Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner...
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We're halfway through the week, Alluser, how's your marketing strategy holding up? Today's tips and insights will help you fine-tune your approach.
In today's edition:
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Enhancing content with Instagram's Restyle
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The video ads dimensions you need to reach across Facebook and Instagram
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5 ways AI is affecting marketers' ability to reach and convert customers
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🗞️ Industry news from Claude, TikTok, and more
Using Instagram's Restyle Tool
Instagram's new Restyle tool for Stories is an AI-powered image editor tucked right inside your favorite platform. Unlike the video-focused Restyle in Edits, this one is photo-only and designed for quick, creative tweaks without leaving Instagram.
For marketers, especially those balancing time, budget, and the need for standout visuals, Restyle can be a handy tool to speed up content creation and keep your brand looking polished. The trick is knowing where it shines—and where it struggles—so you can get the most from it without frustration.
You can change colors, remove distractions, or even reimagine the scene entirely with just a prompt. But while simple changes (like swapping a shirt color) feel effortless, bigger edits like adding objects can be hit-or-miss. Think of it as a fast, free way to clean up or enhance images for your brand, rather than a magic wand for complex designs.
Jenn Herman's latest post walks you through the tool and even has a pro tip to use it for off-Instagram content. Read more here.
Meta Video Ad Sizes That Run Everywhere
Creating Meta video ads that show up everywhere isn't as simple as hitting publish. A video that's perfect for Instagram Reels might be too long for Facebook In-Stream, or too short for Audience Network Rewarded Video.
And while you could edit multiple versions for every placement, that's a lot of extra work.
Jon Loomer's latest breakdown cuts through the noise, mapping out exactly how short or long your video needs to be if you want to use it across all placements. Read more here.
Is AI Leaving You Behind?
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Reinventing Work: How AI is Transforming Everything
The way people discover and consume information is shifting dramatically, requiring businesses to completely rethink their systems and approaches to reaching customers.
Here are five ways AI is affecting the work of marketers and business owners right now.
From Search to Contextual Discovery
For decades, Google has functioned as a massive database catalog of information. Users learned to structure keyword searches to receive lists of potential responses, then manually sorted through ten-page listings to find answers to their questions. AI's ability to provide contextual, synthesized responses is disrupting this entire system.
Cole illustrates this shift with a personal example: "I have very curly hair, and so I might ask for advice on helping me find a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner. If I type that search into Google, I would get a list of people who paid for those keywords and then people who probably have some content related to those keywords. But I would have to go and figure out for myself which is the best response."
With ChatGPT and similar AI tools, users now receive answers with explanations, context about why specific products are recommended, and even warnings about products to avoid based on customer reviews. This represents a fundamental shift from user-driven discovery to agent-mediated discovery.
The Disintermediation of Brand Control
This transformation creates disintermediation—businesses no longer own the search experience. How companies tell their stories, build their brands, and invest in keyword strategies is being disrupted by AI agents that control how brands appear to consumers and in what priority order.
"We're calling this disintermediation. So you are no longer owning that search experience. How you tell that story, the way that you brand it, and how much you pay for the keywords are being disrupted by what's happening on the consumer experience side," Cole explains.
This shift forces businesses to reconsider their fundamental approach to customer connection. Instead of optimizing for search algorithms and keyword rankings, companies must think about creating value, building relationships, and connecting with customers in a world where AI agents mediate these interactions.
From Content Marketing to Context Marketing
Traditional content marketing focused on creating content optimized for searches, hoping to appear when people looked for solutions to specific problems. Context marketing represents a fundamental shift in this approach.
In a context-driven world, businesses must be prepared to reassemble real-time content pieces to answer any customer question. Instead of creating static content for predetermined search queries, companies need flexible content components that AI can dynamically combine to provide personalized, contextual responses.
Cole envisions a future where, instead of navigating a pre-constructed website with fixed navigation, customers can build their own experiences by describing what they're looking for and the problems they're trying to solve. Companies would then create digital experiences tailored to individual customer contexts and needs.
The Changing Role of Websites
While websites may seem less important in an AI-mediated world, they're becoming more crucial. Websites now serve less as discovery mechanisms and more as validation and decision-making tools.
