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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5 Practical ways to improve your Instagram visibility
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Facebook's ad algorithm is literal. Are your instructions clear?
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6 new strategic LinkedIn features
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The ARC framework for influencer partnerships that deliver on-going results
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Using Gemini Deep Research for strategic planning
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TikTok Updates: Desktop Changes, Creator Marketplace Sunset, Ads, and More
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Avoiding AI hallucinations
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Before you hand that project to AI, check for these speed bumps
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🗞️ Industry news from Claude, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more
Boost Your Instagram Visibility: 5 Strategies That Actually Work
Struggling with Instagram reach? While there are no overnight hacks—just consistent actions that compound over time, this post breaks down five practical strategies to get your content in front of the right people.
You'll discover how to train the algorithm through strategic engagement, leverage collaborations to tap into new audiences, optimize your profile for searchability (hint: those keywords in your username matter more than you think!), and create content that people actually want to share (which Instagram values above all else).
There's also a super helpful checklist of account settings you might be overlooking that could be sabotaging your visibility without you realizing it.
If you're tired of posting into the void and want actionable tips to grow your Instagram presence, this is your roadmap to getting seen by the right people. Check out the full post for the complete breakdown! Read more here.
Meta Ads Simplified: Less Tinkering, More Converting
Could an overcomplicated Meta ads strategy be why you're getting low-quality leads or serving ads to unexpected audience demographics?
Jon Loomer's latest piece cuts through the confusion with his refreshingly straightforward Common Sense Playbook.
His core philosophy is brilliantly simple: "The algorithm is literal." It does exactly what you tell it to do—showing your ads to people most likely to take your specified action.
He challenges our obsession with targeting, arguing that most inputs are merely "suggestions" to the algorithm now, especially with Advantage+ Audience enabled. That might feel uncomfortable, but it's the future of Meta advertising.
He advocates for a simplified approach—fewer campaigns, consolidated budgets, and focusing on what actually impacts performance: creating compelling ads, irresistible offers, and high-converting landing pages.
The approach isn't about being hands-off but understanding when to trust the algorithm and when to guide it. It's about working with Meta's system rather than fighting against it.
Want to stop wasting money and start getting results? Read more here.
6 LinkedIn Improvements You Don't Want to Miss
LinkedIn keeps changing the game, and Michelle Raymond's latest article explains how to make the most of six important updates you don't want to miss.
For example, did you know LinkedIn is stepping up its analytics game, showing you exactly how many people saw your comments (yes, really!) and even tracking which of your comments are driving profile visits?
Or that there's a way to save on your Premium subscription?
Whether you're building your personal brand or managing your company's presence, these updates could change your entire LinkedIn strategy. Click through to get the full breakdown and stay ahead of the curve. Read more here.
Need a Good Video Strategy?
You know video is important to your content strategy. But maybe you've resisted getting started.
That means you're missing out on a huge audience that loves consuming video content.
If you're ready to get started with video—or want to level up your current video strategy—then consider attending Social Media Marketing World 2025–March 30 - April 1.
Not only will you learn video strategies that get results, but you'll also discover how to use AI tools to quickly and easily make great videos.
Yes! I need a new video strategy.
How to Succeed in Influencer Marketing in 2025
Are you considering working with influencers but unsure how to get started? Wondering how to maximize your return on investment when collaborating with creators?
In this article, you'll discover proven strategies for influencer partnerships that deliver measurable results for your business.
How to Find and Vet Influencers
To research creators on your own, assess prospective partners using these criteria:
Creator Relevance: First, determine if creators influence your target customers. While younger demographics are generally more receptive to creator recommendations, don't automatically discount older audiences. Gen X might be more influenced by podcasters or Facebook creators rather than TikTok personalities. The key is understanding where your specific audience gets its information and who it trusts.
Creator Size: Moore recommends working with smaller, more focused niche creators rather than expensive mega-influencers. Smaller nano and micro mid-tier creators with hundreds of thousands or even less than 10,000 followers often have deeply engaged audiences who follow them for specific reasons, making their recommendations particularly powerful within their niche.
Content Relevance: Ensure the creator consistently produces content related to your product category. Don't be swayed by a creator's past viral success if their recent content has shifted away from your industry.
Audience Engagement Quality: Look beyond follower counts for evidence of genuine community engagement that indicates the creator has developed loyal connections with their followers. Examine the quality of comments and be wary if a creator with 50,000 followers has only a handful of comments on their posts or if comments are limited to simple emojis rather than substantive responses.
Publishing Consistency: If someone hasn't published in months, there's no guarantee their next post will perform well even if previous content received high engagement.
