the end that’s what I’m here for.

I don’t care what Misha says, and I don’t care what Jensen says! I think they are both queer because I have eyes and watched the show. I think it’s a lovely narrative that is supported by canon, and it’s fine if you disagree with that

On your last sentence there... lol. It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people. But what do I know!

And finally... ‘the Spanish dub isnt canon’

I am literally cuban. My first language is SPANISH. my entire household speaks Spanish, and my family past 1st cousins don’t speak any English. My Boricua cousins have watched supernatural in full for years, and they watch it in Spanish. Do you think America is the center of the universe? Do you think our media is somehow less than yours, that our interpretations of English language media isn’t valid? What, do you think we are idiots who don’t know how to analyze literature and media? Do you think the people who work at Telemundo, people employed as dubbers and translators, you think they do a worse job than the American crew?

Why, because they aren’t American or don’t speak English? ‘Te amo’ said to a non family member is, in 99% of any instance, ROMANTIC. it’s something you say to your spouse in serious situations like weddings!! Even MARRIED people don’t normally say te amo, everyone uses te quiero unless it is very serious or romantic in context.

All of my family who are Spanish language, they heard dean say ‘y a yo ti, cas’ and think that they were in romantic love. Sorry dude! The United States might be the center of your universe, but Latin America is HUGE. Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the WORLD. In fact, more people speak Spanish than English. Sorry that you seem to hate gay characters SO MUCH you have to say an entire language somehow isn’t valid to consume media in!

ME: 

Obviously this heller is batshit crazy. 

Some of those things she thinks I said just show she has no idea how to follow a tumblr thread. 

You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling.

Wow. 

I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Where have I hated canon gay characters and degraded them using tropes and stereotypes? The bitch has me confused with HER FELLOW SHIPPERS. 

Gotta love how she is defending the Spanish dub. Hit a nerve did I? 

It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people.

Now who is using stereotypes? 

[redrabbitspod]

This is in no way meant to be rude or disrespectful and I am fully aware that you can do whatever you please but I feel like Neil is getting so out of character. He clearly started to develop more of an own personality but he definitely has been through so much and he is just so..cheery and happy and clingy all the time(which if you’re like that is in no way wrong or bad) and now he reminds me so much of Nicky in AFTG. It’s really hard for me to still see Neil.

OOC: This is very long, and while we think everything leading up to it is super important to our thought process (and yes this is something we’ve thought about) the bit in bold is the heart of the point we try to make. (Please read the whole thing though!)

Hey, I’m actually really happy that you sent this in because I’ve been wanting to talk about it. I know that there’s a post going around that we both wholeheartedly agree with about Neil reaching far past ooc and becoming very ‘fem’. Jeni and I had a really long talk about this because we were worried that our Neil would be perceived or mistaken to fit in that trope. And while I think your concern is EXTREMELY valid (note: people can write the characters however they want. It’s fanfiction, they can do as they please, like you said, we just did not want to go that direction), I have a few points as to why I disagree. 

On surface I definitely get that. Idk if you’ve read the entirety of RRP, but I know for those of you that just read the asks (Im sure there are a lot), it DEFINITELY seems that way. But we went into RRP right off the bat letting people know that these characters will fundamentally be different. In Andrew’s case, we know he’s extremely soft now and we bring that up a LOT in the fic. Both himself acknowledging it and all the other characters around him. But we went in knowing he was going to be very different from canon - mainly because we took out the plotline that he was ever put on meds. In Wish You Were Here, the story we are writing post-season 2, we will be mentioning that and how we twisted it. Because in canon, that shaped his entire character. The medication changed the physiology of his brain and we hated the fact that something so abhorrent was forced upon him by the courts that we didn’t do it. And as a result, Andrew’s character is completely different because he’s able to tap into emotions that were blocked in canon. He’s able to grow in ways that he was not able to before and besides the fact that this is set a good while after college and especially his sophomore year that we saw in canon, he was going to change. We definitely know that them admitting that they love each other, making strides in their relationship both physical and mental, opening up, expressing, for his character may seem extremely ooc for some, but we had to take into account what would’ve happened if we took the thing that shaped his character in canon away. I hope we’ve done him justice. 

Now onto Neil. Neil we work over a LOT. And when Jeni brought this up to me because of the post, there were glaring things in my mind that automatically said no. This doesnt apply to our Neil even though to some it may seem that way. Here’s what we’ve done at least very consciously to make sure that our Neil holds integrity to his canon character, that he holds merit and a backbone to back up how he’s grown throughout our series. 

From day one, we knew that they knew each other. We knew that an event from the past not only shaped how Andrew approaches life, but how Neil does as well. Childish sentiment and nostalgia kept Neil in Arizona for so long, which we imply throughout season 1 and start the ball rolling in the first chapter. For the both of them, they held onto the boy they met at the Grand Canyon through everything they’d been through. When shit got tough, it was each other they thought of. And on some wild whim, Neil hoped one day Andrew would walk through the Book Nook’s doors and he’d see him again. Not because Neil had a crush, because he didn’t. But because Andrew was the embodiment of strength for him. 

New York was really important to us. Neil standing his ground and letting Andrew know exactly what he’d done to him, was what the entirety of Season 1 and EVEN season 2 culminated and came back to. Neil being able to say no, fuck you asshole, and always express exactly how he was feeling, was so vitally important to us. ESPECIALLY when it came to Andrew. Those few weeks of New York we wanted to build a bridge if you will. Andrew’s intentions were always genuine and well-meaning and Neil knew that, but survival instincts and what’s been ingrained in him stuck. They started to have a little give when he came to realize that he felt something for the man before him. But he never lost that fight for himself. That HE has to ALSO be okay. And I think we see a lot in that trope of Neil that he loses the fight, the backbone, the integrity that makes his canon character so compelling (even if he is a martyr). 

