Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner...
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The weekend is almost here, Alluser! Here's a recap of the most important insights, trends, and updates from the week. Catch up in minutes and go into next week prepared.
In today's edition:
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Meta just dropped a game-changer for Facebook video
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This effective ad campaign can run for 6+ weeks
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Could you be marketing on the wrong social platform?
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How to launch a LinkedIn video strategy
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How to choose and implement the AI use cases the enrich your business results
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Facebook Updates: Ads Tools and Features, API Changes, Meta AI, and More
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Turning dark data into actionable insights with AI
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Check out this 8-part ads-focused AI prompt resource
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🗞️ Industry news from Anthropic, Meta, YouTube, and more
Every Facebook Video Becomes a Reel
Remember when you had to choose between posting a regular video or creating a reel on Facebook? Well, that decision just got a whole lot simpler—or more complicated, depending on how you look at it.
Mari Smith just shared that Meta is streamlining the entire video experience, and she says the implications are bigger than they're letting on. Every video you post will now automatically become a reel, regardless of length or format. No more choosing, no more separate workflows.
The devil's in the details here, and there are some interesting nuances about audience control and content visibility that marketers and creators need to understand. Read more and follow the conversation here.
The 30-Minute LinkedIn Ad Strategy
Are you wrestling with rising ad costs and declining engagement?
AJ Wilcox has a specific type of LinkedIn campaign that's quietly delivering 8-16% engagement rates and building retargeting audiences for just $0.35 per member.
It's not about fancy creative or massive budgets. It's about leveraging something you already have in-house, combined with a simple 5-step process that takes less than 30 minutes to execute.
This approach is perfect for cold audiences and creates the kind of authentic content that stops the scroll. Even better, these campaigns can run for 6+ weeks without performance dropping off—something that's practically unheard of in today's ad landscape.
The strategy involves a specific LinkedIn ad format that most people overlook and a retargeting sequence that turns viewers into qualified prospects. It's working so well that it's become the foundation of successful Stage 01 campaigns across multiple industries.
Ready to see the exact step-by-step process that's generating these results? Read more here.
Rethinking Your Social Platform Strategy
Still sticking with the same old platform strategy and wondering why your content isn't breaking through?
Ever wonder what would happen if you post the exact same video—same music, same hook, same everything—on two brand-new accounts to see what happens?
Chris Kubby ran a test, and the difference in results might have you rethinking where you focus your energy.
The numbers revealed more than insights on view counts. He uncovered something that could change how you approach content, engagement, and platform strategy—especially if you're relying on a single platform to drive visibility for your business. Watch more here.
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LinkedIn Video Strategy: Becoming a Respected Industry Leader
The impact of strategic video content on LinkedIn can be substantial. Brogan shares examples of clients who have achieved remarkable results:
A PowerPoint design consultant recorded twelve instructional videos in just half a day. After posting these videos, she was invited to speak at a conference in Europe based solely on the visibility gained from her LinkedIn videos. This exposure also led to significant business opportunities, including a €10,000 contract with a company that discovered her through her video content.
For business pages, Brogan notes that video content consistently outperforms other content types. One client's LinkedIn company page analytics showed significantly higher engagement rates for video posts compared to text-only updates.
A motorcycle company apprenticeship trainer created four videos about his journey and the value of apprenticeship programs. These authentic, story-based videos became the company's best performing content of the year, effectively promoting their apprenticeship initiatives while establishing thought leadership in this area.
The PREP Framework for Creating LinkedIn Video
Brogan has developed a comprehensive framework called PREP to guide the creation of effective LinkedIn videos:
Below, we explore her advice for the Edit and Publish stages.
Edit: Refining Your Video for Maximum Impact
Editing transforms raw footage into polished, engaging content. LinkedIn recommends keeping your videos under two minutes, and Brogan suggests aiming for a video length of 60-90 seconds. This length is more likely to maintain viewer attention and increase the chances of complete views, which benefits your content's visibility.
She recommends Descript as an accessible tool to edit videos, especially for those without raw video editing experience.
