Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner... | Presented by |  |
It's National Ferris Wheel Day, Alluser... Round and round we go!
In today's edition:
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❎ Today's Tip of the Day is for LinkedIn
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🔬 BTS: Social Media Examiner's Marketing Playbook
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🤯 AI Priming: The Secret to Accuracy
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🕶️ Effective Short-Form Video Formats for 2025
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Meta AI in Your DMs
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Social Media Benchmarks
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YouTube Shorts Text-to-Speech Video
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🗞️ Additional Industry News From Google, Instagram, Reddit, and More
Looking for a quick and useful way to share more curated content on LinkedIn?
Use the Share Quote Feature
Whether you're on desktop or mobile, open a newsletter–yours or anyone else's, and highlight a short passage.
Click or tap on the Share Quote option to automatically create a feed post that includes your pulled quote with the curated content. Add your own thoughts and hit Post!
Today's tip was inspired by Louise Brogan, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World.
Marketing Doesn't Have to be This Difficult!
There are lots of changes happening in marketing. If you aren't staying ahead of what's working, you risk being left behind. But there is a solution.
Join thousands of marketers from around the world at Social Media Marketing World and discover the latest strategies to give your marketing a needed boost.
"My goal was just to learn as much as I could and build an action plan. Day one isn't even half over, and I have 24 pages of notes.... front and back," said Janine Kraft.
"This is the BEST conference I have attended in over 20 years! I learned so much from quality speakers that I can take back and ramp up our marketing efforts," said Julie Harvey.
I'm ready to make marketing easier.
How We're Pivoting Our Marketing: Behind the Scenes
Are you finding that your tried-and-true marketing strategies aren't working like they used to? Wondering how to adapt when algorithms seem to be working against you?
Come behind the scenes as Social Media Examiner's CEO Michael Stelzner and marketer Dan Sanchez reveal how they're pivoting their marketing strategy in response to 2025's challenges.
With social algorithms deprioritizing promotional content, email deliverability issues, and AI impacting SEO, they've implemented eight new approaches—all while promoting their flagship Social Media Marketing World conference.
Why Marketing Has Changed
"Something fundamental has changed in our industry," explains Michael Stelzner, founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner. Our marketing playbook worked reliably for twelve years, but recently everything shifted. The algorithms have turned against us, emails are getting buried in spam folders, and social posts aren't reaching their intended audience.
Dan Sanchez, Senior AI Marketing Strategist at Social Media Examiner, identified four significant changes affecting marketers in 2025:
First, social feeds are now dominated by interest-based content rather than social graph connections. While marketers could previously expect to reach a significant portion of their followers, they're now lucky to reach even 5% of their audience. The algorithms prioritize content based on user interests rather than social connections, making it harder for brands to leverage their following.
Second, short-form video has become increasingly prevalent and demanding. Creating quality short-form content requires significant time investment, with even a 60-second video potentially taking hours to produce. While video has been important for years, the current landscape demands higher production value and creative energy.
Third, algorithms are actively suppressing promotional content. Marketers might spend considerable effort creating engaging top-of-funnel content, but the algorithms restrict their reach when they attempt to promote their products or services.
Fourth, SEO is undergoing significant changes due to AI advancement. Traditional strategies like writing blog posts to rank in search results may not have the same future potential, forcing marketers to reconsider their approach to content creation.
Social Media Examiner's Strategic Responses
In response to these challenges, Social Media Examiner implemented eight key strategies to adapt their marketing approach:
Strategic Hiring for Content Creation
We hired Dan Sanchez as their Senior AI Marketing Strategist, recognizing the need for someone who could create short-form, long-form, audio, and video content. This strategic hire also brought AI expertise to help streamline their marketing efforts.
Increased Investment in Paid Advertising
Despite primarily focusing on organic marketing, Social Media Examiner allocated a $10,000 monthly budget for Meta ads. We partnered with Emily Hirsch's agency to target our existing audience, who might have missed seeing organic content due to algorithm changes.
Premise-Based Content Series
We developed what Sanchez calls "premise-based content" or "series-based content" to maintain consistent engagement without reinventing the wheel for every post. One example is the "Dollar Marketer" series, where Sanchez attempts to create viral social media posts using items that cost one dollar.
In one episode, Sanchez purchased googly eyes and created an entertaining video showing various objects with googly eyes, culminating in a promotion for Social Media Marketing World speakers. This approach generated both behind-the-scenes content and the final promotional piece.
Strategic Meme Marketing
We launched a "Meming Full Marketing" series that combines original memes with educational content. Each post includes a meme addressing common marketing challenges or situations, followed by thoughtful analysis and practical advice. This approach helps build engagement while subtly promoting their conference when relevant.
