Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner... | Presented by |  |
It's National Young Reader's Week, Alluser! What book made the deepest impact on you as a young reader? For our Director or Editorial, it was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
In today's edition:
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🧵 Today's Tip of the Day is for Instagram and Threads
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🗺️ A strategic approach to marketing on Reddit
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🧗 A scalable AI prompt framework
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🧪 A testing protocol for Meta's AI-powered ads tools
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Instagram for Business changes
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TikTok thumbnail previews
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Facebook metric changes
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Shorts updates
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🗞️ Additional industry news from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and more
Does your personal Facebook profile allow public followers? Are you aware that Facebook will soon be forcing a change to your profile?
On November 14th, Facebook will begin a phased removal of the public followers option from personal profiles. Users with public followers will automatically be transitioned to Professional Mode, which combines friends and followers into a single audience.
The transition to Professional Mode will occur in waves. Only a select group of profiles will be affected by the initial November 14th deadline, but users can switch to Professional Mode independently at any time.
Make a Pro-Active Switch to Professional Mode
While migrating to Professional Mode may result in decreased privacy and potentially more unsolicited messages, it offers several benefits, especially for creators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners including but not limited to:
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Visibility in Facebook's "Suggested for You" algorithm increases the chances of your content being shown to a wider audience.
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A dedicated dashboard that provides insights and analytics about your content performance, audience demographics, and engagement metrics.
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The ability to schedule posts in advance to optimize reach and ensure consistent content delivery.
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Monetization features for Reels and longer videos.
Today's tip was inspired by Mari Smith, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World. Source: Mari Smith via Facebook
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Getting Started With Reddit: The Future of Online Conversations: Part 2
Are you overlooking Reddit? Wondering how to get started—from identifying the right subreddits to engagement tactics?
In this article, we'll explore what you need to know when you're ready to begin marketing on Reddit.
Research Your Industry Presence
Once you're comfortable with Reddit basics, Csutoras recommends researching your industry's presence using the site's search features.
For example, you can type in site: [yourdomain.com] and hit search. Right off the bat, you'll see subreddits your domain has been mentioned in.
When evaluating which subreddits to join, look beyond subscriber counts, check the "online now" number. If you open up one community and see five people online versus another community that has fifty online, you'll be able to discern where people are actually active.
You'll also want to consider factor such as:
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Posting frequency
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Community Rules
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Content quality
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Moderator activity
If one subreddit is massive in scope and scale while another is more targeted to your product but limits what you can talk about, you'll need to decide where to spend your time. The balance is in finding where you have the most visibility in the largest audience with the least resistance.
Next, assess the content performance in each subreddit you're considering.
Use the "Top" sorting option to see posts that have been successful in the past. Then, look at community response patterns and engagement levels. Finally, note which times are best for posting content to generate the most engagement.
How to Establish Your Reddit Presence for Marketing
The key to success on Reddit is approaching it like any real-world community. As Csutoras explains, think of it like a civic center: "Would you walk in, go up on stage, grab the mic, and start talking? Would you walk in and just start handing out business cards to everybody and promoting yourself? No, that wouldn't go well."
Instead, observe how each community operates and learn which topics resonate with each subreddit. Again, pay special attention to each community's rules and norms. If something in the rules prohibits you from engaging, find another subreddit or create your own.
When you're confident you understand a subreddit, you can begin building relationships with regular participants and the moderators.
Start with smaller subreddits and begin by commenting on older posts first, and remember that Reddit users value authenticity over promotion. Don't be lazy. Instead of posting, "I have a social media account I want to grow. Can you help me?" give your fellow Redditors some context and background.
"I have an account that's [this large] that's been [doing this], and it's in [this space]. I'm trying to accomplish [goal], and I've been incorporating [these strategies]. I'm noticing [this outcome]. I want to see [this outcome]. What am I missing? Can you recommend something new that's worked for you in the past?"
This post type will likely get multiple comments because your ask is specific and detailed.
It's also important to follow up on conversations rather than abandoning them. You wouldn't just walk away from someone during a face-to-face conversation, so don't do that on Reddit. If someone takes the time to write a thoughtful response to your question, don't just reply with, "Thank you."
Instead, reply with, "Thank you so much. I never really understood how the battery life impacted the distance like that. It's very interesting to see how the voltage doesn't necessarily apply to the mileage so much as how you're running the device. Overall, this is really intriguing, and I'm going to have to consider this more when I start making a purchase."