How to Approach Creators
The most common complaint Moore hears from marketers is that creators don't respond to their outreach messages. Typically, that's because brands are relying on mass outreach tactics.
"My most sincere advice to any marketer is, don't do mass outreach," he warns. "Do one at a time, individual outreach to creators."
The key is crafting a bespoke offer that aligns with what's currently important in the creator's world. To develop these personalized approaches, research the creator's recent activity across platforms. What are they currently promoting? What appears to be their current focus? Understanding this context can help you craft an offer that genuinely excites them.
For example, Moore is currently promoting his new book.
If a company approached him with an offer to email their customer base of 10,000 creators about his book in exchange for brand mentions, he'd consider that.
How to Ensure Influencer Content Aligns With Your Goals
According to Moore, the number one mistake brands make when working with creators is not having clear goals. Without clearly communicated goals, your campaign will likely underperform regardless of the creator's talent or audience size.
Moore recommends using the ARC framework when defining your influencer marketing objective. This framework helps you articulate one of three goal options:
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Awareness: Your primary goal is spreading the word about a product launch or market expansion.
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Repurposing: Your primary goal is securing content assets you can use beyond the creator's channels.
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Conversion: Your primary goal is driving measurable actions like sales, app downloads, or trial signups.
So, if you're working with a podcaster to promote a new AI feature and your goal is awareness, you might negotiate for a badge on the podcast cover art and a mention at the beginning of each episode ("The Creator Wizard podcast, powered by Brand XYZ").
If your goal is conversions, ask the creator to focus on incorporating direct response elements like custom discount codes and strong calls to action ("Click on the link CreatorWizard20 to get 20% off your first purchase").
Influencer Marketing Compensation Models
Moore outlines three primary pricing models for creator partnerships:
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Affiliate: With affiliate partnerships, creators earn a commission on sales they generate through tracked links or discount codes. While this approach seems ideal for brands (paying only for performance), Moore cautions that motivating creators through affiliate relationships can be challenging, especially as they're likely affiliates for multiple brands competing for their promotional attention.
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Hybrid: Hybrid compensation combines a guaranteed base payment with performance incentives. You acknowledge that it is a non-trivial amount of work for the creator to generate content containing a promotion of your product, so you compensate them with a base fee ($1,000 or $1,500 or whatever it is) plus a 15% ongoing kicker on the backend. This approach de-risks the partnership for creators while maintaining performance incentives, often resulting in more enthusiastic participation.
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Flat Fee: With flat fee arrangements, brands pay a set amount for specific deliverables without performance-based components. While many marketers prefer performance-based models, Moore notes that working with in-demand creators often requires flat fee arrangements due to market dynamics.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Justin Moore, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
AI Assistants: How to Use Google Gemini Deep Research to Develop AI Assistant-Training Documents
Should you be using an AI assistant in your business? If you've ever wished for a consultant who's available 24/7, never gets frustrated, and costs a fraction of a typical advisory fee, then the answer is yes.
Did you know AI assistants can go beyond basic content creation tasks to become strategic partners in your business planning?
How to Use Google Gemini Deep Research for Strategic Planning and Execution
If your business pays for Google Workspace, you already have access to Gemini.
Key advantages of Gemini include:
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Integration with the Google ecosystem
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Very large context window (allowing you to include more information)
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Reference to living Google Docs (which update as you change them)
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Tools like Deep Research for comprehensive information gathering
When you give Deep Research a topic, the system reads your request and comes back with a research plan you can review before proceeding. Allton used Gemini's Deep Research when rebranding his business to focus on helping St. Louis companies.
He asked Deep Research to:
Help me understand the St. Louis business landscape by identifying the top industries in St. Louis, examples of businesses that work in those industries, the challenges those businesses have that AI could resolve, and the associations or organizations that represent those businesses.
The system repeated his requests and added additional research areas it thought would be helpful.
After he approved the research plan, the system scanned over a hundred websites, scraped them and returned a complete report in about 10 minutes.
This report now informs all of Mike's conversations with his AI assistant, like the brand voice content creation assistant he trained his assistant to keep this focus front and center.
When he brainstorms an email campaign or a blog post, the assistant constantly reminds him to include St. Louis businesses in the content. This consistent reminder is a strategic safeguard, keeping Mike aligned with his business goals.
Use the RICCE Framework to Create and Train AI Assistants for Various Tasks
While you can use Mike Allton's RICCE framework in individual conversations with AI, creating custom AI assistants allows you to save your instructions for ongoing use. Think of the RICCE framework as training wheels that help you provide all the information an AI needs to serve you effectively.