The process has shifted: AI helps with initial research and recommendations, but humans still want to visit websites to confirm decisions, especially for complex or high-value purchases. Websites are evolving from broad discovery tools to focused conversion and credibility instruments.
Additionally, AI agents actively crawl and analyze website content to inform their recommendations. This means websites must be optimized for AI consumption and understanding, not just human navigation and search engine rankings. The content must be structured and comprehensive enough for AI agents to accurately represent the business in recommendations.
The Growing Importance of User-Generated Content
In an AI-driven discovery world, user reviews, customer testimonials, and user-generated content on platforms like Quora and Reddit become increasingly important. These authentic, user-driven content sources serve as critical feedback loops for AI agents making recommendations.
"I think it becomes about a focus less on brand-initiated content creation, and really on activating customers to be advocates and speak on our behalf," Cole explains. While marketers have always known that customer advocacy provides the most valuable opportunities, controlling and systematizing it has been difficult. In an AI-mediated world, customer advocacy becomes even more critical for business success.
Businesses must shift focus from creating promotional content to inspiring and enabling customers to share authentic experiences and recommendations. This requires developing programs and strategies that encourage genuine customer advocacy rather than traditional marketing content creation.
Other topics discussed include:
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The Advantage AI Transformation Presents for Marketers and Small Businesses
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Real-World Agent Implementation: Form Analysis and Lead Qualification
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Real-World Agent Implementation: Advanced Account Research and Content Creation
Today's advice provided with insights from Amanda Cole, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
Watch the full interview YouTube
Claude Sonnet 4 Expands to 1M Token Context Window: Anthropic has increased Claude Sonnet 4's context limit to 1 million tokens—a fivefold jump—enabling developers to process massive codebases, analyze large document sets, and maintain context across complex workflows in a single request. The long-context feature is now in public beta on the Anthropic API for Tier 4 and custom accounts, also available in Amazon Bedrock and coming soon to Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Updated pricing applies to prompts over 200K tokens, with caching and batch options reducing costs. Early users, including Bolt.new and iGent AI, report major productivity boosts in large-scale coding and autonomous engineering. Anthropic
Threads Surpasses 400M Monthly Active Users: Threads has reached a major milestone, with more than 400 million people using the platform each month. Adam Mosseri via Threads
Temporary Reach Boost for Edits Content: Meta confirmed that content created with its Edits app is currently receiving a short-term reach boost to help grow the app, but cautioned creators against using it purely to bypass content checks, noting that detection systems are in place. The platform is incorporating signals like the probability of a user tapping the Edits button into its ranking algorithm, aiming to show more Edit-focused posts to audiences most likely to engage and potentially adopt the app. Adam Mosseri via Threads
Instagram Marketing API Deprecation Accelerated: Meta has moved up the deprecation date for legacy Instagram fields in the Marketing API to September 9, 2025, ahead of the previously planned January 2026 deadline, starting with Marketing API v22.0. Developers are urged to migrate before the deadline to prevent disruptions, as the changes already apply for Graph API v22.0 users with auto-updates. Impacted API calls include various GET and POST endpoints. Full details are available in Meta's developer documentation. Meta
Meta Expands Brand Rights Protection with Scam Ad Reporting: Meta has rolled out major updates to its Brand Rights Protection tool, enabling all enrolled businesses to report suspected scam ads at scale, even if the ads don't directly use their intellectual property. The enhancement also covers misleading ads that exploit brand names without permission. Alongside this, Meta has redesigned the takedown request process to be more intuitive, adding violation-type sub-tabs and improved search and filtering in the Reports tab. Meta
TikTok Expands Affiliate Program to Services with TikTok Go: TikTok has introduced TikTok Go, a new affiliate tool that lets creators earn commissions from promoting services such as hotel bookings, restaurant vouchers, and local experiences. The feature is now available in Indonesia, Japan, and the United States, with hotel bookings currently the only service category in the US. This expansion moves beyond physical products, allowing creators to monetize service-based recommendations in areas like travel, food, wellness, and education, paving the way for broader creator–brand partnerships. TikTok via LinkedIn
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tukangpostoemel@gmail.com Opted in on: 2021-09-06 17:20:47 UTC.