Descript converts your video into a text transcript, allowing you to edit the video by simply editing the text. This approach makes video editing as intuitive as editing a document:
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Upload your video to Descript
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Wait for the AI to generate a transcript (usually takes about a minute)
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Edit the transcript by selecting and removing unwanted sections
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Create compositions (separate video clips) from your selections
Descript's AI capabilities enable several helpful functions.
The Clean Up Audio feature has light, medium, or heavy settings to automatically remove filler words, repeated phrases, and mistakes.
The Create Social Clips feature generates multiple short clips from longer recordings, with options for different aspect ratios for landscape or portrait clips. LinkedIn increasingly promotes vertical video formats, similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels. This vertical format appears prominently in the dedicated video tab on mobile devices (currently available in the United States and expanding to other regions).
The Add Captions feature generates and edits captions to ensure accuracy.
Brogan strongly recommends burning captions directly onto your videos rather than relying on LinkedIn's auto-caption feature. This ensures that captions appear for all viewers, regardless of their personal settings. Adding custom captions is particularly important because:
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Many people watch videos with the sound off.
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Viewers may speak different languages or have different accents.
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AI auto-captions often misinterpret words, especially with non-American accents.
Publish: Maximizing the Value of Your Video Content
The final stage of the PREP framework involves not just posting your video but strategically leveraging it to create additional content.
When publishing your video on LinkedIn, consider these recommendations:
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Schedule Strategically: Use LinkedIn's native scheduling feature to post at optimal times for your audience.
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Write Compelling Accompanying Text: Create a text post that opens with a strong hook (ideally one line), highlights key points from the video, and includes a clear call to action.
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Be Careful With Links: LinkedIn's algorithm tends to limit the reach of posts containing external links. Instead of including a link in your post, Brogan suggests directing people to your featured section or inviting them to message you directly for resources.
Repurposing LinkedIn Video Content
The true value of a video content strategy for LinkedIn extends far beyond the original post. As Brogan says, "The gold mine in this video is actually the transcript."
Here are five ways to repurpose your video content for more LinkedIn exposure:
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Create Multiple LinkedIn Posts: Extract key quotes and insights from the transcript to create additional LinkedIn posts.
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Develop LinkedIn Carousel Posts: Transform the main points from the video into slide-based carousel posts, which remain highly popular on LinkedIn.
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Write Blog Content: Use the transcript as the foundation for blog articles, expanding on the video's key points.
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Produce LinkedIn Newsletters: Incorporate your videos into LinkedIn newsletters, embedding them alongside related written content.
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Generate Additional Video Formats: Use tools like Descript to create multiple clips from a single recording in different formats. For example, horizontal interview footage can be transformed into vertical clips for LinkedIn's video tab.
This repurposing strategy maximizes the return on your video investment by creating multiple content pieces from a single recording session.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Louise Brogan, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
How to Use AI to Simplify Your Marketing
AI-first marketing isn't just about using AI tools; it's a complete mindset shift in how you approach your marketing efforts. This transformation requires completely shifting your thinking when deciding how and where you are incorporating AI.
Remember that AI isn't replacing human creativity and expertise—it's augmenting and enhancing them. The most successful AI-first marketers understand where AI-powered tools provide the most value and where human insight remains irreplaceable. By embracing this balance, you can create a marketing approach that's not only more efficient but also more creative, strategic, and impactful.
For example, Angie Carel redesigned her marketing agency with an AI-first approach when she recognized that certain services like logo design were becoming commoditized due to AI advancements. Rather than fighting this change, she embraced it by creating VIDA, an AI-powered visual ideation design assistant that helps clients generate logo concepts for free.
After a client uses the assistant to develop a working concept, Carel can apply her years of expertise to refine and finalize that logo, the part of the process she charges for. By understanding where AI capabilities are heading, she repositioned her value to focus on expertise that comes after the initial design work.
Identify Suitable Marketing Use Cases to Pair with AI
A common mistake is trying to tackle too many AI implementations simultaneously.
