ICYMI: How PBS teamed up with TikTok librarian Mychal Threets
Social listening pays off!
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
An interview with the social team at PBS and PBS KIDS about their newest creator partnership with TikTok librarian Mychal Threets
Instagram is testing 3-minute Reels
Teens are resurrecting Facebook’s Poke feature
YouTube rolled out a tool to label content made with Gen AI
TikTok is all in on search with its Creator Search Insights tool and now the platform is rewarding creators for the search value of their content
Squarespace just made their link-in-bio tool — plus fancy layouts and upgrades — free for everyone*
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Meta Updates
Instagram is testing Reels up to 3-minutes long. Can you imagine being someone who worked on IGTV sitting there knowing you nailed this format in 2018 only to have the company shut it down four years later.
Instagram announced it was combining the hashtag and search experience. Tapping on a hashtag will bring up search results and the option to follow/unfollow.
Instagram is currently running a test with a small group of people allowing a link from Reels to Stories Highlights.
Facebook shared that there has been a 13x spike in poking in the past month — with more than 50% of pokes coming from 18 to 29 year olds. Yes, “Poke” still exists and comes up as an option in search.
Trending topics on Threads is officially rolling out to the US this week so you can see what people are talking about.
Meta is testing the ability to swipe right on a Threads post to like it, or swipe left on a post if you’re not interested.
📲 YouTube Updates
YouTube is rolling out a new tool in Creator Studio to help creators disclose when realistic content is made with “altered or synthetic media,” including generative AI. Interestingly, not everything needs to be disclosed…
Things that need a label: content that a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, or event
Things that don’t need a label: Clearly unrealistic or animated content or for productivity purposes, like content ideas or generating captions
YouTube announced its #WomenofYouTube 2024 Mentorship Program, pairing Shorts pros with emerging talent in its Shorts Creator Community.
Google has developed a technology called VLOGGER. It’s an AI tool that can turn a still image and sample audio into a video of a talking and moving person. It’s not yet available for public use and probably won’t be for a while. But it is interesting to imagine a future where you have the option of subbing your virtual self in for a video.
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok announced Sounds for Business – Voice Clips. These are 18 custom voiceover audio templates recorded by creators and cleared for brand use.
TikTok is testing more Live Subscriber perks to incentivize sign-ups
TikTok's Creativity Program beta is now the Creator Rewards Program, which rewards original content over a minute long. Rewards are based on 4 core metrics:
Originality
Play duration
Search value
Audience engagement
*Note: As several outlets pointed out, TikTok is now paying creators to improve its search results by rewarding creators for the “search value” of their content. And it’s making high search volume topics easier for creators to find and produce by rolling out a new tool called Creator Search Insights.
“One way to read this is that it’s a case of TikTok incentivizing creators to make videos that satisfy business needs…. This explicit emphasis on search query-related content also signals that the platform is more seriously thinking of itself as a search engine,” wrote The Verge.
📲 Reddit Updates
To celebrate its IPO, Reddit (or RDDT) released a “day in the life” video featuring the company’s mascot Snoo prepping to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
📲 Pinterest Updates
Pinterest announced its predictions for Coachella trends for the 2024 festival season, including Lana Del Rey core, nostalgic 2014 core, whimsical fairycore and the dark feminine aesthetic.
📲 LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn has confirmed it’s working on introducing puzzle-based games on the platform. This seems to be another step in the company’s effort to go from purely professional to more of a work-life blend.
🧰 RESOURCES
We all know the struggle of cramming multiple links into one bio. That’s why link-in-bio tools exist, but they usually charge for the good stuff.
Guess what? Squarespace distilled its science of design into a super simple, user friendly, beautiful and effective link-in-bio tool that’s also completely free.
Bio Sites lets you link everything — your website, socials, newsletter, projects, courses, you name it.
Plus, the fancy layouts and upgrades used to cost extra, but now they’re FREE for everyone.
*sponsored
PBS Turned Fan Engagement into A Dream Collab
The PBS partnership with librarian (and influencer) Mychal Threets seems like a perfect match but it’s also an amazing example of social listening and letting your community feel heard.
Let me rewind. Threets is a California-based librarian who started spreading “library joy” on social media in 2020 and has since blown up on TikTok (783K followers), Instagram (801K followers) and Twitter (150K followers).