Role: First, tell the AI what role you want it to assume.
Instructions: Next, clearly explain what you want to accomplish and what you expect from the conversation. Be as specific as possible about your objectives, and instruct the AI to ask you questions if it needs more information. Another important aspect of these instructions is to tell the AI if you want to take a step-by-step approach rather than letting it jump straight to the final product. Without this guidance, the AI will try to be helpful by immediately producing an output.
Today, I am doing an email campaign. I want to reheat my audience because many haven't been opening emails for a while. I want to target them and get them to re-engage with my emails overall. We're gonna go step by step through this process. The first step is to identify who I'm talking to.
Context: Now, you need to provide background information about your business, target audience, and other relevant details that will customize the results to your unique business:
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Who your business is
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Who your target audience is
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Your brand voice and style
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Links to relevant documents or websites
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Strategic planning documents from Deep Research
While you can copy and paste these details into the chat, you can also attach several types of document files.
Google Gemini offers users a helpful enhancement for custom instructions because it can access Google Docs. As you update your brand documents or client information in Google Drive, your AI assistants will always work with the latest version of the data without needing to be retrained.
Constraints: Follow your context with boundaries to help the AI understand your preferences and ensure the output matches your needs. This might include:
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Specific formats you prefer
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Geographic considerations (e.g., "We're only talking to our North American audience")
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Language requirements
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Style constraints (e.g., "Don't overuse emojis")
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Word count limits
For example, if your emails are typically short, you might tell the AI that any email it writes must be 500 words or less. Or you might stipulate long-form content by telling the AI any email it writes must be at least 1500 to 2000 words long.
Evaluation: This final step is to define what success will look like. How will you know if the AI's response is good? Did the AI assistant produce a great email or a ho-hum email? Defining clear criteria for the response helps you evaluate and refine the AI's output.
Today's advice provided with insights from Mike Allton, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast
Watch the full interview YouTube
Can't Travel to Social Media Marketing World?
Attending Social Media Marketing World in person is the best option. But if travel isn't an option, the conference can come to you.
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Isn't it time you experienced the career-changing content from Social Media Marketing World? Your future self will thank you.
Grab your Virtual Ticket today to save $400.
I'm ready to get the recordings!
Discover TikTok's updated desktop experience and latest ads type. Plus, learn about TikTok Local and the tool suite that replaced Creator Marketplace.
Watch it on YouTube
AI Hallucinations: How to Avoid Them
Those viral stats claiming GPT-4.5 hallucinates 37.1% of the time? Nicole Leffer says they're misunderstood.
Those percentages come from SimpleQA—a specialized test designed to challenge AI systems with questions that have specific and tricky fact-based answers. They don't represent how these models perform in everyday use.
So, while AI hallucinations are a legitimate concern, these widely shared numbers are being taken way out of context.
Your actual experience depends on your use case and prompting strategy—not some alarming percentage from a specialized test most users will never replicate.
In her post, she shares surprising tips to minimize AI errors. Read more here.
4 Signs Your Task Isn't AI-Ready
Feeling pressured to implement AI in your marketing but don't know where to start?
There's a lot of advice out there about what tasks you should begin with but there aren't many people talking about how to know when a task isn't ready for AI.
Katie Robbert tackles that exact challenge and gives you four red flags to watch for. Read more here.