By limiting your initial scope, you can focus on thoroughly understanding and implementing a few solutions before expanding. This approach builds confidence and expertise that will make future implementations easier.
If a use case has one of the following characteristics, it can likely be improved or run with AI:
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Is It Data-Driven? Examples of these tasks include analyzing customer behavior patterns from website analytics, processing information from large datasets to identify trends, segmenting your target audience based on customer data on demographics or behaviors, interpreting marketing campaign performance metrics, and making marketing decisions based on quantitative information.
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Is It Repetitive? Tasks that follow predictable patterns or require consistent outputs are prime candidates for AI assistance.
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Is It Generative in Nature? Is the end goal to create content you would normally write, illustrate, draw, or photograph, like social media posts, blog copy, images, videos, or music?
After identifying potential AI use cases, conduct an impact assessment to prioritize your efforts. While enterprise organizations might have hundreds of possible applications, Carel emphasizes that you only need to find a handful of high-value use cases to see significant benefits.
Even solopreneurs or small marketing agencies should prioritize projects that will deliver the highest value for the lowest effort. When conducting your impact assessment:
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Select projects where you already understand the tools required
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Focus on tasks that currently consume too much of your time
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Target processes you dislike doing manually
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Identify areas where efficiency gains would be substantial
Map Your AI Solution
Solution mapping is the process of visualizing and planning how to implement AI for a specific use case. It involves identifying all the steps required to go from your starting point (input) to your desired outcome (output) and determining how AI can enhance each part of that process.
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Start With a Visual Representation: This creates a clear visual of what you have now and what you want to achieve. Carel uses a pen and paper to describe the input on one side of the paper and the output on the backside of the paper.
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Map the Steps Between Input and Output: In this step, you list every step to get you from the beginning to the end of the process. For visual thinkers, this might look like a flowchart with connected bubbles. For others, a simple outline format works well. For digital solution mapping, Carel recommends tools like Miro or Mural, which allow for visual ideation and collaboration. These platforms help you create comprehensive maps that can be shared and refined with team members.
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Document the Process: Take a photo of your hand-drawn map and upload it to an AI tool like ChatGPT to help you ideate and refine your process.
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Identify Required Tools: Determine which AI tools will be needed for each step of the process.
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Consider Training Needs: Identify and address any skills or knowledge gaps before you build and implement your AI solution.
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Plan for Implementation: Create a clear action plan for putting your solution into practice.
A Multi-Step AI Content Marketing Workflow Example
To illustrate an outline for solution mapping, Carel shares an example of a multi-step AI workflow:
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Each morning, an AI assistant searches the internet for leads in specific categories (snack foods, candy, and ice cream).
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The assistant drops these leads into Slack.
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Another AI assistant picks up the leads and qualifies them based on specific criteria (only products containing chocolate)
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The lead qualifying assistant posts the qualified leads back to Slack.
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A blog-writing assistant creates content about the chocolate products.
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A social media assistant creates posts based on the blog content.
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A repurposing assistant adapts the content for different platforms.
Today's advice provided with insights from Angie Carel, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
On this week's Social Media Marketing Talk Show, host Jerry Potter, breaks down the latest Facebook news and what it means for marketers like you.
Meta's New Generative AI Features for Advertisers
If you're running ads on Meta's advertising platform, you'll receive early access to these AI-powered features before they become available to users focused solely on organic content. Meta has implemented an early release program that gives select advertisers the opportunity to test these features before widespread rollout, representing a clear priority shift toward supporting paid advertising over organic reach.
Several important considerations come with these early release AI features. First, they're explicitly labeled as early release, appearing at the ad level in Ads Manager. This designation essentially means they're still in beta or even alpha testing phases. For marketers spending hundreds or thousands of dollars daily on advertising, this represents a significant consideration since you want to ensure your campaigns are running on stable, proven technology.
The positive aspect is that advertisers can preview and customize their ad variations before deciding whether to opt into using these AI-generated elements. This allows you to experiment with the technology and see how it performs before committing your advertising budget to AI-created content.
