This post will be the summation of everything I've learned from 2018:

What worked.

What didn't work.

What yielded great results.

What yielded craptastic results.

...this is a year-end review to predict what to spend time/resources on in 2018.

So let's try planning out 2018, by reviewing what worked well in 2018. We'll go platform by platform. Let's begin!

Twitter Pro's:

• Still great to hear quick burst of information and facts from people you enjoy.

• Great for interacting with customers and people you're not directly connected to on other social networks.
• When giving speeches, Twitter seems to be the most common way people interact and share your speech.

I love the very curated set of people I follow on Twitter.

I'm a follower of: Elon Musk, Benedict Evans, Max Roser, Neil Degrasse Tyson and a few others. They tend to post interesting quips and learnings in their Tweets which I find interesting.

Since I follow only ~35 people, my Twitter feed is always interesting and informative....and not cluttered with a bunch of self-promotion and random crap I see on platforms like Facebook.

Twitter Con's:

• As a source of website traffic, Twitter super sucks.
• Getting people off Twitter and onto your website is difficult and not very effective.
• It's not required you're a real person like Facebook, so there's even more dumb comments.
• Many people use Twitter as primarily a way to "push" their existing content rather than make new and personalized content for Twitter (I'm guilty of this too).

There's people who post personal updates on Twitter, but MANY people (like me) just use it as a "notification platform" for blog posts and such.

For example, I have a personal account (@NevMed), and I wouldn't even follow myself because the account is more about pushing notifications than creating unique content.

For this reason a lot of Twitter accounts are just self-promotion to older content.

2018 Twitter Course Of Action:

I will continue to use Twitter for entertainment and blog updates, but won't be focusing on it as a source of traffic or revenue.

As a source of website traffic, Twitter is super crappy. It's the lowest driver of traffic of any social platform. HOWEVER, it's a great tool for keeping up with people you enjoy following!

Here's some of my Twitter stats for a 30 day time frame....this is the HIGHEST amount of traffic I got from Twitter all year in a 30 day period.

For some reference, other sources of traffic in the same time frame sent 100,000+ visitors and 3,000+ email signups. So under 500 website visits and 12 email signups is relatively low.

Facebook is super-clearly the reigning king of social media. Other platforms (such as Instagram) that are rapidly growing are OWNED by Facebook too.

Facebook Pro's:

• Literally everything now has Facebook integrations (I prefer logging into most services/apps via Facebook as it's faster & safer than widely spreading usernames and passwords to more locations).

• I think people undervalue Facebook's track record of reliability, site uptime, and speed.

• It's one of the most accurate and specific advertising platform on the planet.

• They actively venture into new businesses. They bought Instagram which was genius, and also Oculus Rift (which may not be important right now, but they are ahead of the game in virtual reality).

• Google tried to compete and Facebook still pummeled them. Not many people in the world can say that.

• For most people in the world, Facebook is where they spend most of their time.

• The Facebook Pixel (a little snippet of code) is on almost every major website on Earth. Facebook knows where you go, and can serve up ads specific to those results.

• Facebook Groups literally took over the function of forums on the internet, and there are thriving groups for pretty much EVERY subject ever.

Facebook Con's:

• Browsing Facebook is fun, but I often browse the newsfeed for a few minutes then get fed up and wish I hadn't wasted my time.

• Products like Facebook Pages or Facebook Groups often get crazy high traction, but then as more people join the bandwagon, your visibility goes down, and you have to "pay to play." This means you should ALWAYS have a backup way of reaching your customers.

• Facebook is a "Walled Garden" and you must only play by their rules. This isn't necessarily a "bad" thing, but it's a thing.

2018 Facebook Course Of Action:

I will continue investing time and money into Facebook in the form of Groups, Ads, Posts and Pages.

I find it highly unlikely Facebook will lose it's grip on the social networking world in the next decade. In fact it'll most likely become MORE powerful as stuff like virtual reality starts rolling around.

A GREAT fiction book to read, and pretend the main character is Mark Zuckerberg: Ready Player One (all new employees at Facebook-owned Oculus Rift are required to read this book).

