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It’s 🥳 National Small Business Day, Reader! You are why we do what we do… 

In today’s edition:

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

• 🧨 Improve your 📷 Instagram results

• OpenAI develops new 🧰 Media Manager tool

• Meta rolls out new generative 🤖 AI features for ads

• 📣 Additional industry news from Meta and Threads

Are you losing track of valuable LinkedIn leads? Need an easy way to organize and manage communications with them? 

Keep Lead Tracking Simple

To keep track of your conversations, use a simple spreadsheet with these columns:

• Name

• LinkedIn profile URL

• Email address

• Which resource they said yes to

• Date you sent the resource

• Date(s) you followed up

• Notes about them from their profile

Now, you can track where each conversation is at and plan follow-up until you get a firm "no."

Today's tip is inspired by John Nemo, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

Have You Listened to the Marketing Agency Show?

It’s official. Marketers love the Marketing Agency Show! 

Each week, host Brooke B. Sellas interviews agency marketers to explore how they've overcome some of their biggest challenges, including navigating rough economic times, leveraging AI, service diversification, client acquisition, and so much more.

Recent episodes include creating clear client communications and getting more clients through referrals and self-promotion.

I don’t want to miss the Marketing Agency Show.

How to Test and Analyze New Instagram Strategies

Instagram's algorithm changes often, so what worked last quarter might not work now. 

For example, these IG growth strategies aren't effective and can even harm your account's growth: the follow/unfollow method, engagement groups or pods, giveaways that require people to follow multiple accounts or tag their friends in the comments.

As IG introduces new features and its algorithm evolves, continuous testing and adaptation of your content strategy is essential. The following tips will ensure you're getting the best results:

Content Format Experiments

First, try different types of content and see what resonates best with your audience. Instagram offers a variety of content formats, including photos, Carousels, Reels, and Stories. Each format has its strengths and can be used to achieve different goals. For example, Reels are great for reaching new audiences, while Carousels are good at sharing in-depth tips or showcasing products.

Next, determine what's working and what's not, and regularly review the metrics that align with your goals. This will identify the types of content, topics, and formats generating the best results for you.

Finally, adjust your strategy based on your findings and the latest IG updates. Based on your analysis, make informed decisions about how to optimize your content strategy. Double down on what's working and continue to experiment with the latest IG features and best practices.

Strategic Experiments

Grow Your Email List: If you are after email subscribers, test and analyze the performance of IG's link sticker in your Stories to direct followers to your lead magnet landing page, blog posts, or other relevant resources. The platform's link sticker allows you to add clickable links to your Stories, making it easy for followers to access your content or lead magnet without leaving the app.

You should also experiment with direct message (DM) automation. When someone messages you with a specific keyword, your automation can reply with a link to your freebie and follow up with additional messages or offers.

Position Yourself as the Expert: If you aim to establish yourself as an expert, Instagram Highlights are a powerful tool for showcasing your expertise and making your best content easily accessible.

Consider the main topics or themes you want to cover on your IG account and test highlights for each. For example, if you're a fitness coach, you might have Highlights for workouts, nutrition tips, and client transformations.

Be sure to use your brand colors and simple graphics or icons to create eye-catching covers that reflect the content of each Highlight album, and make one or two-word titles that clearly describe the content of each Highlight, such as "Recipes," "Tips," or "FAQ."

Don’t Play Follow the Leader

Remember, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to Instagram success. What works for one account may not work for another, so it's important to test, analyze, and iterate based on your unique audience and goals.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Millie Adrian, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

🗞 OpenAI’s Media Manager Tool: OpenAI has announced that it is developing a tool called Media Manager to give content creators more control over how their content is used in training generative AI models. The tool, which is expected to be in place by 2025, will allow creators and content owners to identify their works to OpenAI and specify how they want those works to be included or excluded from AI research and training. Source: OpenAI

🗞 Meta’s New AI Features for Ads: Meta is introducing enhanced generative AI features and tools to help businesses improve ad performance. The new features include full image and text generation capabilities, allowing advertisers to create variations of ad creatives with text overlays and adjust assets for different aspect ratios. Text generation now creates variations for ad headlines and primary text, reflecting a brand's voice based on previous campaigns. These features will be centralized under Advantage+ creative in Ads Manager, alongside updates to Meta Advantage products such as Advantage+ creative optimizations, Advantage+ catalog ads, and their combination. Source: Meta

🗞 Meta’s Verification for Business: Meta is expanding access to its Verification for Business subscription package, which allows brands to purchase a blue checkmark for their Facebook and/or Instagram profiles. The service is expanding to businesses in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Peru, France, and Italy. Additionally, Meta is introducing new subscription packages with higher price points and a range of add-on benefits. The four tiers offer various features, including enhanced account support, impersonation monitoring, enhanced profile options, search optimization, featured account placement, links in Reels, employee impersonation protection, customized messaging chats, and account reviews by Meta experts. Source: Meta

🗞 Threads View Count: Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, announced that Threads is rolling out the ability for users to tap anywhere on a post to display its total view count. Source: @mosseri via Threads

🗞 Threads Tests Cross-Posting: Meta is currently running a global experiment that allows users to easily cross-post their Instagram content directly to Threads. This opt-in feature gives users a toggle to share their Instagram posts on Threads, individually or for all of their content. However, the cross-posting functionality is currently limited to images, meaning users cannot automatically post Reels to Threads. When users cross-post their Instagram posts, the caption will be converted into text for the Threads post, while hashtags will be transformed into plain text. Source: @jonahmanzano via Threads

🧰 Save Time on SMM! Cloud Campaign automates content creation, post scheduling, reporting, approvals, and more. Try two weeks FREE  and get an exclusive content pack to boost your clients’ social media presence. (Sponsored Message)

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