However, Meta clearly states that these features may be limited or removed at any time. You might fall in love with a particular AI-generated element, only to have Meta discontinue it without warning. If they do remove features early, they promise to provide notifications so you can adjust your campaigns accordingly, but this uncertainty creates potential disruption for ongoing advertising efforts.
The vision Meta is working toward represents a significant shift in how digital advertising will function. Industry discussions at recent marketing conferences suggest Meta is moving toward a future where buying ads involves simply telling the platform who you want to reach, and Meta's AI handles everything else. The AI would find those people, create the images and videos, write the copy and headlines, and essentially manage the entire creative and targeting process.
This evolution feels like Meta is systematically reducing advertiser control while encouraging reliance on their Advantage Plus campaigns and other automated features. While some advertising experts remain skeptical and prefer to maintain control over proven strategies, the platform continues pushing toward greater automation and AI integration.
Meta's New Opportunity Score System
This scoring system allows you to quickly evaluate campaign quality and monitor improvements across your account, campaign, and creation workflows. While Meta frames this as a helpful tool, it essentially gamifies advertising optimization in a way that may pressure marketers to follow Meta's recommendations rather than their own proven strategies.
The opportunity score system feels somewhat punitive or shame-inducing for marketers who choose not to implement all of Meta's suggestions. If you don't achieve a perfect score of one hundred, the system implies your campaign setup is suboptimal, even though many successful advertisers deliberately choose different approaches based on their experience and testing.
Meta acknowledges this limitation with an important disclaimer: while a high opportunity score signals strong setup according to their standards, it doesn't guarantee improved return on ad spend or better outcomes. This admission reveals that the scoring system measures adherence to Meta's preferences rather than actual performance potential.
Advanced Business-Centric Conversion Optimization Tools
The enhanced value optimization tool represents a significant advancement, allowing advertisers to target return on ad spend based on profit margins or custom conversion events. This feature enables much more sophisticated campaign optimization that goes beyond simple conversion counting to focus on actual business value and profitability.
Meta is also expanding their value rules feature, which helps advertisers prioritize high-value demographics within their targeting. While this feature has been available previously, the expansion provides more granular control over which audience segments receive priority in campaign delivery. The goal is enabling more tailored and effective outcomes across all of Meta's advertising placements.
Perhaps most significantly, incremental attribution is now globally available for real-time optimization of incremental conversions. This sophisticated measurement approach uses a hybrid methodology that addresses the ongoing challenges of digital advertising attribution in a privacy-focused environment.
The incremental attribution system works through a three-step process. First, it allows you to review current measurement practices by assessing data quality and coverage across your marketing channels. This evaluation helps identify gaps in your current tracking and measurement capabilities.
Second, you can calibrate measurement models like multi-touch attribution using experimental results to more accurately reflect real-world outcomes. Since we know that perfect tracking is impossible due to privacy restrictions and technical limitations, this calibration process helps create more accurate projections based on available data.
Third, the system enables regular experiments across multiple channels with particular emphasis on single-channel evaluations and in-channel optimization. This approach allows you to measure and improve one element at a time, providing clearer insights into what's actually driving results versus what might be coincidental correlation.
Threads Advertising Launch and Opportunities
Threads advertising has officially launched, giving marketers access to Meta's rapidly growing text-based social platform and its highly engaged user base.
The advertising integration connects to Meta's existing marketing API, allowing you to leverage existing creative assets without creating new content specifically for Threads. Any image assets you've already created for Facebook or Instagram campaigns can be used for Threads advertising without additional creative development.
However, you must have a Threads profile for your brand to run ads on the platform. You cannot simply use your existing Facebook business page to advertise on Threads; the platform requires dedicated brand presence and profile setup.
For performance tracking, you can use the Insights API with breakdowns for publisher platform or platform position, enabling you to separate performance statistics from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads placements. This granular reporting capability helps you understand which platform delivers the best results for your specific campaigns.
The launch of Threads advertising presents a potential early-adopter opportunity. As with any new advertising platform, costs may be lower initially while competition for ad space remains limited. Results might be better during this early phase before the platform becomes saturated with advertisers, though only testing will reveal the actual performance potential.