Messenger Bots are little chat programs inside Facebook Messenger that were extremely overhyped in 2017. I think they can be great for some purposes, but not for everything.

Facebook Messenger Bot Pro's:

• Almost everyone uses Facebook and Facebook Messenger, so the audience for these is 1 Billion+ people.

• They are simple to build, and can allow users to "interact" with you or your store without having a human sit there and do it.

• Since text messaging is such a common part of everyday life for most people, Messenger Bots are relatively intuitive to use since it's like sending text messages.

Facebook Messenger Bot Con's:

• While it's touted that open rates are high, unsubscribe rates are sky high also.

• You have to be careful about pushing existing content to people via Messenger, as messenger is a very "personal" mode of communication, and people are quick to flag you if you're spamming their personal messages.

• There was a lot of hype (which quickly died down) about Messenger Bots that if you added bots to your site, it was somehow a better experience.

• Bots are more just a way to interact with existing customers, not necessarily a way to attract new customers.

2018 Facebook Messenger Bot Course Of Action:

Messenger Bots seem to be going through what most things in the Hype Phase go through:

They get overly hyped in the beginning, hype dies down, then eventually useful applications start popping up, then it slowly starts to surge again:

So for 2018 I don't think I'll be jumping deep into Facebook Messenger until I see some truly helpful utilities built on top of it. There seems to be potential though.

In the early days of social networking, Facebook realized "Photos" were the most popular thing on the platform. Almost overnight Facebook became the dominant photo platform on the web.

Then along came Instagram. A photo-sharing app with stupidly-simple filters that made your phone photos look great. It gained traction FAST, and in 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for $1 Billion.

At the time that price seemed CRAZY, but now Instagram has 600 Million+ users and is the 2nd most popular social network....so now that price seems like a bargain.

Instagram Pro's:

• The #1 focus of Instagram is photos, so "visual" industries do well on it (food, fashion, fitness, lifestyle etc).

• Some people become famous on Instagram and can translate that popularity to other businesses.

• My friend Eric Bandholz gets lots of attention and leads from Instagram on his BeardBrand Instagram Page that's filled with.....you guessed it....pictures of dudes with beards!

• A client Neal has 90,000+ followers for his barber scheduling software (@GoPanache) and 1.2million followers on their other Instagram (@TheBarberPost), both of which they get lots of clients from.

• Instagram is so easy to update, that you don't have to put in a massive amount of effort to keep it fresh.

Instagram Con's:

• Browsing Instagram makes me feel sad, and generally feels like a waste of time.

• The metrics (such as "hearts" and "impressions") seem to be WILDLY inflated.

• Some people who are "Instagram Famous" tend to have a hard time branching out to different business models.

• Some people who are "Instagram Famous" have had book deals cancelled, TV deals cancelled, as their Instagram fame sometimes doesn't translate off the platform.

• Without actively promoting quite a bit on Instagram, it's now harder to build a following as the platform has become larger.

2018 Instagram Course Of Action:

Great for "vanity" metrics such as "views" and "hearts" and raw amounts of comments.

Great for food, dogs, showing how baller you are, and

Bad for conveying large amounts of information.

Bad for paying customers.

*NOTE* Let's start off saying I am NOT a regular SnapChat user.....so you take my advice with a solid grain of salt.

Snapchat Pro's:

• SnapChat is a "cool" brand.

• Feedback on SnapChat is quick.

• SnapChat feels more private and personal than other social networks like Facebook and Instagram.

• SnapChat does super well with the 18-24 year old audience.

Snapchat Con's:

• It's difficult to outsource all your SnapChat stuff.

• Facebook has started to emulate some of SnapChat's primary features, and since they have more capital and a larger user base already, this is super dangerous to SnapChat.

  

• SnapChat is a completely walled garden. If you post a bunch of stuff on SnapChat, unlike Instagram you can't even view it on the web. Everything only exists within the SnapChat app.

2018 Snapchat Course Of Action:

Personally I'm not gonna do anything on SnapChat.

SnapChat is a platform that rewards lots of activity, and I'm not as good/interested in that.

I don't like constantly posting on social, and I'm not a huge fan of consuming too much social stuff. Therefore it's unlikely a person like me would thrive on SnapChat.

