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It’s Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day, Reader! Have your Tardis at the ready, people. This is not a drill! 🌀 ⏰ 🌀

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for video retention

• A struggle-free content 🖼️ framework

• 🔇 Sound is missing from early Instagram videos

• Instagram Stories 🙌 hype comments 

• 💥 Newsletter updates from LinkedIn

• New Messenger features 🔐

• Meta's ⚙ 🤖 AI image generation website tool

• 🧵 Topic tags on Threads

• TikTok 💫 trends report 

• X/Twitter ☑️ verification change

• YouTube podcast 🔀 migration

• ⏸ Pause for 💬 comments on YouTube

Whether you’re creating short-form video for TikTok, Instagram, or both, the first couple of seconds are critical to attracting and engaging your viewer. 

2 Ways to Improve Watch Time and Retention

If your target audience is looking for solutions to a problem you can solve, start your videos by showing the promised result and then walk the viewer through the steps to achieve that result. Once they’re watching, they’ll likely watch the looping video a few times to comprehend the solution you're showcasing fully.

Another way to pull viewers into watching a full video is to take the role of different characters in a single video. Start the video acting as your customer with a problem, then switch to yourself as The Expert to explain how you can help. Switch between the roles until you’ve led someone from problem to solution.

Today's tip is inspired by Kat Norton.

Stay Relevant During This Time of Change! 

If you're ready to level up your marketing skills with what's working now, consider attending Social Media Marketing World. This event is designed to ensure you don't become irrelevant. 

"I found purpose at the conference. It's set up for anyone attending to reach their objectives," said Pamela Bakalian.

"This conference gave me a new vision for my work and opened my eyes to where I could take my career. I can’t wait to reflect and put what I learned into action," said Stacey Brown.

Check out what other past attendees had to say!

Wondering how to write marketing content easily? Looking for a step-by-step model?

The Writing GPS Framework

Here is a step-by-step model to guide you through creating a piece of marketing content, from initial idea to final publication. 

Go: Research and Plan Before Writing

Before starting to write, it is critical to spend time researching and planning out your content. Identify one clear goal that this piece of content should achieve, like getting email subscribers or making sales. Then, put yourself in your reader's shoes and ask "So what?" to understand the benefits they will gain. Next, add supporting data like statistics and testimonials to validate your message. Finally, think about what format makes the most sense based on where the content will be published and how much space you have. Planning thoroughly during this phase makes the actual writing much easier.

Push: Write a Draft, Then Rewrite for One Reader 

First, write a rough draft without worrying about quality at all. Just get your ideas down on paper. Then, take a break and come back to rewrite the content directly for one specific reader, whether a buyer persona or a real person. This makes your writing more natural and accessible. Over time, you will develop your unique writing voice that readers recognize.

Shine: Edit and Publish Your Content

Finally, polish your writing by taking it through three editing steps before publishing. First, use AI tools like Grammarly to catch grammar and spelling errors. Next, have a human editor who knows your niche review the content to catch anything confusing or boring. Lastly, read the text out loud yourself to check flow and continuity. Remember, "published is better than perfect." Get your content out into the world!

Today's advice is provided with insights from Ann Handley, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World.

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🗞 Hype Comments for Stories: Instagram has launched a new feature called Hype Comments that allows users to post written reactions and messages on others' stories beyond just emoji responses. With Hype Comments, people can now leave specific thoughts on stories they view in real-time. This provides more meaningful engagement than a generic emoji in responding to story content. The comments left through the new feature are visible to anyone who views that user's story. Source: HITC

🗞 LinkedIn Announces Newsletter Updates: LinkedIn introduced expanded newsletter analytics, providing deeper insight into subscriber demographics and content performance over time. The metrics are available to individual creators and Company Pages publishing newsletters. In addition, the platform announced one-click draft duplication, an improved preview mode that lets authors see the desktop article view before publishing, simplified author switching when posting either personally or through a Company Page via newsletters or as stand-alone articles, and expanded identity verification options to reinforce user credibility through badges displayed on Profiles. Source: LinkedIn