One thing we worried people would misinterpret was how fast we pushed their characters together. We definitely get that. In our world we didnt really have the luxury of really stretching it out like some may have, just because we were working with real-time. And honestly? As we wrote, the drive to push them together because they were so connected and intertwined just fell genuinely and organically. For us, it only made sense and not because of canon, but because of the story we’d written already. It made sense to us for Andrew to be the one to hold himself back and Neil be the one reaching out - Neil be the one exploring and beginning to recognize what want and really, agency over himself AND his wants, was. Neil was the one to ask for their first kiss here, Neil was the one to initiate them all afterwards, Neil was the one that asked Andrew to touch him, Neil was the one that asked what they were in Arizona, Neil was the one to bring up sex. And in return, Andrew was peeling away layers of himself, feeling accepted, and wanted, and understood in ways he’d never been before. And honestly? Feeling honored that they were both experiencing emotions in ways that they both never felt before. We see their relationship has an equal give and take, a push and pull. And I’m saying all of this because it’s honestly and truly really important for why we’ve made Neil’s character the way that he is. 

Going into season 2, we knew that happiness could not last long. They both had things to sort out, they both had hurdles to hop over, bridges to cross, whole fucking oceans to swim. Before season 2 started, before we had anything written or really even solidly planned, we knew they had to break up. Jeni even had the scene written back in either july or august. We knew that in order to continue trying to give integrity to their characters and relationship, how far they’d grown but also that growth is not a linear path, we needed to break them up. And in the lead up to that, we made sure that Neil was not only looking out for Andrew or trying to, but that he was looking out for HIMSELF. Unlike in canon, he didnt automatically have the foxes - not in his head at least. Of course he knew he had a home there, he knew that he had friends, but they weren’t like canon because he didnt grow WITH them like he did in canon. In his mind, he really only had Andrew and if there was no Andrew, why stay? And when their fight happened we made sure that Neil had value enough in himself, care for himself, love for himself AND for Andrew that they couldn’t let this go on any longer. Neil left because he knew he deserved better. He knew Andrew needed help and he couldn’t provide it. And he held onto that. In fact, Andrew even held onto it himself: 

“Is there no hope, then?” Andrew asked, unable to help himself.

Neil sighed and Andrew was grateful that he at least didn’t pretend that he didn’t know what Andrew meant.

“I don’t know, Dr- Andrew.” Was it possible for his chest to hurt even more? He wanted to curl in on himself, but settled instead for clenching the sharp corners of the pack of cigarettes in his pocket into the palm of his hand. He watched as Neil bit the inside of his lip and that little indent appeared. Maybe he feels it, too . “Part of me wants to say fuck it all and let’s just go home. I hate this... But I hate what you’ve been putting me through these last couple of weeks even more. I can’t do that again,” he stopped talking once more and inhaled a shuddering breath. “You broke my heart, Andrew. I know I sound dramatic and stupid, but I don’t know how else to say it and - I don’t know how to do this, for fucks sake.” He finally turned to him, but the eye contact was brief and before it was even there, it was gone. “I came into this knowing nothing about relationships and I know even less about breakups. I don’t know how to navigate this.”

“You think I do?” Andrew asked. He didn’t mean  for it to sound so bitter, but there it was.

“I don’t know with you,” Neil shrugged. “I feel like you keep everything so close to your chest, that there are whole sections of you I’m missing. And listen, I don’t blame you. You should be able to choose what you want to share. But I can’t help that it makes things hard when you’re falling apart and I don’t know why...”

Andrew let go of the box and put both of his hands in his lap. Grinding his teeth together, he heard the beginning hum of Bee’s buzz , but took a deep breath to try and keep her at bay. Clearing his throat, he looked back to the stadium and that stupid orange fox paw, before he murmured, “What if I offer you a piece?” - suddenly and quickly said, it was as if his mouth was trying to outrun his mind, despite the second he took to contain it. He’d known this would eventually come - that he would have to do this. And besides, Neil deserved an explanation, even if they never got back together.

“Andrew-”

“I’m not offering with hopes that we’ll get back together right now, Neil. I’m working through shit the best I can. Therapy is helping, but I know it’s a process. I just know you deserve an explanation. And I haven’t wanted to tell you because it’s fucking horrific, but I was also afraid that it would send me even further down the spiral if I talked about it. Now that I have a space to vent through, I don’t think I’m so afraid of the fall.”

This part was so important to us for both Andrew and Neil’s character. And in the entire build up to the break up and directly after, Neil held onto the fact that they needed to talk. He kept bringing it up. Because he knew that if they didn’t it would escalate just like it did before. 

“I wouldn’t risk being with you again if I didn’t think things would be different. I’m not better and to be honest? I probably wont ever be better. I’ve spent my entire life dealing with my shit by myself because that’s just how it was. I’ve avoided relationships because I never trusted anyone with my baggage and I didn’t think it’d be fair to pile it on someone anyway. So when it comes to talking about shit - I’m not used to that. Bee was the only person I’d ever told everything to, and she doesn’t even know all of it.”

“I know that,” Neil said, leaning forward as if to show Andrew how much he actually understood. If that was the case, Andrew believed him. “I know you, Andrew. I would never force you to talk about something you don’t want to. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But , I need you to work with me, and if not me, someone else. Don’t take it out on me when you’re going through shit that neither of us can control. It’s not fair and it makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong and I can’t fix it.”