Speaker Content Strategy
The team developed a systematic approach to creating content with conference speakers by conducting 30-minute interviews asking five strategic questions designed to generate multiple pieces of content.
Questions include:
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What mistakes do marketers make with [platform]?
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Why are you excited to speak at Social Media Marketing World about this topic?
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What's one big change you've seen recently?
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What's a common myth marketers believe?
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What popular tactics no longer work in 2025?
AI-Powered Customer Support
We implemented an AI chatbot named Scout that handles sales and support inquiries. The bot retrains every 24 hours on updated conference information and can communicate in multiple languages. This addition has increased sales by providing immediate answers to potential customers' questions while reducing support tickets.
Enhanced Sales Strategy
We integrated the AI bot with a conference advisor program, connecting potential attendees with human sales representatives for complex inquiries. We also initiated outbound sales efforts to previous attendees who have yet to purchase tickets for the current event.
Long-Form Text Content
Stelzner has consistently published long-form text posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X, focusing on authentic storytelling and transparency about business challenges. This approach has maintained strong engagement and built deeper connections with our audience.
4 Implementation Tips for Your Marketing
The key to success in 2025's marketing landscape lies in adapting to algorithmic changes while maintaining authentic connections with your audience. When implementing similar strategies, consider these key insights:
First, look for opportunities to repurpose content across multiple channels. For example, a single 30-minute speaker interview can generate five or more pieces of social content.
Second, focus on creating content series rather than stand-alone pieces. This approach provides a framework for consistent content creation while maintaining audience interest.
Third, be transparent about challenges and struggles. Stelzner's openness about business difficulties has created stronger connections with his audience and opened new opportunities through supportive responses.
Fourth, consider how AI can enhance your marketing efforts, from customer support to content creation. The technology has matured to the point where it can provide significant value while reducing manual workload.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Michael Stelzner and Dan Sanchez, speakers at Social Media Marketing World.
AI Priming: Getting Custom and Accurate AI Output
Wondering why your AI results aren't meeting expectations? Curious about the secret to crafting more effective prompts?
Artificial intelligence (AI) models operate based on three core values, prioritized in this order:
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Harmless (to avoid legal liability)
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Helpful (following instructions)
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Truthful (a distant third)
This hierarchy means that when given insufficient information, AI will try to be helpful by making things up – a process known as hallucination. The solution is to provide more context and information through a process called priming.
Christopher Penn, chief data scientist at Trust Insights, compares priming to preparing and organizing all your ingredients before you start cooking. When you prime an AI model, you're giving it a foundation of factual information to work from rather than leaving it to rely solely on its training data, which may include unreliable sources.
With proper priming, AI can produce legal documents, optimize social media content strategy, and perform SWOT analyses.
How to Use the RAPPEL Framework for Effective AI Priming and Prompting
Trust Insights uses the RAPPEL framework for structuring their AI interactions:
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Role
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Action
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Prime
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Prompt
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Evaluate
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Learn
Role & Action
In the initial role step, you use one to two sentences to tell the AI who you want it to be or what you want it to be. Next, you provide a paragraph or a brief list of four to five items that give a high-level overview of the intended task you want the AI to execute. For example:
Role: You are an award-winning social media marketer like Alisa Meredith, who knows Pinterest in and out. Action: Today, we're going to devise a Pinterest strategy.
Now, you can proceed to priming the AI by providing the necessary context to execute your prompt effectively.
Prime Your AI
Data is the most essential ingredient in your AI interactions. Extending Penn's cooking metaphor, think of priming data as your eggs. You're not going to make much of an omelet with half an egg, but you can make a massive omelet with five crates of eggs!
Penn says that about 95% of an effective prompt should be priming data and that if your complete prompt isn't around 5,000 words, you probably haven't given your AI enough priming data to do what you're asking it to do.
You can prime AI models with various types of data:
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PDFs
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Spreadsheets
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Documents
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Web pages
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Video transcripts
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Audio transcripts
Here are three ways to gather data for priming:
Using Internal Documents: Penn recommends using Google's NotebookLM to handle larger datasets. This tool can process multiple sources and create digestible summaries. It is particularly useful for analyzing sales call transcripts, processing court documents, reviewing earnings call transcripts, and analyzing customer feedback.
To achieve this, upload the entire dataset into NotebookLM and ask it to generate focused summaries. You can then use these summaries as priming data in other AI tools.
