the Clikk -Mad Skillz, No Billz

Launch, Rank & Increase Reviews for Your Amazon Listings in this free training.

Today: what is Social Influencing? Plus, where to get free online training, and five free niche image websites to swipe from.

But first…

“We found that everything that we’ve been hearing about TikTok, all the rumors [about growth], it was true,”

~ Kevin King, lead of client analytics for Kochava, confirming that TikTok’s meteoric growth is verifiable. Advertisers have been slow to work with the Chinese company fearing fake clicks and views.  Is it time to take the Tok more seriously?

TRENDS

Mad Skillz, No Billz

Feeling Isolated? Get Smart With Free Online Learning

While we’re stuck inside, scientists are working around the clock to outsmart COVID-19. But for us non-virologists, sheltering in place may offer the opportunity for some continuing education that we just never seemed to get around to. Shout out to most parents: if you’re keeping them alive…

If you do have some time on your hands, a lot of businesses and institutions are stepping up with free trials. Here are a few of our favorites.

Mos’ Moz
Now through May 31, you can access courses at Moz Academy for free with the cold “WEGOTTHIS.” Brush up on the ol’ SEO, bone up on backlinks, learn to pitch clients on SEO strategies and onboard them when you hear the sweet sound of “yes.”

Cloud Me, Baby, Two More Times
Adobe is offering current subscribers two months of free access to the whole shebang, so now’s the time to perfect your Photoshop techniques, stock up on stock images, or investigate the intricacies of InDesign. Lifehacker has the skinny: Sign in to your Adobe ID on Adobe.com, then go to “Plans” and click to cancel your current subscription—but don’t follow through. While in the cancellation process, look for the “Offers” link and you should see the special discount. Click the offer, and the two months will be automatically applied to your account.

Let LinkedIn Hook You Up
The networking giant has made 16 of its LinkedIn Learning courses available at the low, low price of zero. Most of them relate to remote work and the tools used to facilitate it, but we could all benefit from “Managing Stress For Positive Change.”

You Don’t Need Backups. You’re Going To Harvard
Educate your inner Ivy Leaguer and head to Harvard. Or Yale. Or Penn’s Wharton School of Business. From Philosophy to FinTech, you can take more than 400 Ivy League courses online and for free. It’s an Elle (Woods) of a deal.

See you at the Freshman Social!

CLIKK THIS…

[FREE TRAINING] AMAZON + CHAT MARKETING: The awesome folks at ManyChat are doing a live training on launching, ranking, and increasing reviews using chatbots. You’ll learn the one-two punch for product launch ranking campaigns, eight Amazon SEO strategies, and the top two methods for growing your number of reviews. Plus, they’re giving away free templates so you can implement immediately. Get registered here. *

5 (FREE) NICHE IMAGE SITES: Gratisography dubs itself “the world’s quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures,” which is accurate (there are roughly 1000). NewOldStock has an impressive collection of vintage photos from public archives (their Twitter is another option for browsing). PicJumbo has a couple thousand good images mostly geared toward food. For landscapes and architecture, check out GetRefe and their 800ish freebies. Looking for images of the cosmos? NASA allows informational and educational use of their images.

FACELIFT BY FORCE: We spend lots of time on Reddit and Wikipedia, but both websites have some aesthetic deficits (read: they’re ugly). Fortunately, both sites can instantly feel a decade newer if you take two seconds and press a couple of buttons. Redditors here might know about Reddit Enhancement Suite—which, by the way, is also helpful if you’re using Reddit for work—but far fewer people know about WikiWand, which gives Wikipedia a major cosmetic overhaul a la Medium. These are the rare sort of aesthetic upgrade which actually improves the whole experience, not just the polish.

* This is a sponsored post.

SHOPTALK

Building influence on social media channels

Yesterday we introduced the four (very) different social media marketing activities: 

1 – Social Listening – Monitoring and responding to customer service and reputation management issues on the social web.

2 – Social Influencing – Establishing authority on the social web, often through the distribution and sharing of valuable content.

3 – Social Networking – Finding and associating with authoritative and influential individuals and brands on the social web.

4 – Social Selling – Generating leads and sales from existing customers and prospects on the social web.

We talked about Social Listening yesterday. You can read that article here.

Today, let’s talk about Social Influencing.

If your business goals are to increase engagement, authority, social followers, or website traffic you should have a Social Influencing campaign in place.

You know the drill. Create educational, inspirational, and/or entertaining content and distribute it to your network on channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

If you’re new to this game, pick one content type to produce and one channel to begin distributing. Content types include blog articles, videos (short or long form), podcasts, and images like infographics or photographs.

Remember that Social Influencing is a very different activity from the other three social media marketing activities. The distribution of content role might live on your marketing or content team while Social Listening might live in the Customer Service department. If your company is smaller, a single person might be handling all four social media marketing activities.

Here’s an example of language learning company, Rosetta Stone, publishing a piece of content to Instagram to build engagement and authority:

ZOOMED IN

This physician has been in the news a lot lately. Can you name him?

Hint: This photo was taken in 1989.

Answer at the bottom of this email.

OH, AND THIS…

Scientists have discovered that mice have a range of facial expressions linked to their emotions.

Or maybe it’s just Resting Rat Face.

Full story here. Say “Cheese!”

‘ZOOMED IN’ ANSWER: Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

This isn’t Fauci’s first rodeo. In fact, he’s served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, including making tremendous contributions to HIV/AIDS research. Here’s Fauci briefing President Ronald Reagan on the AIDS epidemic in 1987.