ICYMI: The Best + Worst Brands to Work For 🔥
Here's what happened on social media this week, January 6, 2023
[Photo by Shridhar Gupta on Unsplash]
Happy New Year and welcome to ICYMI! This is a recap of news and trends for and about creators or anyone working in social. My goal is to give you the information you need to make better business decisions — especially if you’re working as a team of one.
And since it’s the first week of the new year, I’m picking an intention word (not a resolution). For 2023, my word is ruthless. Not like I aspire to some Wolf of Wall Street hustle era — I plan to be ruthless in what I won’t do. I’m going to eliminate busy work, ignore distractions and extricate myself from situations that don’t serve me. It’s like setting boundaries but with attitude. What’s your word for 2023?
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Instagram Updates
Adam Mosseri shared another folky video outlining Instagram’s 2023 focus. It’s pretty vague so I’ve done some creative reinterpreting of what his message might mean. According to his latest Reel, Instagram plans to focus on three things this year:
Inspiring people to be creative
Pretty standard stuff but Mosseri also gave a nostalgic shout out to the app’s OG filters and frames, which could be a sign that Instagram will roll out new editing tools and AR creative capabilities this year.
Help people discover new things they love
Mosseri clarified that this isn’t just about videos but about photos, creators and recommendations. One of the takeaways from this is in thinking about all the ways your content can be discovered, which includes taking advantage of all the SEO things where clarity > cuteness.
Optimize your bio with keywords relating to your niche and expertise
Use Instagram’s Topics feature on each post
Add broad and niche hashtags relevant to the topic covered, not just a company or campaign name
Create clear and straightforward captions with keywords that relate to your niche
If you’re editing and saving video files in a third-party app, save the video (or graphic file) using a keyword that relates to your post topic versus a random sequence of letters and numbers
Always turn on captions for your videos so anyone scrolling by knows exactly what it’s about.
Spark connections between people over what they love
This might relate to the shift we’ve seen which moves conversations between friends to Stories and DMs and prioritizes the Feed, Reels and Discovery for creators and brands. Instagram recently rolled out Notes as a way to increase conversation and engagement between contacts and we know Group Profiles and Collab Collections are on the way so they’re likely looking for more ways to keep you in touch with your contacts even as they build out the algorithm to connect strangers over their interests.
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok announced it’s rolling out the ability for creators to restrict their videos to adult viewers. According to the app, this isn’t meant to encourage adult content but to prevent minors from encountering content that’s aimed toward an adult audience.
TikTok is licensing IMDb data to allow creators to add a link to the movie or TV show referenced in their video. Viewers will be able to click that link and be directed to another page with IMDb-powered information such as the project’s cast and release date.
TikTok’s is adding video-scrubbing thumbnails to make it easier to scroll and find specific parts of videos but as TechCrunch points out this seems to affect new content only.
📲 YouTube Updates
YouTube is testing hashtag suggestions to make it easier for Shorts creators to add relevant hashtags to video titles. It’s on an invite only basis for now.
📲 LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn now allows you to schedule posts so you can organize your content to go up any time you want. When you create a post, you’ll see a ‘scheduling’ icon to the left of the Post button. To schedule your post, simply click the icon to choose the date and time you want your content to be shared.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
🔥 Top 10 Best (& Worst) Brands to Work With 2022
Adobe, Amazon and Bob’s Red Mill are just some of the best brands to work for according to 10K influencer reviews shared by creator pricing transparency platform FYPM. CEO Lindsay Lee Lugrin also analyzed what the winning brands had in common when it came to their influencer marketing programs, which includes:
Professional teams
Strong brand-creator fit
Creative Freedom
Fair compensation
Timely payments
👩💻 5 Trends That Could Shape Influencer Marketing and the Creator Economy In 2023
"In 2023, I think we're going to see a record number of creators identify as YouTubers for the first time. Shorts lowered the barrier to entry for creators who never saw themselves as part of that ecosystem and the addition of AdSense payouts for short-form videos makes the platform so much more appealing. For professional creators, YouTube is currently the best bet for a sustainable income through predictable content distribution.”
That quote was part of my contribution to Insider’s 2023 predictions piece which listed the following industry trends to watch:
More creators — and more generations — will join the industry
Creators will expand their content beyond photos and short-form video
Live shopping could finally have its moment in the US
Some creator economy startups might close their doors
Meanwhile, there could be an M&A frenzy on the horizon
🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK
“19 of the 50 states now restrict access to TikTok on government computers, with most of the bans being passed during a two-week period last month.”
-From Casey Newton’s piece in The Verge: Why TikTok’s future has never been so cloudy
🔨 RESOURCES
📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“More audio-only podcasts will use YouTube as a distribution platform. We’ve already seen this trend becoming more predominant in the last five years or so, but in 2023 it will reach critical disruptive mass.”
-Grant Durando, Director Right Side Up quoted in Podcast Advertising: 2023 Predictions from Right Side Up Experts
👩🏽🤝👨🏻 PEOPLE
MrBeast Lands Hans Zimmer to Soundtrack Latest YouTube Video -THR
Jenna Marbles's Home Broken Into By Stalker -BuzzFeedNews
Andrew Tate arrest: TikTok and Twitter under fire over false posts from fans -The Guardian
Inside the rise of Alix Earle, TikTok’s beauty breakout star -Glossy
10 of the richest TikTokers and what their success can teach us -Passionfruit
📖 WHAT YOU MISSED OVER THE BREAK…
Some universities are blocking access to TikTok over campus Wi-Fi -NBCNews
Meta is shutting down its Cameo-like ‘Super’ app in February -TechCrunch
Why Cisco is training its 84,000 employees to be LinkedIn influencers -LinkedIn
The rise of the influencer-worker juggling a day job -Passionfruit
TikTok's #BlackGirlFollowTrain Has Some White Women In A Tizzy -Blavity
The irresistible voyeurism of “day in my life” videos -Vox
The Instagram Reels Gold Rush -The New Yorker
Extremists in the trad wife community have taken over -Insider
J.P. Morgan has been quietly working with TikTok parent ByteDance on payments technology -Fortune
Welcome to the Live Shopping Era -ELLE
My word for the year is “curious.”