Finally, when you face criticism–and you likely will, Csutoras emphasizes avoiding defensiveness. A defensive stance can divide the community, with some users supporting you and others opposing you, which could put you at odds with the moderators.
A quick apology that acknowledges your mistake is the fastest way to move forward," he advises. "I'm really sorry. I genuinely didn't mean to come off like that. I apologize; I'll make sure I do better in the future."
A Final Word About Marketing on Reddit
Success on Reddit requires patience and authenticity. While the platform may take more time and effort than other social networks, the potential for deep customer relationships and genuine brand advocacy makes it worthwhile.
"Anybody can be successful on Reddit," Csutoras concludes. "As long as you're willing to put the work in." The key is approaching the platform with respect for its unique culture and a genuine desire to contribute value to its communities.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Brent Csutoras, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Prompting at Scale: How to Deploy AI Across Your Company
If you've tried to expand AI adoption across your organization, you've probably encountered a familiar pattern: inconsistent results, frustrated team members, and endless prompt refinements.
This challenge multiplies across your organization as different team members develop unique approaches to prompting and AI projects, leading to inconsistent results and inefficient workflows.
The solution is a systematic prompt framework that scales from a single source of truth.
The AI Strategy Canvas for Scalable AI Prompt Engineering
The AI Strategy Canvas is built on a two-part foundation of prompt formatting and dynamic variables that can be quickly dropped into a prompt. This is easily achieved by using delimiters to open and close a prompt block.
Imagine you want to write an email using Claude. Start your block with all caps and a colon.
Then, enter the name of a target audience persona you've already fully defined and stored in a library where your AI can retrieve information. This is your variable.
Using dynamic variables that pull standardized details from a library ensures that everyone can easily include the correct information in their requests because there is a single source of truth. You can store these variables in Notion or similar tools your AI can connect to, allowing quick substitution (AKA hot-swapping) for different use cases.
Close your block with a forward slash.
For example, this prompt tells Claude that you want it to generate content for prospects who fall into your Target Audience A–without you having to copy and paste lengthy persona details.
AUDIENCE: The audience is: ${target_audience_a} /AUDIENCE The 9 Blocks for Scalable AI Prompts
Each block will have multiple variables you can swap in for specific uses. Give each varia a name–paying special attention to taxonomy, and store them in your prompt library for hot-swapping. For example:
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target_audience_a
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target_audience_b
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target_audience_c
Building Block 1: Target Audience Definition: Using psychographics, demographics, economics, and sociographics, build a complete profile for each target audience.
Building Block 2: Company Context Integration: Create multiple versions of your company context, from a one-paragraph summary to comprehensive documentation that can be used at various customer journey stages.
Building Block 3: Products and Services: Maintain two distinct versions of your product information to detail the value you deliver to customers: a concise promotional description for basic tasks and a comprehensive document detailing features, benefits, and technical specifications.
Building Block 4: Dynamic Context Integration: Think of this as a situation-specific catch-all block. For example, you might need the AI to reference:
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Key points discussed in a review meeting
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Specific challenges your team identified
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Customer feedback
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Current business objectives
Building Block 5: Role Definition: Be very clear about the roles your team will need and how you want the AI to behave within the scope of each role. For example:
Building Block 6: Style and Voice Calibration: Create several style and voice blocks so that you're using the best fit for every need, such as internal emails, prospect emails, and customer emails.
You can develop specific parameters to control everything from tone to sentence length in AI outputs. For example:
You can also maintain an exclusions rule that gives the AI a list of words and phrases your company doesn't want to see in their content.
Building Block 7: Resource Integration: This block connects your AI tools with the information and tools they need to complete your request. These resources might include:
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Meeting transcripts
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Reference documents
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External URLs
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API data feeds
Building Block 8: Rule Setting: Beyond the basic guidelines from Block 6, these are detailed rule sets that establish guardrails for data security and copyright infringement.
Building Block 9: Request Formulation: Your actual request for output should build upon all previous blocks to create a clear, actionable instruction for your AI tool–what you want the final output to look like. For example, if you want a fully fleshed-out article, use the word 'Write" instead of "Outline."
Today's advice provided with insights from John Munsell, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast.
Facebook and Instagram Ads Updates for 2025: What Marketers Need to Know
Are you struggling to keep up with the latest Meta advertising changes? Wondering how AI is reshaping the ads landscape?
For marketers who haven't recently embraced advertising on Meta platforms, particularly those who stepped back after the iOS updates, now is the time to reconsider.
The potential reach is enormous, with over 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook and nearly 3 billion on Instagram.