The timing of this launch is particularly interesting given the broader shifts in social media behavior and the decline in public posting that Meta has acknowledged. Threads represents their attempt to capture the conversational, text-based social media space while providing new advertising inventory for marketers.
More Features, Tools, Changes, and Updates Discussed Include:
Watch it on YouTube
Using Dark Data With AI
Somewhere on your computer right now sits a digital graveyard of untapped potential. White papers you swore you'd read. Webinar transcripts gathering digital dust. Research reports that could transform your strategy—if only you had time to digest them.
Sound familiar? You're not alone. Most marketers are drowning in valuable data they've collected but never actually used. It's like having a library of business intelligence that's permanently locked.
In this video, Katie Robbert shares two simple tactics that can resurrect your dark data and turn it into actionable insights—without requiring you to read a single dense report.
The first method literally puts your data in motion, transforming static PDFs into something you can consume anywhere. The second puts your data to work for you, automatically auditing your existing strategies against industry best practices.
These aren't complex technical solutions requiring expensive software or dedicated data teams. They're straightforward approaches that any marketer can implement immediately using tools you probably already have access to.
Your dark data doesn't have to stay buried. It's time to unlock the value that's been sitting there all along. Learn more here.
8 Ready-to-Use Prompts for Creating New Ads to Test
Tired of staring at a blank page or settling for generic ad copy? Want a better way to generate high-converting hooks, write ad copy that sounds like you, and build creative variations worth testing—all without starting from scratch every time?
If you're curious about how pros are combining human strategy with AI efficiency, and you want a behind-the-scenes look at the exact frameworks they're using, you'll want to check this out.
The Marketing Resource Library from Smart Marketer has eight AI-powered prompts you can customize to do just that.
From writing on-brand ads to finding angles that stand out in crowded feeds to creating variations that help you test smarter—there's a lot you can swipe and apply to your next campaign. Read more here.
Meta Updates Advantage+ Audience API Requirements: Meta has announced changes to its Marketing API, impacting how Advantage+ audience settings are handled when creating new ad sets. From API version V23.0, the advantage_audience parameter will either default to enabled or require explicit configuration. This adjustment applies only to new ad sets, with no effect on updates to existing ones. The change aims to streamline audience automation, particularly for default and relaxed targeting setups, while requiring clear settings in custom configurations. Partners are encouraged to review and test their implementations to fully leverage the performance benefits of Advantage+ audience targeting. Meta
Meta's $14.8B Scale AI Deal Strengthens AI Development Edge: Meta has invested a 49% nonvoting stake in Scale AI and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, in a strategic move to bolster its AI capabilities. The deal gives Meta access to Scale's expertise in large-scale data labeling—critical for training next-generation AI models—without triggering automatic U.S. antitrust review. Reuters
Meta Recommends Adding Links in Comments, Not Post Captions: Meta has informally advised Facebook Page managers to improve post performance by placing external links in the first comment rather than in the main post caption. This guidance, surfaced in Professional Dashboard insights, reflects ongoing trends in which posts without external links dominate views on the platform. Meta's data shows that over 97% of U.S. post views come from updates without outbound links, as the algorithm increasingly favors video and native content. Page managers are encouraged to experiment with this approach, though it may require extra effort since comments can't be scheduled. Social Media Today
Meta Debuts Generative AI Tools for Scaled Personalization: Meta introduced a suite of generative AI tools designed to help advertisers and agencies create personalized content at scale. The updates include AI-driven image and text generation within Ads Manager, as well as new advantage+ features that automatically produce and test creative variations for different audiences. Additionally, Meta launched an API enabling agencies to integrate these capabilities into their existing systems and workflows, supporting greater customization and efficiency in ad creation. Meta
Reddit Unveils Community Intelligence Tools for Advertisers: Reddit has introduced two new AI-powered ad products—Reddit Insights and the Conversation Summary Add-on—to help brands tap into authentic conversations across its platform. Reddit Insights offers marketers a social listening tool with access to summaries, key posts, and subreddit trends, while the Conversation Summary Add-on highlights positive sentiment below ads. The tools, built on Reddit's massive base of human-driven discussions, aim to help advertisers identify new audiences and engagement opportunities at scale. Axios