He’s gone viral multiple times, was featured on Good Morning America, and has been profiled in countless articles.
In 2023, people started to tag PBS and PBS KIDS, petitioning the organization to revive Reading Rainbow with Threets at the helm.
The social team took notice. And while they didn’t have the power to greenlight a show, they could partner with him to help spark a love of books, literacy and libraries among their audience.
On February 16th, Threets announced he’d been made “Resident Librarian” for a social media series with PBS and PBS KIDS.
I wanted to get the details behind this dream collab and hear more about how PBS thinks about its creator partnerships. So, I talked with Carolyn MacLeod, Senior Manager, Social Media for PBS KIDS, who oversees social media strategy for PBS KIDS, and Marissa Pina, Senior Manager, Social Media for PBS. She oversees creative, partnerships, and emerging platforms such as Threads and TikTok.
They shared how this partnership came about, what KPIs they’ll be tracking and their tips if you’re pitching a creator collab to leadership…
ICYMI: Let’s start with the role, “Resident Librarian.” What does it mean and especially what does it mean for Mychal?
Carolyn MacLeod: We started with a small conversation with Mychal, each of us simply talking about what was important to us in the work we did. We found three areas of overlap: importance of literacy, mental health, and encouraging a sense of belonging and community. Now the question was, “What do we want to do?”
Ultimately, we brought him a pitch to be our “resident librarian,”a concept that matched well with both our brand and his. Marissa said this in one of our early conversations with Mychal and I loved it: We wanted to work with him because of who he is. We didn’t want to work on anything that would get in the way of his work, his persona, his goals, but to complement them.
As “resident librarian,” he would make videos recommending books to our audiences — some for families with kids, some for grown-ups — and pair them with a story of a library friend.
One of Mychal’s strongest gifts is his empathetic storytelling, which aligns perfectly with our work at PBS KIDS, working with him to be that voice meant that the content was consistent with our brand identity, and that it created a space for his personality to come through and give it that special spark.
ICYMI: To understand how we got here, how would you describe PBS’ influencer strategy?
CM: PBS KIDS is fairly new to working with creators in this way. Our goal with influencer engagement is to reach and engage parents and caregivers. Working with such a trusted brand, we take the responsibility of maintaining trust with our audience very seriously and have high standards for collaborations.
We knew we had to do it right, and Mychal was the perfect creator for us to work with. His whole persona - enthusiastic, passionate about learning for its own sake, and, of course, library joy - was an ideal match for the PBS KIDS brand. The fact that he has a tattoo of Arthur Read’s library card was just a bonus.
We’re using this experience to build a playbook so we can bring more creators into our social media presence and help make our work accessible to as many parents and caregivers as possible.
Marissa Pina: On the PBS side of things we have been working with influencers and creators when it makes sense from a brand or programming perspective.
In the past we have partnered with creators such as Sesali Bowen (@badfatblackgirl) and Levert Blount (@Levertthebassman) in order to add perspective to our brand and programming.
As Carolyn said, we take our responsibility of being a trusted, valued, and essential source of information seriously. We want to align with creators who feel right for the brand, but never ask them to assimilate to something that would be a far stretch for them. We want all of the content we collaborate on with creators to feel as organic and authentic to the creator themselves. I always ask them to create as if it was for their channels with our brand and values in mind. I think that has been a key to our success, authenticity.
As we move forward, we’re looking to partner with other influencers that align with our brand mission – and some of that includes taking cues from our audience and who they want to see on our channels.
ICYMI: Talk to me about when you guys first noticed you were getting tagged by people wanting a PBS and Mychal collaboration?
CM: We noticed tags starting to come in mid-2023. Around October, we were getting at least three comments every day mentioning Mychal. I sent him a DM on X (Twitter) in November saying, “Hey, it seems lots of people think we should work together. Want to talk about it?” He said yes and, together, we started to think about what that could look like.
We knew that having him as our “resident librarian” in this capacity fit with his brand, with our brand, was scalable in terms of how many videos we could make together, and relatively quick and easy to produce.
MP: As the social manager behind our TikTok account, it was impossible not to notice people tagging PBS almost daily for months on end. He had been someone I’d been watching from our side of the screen and knew that it would be a good idea to bring him in since the audience was making it pretty clear that they wanted him aligned with us.