Pinterest Pro's:

• Does really well in visual categories (Food, Fashion, Health, Design).

• Great for aggregating collections of stuff, but not for going deeper into subjects.

• A lot of clients get tons of Pinterest traffic, and it's usually quality traffic.

Pinterest Con's:

• Primarily a visual platform.

• They still prefer to keep users ON the platform rather than send them off.

• It's better for hosting photos than written content or video content.

2018 Pinterest Course Of Action:

For my specific purpose (aka copywriting) I will not be focusing on Pinterest as a means of traffic. HOWEVER, if I were in a health, food, fashion, or lifestyle industry I would 100% explore posting on Pinterest more.

Medium:

Medium is a simple blogging platform. You can publish an article on Medium very easily, and if it goes viral, it gets more attention and shared.

Medium Pro's:

• Super easy to publish an article on Medium.

• Very simple editor to add text, pictures, and videos.

• If your article starts getting traction, it gets showed to more people.

• An article can POTENTIALLY go very viral on Medium.

• If someone wants to "try their hand" at writing articles, this is the fastest way to get published online (and helps you skip the whole "making a website" part of the process.

Medium Con's:

• I don't know a single "Medium celebrity" like I know many Instagram or YouTube celebrities.

• If you spend hella time on writing articles regularly, then why not have the attention directed at your own blog?

• All promotion to your articles goes to Medium....not YOU.

2018 Medium Course Of Action:

Through many consults I've seen relatively poor engagement and off-site linking from Medium. I kind of re-published an article on Medium to see what would happen, it flopped. This is similar to what I've seen with many consulting clients.

For anyone considering starting writing articles on the internet, I would rather have them start a simple Blogger.com blog instead. This has multiple benefits such as:

• Your content is your own, not Medium's.

• You get to explore different formatting and layouts, rather than be pigeonholed into Medium's aesthetic.

• You can insert ads if you want.

• If your blog happens to "catch on" and get popular, you can start building it right away, and not having to "transition" from Medium to a new blog.

Medium originally rocketed to fame because posting on there would often yield TONS of readership almost instantly:

But like any platform, it undergoes "Platform Saturation" where more-and-more people create content, so it gets harder-and-harder to get eyeballs.

LinkedIn:

Hollllyyyy shit, something is happening over at LinkedIn!

LinkedIn Pro's:

• LinkedIn got smart and just started copying the hell out of Facebook....yielding MUCH higher engagement, and turning it into a much better social network than before.

• Since LinkedIn just recently started making these changes, it's hungry for content and actively promoting posts with high engagement.

• What worked 5 years ago on Facebook seems to be working on LinkedIn now.

• Since LinkedIn is where people associate with their "work", the comments on articles are far less stupid than Facebook comments! As someone who gets easily irritated with the mind-numbingly-stupid comments on most social platforms, this is a welcome change.

• Many LinkedIn Groups aren't super active with posts, so LinkedIn still allows you to spam the living shit out of these groups with no consequences!

• Can more easily connect with people over LinkedIn than many other platforms.

• Many people who don't actively maintain a Facebook or Twitter account will often have a LinkedIn account they pay attention to.

• LinkedIn is a crucial part of recruiting and researching people. I use "Rapportive" on Chrome, and anytime someone emails me, Rapportive pulls their LinkedIn information in the sidebar, and instantly you can "see" who you're emailing with!

LinkedIn Con's:

• The content tends to be more business focused, so you'll see endless links to "thrilling" articles such as "3 Ways B2B Salespeople Can Increase Outbound Sales."

• Not many huge con's really.

2018 LinkedIn Course Of Action:

I will be publishing 2-3 articles per week on my LinkedIn profile in 2018.

I've already started embarking on regularly posting LinkedIn articles, and the results have been very promising:

• Re-published article about copywriting books: (913 views | 52 likes | 6 comments | 19 shares).

• Re-published article about headlines: (797 views | 46 likes | 4 comments | 7 shares).

• Re-published article about Fiverr: (410 views | 30 likes | 5 comments | 5 shares).