Now. Now we’re up to your points. I promise all of this was important for me to explain, because I know there’s literally SO MUCH that we’ve written, that shit happening now can get in the way of everything that’s happened before to lead up to this. 

We fully recognize that Neil is definitely happy. But he’s not happy-go-lucky and we tried really hard to make sure he didn’t lose his integrity - his backbone - the things that made Neil, Neil. 

Something I realized throughout this series was that I was getting worried that the focus of season 2 was so heavily on Andrew. I was seriously worried about that. But then I realized that Season 1 was focused solely on Neil. Season 1, Neil was a fucking wreck. It was Matt AND Andrew comforting him, Matt and Andrew bringing him down, Matt and Andrew trying to protect him, take care of him, find him, search for him, all of that. But even through Neil’s horrific anxiety and all the bad shit that happened, it was still Neil that pushed himself up from the ground, pulled Lola back, and gave Andrew the in. It was Neil that fought with the doctors and nurses to see Andrew and make sure he was okay. Even still afterward though, it was Neil discovering and Neil understanding and a lot of Neil, Neil, Neil. 

Season 2 is heavily focused on Andrew. We’ve already seen Neil’s story and his growth. Its Andrew’s turn to try and again, build his bridge to getting better. But with that, it was Neil that made the strides to speak and handle Ichirou, it was Neil that figured out things with his uncle, it was Neil that ultimately had the gun, brought Andrew for practice - took it out and demanded Andrew get behind him this time. It was Neil that looked Andrew in the eyes as the cops patted them down and desperately tried to tether them together.  It was Neil that kept reassuring Andrew they were going home. It was Neil that snapped the moment the cop tried to put his hands on Andrew to show them where their things were when they left the prescient, and ANDREW that allowed himself to be pulled into Neil’s arms in that moment, because he knew that he was the one thing that was SAFE. It was Neil that held Andrew that night and Andrew that LET himself be held as he broke down. 

That was one chapter ago. And we really tried to illustrate at the end that they have a life ahead of them now. They have a future - a future that is spread out and it’s bright and full of possibilities. They have a future where they can do what they want. They have a FAMILY. They have nieces, Aaron, Kate, Bee, the entire TFN team. Neil had nothing and now he has something. He has hope. 

Promise Im coming down to the end omfg. This is why our Authors and End Notes are so fucking long i swear to fucking god. 

This BTP chapter, we wanted to explore that fucking unbridled happiness. That elation of fuck - we have the world out in front of us. We don’t have any killers on our backs, Hailey is safe, Robin is safe, Jean is out, the Moriyama’s are taken care of, Stuart isn’t begging Neil to join the Hatford Branch, Aaron and Kate might be moving back to South Carolina, they’re married and all of that isn’t terrifying. It’s COMFORTING. So yes, this BTP chapter was bright and cheery. Neil was most certainly happy and showing it. Jumping on the bed, kisses all around, getting excited over ZOO BABIES and a ZOO CHOO train. But just because we show this side of him where he gets to go on a road trip and experience real and true fucking freedom for the first time, doesn’t mean that we’re all of a sudden shedding everything that we’ve built for his character. I don’t think that’s what you meant, but I mean it when I say we take the characters, the integrity of the characters, very, very seriously. Also in this chapter, Neil takes a homophobic asshole to task and not in the way that a lot of people do, but by quietly hinting at the threat because Neil doesn’t need bells and whistles. In fact, he even talked about how being happy was something his mother frowned upon: 

Because the way he looked at Neil when a butterfly landed on his finger or when he snuggled up to a goat in the petting zoo let Neil know that Andrew was happy. And he was happy.  That was something Neil never really had in his life. His mother didn’t care if he was happy, only that he was alive . In fact, the less happy he was, the fucking better. By her logic, he was less likely to go rogue if he didn't feel like there was something to be happy about outside of her. 

Neil’s finally had a moment to enjoy and let go and we know exactly how that can come off, but we have an entire future planned for them and the book they’re about to explore. Spoiler Alert: It won’t be all “butterflies and rainbows”. But all of this does not mean that all of a sudden we’re giving in to tropes and changing his character entirely because of one chapter. RRP and it’s characters mean too much to us. 

So I definitely get where you’re coming from and I’m so fucking sorry this is so long omfg. And I respect your view because we definitely worried that people would see them like that. But we have a reason for almost everything we do in this fic and really, we just wanted to see the boys happy here. We don’t believe he’s like Nicky and we don’t believe he’s clingy, but everyone interprets these characters differently, and you’re certainly entitled to that opinion. We hope this just makes our thought process on Neil’s development a little clearer. - The Creators

[mikeshanlon]

iwwv anon and PHEW OK. I def did not expect that essay and now I feel bad cause I KNOW my thots r not gonna be articulate or right. nonetheless! i think Oliver does qualify as an unreliable narrator cause hes. very oblivious but not like... Richard papen (who is a whole ass clown don't get me started on tsh) but not like addy from dare me(I will support till the day I die that dare me is da like I WILL die on this hill) who sees what she wants to see. 1/?

i think he just... thinks that his friends r diff ppl than they actually r? that doesnt rly make sense but yea. what I mean is that everything the characters do is coated in that empathetic view Oliver has which is usually wrong? so we don't get an objective look into the characters. meredith is my girl like I love the hot popular girl trope deconstruction but at the end of the book she's not at a great place like she's w someone that doesn't love her like she needs to be loved... 2/