Claude Issues Troubleshooting for Faulty Code Tool: Anthropic's Claude Code tool reportedly contained a bug in its auto-update function that caused significant system problems. When installed with root or superuser permissions, the buggy commands altered access permissions for critical system files, making some workstations unstable or completely unusable. Anthropic has removed the problematic commands and added a troubleshooting guide link within the program. Source: TechCrunch
Mentions on X Engage Grok: Users have reported a new feature allowing them to mention Grok in replies to ask questions about posts, with Grok providing explanations in response. Source: TechCrunch
Instagram Previews Additional Edits App Features: Instagram's upcoming Edits video editing app will feature a Projects tab, allowing users to manage multiple video projects simultaneously. The app includes a Cutouts tool for isolating specific elements within clips. Videos created with the app will display a Made with Edits tag when shared on Instagram. Some features shown are still in development and won't be available upon initial release. Source: @Creators via Threads
Meta Updates Requirements for Advertisers Targeting Singapore: Meta is updating verification requirements for all advertisers targeting audiences in Singapore and adding transparency requirements. Most advertisers can begin the verification process by early April, with a deadline of June 2025, to meet these requirements. Advertisers will need to verify details about who benefits from and who pays for ads targeting people in Singapore. Advertisers with a verified business portfolio may be eligible to skip the verification step. All ads targeting Singapore must include the name of the individual or organization paying for and/or benefiting from the ad. This information will be visible on the ad's infosheet and in the Ad Library. The verification and transparency processes will roll out starting in early April, with most advertisers expected to have access by early May 2025. Source: Meta
Pinterest Generative AI Training Updates: The platform announced changes to its Privacy Policy that allow it to train generative AI on users' content and personal information. Source: Pinterest
Threads Profile Interests: Meta confirmed Threads has begun testing a new feature allowing users to add interests to their profiles. This new interests feature will direct users to active conversations about selected topics, not just show profile visitors what topics a user might post about. The company said more details would be coming soon. Source: TechCrunch
Instagram Blend Test: The platform is testing a new messaging feature that lets you and a friend view a feed of AI-recommended Reels. Source: Mashable Social Media Today
OpenAI Launches Tools to Build AI Agents: The Responses API combines Chat Completions simplicity with tool-use capabilities. Built-in tools include web search for up-to-date information with source citations, file search for retrieving information from documents, and computer use that can automate tasks on computers. The Agents SDK simplifies orchestrating single and multi-agent workflows. Source: OpenAI
Pinterest Labels AI-Generated Content: Pinterest made this change after Futurism published a report highlighting the increasing amount of AI-generated content that is overwhelming some users. Pinterest responded by developing AI detection and labeling features to provide context about what users are seeing. The platform also added a new rule stating they may display a label on image Pins when they detect AI generation or modification, in accordance with the IPTC standard for photo metadata. These tags have been visible in the app for the last couple of months on a small collection of Pins. For advertisements, Pinterest only displays AI content disclosure in the "Why am I seeing this ad?" section rather than directly on the image. Source: Social Media Today
YouTube Testing Ad Suitability Reviews Improvements: The platform is experimenting with automatically sending videos marked "Limited or no ads" for additional review. This may include reviewing newly uploaded private videos. Some monetization decisions could take up to 24 hours. The test is rolling out to a small percentage of creators but will eventually expand to all creators who monetize with ads. Source: YouTube
YouTube Updates Dream Screen: The upgrade integrates Google DeepMind's newest video generation model, V2, making it more powerful. Users can now generate stand-alone 6-second video clips or stitch together multiple clips. The feature also allows the creation of video backgrounds to complement other assets and enhance creative vision. These features are currently available in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Source: YouTube
Facebook Stories Monetization Expansion: The platform now enables creators in its Content Monetization program to earn money from views on public stories. Creators can monetize existing content by sharing it to their stories, with no minimum view threshold required. Program members with content monetization enabled will automatically have story monetization activated. Facebook plans to offer open enrollment to the program this year, having already invited millions of creators in 2024. Source: TechCrunch
LinkedIn Predictive Audiences Features: Recent enhancements include new company list targeting and retargeting sources, providing advertisers with additional tools to improve audience selection. Source: LinkedIn
Meta Begins US Testing Community Notes: On March 18, 2025, the company is replacing its third-party fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The system allows community contributors to write and rate notes, providing context for posts. Notes won't initially appear publicly while Meta tests the system with gradually admitted contributors from their 200,000-person waitlist. Contributors must be over 18 and have accounts older than 6 months. Notes require 500 characters or less with supporting links and won't display author names initially. The feature will launch in six languages and cover most content except advertisements. Unlike fact checks, notes won't reduce content distribution. Source: Meta
Meta Expands Access to Google Analytics Integration: The connection is managed through Meta Events Manager and allows Meta to use aggregated Google data to establish more context for web traffic. The integration works alongside the Meta Pixel and Conversions API to provide a better understanding of campaign performance drivers. Advertisers can share "All traffic sources" or "Only traffic coming from Meta," giving them some control over shared data. Meta recommends maintaining "connection quality" by ensuring relevant events are properly mapped. The integration is still rolling out gradually and may not be available to all advertisers yet. Source: Social Media Today
TikTok Shop Seller Features: The platform has introduced new seller features based on community feedback to provide greater control over business operations. These updates include customizable automated aftersales processes, PO Box exclusion to prevent delivery issues, adjustable cancellation request windows, customizable return periods ranging from 14-90 days, a final sale option for fashion sellers to prevent returns, and extended shipping handling times of up to seven business days for qualified sellers. These changes aim to increase seller flexibility and improve the overall TikTok Shop experience. Source: TikTok
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The first soda pop made in the U.S. was Vernor's Ginger Ale, created in Detroit, Michigan, in 1866 by James Vernor. He sold it in his drug store for 30 years before opening a factory to produce it on a larger scale.
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