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It’s a 🗓️ Leap Year, Reader... Tomorrow, we get an extra 24 hours!

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for social strategy

• 🩹 Improving Instagram content performance

• Saving to 🧵 Threads

• 📞 Calling on X/Twitter

Want to forge a deep connection between your brand and consumers? There's a psychological framework behind the process of getting to know someone new. It's called social penetration theory.

Use Social Penetration Theory in Your Social Media Marketing

• Cliché: Posting about topics like sports and weather aren't very exciting but they help you to establish a basic rapport.

• Facts: As part of branded content on social media, this might mean the story behind your business or specific product details.

• Opinions: Show off the values and experiences that establish whether you have something in common with prospective customers.

• Feelings: Instead of talking about being happy or sad, think about all of the emotions that someone might go through during a buyer's journey: curiosity, anticipation, frustration, confusion, satisfaction, impatience, and delight.

Today's tip is inspired by Brooke Sellas, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World 2024.

Today Is the Day to Raise Your Hand… 

And say hello to better marketing results in 2024. 

Why today? Because Friday the doors close forever for On-Demand tickets to Social Media Marketing World 2024. 

If you're looking for the best bang for your marketing training budget, then grab your On-Demand ticket.  

You get world-class training from experts you respect—all from the comfort of your favorite chair.

But it’s only available until Friday at 11:59 PM Pacific. Then it is gone forever! 😱

I don’t want to miss out!

3 Tips to Improve Instagram Content Performance 

Want your brand to stand out on Instagram? 

Not many marketers are professional graphic designers. This means small editing and design errors–not the algorithm—could be negatively impacting content performance.

For example, text overlays or captions with fonts sized too small to comfortably read on a tiny phone screen leads viewers to simply keep scrolling rather than pausing to decipher the words. 

Likewise, a lack of sufficient contrast between text colors and background images causes readability issues that fail to grab attention in the queue of posts. Such frequent graphic design mistakes likely damage your content's reach much more than changes to Instagram's feed algorithm or platform tweaks. 

Additionally, boring recycled content that merely mimics what other accounts have already done fails to convey what uniquely defines your particular brand. Replicating others’ video trends or templates without customization ignores the chance to showcase your specialized products, services, or perspective.

The following tips will help you design content that performs better—even with limited resources.

Tips for Pinned Posts: Profile Banners

This clever hack lets you efficiently repurpose and re-highlight performing content without complicated editing or ongoing design work: divide an extra-long rectangular image into three pieces and pin them across the three top posts at the top of your profile feed to function as a large continuous billboard.

Prominently placing pinned posts with strong visual continuity signals importance to visitors landing on your profile, indirectly encouraging them to click and learn more about your pinned content. 

Refresh your pinned banner posts monthly or whenever you have a new major promotion or product launch worth spotlighting front and center. 

Tips for Captions

Clear, benefit-focused captions tend to perform better than lengthily worded captions aimed primarily at showcasing creativity through clever turns of phrase, humor, or storytelling. 

Lead your captions with an interesting emotional hook, intriguing question, or highlight about your product or service to grab attention right away—before diving into a longer backstory or anecdote. 

End captions with a strong, clear call to action that provides viewers with an obvious next step, like clicking your link or visiting your website to make a purchase, sign up for a freebie, or learn more.

Pro Tip: Use intentional line breaks between paragraphs and emoji icons to better visually organize blocks of heavy text for readability at a glance. 

Tips for Trends

Viral internet and entertainment trends work like timely inside jokes almost everyone quickly understands on a visceral level. 

Instead of wholesale copying what others are doing with a trend, put your unique spin on a popular topic in a meme format or challenge to tailor the recognizable humor to your niche while benefiting from the shared context. 

Rather than painstakingly recreating popular dances or video formats entirely from scratch, a simple text-based Instagram post can nod to a trending meme or react to a news event that aligns with your brand voice and still features enough creativity to garner attention.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Manu Muraro.

Extra Benefits From an On-Demand Ticket…

An On-Demand ticket to Social Media Marketing World gives you so much more than just great content from the conference.

You also get: 

🔥 Peace of mind that your strategies are current.

🔥 Techniques you can put to work right away.

🔥 Kudos from your boss or clients as they see results.

Imagine... hours of world-class content that you can watch anytime, anywhere.

But don’t wait! After Friday, it will be another year before you can experience training like this.

I don’t want to wait another year!

🗞 Save on Threads: The feature began rolling out more broadly yesterday. This feature allows users to bookmark their favorite posts for later. To use this new feature, users can tap the three-dot menu on a post and select the "save" option. The posts a user has saved will be available to view in their account settings. This allows users to easily save posts they are interested in and want to revisit later in a convenient place. Source: Adam Mosseri via Threads

🗞 X/Twitter Features: The platform is rolling out video and audio calling functionality to non-Premium users. Source: @enriquebrgn via X/Twitter

Did You Know?

Grapes are a type of berry.