I guess the most probable ending is that James never meets Oliver again and that everyone is kinda stuck on what happened but that's soo sad and I really don't want to think abt it. ngl iwwv wasn't like my fave book ever and I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with dark academia sometimes but what i rly liked abt the book is that despite how fucked up everyone is and how toxic they r to each other they do at heart care abt one another...3/

like I rly liked that esp cause at that point the only other da book (other than dare me!) that I had read was tsh and godd every character is so fuckinh annoying and they all hate each other. i was super confused by it till I saw someone saying that it's satire and I felt my mind explode. I feel like this is so long but I didnt rly properly answer all you wrote sorry! I think its a pretty good book tho it has some crazy quotes like hold awn Im gonna look at the highlighted stuff on my copy.. 4/

Were you in love with him?” “Yes,” [...]Yes, I was.” It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still. LIKEEE PHEWW OK OK OK. WE OUT HERE. that line literally made me go crazy. I'm so sorry for any spelling mistakes or like general mistakes I made here English isn't my first language, it's 1am and I wrote this in the notes app w/o looking it over. so like.. NOT a professional review lemme tell you. 5/5

 Ahh im so sorry I did not see this before I yeeted for a month!!!

Oooh okay first of all dare me as a DA… I’ve only watched the show but like yeah I see the Elements for sure.

Also yeah I can understand what you mean abt Oliver being an unreliable narrator now… Ig my view of unreliable was more like they are purposefully twisting the truth or omitting facts or just literally don’t know shit but I get how personal bias can make the narrator unreliable. I do think the assertion that Oliver thinks his friends are different than they actually are makes sense. He sees James in a very positive light and though I like James a lot and think he is better than, like, Richard, he definitely has darker moments and manipulates Oliver at times (again I’d like to think it’s not the most nefarious thing in the world but like him just being shitty bc he’s in a dark place and he one, wants to do anything he can so Oliver doesn’t figure out he fought Richard so Oliver still thinks of him the same way/bc he knows Oliver would do something stupid like get himself arrested for James; and two, is very jealous that Oliver is with Meredith after Richard dies and has sort of a somewhat positive outcome from Richard’s death versus James being riddled with guilt and anger). And yeah, the probable ending is they never meet but I refuse to acknowledge that so LGNRG. Also that line makes me go CRAZZZZZZZZZZY!!! There are so many great lines, both using Shakespeare and on their own and its like okay give me a moment im going bonkers…

Personally, I haven’t read that many dark academia novels yet (bc for some reason i can barely finish a book rn sigh) but the concept interests me. I think what’s compelling is the setting/atmosphere of like ~mysterious college vibes~, and the idea of a sort of niche, obsessive bond and pursuit of knowledge with a tight knit group of friends (and the like inherent homoeroticism in every single DA elrngenrg). Like Dead Poet’s Society (the film I haven’t read the book) isn’t Dark in the same way most other dark academia is by like, obsession and death and manipulation (though of course there are dark elements with Neil’s storyline), but I think the other building blocks of academia are present there in a more wholesome way and you can see why people are drawn to that idea. As for the more Dark aspects I think it’s interesting to analyze things like group psyche, obsession, manipulation, etc, like what went wrong for everything to take such a dark turn???

 But, like everything else, it really has to be done well or else its just like okay….… I’ve tried to read TSH twice and I may try again but from the 100+ ish pages I read I totally get what you mean. IWWV is so interesting to me bc the characters are all very compelling and multifaceted and I like that they are a close friendship, we come in after 4 years of them spending all the time together and to me that is apparent. Like you said, we can see fissures and problems especially as the novel continues but there is care there between them. That also makes the decision to let Richard die much more interesting and sinister imo, as well as how all of them interact with each other after he dies, and how the roles of the group change without their “leader” so to speak. Also, maybe it’s just bc I like Shakespeare, but I think the academia part of IWWV is so much more accessible compared to TSH. Like I don’t know every Shakespeare play or anything so I didn’t understand every nuance or was like immediately like oh this is from Cymbeline or whatever the fuck, but you could understand the gist of things and it made sense that they spoke in Shakespeare lines bc that’s all they’ve been doing for four years and also theatre kids are Like That. Their pretention also provided any Layers to the story, like the parallels between the characters they play and their own arcs, how some of the lines echoed their own thots, foreshadowed, or they were able to say things through Shakespeare (I’m thinking of like, Oliver realized he loved James during Romeo and Juliet, the foreshadowing that James was going to ruin Richard’s life and that he dislikes Meredith/Richard when he quotes Mercutio at the start “A plague o’ both your houses”, the exchange Oliver and James had onstage and had that kiss during King Lear before Oliver was arrested,etc.) (Also I think the structure of some of the dialogue being formatted like a play really helped make it feel more realistic and immersive). Versus TSH which is just so pedantic and dense and hard to follow at times im like I get they are smart but what??? And maybe that’s part of the satire aspect (or maybe im dumb) but like donna I read TGF I know you are pretentious and info dump abt random obscure shit anyways so erglknerg. Like to me there was a Point to all of the academic Shakespeare stuff in IWWV and it was the soul of the book, and M.L. Rio made it very interesting—like the way that the directors reimagined the plays and had Julius Caesar be like a modern political play, the cool mirror shit in King Lear, the Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet performances where they did them at events and interacted with their environments (which were one of my favorite parts of the books bc I just think that concept is so interesting), etc. For TSH the shit they did literally just felt like “okay look at them they’re smart see you can’t even keep up!” like okay… I felt lost a lot and only like snapped into reality whenever Henry (?) was like oh… murder….. and even then I was like idk what this dude is saying but like he’s being darksided LMAO. And I also agree that it’s just like… Richard being thrown in the middle of this group could lend itself to some cool ideas but its hard to believe that he fits into the friendship group and hes just like hell yeah I love Greek so much and lets go kill this guy other than like okay ur gay and stupid and just want to impress Henry or whatever his name was (which he was but I digress). It’s just not as impactful to me as this close friend group falling apart. Ik TSH fans might be angry if they see this (and of course I haven’t finished the book so my perception may be warped but I also kno many ppl felt that way u did) bc I’ve seen ppl say IWWV is just like TSH but “lackluster” or whatever and while I can see some parallels (mostly b/w Richard and Henry and Alexander and Francis), I really think M.L. Rio expanded upon common DA tropes and the interesting parts of TSH but made it her own and interesting and oh yeah there are actually multiple compelling female characters and LGBT characters (and no incest)!!!

