Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner...
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Here’s a recap of the most important insights, trends, and updates you need to know about today, Pz! Catch up in minutes and go into the rest of the week prepared.
Question of the Day: Will you experiment with Instagram’s episodic video in your marketing? NO or YES?
In today’s edition:
Instagram Reels conversion guide
Using Facebook's new AI-powered ad and ecommerce tools
🗞️ Industry news from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more
How to End Every Reel With the Right Ask
How do you know whether a reel is working? Well, that depends on what you want it to do for you. Without a goal set upfront, there's nothing to measure. You have to measure what you mean to move.
So, once your Instagram post stops someone’s scroll, it needs to tell them exactly what you want them to do next, with an explicit, specific call to action. The key is to pause before you post and consider the goal for that specific piece of content, because the goal determines your call to action:
If the goal is audience growth, use "Follow for more" with a clear reason why, then tag your own handle so viewers can follow in one tap.
If the goal is conversation, ask a real question rather than deliver a monologue.
If the goal is email signups, offer a lead magnet and ask people to comment a keyword so you can DM it to them.
If the goal is sales, point to the next step in your funnel, whether that's a conversation or a low-ticket offer.
This tip was shared by Elizabeth Marberry at Social Media Marketing World.
You can learn from tutorials. You can test tools on your own. You can spend hours figuring out what works and still wonder if you're missing something everyone else already knows.
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Facebook Ads: New Tools for Better Tracking, More Creative, and Faster Sales
With every passing month, Meta asks marketers to give up more control over their ads, across tracking, creative, campaign management, and reporting. The trade-off is the promise of better results. The catch is that it puts more responsibility on you to know what to trust, what to double-check, and what to keep your hands on.
Nick Theriot has watched this play out from the front lines as an agency owner who runs ads for e-commerce brands. His overall read is that advertising gets easier every day because the barrier to entry keeps dropping. Almost anyone can set up a campaign now, even without strong technical skills.
The direction is clear: Meta is moving marketers away from manual control and toward guided control, where you tell AI what you want and it does more of the clicking. The sections below cover where that shift helps, and where Nick still keeps a human in the loop.
Using Meta's AI Business Assistant as a Smart Second Opinion
Meta is expanding its AI Business Assistant, which works like ChatGPT built into Ads Manager, surfacing recommendations and insights as you work.
Nick says 90 to 95% of that advice will be better than anything a beginner could piece together from YouTube videos and blog posts. For someone new to ads, it can cut years off the learning curve and level the playing field, without spending thousands on consulting calls or an agency.
The catch is that the assistant is trained on Meta's own rule book, so it tends to behave like the Meta reps who call advertisers, and Nick has heard plenty of bad advice from those reps over the years. For example, while he was optimizing for purchases and scaling an e-commerce brand, a rep pushed him to run a link-click campaign for more cold traffic. His team tested it and never saw the promised results.
He's most skeptical when the advice is to spend more money. A recommendation to add to your daily budget overnight because your cost per result looks good rarely holds up. Nick says you can't multiply your budget that fast and expect the same cost per result, and the outcome is usually worse. His rule of thumb is to be extra skeptical of "spend more" suggestions and to use your judgment otherwise.
Pro Tip: Check the AI's math, since not every model is equally reliable at it. As a practical pointer for auditing your numbers, Gemini tends to be weak at math when analyzing spreadsheet data, while Claude is unusually strong at it, likely because Claude is also built for coding, and math and code are both structured languages. When you're spending something like a million dollars a month at a 0.8 return on ad spend while acquiring customers on a twelve-month payback window, being off by a few dollars in your math can sink a company.
Using AI Shopping Tools to Shorten the Path From Ad to Sale, Without Killing Conversions
Meta is also adding shopping tools to the middle of the funnel:
One-Click Checkout lets someone can click Buy Now and complete the purchase instantly with their payment details already saved.
Post-Click AI Shopping Features surface product details, reviews, pricing, and recommendations after a click, drawn from your site or from other metadata, and even a buyer profile.
Nick’s opinion of these unproven tools is measured. He remembers Meta introducing Facebook Shops a few years ago. Since then, he's seen one brand make some sales from it, but no brand really takes off, pushing it.
His view is that it comes down to the product.
One-click checkout suits simple, low-ticket items people buy out of habit, like a plain t-shirt or cooking utensils, where the thought is just "I ran out, let me grab some."
More considered purchases work better with a multi-step landing page and more product education. For those products, buyers want to leave and do their homework: Google the company, check Reddit, look for a refund guarantee, and see how the brand handled customers who had problems. That research is part of the sales process, and stripping it out can cost you the sale.
Pro Tip: On Shopify product pages, when Nick’s team changes the button from "Add to Cart" to "Buy Now," they consistently see a lower conversion rate. There's something psychological about the add-to-cart step: it gives the buyer a two-to-three-second buffer to think before checkout, and because it's a familiar habit, it feels safe. Replace it with an immediate buy button, and the money is gone right away, disrupting that natural rhythm. Before you adopt one-click mechanics, know that this trap exists.
Other Topics Discussed Include:
- Let AI Handle Your Facebook Pixel Setup
- Connect AI Agents to Your Ad Account, Carefully
- Produce AI-Assisted Creative to Stand Out
- Tools That Speed up Meta Ads Creative Production
Want to Learn More?