Something is quietly happening at LinkedIn. In recent times LinkedIn stopped being just a page for your work, and started adding lots of Facebook-like functionality such as the News Feed.

I would 100% start updating LinkedIn if you haven't.

Prediction for 2018: Keep posting and sharing on LinkedIn. It seems like a legit avenue for growth.

Google Plus:

In 2011 Google ventured into the social networking world With "Google Plus" (Or Google+)....I never knew which way to actually write it.

It was widely thought this would be a Facebook killer, since an internet superpower was throwing resources behind it.

However in a few years they announced Google Plus was (sort-of-kind-of) dead. It's still alive in a small way since everyone with a Google account technically already has a Google Plus account, but as a source of traffic, it doesn't seem significant anymore.

Google Plus Pro's:

• It showed that even a superpower on the internet can fail at something.

Google Plus Con's:

• It showed that even if you are huge and powerful, you can still fail at beating an incumbent.

2018 Google Plus Course Of Action:

Well....at this point probably nothing. When I batch-update my social media posts using Buffer, it's linked to Google Plus, but outside of that I don't use it.

YouTube:

A good video can (often) educate someone on a subject faster than text, so video is a very popular platform. With technological advances helped by Google, YouTube was able to rocket into the #1 position for video on the web.

The word "video" and "YouTube" are pretty much synonymous.

YouTube Pro's:

• 2nd largest search engine behind Google.

• Highest amount of time on site of nearly any website.

• 1.5 Billion+ users.

• Basically the de facto system on the internet for video.

• Largest base of custom content creators.

• Has created a whole new generation of "YouTube celebrities" whose fame is even more personal than many A-list celebs.

• No barrier to entry.

• It's free, and you can actually earn money for your videos.

• Still lots of niches where there's not a lot of great content.

YouTube Con's:

• Lots of other people on the platform means you're not guaranteed traffic for no reason, you still have to promote.

• Still have to abide by YouTube policies (although they are pretty fair, so it's not too big a deal).

• Hmmm...not too many other downsides.

2018 YouTube Course Of Action:

Anecdotally, most people will know me from videos I did years ago. And lots of people want more videos.

I think posting more videos would be a good thing if it made sense. I do mainly videos in the paid portion of KopywritingKourse, but not on the free side as much.

So, as a course of action for 2018 regarding YouTube:

Possibly start posting more?

Email:

Email Pro's:

• Still the dominant form of customer generation from an existing clientele.

• Still drives SIIGGGNNIIIIIIIFFFIICCCANNNTTT revenue for a lot of companies.

• More and more companies are realizing the value of growing their email list.

• You can "sell" over email more than other platforms as email is an "optional checking" system.

• There are still tons of new companies who rely almost exclusively on their email list to interact with customers.

• Email is one of the few ways to "own" the customers contact (versus something like Instagram/Facebook/SnapChat where the platform owns that).

Email Con's:

• Inboxes are getting crowded as more people catch onto email.

• It's sometimes hard for people to write "good" emails (Hence why I started The KopywritingKourse)

• Not too much functionality in email still, besides viewing images, gifs, and clicking links.

2018 Email Course Of Action:

Full steam ahead!!! Every company I've seen get acquired lately, it was often because of their customer base (aka email list).

Pretty much 100% of big companies I've worked with have started to double down on gathering email addresses, and sending good emails to nurture customers.

However, like any medium that gets more crowded, you start noticing a saturation. This makes it harder to get read without great content.

Millennial-focused companies are still heavily using email also, so email isn't just for "old people." For example, TheHustle is a rapidly growing email newsletter focused on Millennials, and is totally crushing it with just email.

Podcasting:

Holy crap.....something is happening in the podcast world. Even when people describe themselves you'll hear stuff like, "I like long walks on the beach, dogs, and listening to podcasts."

Podcasting is becoming part of the mainstream.

It has the same power as listening to the radio 30 years ago, but with FAR more options and micro-niches! You can get drunk with a friend one night, record a conversation on your phone, and have it listed as a podcast on iTunes in the morning.

Podcasting Pro's:

• Pretty much zero barrier to entry.

• You already have conversations all the time, some of them worth recording and publishing.

