Here’s a recap of the most important insights, trends, and updates you need to know about today! Catch up in minutes and go into the rest of the week prepared.

In today’s edition:

• Content strategy tips

• Create better social media ads

• Follow along on The Road to 3K

• 🗞️ Industry news from Facebook, YouTube, and more

How to Update Old Content to Recapture Traffic

Need to fill a spot on your content calendar but don’t have time to create something new? These content refresh ideas will help:

• Open your reporting tool and pull your top-performing pieces from each of the past several years. Depending on your volume, that might be the top 3, 5, or 25 per year. Check each one for accuracy and room to expand. Anything you’ve written about AI likely needs an update already.

• Replace outdated screenshots in tutorials, help pages, and how-to content. A single interface change can make an otherwise helpful piece unusable.

• Read the comments and search for the URL on social to find the clarifying questions people are asking. Your audience is telling you exactly what to add.

• Revisit pieces that underperformed because they published on a bad news day. Give them a new headline and another chance.

• Refresh headlines, subheaders, and images, and update the image metadata while you’re in there. Remove year references that make the content feel less relevant.

Updating works because relevance is usually the first thing search engines discount as content ages, while the piece keeps the authority it has already earned. Restore the relevance and the content gets preference again.

This tip was shared by Melanie Deziel at Social Media Marketing World. Get your ticket to join us in Anaheim this April.

Your Next Opportunity Is in the Hallway

Some of the best marketing ideas don’t get published. They get shared over coffee, at a lunch table, between people who met an hour earlier. You won’t find them online.

At Social Media Marketing World, those conversations happen everywhere. Even the speakers are surprisingly easy to connect with. And the marketers you meet in Anaheim often become the collaborators you call all year.

Save my spot in Anaheim.

How to Use Behavioral Science to Create Better Social Ads

Social feeds now serve content based on what algorithms think people find interesting, not who they follow or what they search for. That shift means your ads need to connect on an emotional level, not just push for the sale. Consumer behavior analyst Sarah Levinger, founder of Tether Insights, shares a psychology-based framework for deciding how to deliver your message, who to deliver it to, and where it fits in the buying journey.

Why Your Ads Shouldn’t Only Try to Sell
Find out the job Sarah believes most ads should be doing instead, and why skipping it makes every conversion harder to win over time.

The Emotional Dials That Shape How Your Message Lands
Learn how two psychology concepts, valence and intensity, change the way people respond to the same message and how a single word swap transformed results for one watch brand. Plus, discover a simple way to analyze your reviews and ads with AI to see whether you’re hitting the right emotional notes.

Ditch the Avatar and Target a Version of Self Instead
Sarah has a beef with customer avatars. Discover the three versions of self every buyer switches between throughout the day, how to tell which one your competitors are talking to, and why sharing the same target hurts your recall.

Match Your Creative to How People Actually Shop
Explore the four buying behaviors from a Google study that replace the traditional awareness funnel, the content formats that work best at each stage, and how to build a creative library that shows you exactly where each piece fits.

Want to Learn More?

• Watch on YouTube

• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

• Read the show notes on Social Media Examiner

Your Hook Decides How the Video Lands

Same Reel, same edit, two different hooks. One says, “Moving.” The other says, “Relocating to Nashville.” The first tells people what happened. The second lets them picture it.

That gap is easy to miss when you’re close to the work. Shannon McKinstrie, an Instagram Reels expert and Social Media Marketing World speaker, has a one-word check that catches it. It’s step one of six in our free guide, Unpolished Reels.

Show me all six steps.

Here’s What You Missed From Our Short-Form Docuseries

Mike and the team test ideas submitted by fans to get 3,000 people to Social Media Marketing World 2027. Here are four lessons from the past week:

1. If your traffic looks fine but sales don’t, check whether your visitors are human. Site traffic held steady while sales dropped 50%. The team traced the gap to a single setting that was letting bots through.

2. Show the experience, don’t just describe it. Mike added a video to the top of the sales page that starts playing the moment someone lands, then split-tested it against the old page. Early results: zero sales on the old page, three on the new one.

3. One great asset can become dozens of ads. Mike started with conference testimonials and ended up with 45 ads: vertical ads for Meta, horizontal ads for YouTube, audio ads for the podcast, and videos for the sales page.

4. Let AI narrow the field before you review. Having AI watch more than 2,000 conference clips burned hours. So, Mike had it pick its favorites and build a searchable index instead.

Watch the series and share your idea on YouTube.

Meta Expands Forum With AI Moderation and Community Management Tools: Meta has announced new features for Forum, its dedicated Facebook Groups app, designed to help community administrators reduce manual work and improve group engagement. Enhanced Admin AI capabilities assist with reviewing posts against community rules and drafting content, while customizable Admin Assist automation gives admins greater control over moderation. The update also introduces shared scheduling tools, pinned comments, and tailored insights that help admin teams coordinate publishing and identify pathways for community growth. Meta

LinkedIn Expands CTV Advertising Through Google’s Display & Video 360: LinkedIn has introduced programmatic access to its Connected TV advertising offering through Google’s Display & Video 360, giving B2B marketers another way to reach professional audiences across streaming platforms. The integration combines LinkedIn’s professional targeting data with premium CTV inventory and Google’s AI-powered campaign management capabilities. Advertisers can plan, activate, optimize, and measure campaigns within existing programmatic workflows while coordinating CTV with other LinkedIn advertising formats. The offering is currently available for U.S. targeting through LinkedIn and Google account representatives. LinkedIn

Meta Introduces Creative-Level Audience Selection for Advertisers: Meta has launched a new advertising feature that gives marketers greater control over which audiences are best suited for individual ad creatives within a single ad set. Advertisers can specify age and gender preferences for different images and videos, enabling more tailored creative strategies without requiring separate ad sets for each variation. The update provides additional flexibility for brands running campaigns with products or messaging intended for different demographic groups. Meta

Reddit Introduces Campaign Planning, Optimization Scores, and Automated Budget Tools: Reddit is expanding its advertising platform with new features designed to simplify campaign planning and improve performance. Campaign Planner combines forecasting with community engagement data and conversation insights to help advertisers make informed media and creative decisions. A new optimization scoring system provides tailored recommendations for improving campaign effectiveness, while automated budget allocation shifts spending toward higher-performing ad groups. The updates are rolling out throughout October, with budget optimization available across multiple campaign objectives. Reddit

YouTube Introduces Automatic Security Restrictions for Potentially Hacked Channels: YouTube has announced a new safeguard designed to protect creators when suspicious account activity suggests a possible channel compromise. The system temporarily disables publishing and content management functions while security teams investigate, helping prevent unauthorized uploads, livestreams, and other changes that could put a channel at risk. Reviews are generally completed within 24 hours, with access restored once the account is verified as secure. Existing content remains available to viewers, and monetization is unaffected during the pause. Google