More importantly, Meta's advertising remains one of the most cost-effective options for reaching a target audience with paid social media marketing. Facebook ads expert Tara Zirker routinely sees averages of:
3 Advantage+ Features to Explore
Meta has introduced a suite of Advantage Plus features representing a significant shift toward AI-driven advertising.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
This feature represents Meta's fully automated solution for eCommerce businesses.
The system uses a dedicated algorithm separate from other ad products and requires minimal input from advertisers–simply upload your creative assets and select your catalog source. The AI handles audience targeting, placement optimization, and delivery from there.
This feature works across various price points, even for products priced at several hundred dollars. However, it performs best for accounts with substantial historical data from which the AI can learn.
Advantage+ Placements
This optimization feature allows the algorithm to identify where your ads perform best effectively.
Zirker strongly advises against manually selecting placements, a practice she sees many advertisers still following.
Her analysis of numerous accounts reveals that even with unrestricted placements, about 60-80% of the advertising budget typically goes to Instagram, where the audience is most responsive. At the same time, she's found that Facebook audiences can sometimes be even more valuable than Instagram audiences for certain businesses.
This demonstrates the importance of letting the algorithm optimize across all available placements rather than restricting them based on assumptions.
Advantage+ Creative
According to Zirker, creative optimization should consume about 80% of your advertising effort, as it's becoming the primary differentiator in campaign success. Meta has developed sophisticated tools to better serve advertisers with tools to enhance ad creative automatically.
The system can now adjust image brightness, generate animations, add music, and more. One particularly powerful feature is the ability to take a basic product image and automatically generate various background settings for testing.
The system can also intelligently extend backgrounds to fit different placements while preserving critical elements like text and logos.
When you enable these enhancements, Meta will show you preview examples of possible variations and suggest using top-performing ads from previous campaigns. However, you won't always know exactly which enhancements will be applied to individual ads.
Advantage+ Ad Strategy Implementation: Budget and Testing
You'll need enough budget for at least 200 conversions per day during your testing period; if your cost per lead is $10, you should plan for a daily testing budget of $2,000. This might seem substantial, but it's necessary to ensure Meta's AI has enough data to optimize effectively.
From that budget, allocate 10-30% specifically for new features or approaches.
For Advantage Plus Shopping campaigns, you might initially see negative ROI in the early hours, but profitable campaigns often emerge by the end of the 24-hour cycle.
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Review your initial ad performance 4-6 hours after launch and pause any ads showing no conversions.
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Pause any unprofitable ad sets at the 8-9 hour mark, though you can keep those close to profitability.
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By the 12-hour point, pause any ad sets that aren't definitively profitable.
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Make a final check at 14-16 hours to pause any ad sets that have dipped below profitability.
Through this testing process, you'll typically find that about 15 out of 20 initial ad sets are effective, and five can be permanently scrapped.
Once you identify your winners, create new ad sets to replace the unsuccessful ones and continue the testing cycle.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Tara Zirker, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Instagram for Business Sunsetting: In December 2024, the Instagram for Business website will no longer be available. All content from the website will be moved to the Meta for Business website to provide a single, comprehensive platform for businesses to access information and tools across Meta technologies. Source: Social Media Examiner's Editorial team via Instagram.
