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It’s National Awkward Moments Day, Reader... also known as Every Day for our Director of Editorial 🫢.

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for LinkedIn

• 🏆 No-cost influencer strategy

• More photos in Instagram 🎠 Carousel posts

• Reddit announces new 📢 ads

• 📣 Additional industry news from LinkedIn, Meta, Snapchat, and more

Want more people on LinkedIn to see your newsletter? If you want more subscribers and visibility for your LinkedIn newsletter, you need to combine tactics that work natively and independently of the platform.

5 Ways to Promote Your LinkedIn Newsletter

• Highlight your newsletter in the "Featured" section of your LinkedIn profile.

• Turn on Creator Mode and display your newsletter content first in the "Activity" section.

• Share snippets from your newsletter as posts on your feed.

• Add a link to your LinkedIn newsletter in your email signature and on your website.

• Create vanity URLs that redirect audiences on other platforms to your LinkedIn newsletter.

Today's tip is inspired by Michaela Alexis, a featured presenter in the Social Media Marketing Society.

Continuous Learning… Plus, People Who Care

When you join the Social Media Marketing Society you'll receive training from trusted pros, covering everything from AI to organic social marketing. We curate experts who are top-of-class. Many are the same speakers who teach at our conference.

There are more than 100 high-quality marketing workshops ready for you when you need them. But with membership in the Society, you'll receive so much more...

You'll get a community of marketers—many who are just like you—to help guide and support you. 

I want quality training—and a welcoming community.

How to Create a No-Cost Influencer Marketing Program

An influencer is someone who has developed trust and engagement with their audience. Their value to a brand isn’t solely about the number of followers they have, so you should never overlook the power of nano- and micro-influencers with small but mighty communities. Someone with only 500 followers can be a powerful influencer if their community is highly engaged with their niche content.

Influencers can be Instagram creators or YouTube stars, but they can also be bloggers, podcasters, or people with engaged email lists or membership communities. For business-to-business (B2B) brands, an influencer could be someone with a highly active Facebook group or LinkedIn presence.

By following this four-step process of research, content creation, outreach, and ongoing engagement, you can build authentic influencer relationships that expand your reach and credibility without spending a dime on paid sponsorships.

Step 1: Research

Start by asking your own community who they find valuable in your niche or industry. Post questions on LinkedIn, Facebook, X/Twitter, and other social networks to gather names, asking your followers to tell you who their favorite experts are in the comments!

You can also search for relevant job titles and keywords and look for people who post frequently and get high engagement and comments. Focus on the relevance and value of their content, not vanity metrics.

Make a spreadsheet of 25–35 well-known experts and up-and-coming voices in your industry. Rank them based on their overall engagement, posting consistency, and resonance with your brand.

Step 2: Content Development

Create a blog post featuring your top 15–25 influencers. Use an engaging title like "25 AI Experts to Follow in 2024." For each influencer, include their headshot, name, company, title, and a short description (50–100 words) of why you chose them.

Add screenshots and links to 1–2 of their best LinkedIn posts, articles, videos, or podcast episodes. These examples prove their expertise and give your audience a preview of their content. Be sure to include a variety of content types and perspectives.

Next, create custom images featuring each influencer's headshot and info about being featured in your list. These "social cards" can be easily made in Canva. They should include your company branding and the list's name (e.g., "Jane Smith, Top 25 AI Experts to Follow in 2024, Presented by [Your Company]"). The influencers can share these eye-catching cards on social media to inform their followers about the recognition.

Step 3: Outreach

Email each featured influencer individually to let them know they made your list. If you don't have their email address, send them a friendly LinkedIn message explaining the good news and asking for the best email to reach them.

In the email, explain why you chose to feature them and highlight a few of the other awesome people on the list. Make them feel special! Include a pre-written social media post with their social card and a link to your blog post they can share, something like: "I'm excited to be recognized as one of the Top 25 AI Experts to Follow in 2024, along with other industry leaders like @otherexpert and @coolperson. Check out the full list: [link] #ai #artificialintelligence".

Step 4: Deepening Relationships

Continue developing creative ways to collaborate with your influencers and help them build their authority and personal brands. As you develop stronger relationships, some may even help promote your company's events, products, or offerings. 

Here are 5 ideas to get you started:

• Comment on and share their content. 

• Introduce them to each other. 

• Invite them to contribute a quote to an eBook, be a guest on your podcast, or write for your blog. 

• Profile a different influencer each month in your email newsletter.

• You can also ask your influencer community for their predictions on industry trends or timely responses to breaking news and use their quotes to create more roundup content.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Justin Levy.

🗞 Instagram Carousel Photos: The platform has confirmed that it’s testing the capacity to add more than 10 photos to a Carousel post with a small group of people. Source: Social Media Today

🗞 LinkedIn Collaborative Articles: LinkedIn has announced several enhancements to its platform to make it easier for experts to contribute to articles and for members to find the most helpful and insightful contributions. The company has evolved how it asks questions, focusing on work-related situations and problem statements, and has introduced an "unhelpful" button for members to notify the team of unhelpful contributions. LinkedIn is also iteratively improving its matching algorithms to help contributors find articles where they can share their best insights and stories. To keep the conversation going as articles become richer with more contributions, LinkedIn has reimagined the mobile collaborative articles experience, putting member contributions front and center. The platform has also improved how it distributes contributions in members' feeds and notifications, showing the most relevant ones for their careers. Additionally, LinkedIn has expanded its international language support, allowing members across various languages—German, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and French—to collaborate on the same articles, with translations available for contributions in different languages. To further enhance the user experience, LinkedIn has added a "Collaborative articles" filter in Search, making it easier for members to find articles about their interests. The platform has also introduced the ability to follow contributors and featured experts. Source: LinkedIn

🗞 CrowdTangle Shutting Down: Meta has announced that it will officially shut down CrowdTangle on August 14, 2024. Meta plans to replace CrowdTangle with a tool called Meta Content Library, which will only be accessible to academics and nonprofit researchers, excluding for-profit news organizations. Source: CrowdTangle

🗞 New Reddit Ads: Reddit has introduced a new advertising format called free-form ads, inspired by the popular user post type known as the megathread. This format encourages multiple users to discuss popular topics, making it an ideal choice for advertisers looking to launch a product, introduce a brand to a new audience, or share a seasonal shopping guide. The open-ended nature of free-form ads allows advertisers to explore different types of creative content, facilitating in-depth conversations with Reddit audiences and sharing a comprehensive brand voice on the platform. Reddit has also introduced new building capabilities within the Ads Manager, including topic templates such as "brand introduction" and "product deep dive," which make it easy for advertisers to create, edit, and launch free-form ads at scale with minimal effort. Free-form ads are now available to all Reddit advertisers globally via the Reddit Ads Manager. Source: Reddit

🗞 Snapchat Conversation Settings: Snapchat is introducing a new conversation setting that offers users more flexibility and control over their chats. The new setting allows users to choose to retain their conversations indefinitely on a conversation-by-conversation basis, similar to how messages are saved in iMessage or SMS. This option is currently being tested and can be updated by participants at any time, with in-chat notices ensuring clarity on the latest selections. While conversations will continue to be deleted by default, Snapchat hopes that this new feature will provide their community with more ways to customize how users connect with their friends. Source: Snap

🗞 Pinned Posts on X/Twitter: The platform is testing a change to the recommendation algorithm that guarantees users' pinned posts will be shown to all of their followers. This change applies to only one pinned post every 48 hours. Source: X

Did You Know?

"Skiing" is the only six-letter word in the English language with a double "i" in the middle.