Today's advice is provided with insights from Nick Theriot, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Stop Rewriting The Same Feedback Email
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From Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner
Meta Brings In-App Appointment Scheduling to Facebook Lead Ads: Meta has introduced Embedded Appointment Booking for Facebook Lead Ads Instant Forms, enabling businesses to convert leads into booked appointments without sending users to external websites. After submitting a lead form, prospects can immediately view available time slots and schedule an appointment using a built-in calendar experience that automatically pre-fills their contact information. The feature is designed to reduce booking friction, improve lead conversion rates, and simplify setup for service-based businesses by integrating directly with scheduling platforms such as Calendly and HighLevel. Meta plans to expand partner support and make the feature globally available later this year. Meta
Meta Expands AI Creative and Creator Marketing Capabilities: Meta unveiled a series of new AI-powered advertising tools designed to help marketers accelerate creative production, improve campaign performance, and strengthen creator partnerships. The company’s new end-to-end creative solution introduces brand-aware content generation, performance-driven creative recommendations, and agency-ready workflows that integrate with existing marketing operations. At the same time, Meta is streamlining creator marketing through the upcoming Meta Creator Marketing Hub, which combines creator discovery, content sourcing, and partnership ad activation into a single destination. Additional enhancements include multilingual AI-generated creative, expanded creator discovery across Facebook and Instagram, and new tools that help marketers turn creator content into measurable advertising performance. Meta
Meta Reintroduces Facebook Creator Studio with AI-Powered Creator Tools: Meta has unveiled a redesigned Facebook Creator Studio that transforms the former management platform into an AI-powered companion app focused on helping creators grow more efficiently. The new experience combines personalized strategy recommendations, performance insights, content ideation, and AI-assisted community management into a dedicated creator workspace. Alongside the standalone app, Meta is also overhauling its in-platform creator tools by splitting Professional Dashboard into separate Creator and Business Dashboards and expanding web-based publishing capabilities with features such as content scheduling, bulk uploads, and enhanced analytics. Meta
Instagram Expands Its TV Experience with New Discovery and Viewing Features: Instagram is broadening the reach of Instagram for TV by launching support for Samsung Smart TVs across the U.S. while introducing new ways for people to watch and share content together. The platform is testing features such as interest-based content channels, TV casting for Reels, Stories on larger screens, and support for horizontal video. Looking ahead, Instagram is exploring TV-native formats including episodic series, longer-form creator content, and live broadcasts designed for shared viewing experiences. Meta
LinkedIn Introduces Brand Kit to Keep AI-Generated Ads On Brand: LinkedIn is expanding AI-assisted advertising in Campaign Manager with the launch of Brand Kit, a feature that centralizes a company’s visual identity and brand voice for use in ad creation. By automatically drawing on information from a brand’s LinkedIn presence or allowing manual customization, Brand Kit helps ensure that AI-generated ads align with established branding guidelines. Advertisers can apply branded fonts, colors, messaging preferences, and media templates directly within campaign workflows, helping streamline creative production while maintaining consistency across campaigns. The feature is currently available to a select group of advertisers and supports single image ad formats. LinkedIn
LinkedIn Begins Testing Collaborative Posts for Creators and Brands: LinkedIn is introducing a new Collaborative Posts feature that will enable multiple members and company Pages to co-author and publish content together. Designed for announcements, partnerships, product launches, and other shared initiatives, the feature will prominently display all collaborators on a post, giving contributors equal visibility and recognition. LinkedIn says the update reflects the increasingly collaborative nature of professional content creation and business storytelling. The feature is currently being tested with a small group of creators and brands at Cannes Lions and is expected to expand to more users in the months ahead. LinkedIn
Reddit Expands Community Intelligence Tools to Influence the Modern Buying Journey: Powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™, the new tools include AI-assisted creative generation, personalized ad assets, and Redditor Highlights, which integrates authentic community discussions directly into ad experiences. Reddit also introduced Shopping Listing Ads, a commerce-focused format that places relevant products within high-intent conversations. Reddit
TikTok Unveils Symphony Agent to Accelerate AI-Powered Campaign Creation: At Cannes Lions 2026, TikTok introduced Symphony Agent, a new AI-powered creative assistant designed to help advertisers move from concept to campaign execution faster. Built with cultural intelligence and platform performance insights, the tool can generate customized creative recommendations, surface relevant creator content, and help brands identify creators aligned with campaign goals. Integrated into both Symphony Creative Studio and Content Suite, Symphony Agent aims to streamline content creation and discovery while maintaining transparency through AI labels, watermarking, and moderation safeguards. The announcement reinforces TikTok’s focus on combining AI, creator partnerships, and cultural relevance to help brands drive stronger business results. TikTok
YouTube Refreshes Shorts with Cleaner Viewing and Smarter Personalization: YouTube has introduced a series of updates to the Shorts experience focused on reducing distractions and improving content discovery. The redesigned player adds a Clear Screen mode, faster 2x playback, new audio controls, and timer customization while simplifying viewer interactions. The platform is also replacing the traditional thumbs-up with a heart icon and removing the dislike button in favor of more precise recommendation controls such as "Not Interested" and "Don't recommend this channel." Together, these changes are intended to create a more immersive viewing experience while giving users better tools to personalize their Shorts feed. YouTube
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