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Tomorrow is World Olive Tree Day, Reader! Where are my Castelvatrano fans?

In today’s edition:

• 🤳 Today's Tip of the Day is for YouTube

• 🧲 🤝 Forging business relationships that grow your business

• LinkedIn consolidates Live features

• 🗞️ Additional industry news from Threads and X

Ever wish your YouTube Shorts had a more exciting or contextually relevant background? Have you checked out YouTube's latest Shorts feature?

Now, you can instantly generate custom static video backgrounds with just a few words!

Make Your Own AI-Generated Shorts Backgrounds

With YouTube's Dream Screen feature for Shorts, you can create AI-generated video backgrounds from simple text prompts such as "snowscape," "sand castle," or "redwood forest path next to a stream.”

Here's how: Open the YouTube app and tap Create. 

From the menu options on the right, tap the Green Screen icon and then tap this icon in bottom tray:

Next, describe the scene you want to appear in, tap Create, and then tap your favorite background from the four images generated.

From here, you can tap "Use image" or “Create video " to use the image as a background in your Short.

Please keep in mind that this feature is only available to users in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand at this time, and only prompts entered in English are recognized.

Today's tip was inspired by Social Media Examiner’s Editorial team.

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Two Ways to Open Strategic Partnerships That Scale With Less Effort

Are your marketing efforts falling flat? Wondering how to build meaningful business relationships to help your business grow?

Seek Out Strategic Relationships

Slim introduces the idea of tiny marketing actions—small, consistent steps that build relationships over time. This approach is grounded in the science of habits, drawing inspiration from works like James Clear's Atomic Habits and BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits. 

The principle is simple but profound: making a one-percent improvement each day in your partnership-building efforts can lead to exponential growth over just a year.

Start with small, strategic touches:

• Follow their work.

• Engage with their content.

• Reach out on LinkedIn with a thoughtful message about their work.

After you've built up a genuine rapport, you can strategically place yourself in venues to meet them in person.

It won't happen overnight, but if you are invested and engage in genuine human interaction over time, you'll likely get your chance–either through your own efforts or through an introduction from someone you both know.

One particular year at South X Southwest, Pamela attended the event specifically to connect with brand partners. 

Rather than spreading herself thin across multiple venues for a chance encounter, she strategically positioned herself in the bloggers' lounge, where she ultimately met representatives from Citrix through an introduction from someone in her network. 

This connection led to a significant partnership that transformed her business.

Evaluating Potential Partners

As much as Pamela advocates for partnerships, she is the first to tell you, "Tread lightly." 

You have built a reputation as a professional. When you share a referral with someone else, you put your reputation on the line.

Take things slowly and evaluate every partnership before committing to ensure you and your potential partner have a shared values perspective. Ask questions such as:

• Why are you in business?

• Do you have thought leadership? 

• Are you creating something worth selling, and is it meaningful to the world? 

• What are your values? 

• What are your anchors for morals and ethics?

If the partnership isn't a perfect fit, it's better to walk away than endanger your client and reputation.

Attract the Right Partners: Build Your Beacon 

While actively seeking partnerships is essential, Slim emphasizes the equal importance of creating a beacon–the platforms and quality content that attract potential partners to you.

Your beacon might take many forms–a podcast, newsletter, blog, or social media presence, but its essential purpose remains the same: to demonstrate your expertise and value to potential partners.

When potential partners research you–as they inevitably will, they should find a straightforward, compelling story that helps them understand how a partnership might benefit their goals and audience.

Tips for Scaling Partnership Relationships

The journey from initial partnership to scaled success requires careful attention to human relationships and systematic approaches. 

Slim shared an enlightening example through her experience with a speaker agency she encountered in San Diego. 

This agency had developed a unique approach to partnership scaling that went beyond traditional speaker representation. Instead of simply booking speaking engagements, they conducted detailed research into potential speaking opportunities, managed relationship building, and created scalable systems for their clients' success.

The brilliance of this approach lies in its ability to maintain personal connection while leveraging systems for growth.

The agency didn't just connect speakers with opportunities; they developed a deep understanding of each association, conference, and venue they worked with. They know the decision-makers and audiences and can match speakers with opportunities that truly serve everyone involved. 

This systematic approach to what might otherwise be an overwhelming networking task demonstrates how partnerships can be scaled without losing their essential human element.

Technology can also support partnership building without replacing the essential human element. 

Tools like email automation, CRM systems, and project management platforms can help manage partnerships at scale while emphasizing the importance of maintaining personal connection and authentic relationship building.

The key to successful systemization lies in understanding which elements of partnership building can be standardized and which require personal attention. For instance, initial research and outreach processes can often be systematized, while relationship development and strategic discussions typically require direct personal involvement. 

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

LinkedIn Live Event Features: LinkedIn is consolidating its live event features by merging Audio Events and LinkedIn Live into a single system. Native Audio Events will no longer be available for creation after December 2, 2024. Existing Audio Events can run as scheduled until December 31, 2024. Events scheduled beyond December 31 must be recreated through LinkedIn Live by December 15, 2024, or they will be removed. Under LinkedIn Live, audio-only events must now use third-party streaming partners instead of LinkedIn's native hosting. Event interaction will occur through comments, with speakers needing access to the chosen streaming platform to participate live. All LinkedIn Live events are automatically recorded and can be shared afterward. Source: LinkedIn

Threads Content Ranking: The platform is implementing two key updates. Content from followed accounts will be prioritized in users' feeds, resulting in fewer recommendations from unfollowed accounts. For creators, this means their content will reach more of their existing followers (increased "connected reach") but fewer non-followers (decreased "unconnected reach"). Source: @mosseri via Threads

X for iOS: The platform announced that iOS app users can now hide engagement buttons and numbers for likes, reposts, and replies and interact with posts through custom swipe gestures instead. Rather than tapping the buttons to like or reply, you can now swipe left or right on a post to perform different actions. You can customize these gestures in your settings to choose what each swipe does. Source: @mayxlyy via X

Did You Know?

The world’s oldest olive tree, located in Vouves in Crete, is at least 2000 years old.

Photo by Alexey Komarov, Creative Commons