It’s Thursday, yes Must Reads is coming to you on a Thursday - blame the bank holiday the majority of you in 🇬🇧 and some of you in 🇺🇸 have probably forgotten about.

👍Hit Of The Week 👍:

Something light-hearted to make you smile. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reassures New Zealand’s “kids” that the tooth fairy and the easter bunny are essential workers and will be able to work.

😍 The Must-Reads Of The Week 😍

This week's handpicked Must Reads newsletter is just over 950 words and is a 7-minute read.

• 🙌 Here are 10 great things you can do at home (& mostly for free)

• ✅ Why messy people get stuff done

• 🎥 A New York bike messenger (Mike Ross special) has been live-streaming his experience on Twitch, be warned it is oddly addictive & good seeing NYC so quiet 

• 🕹 Here is how gaming should learn from social media to remove hate out of gaming 

• 💯 I have updated last weeks popular post - Marketing, Growth and Advertising tips 💯 And this week, great minds must have thought alike; 1. HBO has released new backgrounds to use including GoT and Succession and 2. Pepsi is acting as an enabler and sponsoring Lady Gaga’s fundraising concert on the 18th. You can even get your favourite Tiger King Zoom background here

• 👏 I have been recommended the Anti-CEO TED talk a number of times this week, it is brilliant, send it around, share it with your senior leadership team.

• 📰 Deez Links is a popular journalist who’s newsletter is one of my daily go to’s, Delia has written an article on whether paywalls should be up and how dependent news sites are on the support of their readers 

• ⭐️ This is brilliant and such a powerful skill - the secret life of an anonymous speechwriter to the stars 

• 🖼 Here are 8 things the Oatmeal has learnt 

• 😆 If emails had meetings was one of the most creative, and funniest videos this week TikTok has leaped in popularity and videos like this has helped changed its perception. Enjoy the creativie.

• 💰 Growth: Deep-dive into how Canva got to 15m customers with my TLDR; their free, freemium and premium offers

• 🚖 Still not sure on influencer marketing, here is how Lyft worked with influencers to create great & powerful campaigns

• 🐋 This week twitter had one of the most interesting/weird trending topics, how blowing up a whale is similar to stay at home

• 💭 WhatsApp has rolled out two important changes this week, the 1st: is limiting the amount of forwarding of messages (fake news) and 2nd: enabled group calls of 4 or fewer people. Zoom really has got under Facebook’s skin and you will see by the many growth tests Facebook have released in the last five days. FWIW Whatsapp groups can have 256 people in it and status can be seen for 24 hours by your whole address book, so if it can be abused.

• ❓Did you know Facebook and Instagram's idea to copy Snapchat stories came from an 18-year-old enginner?

• 📖 There is also a good book excerpt Sarah Freir from her up and coming book, why Mark Zuckerberg’s jealousy held back Instagram and forced its founders to leave.

• 📍Local and location data has been vital in the last ten to twelve years, this week Foursquare and Factual joined forces Why is this important? Both brands made significant money and the ability to understand, interrupt and offer insights and actions based on behaviour is well worth the investment, especially in months to come

• 🖊 An Amazon worker who organised a walkout wrote an open letter to Amazon leaders about how to keep their employees safe 

• ⚽️ Missing live sports? Well esports (live streaming gaming) has skyrocketed in recent weeks With all live sports (apart from a debatable decision for UFC 249 to allow go ahead and securing an island to arrange fights back to back) canceled until further notice, many athletes have jumped over to livestreaming and using their clout for good causes.

💯 5 Tips 💯

This weeks five tips comes from one of my go-to SEOs & friends Carl Hendy, Carl shares his five tips for the current environment. Go and connect with Carl on LinkedIn.

1. Google has made it easier for you to get your company announcements regarding COVID-19 directly into the search results - Google Webmaster Link

2. If SEO resource is low use content/product/customer support teams to rewrite and improve existing content that will help improve SEO. Adding basic Q&A to product pages can improve organic visibility and improve UX. You do not always need to be creating “new” content. Trim the excess fat from your current website.

3. Need to pause your business within Google because of stock issues? Do not turn your website off. There are many actions you can take to maintain organic visibility whilst being kind to your users - Google Webmaster Link

4. Do not make any knee jerk reactions to changes in your long term SEO plan. SEO can take many months to work therefore changes implemented previously may not be rewarded yet, therefore, do not let that effort go to waste by making hasty decisions.

5. Not directly SEO related and Mark (Ritson) is not everyone’s cup of tea but the thinking within this post does heavily apply to SEO “The best marketers will be upping, not cutting, their budgets”. SEO is a zero-sum game.

📺 Quick Content Recommendations ⏯A few long-weekend recommendations, Netflix have two unbelievable shows you should watch Tiger King (it is nuts) and Ozark, season three of Ozark is the best TV in many years. If you have Disney+ it is inundated with timeless content and movies. Toy Story 4 is our list this weekend alongside forky asks a question & as if a handful of Disneynature shows. YouTube has some great shows including free theatre shows.

❤️You Made It To The End❤️

Thanks again for reading this week’s Must Read’s. Please go and have a good weekend! Take care of yourself, please.

About Danny Denhard - About Me: 19 years in Marketing, Product, Growth and recently as a Crowdfunding business leader. You will want to see my RIP to the CMO role presentation and I will be speaking at the Festival Of Marketing, read my Q&A interview. Most importantly, I write this weekly Must Reads Newsletter.

🚨 I have limited availability for advisory or consultancy work 🚨

Disclaimer: All views & recommendations are my own until you click through on the stories.This week’s gifs are from Giphy.