Excel Influencers

👋 Hey, Must Readers! I trust you had a good week.

This week’s Must Reads Newsletter has 11 must-read stories & an exclusive microblog about why podcasters have a discovery battle.

As a reminder: Each week Must Reads shares stories you have unlikely read, seen in your feeds or on your messenger of choice.

Must Read Articles Of The Week

1. Why Consolidation Is Coming 👁 One guarantee in business - consolidation, find out why you need to be prepared and ahead of the upcoming wave of consolidation - Read the full article

2. Do You Need An External Profile 📄 A challenge many people have once they get into a management position is how to consider their external profile, here is a short guide helping you to understand if you should create an external profile (introverts this will be a good read for you) - Read the full article 

3. The Marketers Behind The Adult Social Networks 🧠 Ever wondered if there were Marketing agencies and consultants helping adult stars (OF) to create content and help them to grow and ultimately make more money? Well, the answer is yes and they are smartly (whatever your own opinion is) helping to create standout adult stars and make a good living - Read the full article 

4. The Excel Influencers Taking Over Social 🧮 How influencers of productivity apps and excel are taking over your feed and enabling salaries and even creating millionaires through teaching how to be better with software - Read the full article 

5. The Math(s) Behind Cancel Culture 💭There is an art and dark science behind which side you land on with cancel culture, why some people seem to get away with what they’ve done and others seem to have to disappear for smaller behaviours. Wired dived into the maths of it and it might just (as always) come down to money and reputation management - Read the full article 

6. Creating An Adored Murder 📺 How Netflix builds Joe, the adored serial killer is created and what tricks you use to create an affinity to a character like him and Love - Read the full article (FWIW You series 3 was great)

7. Nature Is Amazing 😻 In recent years science has come under fire, but something that many haven’t seen is the steps made in non-headlines/news-making items. There has been a breakthrough in wood being able to rival steel for cutlery - Read the full article 

8. Cricket Fighting Is BIG Business 🦗 Animal fighting is big business around the world, in China cricket fighting sees millions spent on two tiny crickets fighting each other - Read the full article

9. Internet Culture Spotlight a. How Meme’s Are Being Used To Challenge 🇧🇷  Brazil’s President is being challenged by meme creators to tackle his political tactics and by all accounts, it’s working! It is a tactic we will see happen in the rest of the world, away from mainstream social apps and more on chat apps - Read the full article b. How Emoji’s Mean Different Things 👀 Longtime readers of must reads will know my affinity to emojis and understand them and their reactions is a job in itself, here is a good article breaking down what emoji’s mean across the world - Read the full article 

10. Company Culture Corner: Here are 2 good reads on 4 day working (work weeks) A. How to pitch your 4 day work week when suffering burnout B. Front’s approach to 4 day work weeks, flexible Friday’s 

11. Airbnb Gift Cards? 💳 Major Travel supplier Airbnb is now offering gift cards, this shouldn’t be a surprise but will be an interesting branding (Marketing) exercise, a way for hosts to re-invest in the platform and for guests to psychologically save a little money (the kicker they don’t expire unlike other gift cards) - Read about it

The Future Of Social Media? The way we could build better social media - how we can do social differently and have actual conversations with audio, video, meme’s and screenshots (listen on Spotify or listen on apple)

Looking For A New Role?

EA or SEO? Good friend of Must Reads Beth Gladstone and her new microagency BuiltbyContent is looking for an executive assistant and a SEO keyword research specialist.

Are you a Product Manager? Are you looking for a new challenge or go on your next growth journey? Lewis is looking 👇

TikTok Of The Week 😝 

Microblog: Platform Benefit - Content Discovery Problem

There Is Now 3.2million Podcasts On Spotify

Impressively Spotify announced in their quarterly earnings they now host 3.2 million podcasts on their platform. This is a huge number, an opportunity for Spotify, a disadvantage for creators.

We always get to this point. It is now not a quantity issue nor a quality issue. It becomes a discovery issue (for podcasters aka creators) & then comes the demand for amplification.

Spotify’s business opportunity: Play the Google search ad game (same came to YouTube), play the Facebook page reach game, AKA Podcasters will have to pay for discovery and then subscriptions (listens / downloads are not automatic so you comparable to how Google PPC works) directly with Spotify and their predicted 400m users by the end of 2021. If you are a creator in any space, it is important to really get an audience who supports and amplifies your content otherwise growth will be limited and likely throttled by these platforms. FYI Spotify’s third quarter ad revenue rose 75% & this is connected to podcasts.

Thanks for reading today.

If you like to discuss any articles, have questions or an article recommendation, I’m always free for Must Readers - just hit reply.

Until next week’s Must Reads, go well and be safe.

Danny Denhard