🗞 End to End Encryption on Messenger: Meta has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for all one-on-one chats and calls across Messenger and Facebook. This update provides an added layer of privacy and security by ensuring only the sender and recipient can access conversation content. Beyond enhanced protection, the end-to-end encryption unlocks additional features for users to further control their messaging experience. Capabilities include editing or deleting messages after sending, improved media quality for sharing high-resolution photos and videos, and enabling disappearing message functionality where conversations automatically delete. Source: Meta

🗞 Meta Launches Imagine With Meta AI: On Wednesday, Meta launched a free website for AI image generation called "Imagine with Meta AI." It allows users to create novel images from text prompts using Meta's Emu model, which was trained on over 1 billion public Facebook and Instagram images. Previously, Emu was only available within Meta's own apps. The website experience is similar to other AI image generators. It creates four 1280x1280 images per generation that can be downloaded as JPEGs with a small watermark. Use requires a Meta account, which can be linked to existing Facebook or Instagram profiles. Meta states only publicly available images were used for model training. Setting accounts private should prevent inclusion in further dataset expansion. Source: Meta

🗞 Topic Tagging on Threads: Threads announced the global rollout of a new post tagging feature that allows users to categorize their posts by topic. The tags appear without hash symbols, support multiple words, are limited to one per post, and function as the search view. Source: Adam Mosseri via Threads

🗞 TikTok Releases 2024 Trend Forecast Report: TikTok launched its 2024 "What's Next" trend forecast report, providing key insights into emerging behaviors and interests of its community that will shape marketing strategies in the coming year. TikTok identified a mindset dubbed "Creative Bravery" that will see deeper brand-consumer connections. Success requires regularly stimulating curiosity, flipping traditional narratives, and building consumer trust. The report outlines three overarching 2024 trends called Trend Signals: Curiosity Peaked, Storytelling Unhinged, and Bridging the Trust Gap. Source: TikTok

🗞 New Verification Option for X/Twitter: The platform announced a new, lower-priced verification tier. The Basic verification will include a gold checkmark, priority support, and Premium+ features. Source: X News Daily via X

🗞 Google Announces Podcast Tool for Migrating Subscriptions: Google announced it is releasing a new tool for Google Podcast listeners in the U.S. to migrate their podcast subscriptions either to YouTube Music or export them for use in other podcasting apps. This allows listeners to transfer subscriptions as Google continues building out the podcast experience on YouTube/YouTube Music. Over the next few weeks, Google Podcast listeners will see a banner allowing them access to the migration tool. It lets users move subscriptions to YouTube Music or export an OPML file to upload elsewhere. Google aims to aid both listeners in transferring subscriptions and podcasters in expanding their reach. Popular shows are already on YouTube, while others can be added via RSS feeds. This gives more options for podcasters on YouTube's platform. While expanding the YouTube podcast ecosystem, Google Podcasts will remain available for U.S. listening through March 2024. Listeners have until July 2024 to use the migration tool before Google Podcasts is fully sunset. More countries will gain access to the tool over time. Source: YouTube

🗞 New Comment Moderation Feature Added on YouTube: YouTube announced a new, optional comment moderation setting called "Pause" that creators can enable on videos to prevent new comments from being posted while still allowing existing comments to remain visible. Before Pause, creators had limited options to restrict comments—either holding them for review before publishing or disabling comments entirely on their channels. With Pause, creators now have an additional targeted way to block new comments at the video level while preserving previous conversations. Additionally, YouTube streamlined and simplified the organization and naming of certain comment settings related to moderation. The functionality of those settings remains unchanged, but they have been updated for clarity and ease of use as follows: "On, with optional comment moderation settings" replaced the various levels of holding comments for review, "Pause" is the new targeted comments restriction option, and "Off" still refers to disabling comments completely. Source: YouTube

Did You Know?

Placing an unripe pear next to a banana will speed-ripen your pear, making it ready to eat in no time. Sometimes, overnight!