Now, most of the time, people are tagging us asking to give creators shows and I always reply, “I’m just a social media manager, I can’t greenlight shows but I can give them space on our platforms.”
I also thought it was really interesting that during one of our initial calls with Mychal, he had mentioned noticing his audience tagging us like crazy, but he chose to not interact so the ball would be in our court.
ICYMI: What do you think makes this collaboration so special?
CM: I think what was so special about this collaboration was the role the audience played in it. On social, we get a lot of people asking for things that we simply cannot make happen. Being able to listen to our audience and follow through and show them that we’re listening — that was a huge gift. So, thank you to the folks who tagged us on social media! You were right!
MP: Exactly what Carolyn said. At PBS and PBS KIDS, we are really making a concerted effort to make our audiences feel heard and like they are a part of the conversation. Public media is just that, for the public, so why not listen to what they want to see and learn? Beyond that, Mychal is just such a pure soul who feels like the personification of a lot of what people view as the PBS brand. He’s the right creator to work with because he mirrors our values and voice.
ICYMI: We need to talk KPIs. What will the social team look to measure to determine the success of this “resident librarian” role?
CM: On PBS KIDS, one of our big goals is to foster engagement with our audience.
When we were looking at this collaboration, we were thinking about those markers that indicate engagement: engagement rate (does our audience like this), impressions (do the platforms know that our audience likes this), comments (why do they like it), and follower growth (do they like it so much that they want to stick around for more).
Overall, we’ve been really pleased with the response. The positive comments alone have been so worth it. It’s been great to share those with Mychal.
MP: The PBS and PBS KIDS brands are aligned on success metrics. We are looking at engagement rates, comments, and overall sentiment. But, we also cannot ignore view counts as well.
So far, we’ve been slowly rolling out the videos from Mychal on PBS’ TikTok page, with more to come, and with the very first post garnering 2.3M views organically, it proves to us that we’ve hit just what our audience is looking for.
Prior to our first post, we were plateaued around 180K followers and with just that first post, we grew to 220K followers literally overnight. Can’t lie, it’s been really exciting for us to see the metrics with this collab.
ICYMI: For anyone else looking to pitch leadership on a creator collaboration, do you have any helpful tips for making it happen?
CM: Quite honestly, this was my first time doing a collaboration like this. I was a little scared! I knew that content partnerships could be a lot of work and, in the case of some creators, it can be challenging to find a middle ground between an artists’ identity and vision with those of a brand they’ve never worked with before.
It’s important to focus on finding the right partnership (not just partnership for its own sake) and to think scalable. We started with a project everyone involved could manage, but we knew we had the legs to go further.
I am so glad we reached out to him and he was open to working with us. Regardless of what content we made, at the root of it, we made a relationship, and there’s no telling where that can go from here. Mychal will always be our neighbor.
MP: Creator collaboration has been at the root of the engagement campaigns and efforts I’ve led in my short time here at PBS, but it did involve some pitching. Luckily for me, my boss and team have always been incredibly supportive and also believe in the importance of collaborations.
For PBS, we strive to bring our brand to audiences who might not seek us out — or quite honestly have forgotten about us since they’ve grown up — and sometimes the best way to do that is to align with a creator who is making content that aligns with who you want to reach. We see it as a way to develop brand equity, affinity and also, as we’ve said before, allow the audience to feel like they have a say in what we’re working on.
If this sounds like something you are trying to do for your brand, this would be a great way to do it. We want everyone to be able to see themselves in PBS, no matter who is on screen. Don’t be afraid to ask, you might be surprised.
Related: PBS KIDS is hiring a social media manager!
👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
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TikTok’s American growth is already stalling -The Wall Street Journal
MrBeast signed a deal with Amazon MGM Studios for his first traditional TV series. Beast Games has a $5 million cash payout — described as the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming -The Hollywood Reporter
Chamberlain Coffee is tackling its next challenge to mainstream awareness: "How do we become more relevant to millennials and Gen X, since we are going into retail?" -Marketing Brew
Trend Report: Luxury brands are looking to athletes for their influencer marketing campaigns -Traackr
Gen Z prefers to watch social video and livestreams about twice as much as TV shows and four times as much as movies -Business Insider
Integrated marketing teams are going to be key to Google’s AI-powered search results -Forbes
There’s an untapped potential in fandoms to drive engagement and growth -Deloitte