[fabfoxly]

What if... Harry were gay?

Thanks to an anon for the idea that inspired this post. I know I should be working, but one can always stay up even later and brew another cuppa (or ten), right? 

Prince Harry’s orientation is strictly his own business unless/until he shares it with us, but if he did decide to go public as gay or bi, he would receive a warm welcome from LGBTQ people globally, and could do even more great things with his charity and philanthropic work in the future, as well as have a lovely family. 

Harry certainly wouldn’t be the first gay man in the BRF. 

 Royals back to King Edward II have led less-than-closeted lives through the centuries: 

Edward lavished gifts and titles on his lover Piers Gaveston, who was (maybe unsurprisingly) assassinated. Later, his favourite Hugh Despenser in 1326 was known as “the king’s husband.” How close were they? Ask Christopher Marlowe, whose steamy, homoerotic early modern drama about the pair was published in 1594. 

James VI and I, who succeeded the first Queen Elizabeth, was famously attached to three different men during his reign even though married to Anne of Denmark. James referred to George Villiers as his wife in private letters; a 2008 Apethorpe Hall restoration discovered a secret passage between their bedchambers. 

He wouldn’t even be the first gay British royal to wed.  

HMTQ’s cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, married his longtime partner, James Coyle, in September 2018: 

(Image: credit Ivar Mountbatten Instagram)

While the Church of England is still holding out on hosting gay weddings, Harry and his partner could marry in the Scottish Episcopal Church or in Wales, which both fully recognise all marriages. If they want a grand ceremony, St. Paul’s Cathedral in Dundee is available: 

He could have children with his partner, via surrogate,

 as have other couples, like Sir Elton John: 

and Neil Patrick Harris: 

He could focus on LGBTQ charities and causes, as he already does. 

HRH supports transgender youth charity Mermaids, the National AIDS Trust, Sentebale (which he founded), and many others. And who could forget when he took a Rapid HIV Test on live television in 2016? 

Prince William, who has posed for LGBT magazine Attitude and condemned homophobic bullying, would no doubt continue to support the good work -- and his brother. 

He’s stood up for LGBTQ military personnel as well. 

 James Wharton, a soldier in Harry’s unit, wrote about how the prince defended him from an an anti-gay attack: https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2015/6/23/why-prince-harry-defended-gay-soldier-attack

What it might be like to have an openly gay Prince 

It’s no surprise that American writer John Paul Brammer wondered what might happen if that royal wedding had been a gay one: https://www.them.us/story/if-the-royal-wedding-were-gay

Since Harry’s currently married, we won’t speculate about possible partners, although one anon suggested his Sentebale ambassador and friend Adam Bidwell, who accompanied Harry on a private African charity trip in June 2018: 

(Image: Facebook)

Even if this is simply a professional and platonic relationship, it’s great that they are involved and doing good with Sentebale. 

He may be open to experimenting: 

As a wild kid, he hung out in gay bars -- on his birthday, yet: http://www.back2stonewall.com/2011/02/prince-harry-boogies-in-uk-gay-bar.html

Then there was his good friend who was a gay porn star: https://canoe.com/life/royals/prince-harrys-friend-exposed-as-gay-porn-star and, it turns out, even escorted at the royal wedding (fun!). 

Back in the party days of 2013, Harry said he “might experiment with men” if his relationship didn’t work out (at the time with Cressida Bonas): https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/03/17/prince-harry-i-might-experiment-with-being-gay-if-my-relationship-doesnt-work-out/

Well, one can hope, anyway. To be clear, I don’t wish ill on his current relationship (although I’m no fan of Megs and think the marriage may have been more of an “arrangement”) because breaking up can be sheer hell -- even if the relationship was, too. They don’t look like they get on well, and there seem to be tensions even though she puts on a loved-up act for the press. 

It’s clear he’s chuffed about having a son, something he’s wanted for a very long time.  If Harry ever does become a single dad and decide to date men someday, I’m sure he’d be welcome with open arms, and would be a smashing success as an openly gay or bi prince. 

[thiamfresh]

4, 9, 12, 14, 21, 24, 28, 30 -love rux

4. What villian do you believe is most worthy for a redemption ark?

If we’re talking about ones who’ve had it and i thought deserved it then ZUKO.

If we’re talking those who have yet to have one and i think they should.

Billy Hargrove. And stick with me here because I know he’s a piece of shit but I have a reason for this.

Okay so, Billy he’s really a kid. He’s what 16-17 should he know better than to be a piece of shit? yes. Does he? clearly fucking not but really, not that many people do at that age. 