Instagram and Threads Content Updates: Instagram introduced a 15-minute window during which users can edit their posts. The platform has also expanded its boosting capabilities to include most GIFs and stickers, making more content types eligible for promotion. Additionally, users can now replace copyrighted music in their posts with boost-eligible sounds when preparing content for promotion. Finally, Threads users can now share up to 20 photos or videos in a single carousel post, matching the functionality available on Instagram. Source: Instagram
Instagram Sponsored Content: Adam Mosseri clarified that the platform does not downrank Sponsored Content. Source: @Mosseri via Instagram
Instagram Story Highlights: Users can now see Story Highlights from accounts they follow while browsing regular Stories. These Highlight insertions are marked with "Story Highlights" appearing on the collection's first Story. Each Highlight includes a header showing "Highlights from [account name]" and the date the Highlight was created. Source: Lindsey Gamble
Misuse on Meta: Meta has updated their terms of service with stronger wording regarding platform misuse. The revisions provide more precise explanations about the usage of platform features. The terms now offer more direct explanations about how users' personal data may be used. Source: Social Media Today
Facebook and Instagram Ads-Free Subscription: Meta is implementing significant price reductions for its ad-free subscription service in the European Union. The monthly subscription fee will decrease from €9.99 to €5.99 for web users. Mobile users on iOS and Android will see their subscription price reduced from €12.99 to €7.99 per month. Additional Facebook or Instagram accounts will cost €4 per month for web users and €5 per month for mobile users. Meta is also introducing a new free option to show less personalized advertisements using significantly less user data. Source: Meta
TikTok Integrates With Lemon8: TikTok users can now access Lemon8 with their TikTok credentials, though the apps will remain separate platforms. The integration gives creators access to features like collages, filters, and text templates. Source: TikTok
TikTok Thumbnail Previews: A new Preview button lets users see exactly how a chosen thumbnail will be displayed within their profile's profile feed. Source: Social Media Marketing Talk Show Host Jerry Potter
Grok Access Expands: X is testing free access to its AI chatbot Grok for users in New Zealand. Users can make ten queries every two hours when using the Grok-2 model. The Grok-2 mini model allows for 20 queries per two-hour period. Users are limited to three image analysis questions per day. To qualify for free Grok access, users must have an account that is at least one week old and verify it with a phone number. Source: TechCrunch
YouTube Dream Track Experiment: YouTube is expanding its Dream Track experiment with a new feature that allows a select group of creators to restyle specific songs from participating music partners. Creators select an eligible song and describe their desired musical modifications through the 'Restyle a track' prompt feature. The system then generates a unique 30-second version of the song that can be used in Shorts, maintaining the original vocals and lyrics while transforming other musical elements such as genre or mood. All restyled tracks will be credited appropriately, with clear attribution to the original song visible within the Short and on the Shorts audio pivot page. The system will also indicate that artificial intelligence was used in the restyling process. Source: YouTube
YouTube Verification for Appeals: A new experimental verification procedure is being implemented for YouTube channels that want to appeal their termination. During this trial period, certain content creators may need to validate their account through a QR code scan using their mobile device when submitting an appeal for channel termination through YouTube Studio on desktop computers. For creators who encounter difficulties with the QR code verification process, an alternative path is available by clicking the "Learn about appeals" link on the QR verification screen, which directs them to the Help Center, where they can find other methods to submit their appeal. Source: YouTube
Metrics on Facebook: Facebook has announced that Views will become the primary metric for measuring content performance across all formats on their platform. For video content, the term "Plays" will be renamed to "Views," though the calculation method remains unchanged. For Stories, photos, and text posts, Views will replace Impressions, with the key difference being that repeat views from the same user will now be counted individually. The platform is also updating its video metrics, with "Minutes Viewed" and "Average Minutes Viewed" replacing "Watch Time" and "Average Watch Time" respectively. Standard engagement metrics such as Reach, 3-second views, 1-minute views, Reactions, Comments, and Shares will remain unchanged. These updates will be rolled out across Insights in Meta Business Suite and Professional Dashboard in the coming weeks, with Views being integrated into all advertising measurement tools across all ad formats. Source: Facebook
Ads on Threads: Multiple sources report that Meta will bring ads to its Threads platform in 2024. Source: The Verge
Threads Drafts: You can save up to 100 drafts for Threads posts. Source: Threads va Threads
TikTok Affiliate Monetization: TikTok is exploring new ways to integrate shopping into its platform with new affiliate partners such as Amazon, LTK, Target, Impact, Rakuten & more. Creators in the test group can monetize their content and earn income through their organic videos without relying on link-in-bio tools or promo codes. The feature, separate from TikTok Shop, allows creators to search for products within TikTok's interface and add links during video creation. These links appear under a "Related Product" or "Click to View" label in the comments section. Source: TechCrunch
TikTok Symphony Creative Studio: The AI-powered video creation platform now available to all advertisers transforms basic inputs like product URLs into TikTok-ready videos within minutes, featuring licensed assets and automatic AI-generated content labeling. Key features include Generate & Remix Videos, Avatar Videos (with stock and custom options), translation and dubbing capabilities, and a comprehensive video editor. The platform is accessible to all TikTok for Business users, with additional features like Refresh Videos and Generate TikTok Scripts planned for future release. Source: TikTok
YouTube Shorts Updates: YouTube is implementing changes to ensure that Shorts videos between 1-3 minutes in length will be properly displayed across Channel Pages, Studio, and subscriptions. This update is expected to be completed by early December. Additionally, a new feature is rolling out that allows viewers watching Shorts to set notifications for upcoming scheduled live streams happening within the next 24 hours. This feature works for any stream orientation and includes Premieres. Source: YouTube
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