Using External 3rd-Party Data Sources: Penn recommends focusing on credible sources when using external data. To vet academic or research content, look for DOI (Document Object Identifier) numbers indicating peer-reviewed publications. Tools for finding credible research include:
When using public content for priming, keep fair use limitations in mind. While you can use 3rd-party articles or posts to inform AI about ideas and best practices (similar to how a human would learn from reading), creating derivative works by having AI rewrite content in your voice would violate intellectual property rights.
Generated Knowledge Through Questioning: If you don't have specific internal or 3rd-party data to upload or you need to provide more data, you can have the AI generate its own context through a series of questions and conversation:
1.What do you know about best practices for this topic?" 2. "What common mistakes do less experienced folks in this topic make?" 3. "What expert tips and tricks are there about this topic that we have not talked about yet?"
This approach typically generates 1,500-2,500 words of context that helps focus the AI on your subject domain.
Prompt, Evaluate, & Learn
After priming, the prompt should follow a specific structure with step-by-step guidance for how the AI should think through the task.
1. You're going to use the knowledge base we've built to create a Pinterest Strategy. 2. Recite back my instructions for me to explain to me what it is we're doing. 3. Identify the key points of a Pinterest strategy. 4. Explain why you chose those points for this Pinterest strategy. 5.Give me my Pinterest strategy in full.
When you receive the output, assess whether it meets your requirements and provide corrective instructions until the desired result is achieved.
Finally, ask the AI to write comprehensive prompt instructions to replicate the process. Documenting the entire process streamlines future iterations of similar tasks, as these instructions are used across various platforms as a custom GPT in ChatGPT, a project in Claude, or a gem in Gemini.
Today's advice provided with insights from Christopher S. Penn, a featured guest on the AI Explored podcast and speaker at Social Media Marketing World.
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Effective Short-Form Video Formats for 2025
Tired of your content getting lost in social media noise? Wondering how top creators consistently produce videos that get noticed?
In this article, you'll learn a proven methodology for dissecting successful content formats and adapting them to your own niche.
Brendan Kane has developed a systematic approach to creating breakthrough video content. His model, refined through over 10,000 hours of research identifying more than 220 different content formats, consists of five essential steps that any creator can follow to improve their chances of success.
Research and Identify Successful Organic Video Formats
Before you begin your research, you must come to terms with two principles.
The first is that organic social media isn't meant for direct selling. It's intended to get people to know, like, and trust you so they're motivated to buy your product.
The second is that there's a difference between trends and formats. Kane emphasizes that trends like the ice bucket challenge are fleeting, while formats are repeatable storytelling structures that consistently perform well over time. His team has identified over 220 distinct formats through their research.
Now that you know what to look for, here are two ways to conduct this research on your own:
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Pay attention to the formats seeded in your social feeds. The algorithms are already showing you successful content types. When you see something performing well, dive deeper into that creator's profile to study their approach. Is the creator replicating that format over and over with success?
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Use the Explorer feed to search for and surface content relevant to your industry. If you're a nutritionist, search for terms like "food hacks" or "cooking recipes." Coaches can search terms such as "entrepreneurial advice." The algorithms will show you more relevant, successful content as you do this more often.
As you find formats, log each one in a spreadsheet along with its creator.
Examples of Consistently Successful Organic Video Formats
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The Man on the Street: In these videos, a creator interacts with a random person in a public space and captures their reaction; SB Mowing offers free yard transformations.
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Two Characters, One Light Bulb: In these videos, creators play the role of both expert and skeptic to address common industry myths; Erika Kullberg plays both expert lawyer and novice to explain legal rights.
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The Walking Listicle: In these videos, the creator records an informal video while walking. The movement creates dynamic energy and makes the content feel more conversational–almost like a FaceTime call rather than a formal presentation; Robert Croak, founder of Silly Bands, shares business advice while walking.
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The Challenge: In these videos, the creator shows a self-imposed challenge and an impressive result, leveraging natural tension and the story's payoff; John Malecki attempts to build expensive furniture from salvaged materials.
Choose and Analyze a Video Format
Going viral should never be the sole goal. The videos you produce must relate to your expertise, products, or services. The key is finding formats that allow you to showcase your knowledge with a target audience while appealing to broader audiences.
To find the right fit for you, take stock of all the video formats and creators you identified in the research phase. Consider each of them and choose the format that has the best natural fit for you, your personality, and your niche or industry. The format will only work if the video feels genuine rather than shoehorned.
Next, analyze that format to understand the nuanced elements that make the format work consistently.