Young people do shitty things, and i’m not saying it’s okay, or that his abusive bullshit is in anyway normal, but also…I get it. Hurting someone else can feel good when you’re hurting and it’s easy to let your pain overshadow everyone elses and think making yourself feel better takes president to being a decent fucking human being. (it doesn’t, dont be a dick)

Now i’m going to go of kinda fannon here so bare with me. Neil Hargrove is abusive, he used homophobic slurs against his son and is widly suspected of being a racist piece of shit and currently, Billy is his mini me and we shouldn’t like him, he doesn’t deserve to be liked, getting abused doesn’t cancel out the shitty things he does and the (not so subtle)  undertones of racism his character shows.

So why redeem this piece of shit?

Because. Stranger things is an extremely fucking popular show set in a time that, unfortunately, isn’t so different to the current climate of the world. Everything is going to shit, racism and homophobia are prevalent. It’s a show that not only draws the eyes of adults but kids. It’s a show that is setting examples for the youth of today with these characters who match their ages and are open about their emotions.

Kids will be watching it and seeing themselves as ou beautifully nerdy little heros.

And i bet you also have kids watching it who see themselves in Billy. You’ll have those kids who (again we’re going into the fanon of possibilities of season 3 and a Billy redemption) will look at Billy agreeing with his fathers disgusting world views, or at the very least not arguing against them. 

Now, you could have that end two ways. Number one, you could have Billy not question his dad, continue down the path of piece of shit and no doubt end up dying a gruesome death or getting his arse kicked by our heros again and returning home to get the same treatment from Neil.

Or, You could show the story of a kid  following his fathers views for the majority of his childhood turning around and learning and accepting. You could have a character that shows kids in situations similar to his that their is a way through all the anger and pain. that there is friendship to be had if they’re willing to open themselves up enough to see that we’re all the same and that everyone deserves to be treated with respect.

and it’s 6am so this is coming out nowhere near as coherent as i want to explain it. but i just think, characters like Billy, they don’t get redemption arks because they don’t ‘deserve’ them. They’re old enough to know i’s wrong, they’ve done this in the pst and blah blah blah and yeah, it’s true. but, fuck, i don’t care if you’re 17 or 57. Things like Racism and homophobia are learned. It’s ignorance. And to show a story about someone overcoming their ignorance and putting their crap aside for long enough to learn is important. 

A story of someone like Billy being brave enough to tell his father to fuck off and learn tolerance and acceptance is something we need. IT’s a story that may well resonate better with young kids in conservative households listening to their parents using slurs and spreading hate. It’s a story that says it doesn’t matter how you were brought up, you are in control of your own life, you make your choices and you can choose whether to be a piece of shit or a decent human being.

And it teaches those all ready open minded people that someones past, although it does hold weight, it doesn’t define them. That saying and doing shitty things doesnt mean you can never change, just because someone has said or done something ignorant and wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can never learn to be accepting.

In conclusion, is he worthy? No. Should he get it anyway..yeah, honestly, id be up for showing that you can out grow ignorance and that theres a way out of the ideals your family istilled in you other than like death or epic humiliation like most shows do to these types of characters.

9. What were you almost named as a baby?

My Mum really wanted to name me Tyranny. Like..yeah…wow. She says it sounds pretty, me and my brother will forever shame her for it. But my brother was almost called Xaiver only saved because my mum ‘couldn’t pronounce it’ so honestly, I think I had the better end of the almost name stick.

12. Favourite smell

My best friends clothes. I don’t know what he uses but fucking hell it smells so good. He sent me an old top of his last year and i slept with it over my ace or like a week because his clothes always just smell so fucking good. The smell hasn’t changed since we were 12 either. It’s ust iuhgihirh so good. Like spicy pine or something idk, whatever it is it has my soul.

14. How many friends do you have that don’t live in the same country as you?

Close close friends i’d say like 5. Then i have another like 15 that i love and want to meet but we don’t talk quite as much as those like main 5.

21. How many people have you thought “Glad I don’t have to interact with them ever again” about?

Like 348 (my school class minus my best friend). No but seriously, i don’t think i’ve every really thought that? There are loads of people i’m so very glad i won’t have to interact with for long periods of time, but I still wanna keep them facebook friends so if i ever become succesful and pretty i can dangle it in their faces.

oh actually, when i was a kid i had this babysitter who’d padlock me and my brother into the room we were in and i was super happy when i realised i’d never see her again.

24. Whats the strangest website you have bookmarked?

I don’t have many weird things bookmarked tbh?? I have ‘a history of children’’ and 3 taps in a row of 100+ plastic test tubes on ebay but they’re all pretty normal, just fanfic and publishing agencies i’ve submitted too.

28. What is the coolest name that you would never name a real human child?

Duude, i’m up for calling my child Sirius Nagini, so like…i don’t really have many limits.

30.How do you feel about snails?

I fucking love snails. They’re so chill, they’re just wandering around, doing their own thing, eating and lounging in the rain. I once found a snail on my bed and i adopted that little uck or like eight hours, he just sat on my hand while i typed, moved around tracing lil slime circles on my hand. Loved tht little fucked, i was heartbroken when i had to take him outside. Found him a nice patch of leaves to chill on though. Whenever i step on a snail accidentally because it’s dark and i’’m not looking and i hear that crunch a bit of my soul gets chipped away. I’ve cried more than once because I stepped on a snail.