• It's allowing "non-traditional" people like comedians who can't score network TV deals to publish their material to the world.

• You can passively listen to a podcast in the background whilst driving, commuting, or doing chores. Contrast that with video which requires to you watch it.

• You can choose to learn new things with business podcasts, or just "relax and unwind" by listening to nonsensical and funny podcasts.

Podcasting Con's:

• Singular format (audio only) works well for certain type of shows, but not others (like a COOKING show would be harder to make as a podcast than a video series).

• It still takes effort and talent to stand out from the crowd and create a popular podcast.

• Advertising on podcasts is still in the stone age. No dynamic ads just yet (although I think that will change within a year or two).

• It's still hard to accurately track listenership. "The Number of Downloads" a podcast has is often a BS statistic.

• Just like personal websites, the overwhelmingly large majority of podcasts have almost no traffic and listenership.

• Podcasting is still work. It takes a lot of work to schedule guests, edit, and regularly put out quality episodes.

2018 Podcasting Course Of Action:

I don't think I would start a podcast unless I was going to put 70% or more of my energy into it. A lot of people half-ass their podcast, then abandon it later. However, there's cases where people dive in and become very successful at it:

I heard Tim Ferriss say: "My podcast now has 10X the annual revenue of all my books combined."

That's pretty crazy!

I personally listen to a helluvalot of podcasts!

• Planet Money: 20-ish minute NPR show where they discuss money, economic theories, and do experiments in a fun one. In my opinion this is the best produced and consistently interesting podcast out there.

• A16Z: Straight-to-the-point interviews by the venture firm Andreesen Horowitz. Makes you feel like you live in Silicon Valley without actually being there.

• The Tim Ferriss Show: Lots of great interviews with cool people, and I always find interesting nuggets in these interviews.

• How I Built This: Guy Raz of NPR gets great entrepreneur guests on the show, and takes you through the stories and struggles how they got started.

• 99% Invisible: A well-produced show that discusses wide-ranging topics of design. Most episodes I like, some are un-interesting to me.

• Joe Rogan Podcast: Sometimes I don't want to listen to business-intensive material, so I throw on Joe Rogan as he talks with comedians and other random people about random shit. I wouldn't even call them "interviews" as he more just "hangs out" with the guest and talks about COMPLETELY RANDOM things. It's easy to listen in the background when my brain feels lazy.

• Noah Kagan Presents: One of my bestest buddies Noah hosts this podcast and has a quick-and-to-the-point style (and he also edits out the boring parts of conversations).

• Marketing School: This is hosted by Neil Patel and Eric Siu. Each episode is only like 3 to 7 minutes long, and keeps the advice very simple. I actually really like the format and listen frequently.

• Freakonomics Radio: This kind of reminds me of a slightly-less-well-produced Planet Money. Some episodes are interesting. Some feel too long and tedious.

Despite me semi-bashing some of these podcasts.....all this content is FREE!!!

Any platform, anywhere in the world....you can access all of these podcasts which is pretty amazing. I think it's just getting started too.....

Podcasting is transitioning into mainstream entertainment.

Oprah, Joe Rogan, Bill Burr, Lance Armstrong....all of these major characters have large podcasts now.

Podcasting is going through the same "shift" I saw blogging go through around 2007: It started shifting from a side-hobby for people, to the central focus of many companies.

Prediction for 2018: Someone will popularize “Dynamic ads” for podcasts. This would be a major boost to podcasters, as they don’t have to sell a permanent spot in their podcast for all of history like they currently do.

For example if you listen to old Planet Money or Joe Rogan podcasts from 5 years ago, they’ll still have sponsorships for some now defunct companies. With "dynamic ads" a podcaster will be able to place a spot in their podcast for updated ads.....so even if you listen to old episodes, you'll only hear updated and new advertisements.

This would make it FAR EASIER for people to buy advertising on podcasts on a large scale, rather than strike individual deals with individual podcasters for each advertisement.

Live Video can mean stuff like Facebook Live and Periscope, where you use your phone to record video and it's live-broadcasted to anyone who wants to watch.