Go to the creator's social media feeds and use a spreadsheet to log a selection of videos using the Gold Silver Bronze Analysis Method. You'll need 10 videos for each category below:
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Gold Standard: Videos with 10+ million views
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Silver Performance: Videos with 800,000 to 1 million views
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Bronze Level: Videos will less than 300,000 views
Now, cross-analyze these videos, looking for patterns in performance drivers to determine why the Gold Standard videos performed well and why the Silver Performance and Bronze Level videos performed less well.
While Kane's team tracks over 1,000 performance drivers, he recommends beginners focus on these core elements:
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Opening hooks and how they capture attention
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Pacing throughout the video
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Caption placement and style
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Reaction captures and emotional moments
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Environmental factors that impact engagement
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Technical elements like transitions and edits
Strategic Organic Video Ideation
Once you understand a format's mechanics, ideation becomes more structured and effective. If you choose the right format, it will typically drive the ideation process.
Take the "Is it Worth It?" format consistently used by Tanner Leatherstein to build expertise and credibility while entertaining his audience.
He started by deconstructing a Chanel handbag to examine its craftsmanship and determine whether the product was worth the cost. He then expanded to deconstructing products from other luxury brands.
Each video maintains the same successful structure, which removes the pressure to create completely original content for each video.
Single Video Production Iteration
You may be tempted to batch multiple videos using this newly identified format, but Kane strongly advises against batch production when learning a new format.
The challenge and danger of batch-producing a new format is that if the first one fails, even if you figure out why it failed, it's not likely that you can fix that issue in the remaining videos. So you'll publish nine more videos that won't work. If you do one video at a time, you're not overly invested in something that doesn't work.
So, produce one video, then move on to the fifth and final step.
Review and Analyze Organic Videos With Sub-Par Performance
When video content produced with this method underperforms, it's usually due to one or both of these two things:
The first is that you misunderstood the key performance drivers. Maybe you focused on surface elements (like wardrobe) instead of structural elements or missed crucial format components.
The second is sub-par execution quality. Perhaps you had technical issues in production, pacing problems, or a weak story structure.
To find out, you need to do a systematic comparison of your content against successful examples in the same format.
Play your video side-by-side with a gold standard example and analyze any differences, such as subtle execution variations or missing performance drivers.
Finally, plan specific improvements for the next video you'll produce.
By following this systematic review process, creators can make incremental improvements with each new piece of content. Once you've mastered a format, you can consider batch production to scale your content creation.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Brendan Kane, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Pinterest 4th Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results: Pinterest achieved its first billion-dollar revenue quarter with Q4 revenue of $1.15 billion, an 18% increase year over year. Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs) reached an all-time high of 553 million users, representing an 11% increase from the previous year. For Q1 2025, Pinterest expects revenue between $837 million and $852 million, representing 13-15% growth year over year, or 15-17% on a constant currency basis. The company projects Q1 2025 Adjusted EBITDA to be between $155 million and $170 million. The U.S. and Canada region generated $900 million in Q4 revenue, Europe contributed $196 million, and the rest of the world added $58 million. MAUs in the U.S. and Canada reached 101 million, Europe had 145 million, and the rest of the world recorded 307 million users. Source: Pinterest
2025 Social Media Benchmarks Report: The report analyzes data from 125 million social media posts between 2023 and 2024, providing a comprehensive view of social media performance metrics and trends for 2025 strategic planning. TikTok and Instagram remain the dominant platforms for user engagement, though with diverging trends. TikTok maintains a strong engagement rate of 2.50%, while Instagram has seen a 28% year-over-year decline to 0.50%. Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) both show lower engagement rates at 0.15%. TikTok significantly outperforms other platforms in terms of user interactions, averaging 3,092 likes per post compared to Instagram's 395. Comment engagement on TikTok averages 66 comments per post (up 73% year-over-year), while Instagram posts receive an average of 24 comments (up 33% year-over-year). TikTok has shown remarkable growth in content sharing, doubling its share rates year-over-year. Instagram maintains an average of 41 shares per post. While TikTok's impressions have remained stable, Instagram has seen a 13% year-over-year increase in impressions. Brands maintain different posting schedules across platforms: Instagram: 5 posts per week; TikTok: 2 posts per week. Source: SocialInsider