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Outlook Perspective The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care? We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating. By Christopher Mellon March 9 at 2:23 PM Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science. In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.   The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest . A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015. 0:34 Watch: Military jet video tracks high-speed UFO (To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science) Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization?  Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers. I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data.  Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making. The current approach is equivalent to having the Army conduct a submarine search without the Navy. It is also reminiscent of the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA and the FBI before Sept. 11, 2001, when each had information on the hijackers that they kept to themselves. In this instance, the truth may ultimately prove benign, but why leave it to chance?  (A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but in December, the military confirmed the existence of a program to investigate UFOs and said it had stopped funding the research in 2012.) The military personnel who are encountering these phenomena tell remarkable stories. In one example, over the course of two weeks in November 2004, the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser operating advanced naval radar, repeatedly detected unidentified aircraft operating in and around the Nimitz carrier battle group, which it was guarding off the coast of San Diego. In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats. On at least two occasions, F-18 fighters were guided to intercept these vehicles and were able to verify their location, appearance and performance. Notably, these encounters occurred in broad daylight and were independently monitored by radars aboard multiple ships and aircraft. According to naval aviators I have spoken with at length, the vehicles were roughly 45 feet long and white. Yet these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion.  From my work with To the Stars Academy, which seeks to raise private funds to investigate incidents like the 2004 Nimitz encounter, I know they continue to occur, because we are being approached by military personnel who are concerned about national security and frustrated by how the Defense Department is handling such reports. I am also familiar with the evidence as a former Pentagon intelligence official and a consultant who began researching the issue after the Nimitz incident was brought to my attention. On several occasions, I have met with senior Pentagon officials, and at least one followed up and obtained briefings confirming incidents such as the Nimitz case. But nobody wants to be “the alien guy” in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue. This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress.  If the origin of these aircraft is a mystery, so is the paralysis of the U.S. government in the face of such evidence. Sixty years ago, when the Soviet Union put the first manmade satellite in orbit, Americans recoiled at the idea of being technologically surpassed by a dangerous rival, and the furor over Sputnik ultimately produced the space race. Americans responded vigorously, and a little more than a decade later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. If these craft mean that Russia, China or some other nation is concealing an astonishing technological breakthrough to quietly extend its lead, surely we should respond as we did then. Perhaps Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s recent chest-thumping claims about propulsion breakthroughs are not pure braggadocio. Or, if these craft really aren’t from Earth, then the need to figure out what they are is even more urgent. Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding “UFOs” and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.  Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability. As with Sputnik, the national security implications of these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data? We cannot afford to avert our eyes, given the risk of strategic surprise. The future belongs to not only the physically brave but also the intellectually agile.

[viralhottopics]

Snapchat just released a 35-minute video about itself

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel

Image: snap

It’s time for Snapchat to convince Wall Street and the world why they should be worth more than $20 billion and here’s a look at their secret 35-minute video that’s meant to do just that.

The video is part of Snap’s “roadshow” a tradition in which companies about to go public visit with investors and analysts to drum up interest. The video is under password protection, but Mashable found a way in and we’re here to tell you what you need to know.

Let’s break down what’s in the video:

‘Snap is a camera company’

CEO Evan Spiegel starts off the 35-minute video by describing where Snapchat fits in. Snapchat for the last year has been referring to itself publicly as a camera company.

“Snap is a camera company. We feel like were really at the beginning of what cameras can do, evolve from being just a piece of hardware to software connected to the internet. Before cameras were the best way to perfectly save something that you saw. They sort of helped augmented memory and now making sure they augment the way that we talk,” he said.

Image: snap

Spiegel positions Snapchat as a camera company that can innovate that form of communication, just as what happened with writing and with the telephone.

“At Snapchat, the camera has become the primary input for the phone. Throughout history people have wanted to communicate in intimate ways… I cant imagine the way that it must have felt on that first phone call where you could hear the other persons voice in real-time coming through,” he said.

“Snapchat really tapped into that human desire to communicate in a way thats face to face even if youre far away. The first time you use it and you can see what someone else is seeing at the same time, from their perspective, that moment makes you feel close.”

Then, Spiegel shares his story about their first office.

“Our dream was always to have an office on the beach,” he said. The montage of Venice is followed by the appearance of Bobby Murphy, chief technology officer.

“We thought it was pretty big to what we needed at the time that was the period of the time that we started a lot of the traditions that are carried out today,” Murphy said.

Image: snap

Breaking the norm with ‘Delete By Default’

Spiegel asserts that Snapchat’s creative strategy has already broken the norm with it’s “delete by default” approach.

“Everyone thought of cameras as a way to save really important memories. When we created Snapchat, where its delete by default, it didnt make sense at the beginning. Thats why people love creating snaps, there isnt pressure to feel pretty or perfect,” Speigel said. “Its about being a way to communicate how you feel and doing that in the moment.”

Murphy then quips in to say that in addition to Spiegel’s own genius, a lot of the product innovations are really inspired by what the users have done and the company prides itself in listening to users.

“People are sending so many snaps back and forth that they kept asking us for a select all button, but we were really worried that might ruin Snapchat so came up with Stories,” Spiegel adds.

Image: snap

Then, came the first of several dings at Facebook

“If you remember social media was always a reverse chronological feed,” Spiegel said. “You were always scrolling backwards through a story and that didnt make sense to us.”

A quick reminder that even though people and especially investors may love Facebook, Spiegel is smart: This ultimately comes from the brilliance of Evan, but the strong emphasis of building the product that makes people feel happy when using our service, Murphy said.

The more that we can create an environment where people feel comfortable trying things, feel comfortable expressing themselves, the more innovative our company can be, Spiegel said.

Image: snap

About six minutes in, we have the stats

Murphy said the 60 percent of users create snaps every day. Snapchat users, on average, visit the app more than 18 times per day and spend 25 to 30 minutes a day on the app.

Just about everything in the app is focused around content creation, he said.