Live Video Pro's:

• The technology to pull out a pocket sized video camera and instantly stream high quality video to a gigantic audience is ABSOLUTELY BONKERS. This was not even in people's wildest dreams 10 or 20 years ago.

• Whenever there's been major disasters or events, people start live streaming, so first hand accounts of the action travels instantly across the world.

• Live video has essentially allowed people to do a "webinar" at anytime, without any of the hassle of a traditional webinar.

• Platforms such as Facebook Live Video can be used as a substitute to traditional webinars, and get a TON of comments/shares/likes.

• I think live video is a great avenue for recording content at a moments notice. If you want to do an interview, instead of arranging for a fancy recording, you can record from your phone and broadcast to the world instantly.

Live Video Con's:

• Generally the production quality of a live video isn't super high.

• Because there's no editing going on, videos can be longer and more rambling than a well produced video.

• Since live videos are generally on social platforms like Facebook, there's a helluvalot of distractions to the user. This means people might tune in for a few seconds or minutes before skipping out and clicking some way more interesting cat video. Whereas traditional webinars tend to retain a very large amount of people till the very end, live videos generally lose people very quickly.

2018 Live Video Course Of Action:

There was a glut of people diving in and doing live videos all the time, but many of them stopped because whilst the "noise" generated (likes/shares/comments) was high, it didn't often lead to sales.

Also a well-produced video can often live a longer life (3-5 years) than a shabbily done selfie live video.

However, I think live video is here to stay, will continue to get better, and is still a fantastic (and low cost) part of a marketing toolkit.

Dang....those are some pretty good answers. A long time ago I stopped trying to re-invent the wheel in marketing stuff, and came up with a concept call, "JUST COPY WHATEVER NOAH DOES."

I think this would be good advice for others too :)

Thanks for the answers Noah!

Super interesting insights. Especially breaking up content to be native on each platform, and keeping the traffic there.

Thanks for the insights Sam!

I will be following this advice myself.

Thanks for the answers Nate!

That last one is more of a person goal than a marketing goal, although it sounded pretty important so I left that one in :)

Thanks for the answers Tucker!

Desirable Skills and Trends for 2018:

What I'm talking about here is what's buzzing at the moment.

In my sphere, here's what I see:

• BitCoin

• Crypto Currency

• Virtual Reality

• Augmented Reality

What I didn't expect was HOW MUCH larger the term "BitCoin" was over any of those other topics:

WOW.

I think the interest in crypto currencies is because:

1.) It has to do with MONEY. Something everyone wants more of.

2.) There are these crazy stories about teenagers buying BitCoin and becoming millionaires, or people bulldozing garbage dumps to find their old hard drive with their old BitCoin keys. These stories are like movie-worthy!

3.) Anyone can buy a crypto currency in 2 seconds online. Whereas stuff like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality require expensive hardware and lots of clunky software to experience it correctly.

4.) It's highly likely a form of crypto currency will become the standard for nearly every country in the future.

5.) There's going to be a metric ass-ton of people promoting bullshit crypto products and "opportunities" soon, and this will likely drive up hype. Currently since there is pretty much zero regulation on this industry, technically these people aren't doing anything illegal.

If you run an obvious "Pump and Dump" scam in the stock market, you can get caught for illegal activity.

If you run an obvious "Pump and Dump" scam on some "coin" you invented, technically you've done nothing illegal (yet).

I'm sure there's going to continue to be a crazy amount of coverage on this subject in the near future.

However one of the CLEAR things I can see happening in the near future is the augmentation of learning, gaming, and work through forms of augmented reality.

I'm not sure EXACTLY how this will take place, but I've seen verrrryyyy strong evidence and proof that it's happening.

-Nolan Bushnell said at VR conference I went to: "I believe when the "Ready Player One" movie comes out, it will be the first time the general publish sees the power of virtual Reality."

-Here's my notes from a Robert Scoble presentation about AR: [Image of notes]

-I visited the Apple Spaceship campus and they had the most awesome AR demo I've ever seen. Now the current version you have to view through an iPad, but eventually this functionality will be on your face in the form of glasses.

Sincerely,

President Neville N. Medhora

P.S. What did YOU see work (or NOT work) in 2017? Leave a comment below!