Instagram Will Use Edits App to Test New Creative Tools: Per the Head of Instagram, "We want to make sure that there are the best possible creative tools for making not only Reels but [for] photos both in the Instagram app and then for video in the Edits app. They're built on the same codebase, and you're going to see probably new features be tried first in the Edits app first over time, and the ones that work, we'll probably integrate into the main app." Source: @Mosseri via @Oncescuradu on Threads
YouTube Details Milestones and Focus for 20th Birthday Year: YouTube TV has achieved more than 8 million subscribers, while YouTube Music & Premium has surpassed 100 million subscribers including trials. Television has surpassed mobile devices as the primary platform for YouTube viewing in the United States, with Nielsen reporting YouTube as the leader in streaming watch time for two consecutive years. Users are watching over 1 billion hours of YouTube content on televisions daily, with the platform expanding features like Watch With for live commentary and real-time reactions. YouTube has become the most popular service for podcast listening in the United States, with plans to enhance podcast tools, creator monetization, and content discovery. More than half of channels earning five figures or more on YouTube generated revenue from sources beyond traditional advertising and Premium subscriptions last year. Auto dubbing technology has proven successful, with more than 40% of total watch time for dubbed videos coming from viewers choosing to listen in translated languages. The platform plans to integrate Veo 2 into Dream Screen. Source: YouTube
YouTube Profile Cards: The platform is updating the feature on Studio mobile to match recent app updates, maintaining the same functionality while introducing a modernized look. The profile card updates are being rolled out to all creators this week. Source: YouTube
YouTube Shorts Text-to-Speech Available on iOS: The text-to-speech feature allows creators to add text to their Shorts and have it narrated, with control over the visual text's start and endpoint. Creators can select from four different voices for the narration. Source: YouTube
Firefly AI Subscriptions: Adobe announced stand-alone subscriptions for its AI models and is launching a redesigned website at firefly.adobe.com where users can access these AI models, including the new Firefly AI video model, which is now available in public beta on both the website and in Premiere Pro Beta. The Standard plan is $9.99 monthly, and the Pro plan costs $29.99 monthly. Source: TechCrunch
Google Whisk: The AI image generation tool is now available in 100 countries. Source: Google
Facebook Marketplace Partner Program: Meta will begin allowing competing classified ad providers to list their inventory on Facebook Marketplace. The new Facebook Marketplace Partner Program will display third-party classified ad listings alongside Facebook's user listings and other third-party inventory on Marketplace. Source: Reuters
Google Ads and Display & Video 360 Customer Match List Updates: The platforms will implement a new maximum membership duration of 540 days for Customer Match lists, with the rollout beginning April 7, 2025. This change affects existing lists with no membership expiration or those set to expire beyond 540 days, as they will be automatically updated to conform to the new 540-day maximum. The new policy will apply retroactively to existing members with longer durations, which means list sizes may decrease as memberships expire. Campaigns that target segments that become too small due to these changes may be unable to serve ads and could automatically pause. To prevent campaign interruptions, advertisers should refresh their Customer Match lists before April 7, 2025, either by renewing memberships or replacing expired lists with current ones. Under this new system, advertisers must regularly refresh their lists by re-uploading customer data, as list sizes will naturally decrease over time without updates. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Meta AI Can Access Messaging Chats: By mentioning using @MetaAI in replies, the AI will access messages and content shared with it, including content that other chat participants choose to share. Users should avoid sharing sensitive information like passwords or financial details in chats, as other participants can share these messages with Meta AI. To prevent message sharing with Meta AI, users can delete chats, remove specific messages, edit message content, or delete chat information. Source: Meta
Reddit's Q4 2024 Earnings: Key findings from the report include: Revenue reached $427.7 million, up 71% year-over-year; International revenue grew 76% year-over-year to $80.0 million, while U.S. revenue increased 70% to $347.7 million; Performance-based advertising drove over half of Q4 growth and represented about 60% of total ad revenue; Daily active users grew to 101.7 million, a 39% increase from the previous year. Source: Reddit
Veo 2 Comes to YouTube Shorts: Dream Screen, which previously allowed users to generate AI backgrounds for Shorts using text prompts, is receiving an upgrade with Veo 2 integration. The update introduces the ability to generate stand-alone video clips that can be added to any Short. Veo 2 produces high-quality videos across various subjects and styles, with improved processing speed compared to the previous version. The model features an enhanced understanding of real-world physics and human movement, resulting in more detailed and realistic output. Users can specify styles, lens choices, and cinematic effects within Dream Screen. To create video backgrounds, users can access Dream Screen through the Shorts camera by selecting Green Screen and entering their prompt. To add generated clips to Shorts, users need to open the Shorts camera, tap Add, select Create, input their prompt, and choose their desired video length. Source: YouTube
What Did You Think of Today's Newsletter?
Did You Know?
Ducks can turn-off one hemisphere of their brain while the other remains alert, allowing them to sleep with half their brain awake, keeping one eye open to watch for predators.
Michael Stelzner, Founder and CEO
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