TikTok Debuts New AI Tools for Scalable Creativity: TikTok has introduced an expanded suite of Symphony generative AI tools, including Image to Video, Text to Video, and Showcase Products, aimed at helping brands and creators streamline content production and enhance storytelling on the platform. These tools enable marketers to easily turn images or text prompts into TikTok-first video clips and use digital avatars to showcase products dynamically. TikTok has also integrated Symphony capabilities into Adobe Express and WPP Open, allowing users to access these creative solutions within familiar platforms. TikTok
WhatsApp Adds Subscriptions, Promotions, and Ads to Updates Tab: WhatsApp has announced new ways for users to discover content and businesses within its Updates tab, including channel subscriptions, promoted channels, and ads in Status. The platform now lets users subscribe to channels for exclusive updates, while channel admins can boost visibility through promotion tools. Ads in Status aim to connect users with businesses, making it easier to engage with products and services. WhatsApp stresses that these additions will not impact personal chats, which remain end-to-end encrypted and free from ads, as part of its privacy-first approach. Meta
YouTube Adds Shopping Stickers, Expands Communities, and Launches New Gifts: YouTube has introduced product stickers for Shorts, replacing the previous shopping button to help drive more engagement with tagged products. Early tests in the US showed stickers generated over 40% more clicks, and the feature is now live globally except in South Korea. The platform is also expanding its Communities feature to all eligible creators, providing a dedicated space for subscriber interaction beyond individual videos. New moderation controls and post-sorting options aim to support content quality and creator curation. Additionally, four new animated gifts are now available for US-based live streams to encourage viewer participation. YouTube
YouTube Launches Player for Education Monetization for Creators: YouTube has introduced Player for Education, an ad-free embedded player designed for use by educational partners such as schools and teachers. This player offers enhanced privacy safeguards and a learning-friendly experience, enabling partners to embed educational videos and Shorts in teaching materials. Creators with embedding enabled can have their content included and, once they accept payment terms, earn revenue based on their share of watch time funded through licensing fees paid by partners. Performance data and earnings are available via YouTube Analytics and AdSense. Google
Anthropic Launches Claude Code for Smarter AI-Powered Coding: Anthropic has unveiled Claude Code, a tool aimed at supporting developers with AI-assisted coding tasks such as explanation, debugging, and code generation across various languages. The offering also introduces Remote Multi-Code Prompting (MCP), which allows real-time collaborative coding sessions with Claude. Claude Code is now accessible to all Claude Pro and Team users, expanding the platform's utility for software development workflows. Anthropic
Meta Unifies Facebook Video Formats and Enhances Editing Tools: Meta has announced updates to Facebook's video experience that merge Reels and longer videos into a single, streamlined format, eliminating the previous distinction between the two. Alongside this change, Facebook's Composer now offers upgraded editing tools and layouts to help users create videos more easily. The platform's Video tab has also been redesigned to act as a central destination for discovering and interacting with all types of video content. These enhancements are being rolled out globally across Facebook's iOS and Android apps this week. Meta
Facebook Rolls Out Passkeys for Easier, Safer Login: Facebook has announced the introduction of passkeys, offering users a password-free way to sign in using biometrics or device PINs. The new feature, initially available in the U.S. and Canada, is designed to provide a more secure and user-friendly login experience while helping to mitigate phishing risks. Passkeys are stored on users' devices and work across supported platforms, enhancing both security and convenience. Meta
YouTube Launches Creator Call to Simplify Brand-Creator Partnerships: YouTube has unveiled Creator Call, a new feature designed to help brands more efficiently connect with creators for branded content collaborations. With this tool, advertisers can post open briefs that eligible YouTube creators can review and apply to directly, streamlining the hiring process. The beta version of Creator Call is currently available to brands running video campaigns in the U.S. via Google Ads, aiming to make creator partnerships more accessible and scalable for advertisers. Google
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