For Snapchat, content creation isnt just taking a photo. Murphy pointed to the identity screen, where users can create a Snapcode that allows them to share their accounts and follow their users.

The camera should do more than just capture and share, he said.

Augmented Reality

And Snapchat is also betting on a future in augmented reality. We always care a lot about interactive that the camera can be a launch point for interactive experiences, he said.

Elaborating on Stories, Spiegel and Bobby share their first test of the Live Story product. Both of them had traveled to Las Vegas for the Electric Daisy Carnival.

We were half expecting to see nothing, instead we saw the most amazing content, Spiegel said, very cool and creative fresh content.

Image: snap

Discover and Spectacles

Discover was, in part, inspired by Live Stories.

You could watch something that was happening as if you were there but you didnt understand why that was happening and thats whats led us to create publisher stories, Spiegel said.

And that part is something Snapchat is going to continue investing in.

Lastly for the product, Spiegel discusses Spectacles and how it fits into the overall mission of creation.

Snapchat has really empowered this human desire to feel closer to someone, Spiegel said. Thats an example of a way weve created a better way to make memories.

Now, time for round two of dinging Facebook.

Remember Move fast and break things? Supposedly, never a thing at Snapchat.

We approach innovation in a different way at Snap, Spiegel said. Its not a throw things at the wall and see what sticks kind of company. We try to take time to really listen to our community.

That doesnt mean they are slow builders.

Weve launched more products every year from the year before, Murphy said. We love this pace of innovation.

Image: andrew hutchinson/snap

According to Spiegel, what they do change isnt driving people away. Our community is receptive to new things, Spiegel said, excited to see what you can build next.

A continued issue is on metrics such as follower accounts, which Snapchat still declines to disclose. Its because Snapchat would rather you not worry about it and rather you connect more closely with less people.

What we identified with Snapchat is people were missing the intimacy of communication, Spiegel said. We love when people are selective with the friends that they add, we wanted to make a place that was comfortable for you to talk to the 7 most people.

Snap CSO Imran Khan

Image: snap

Nearly 13 minutes in and were onto the business.

Imran Khan, formerly of Credit Suisse, now Snapchats Chief Strategy Officer outlines their advertising play and ad products.

For Snapchat, its all being the mobile/digital pull to TV budgets. It becomes harder for advertisers to reach the same number of people as they did in the past spend less time watching traditional tv, Khan said.

The description of a typical Snapchat user beyond the word millennial: The people that use Snapchat are curious about the world, embrace change and are into learning new things, Khan said.

Image: snap

Then came the guys from Universal Pictures

Snapchat, like most companies built on advertising, is focused on ad products, ad delivery, measurement and sales channels.

Kenny Mitchell of Gatorade, Chris Watt of Adidas and Doug Neil of Universal Pictures all give their bullish view of Snapchat:

30 percent completion rate on a 7 minute video. You dont get that on the other platforms, Mitchell said.

We have a really collaborative relationship with the guys at Snapchat, Watt said.

We want to have as much real estate as possible, Neil said.

Image: snap

The road to greater profitability

Khan ends his presentation on the note of strategy, pointing out that Snapchat has a long tail future.

Our user growth is driven by our product innovation, Khan said. It takes a while to make great products.

Right now, Snapchat isnt profitable. Enter Chief Financial Officer Andrew Vollero to tell you how thatll change.

Snapchat, again like most companies, has three phrases: user engagement; monetization; profitability.

Snap CFO Andrew Vollero

Image: snap

Snapchat has more than 158 million daily active users. They don’t bother providing monthly numbers. “We believe that daily investment is the most reliable way to understand engagement,” Vollero said.

Unlike Facebook, Snapchat is not after accessibility for all and connecting the world for now. It operates best in areas with “strong wireless networks” and to the benefit of advertisers these are more likely to be people who have “higher disposable income.”

Snapchat, as we said, isn’t a money printing machine. But it doesn’t shy away from admitting that. “We have significant advertising revenue available,” Vollero said.

Snapchat’s gotten a lot of flack for not being profitable, though that’s quite hard when you’re trying to grow rapidly.

Where Snapchat thinks they have an advantage is low infrastructure cost. Vollero positions Snap’s choice to use third-party infrastructure, such as Google Cloud, as a smart business move.

“We can focus on product innovation,” he said.

About 30 minutes in, it’s time for a talk on privacy.

Re-enter Spiegel, who offers up some charming language on how important it is to him.

After Chris Handman, General Counsel at Snapchat, emphasizes their commitment to privacy and how in fact they’re product is built upon that. “We built snapchat to hopefully restore some of that honesty, intimacy,” Handman said.

Image: snap

Snapchat has written its privacy standards, in plain English though Handman forgets to mention that came after Snapchat was sued by the Federal Trade Commission.

Turns out the word of disappear was vague enough to be brought up in court. Snapchat’s messages aren’t completely ephemeral since they’re temporarily saved on Snapchat servers.

“We use Snapchat constantly both in work and in our personal lives, and we handle personal information with the same care as we would for our families,” Handman said.

Image: snap

The remaining minutes of Snapchat’s video are about people.

VP of Communications Mary Ritti shares that the company as a whole is committed to diversity.

Spiegel then highlights a tradition at the company called Council. There, Snapchat employees sit down in a circle and chat openly about their work.

“There’s a really strong sense of not just are we driving numbers, but really making people happy,” he said.

BONUS: Finally the perfect kitchen invention for people who hate making salads

Read more: http://ift.tt/2lqaVpw

from Snapchat just released a 35-minute video about itself

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

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He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

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This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

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“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

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This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

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“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

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That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

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There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

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All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

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