What You Need to Know Today: December 2
Good afternoon, Early Risers!
Here’s what you need to know
TECH
Mark Zuckerberg is NOT donating his fortune to charity. You probably heard Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan will give 99% of their Facebook shares — currently worth about $45 billion — to charitable purposes. While this news is true, Tech Insider points out that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — where all this money will go — is an LLC company. Meaning it can invest donations into other businesses and nonprofits. If you’re rolling your eyes (I am), know this: the real story here is about young people honing their giving chops. Zuckerberg’s response to his announcement sums it up perfectly, “First is that we have a lot to learn and giving, like anything else, takes practice to do effectively. So if we want to be good at it in 10-15 years, we should start now.” #Truth
And the most-streamed artist of 2015 is… racking up 1.8 billion streams from 46 million listeners — and obliterating the 860 million streams that earned Ed Sheeran the top spot last year, Drake is this year’s most-streamed artist globally according to Spotify. How did Drizzy do it? AdAge breaks down the best music marketing of 2015 and gives us an idea. Hint: “Hotline” memes FTW.
CAREER
Little-known formula for writing viral content. Content marketers are either going to love this or hate it. Only because it requires a lot of work. Assya Barrette is a millennial go-getter who — with the help of Unsettle.com’s Sarah Peterson — found a formula to write articles that go viral. How viral are we talking? One single article Assya wrote was shared over 130,800 times. Click here to find out how she did it.
+ Assya is currently offering a FREE Instagram course that teaches you how to turn your Insta into a list-building machine.
“Best 3 min read all day!” An article on Medium that’s trending right now is “Why Nobody Will Steal Your Sh**y Start-up Idea.” The gist: an idea is worth 1% and execution is 99%. It’s an OK article, and has some funny GIFs. But what makes this article engaging (1,362 likes and 86 comments) is one controversial point the author makes (see if you can find it). I suspect this was done on purpose. It’s a good lesson for when you’re writing articles or speeches to mix in one overly-strong point that tests your audience’s pulse. It doesn’t always have to be clickbaity or controversial. The purpose is to throw in something that’s different from your “control.” This is why Dan Kennedy recommends you script your speeches out so you can split-test different parts.
LIFESTYLE
Founders: The moniker given to post-millennials (kids born after 2000) by MTV. “You have a whole generation that is going to represent the extreme endpoint of where millennials were going in many respects: risk-averse, team-oriented, well-behaved,” says TIME.
The most Instagrammed places in America. This is cool!
+ Parents are naming their babies after Instagram filters. Lux and Valencia are among the top-names list about to be released in 2016.
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#NOWYOUKNOW
Why Christmas is the Super Bowl of British Advertising
Here is this year’s top ad by reigning champ John Lewis.
Another contender for most-tear-jerking-Christmas ad is German supermarket Edeka.
Which ad did you like best? Let us know in the comments.
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