ICYMI: TikTok and Congress Square Off Over a New Ban

Plus 3 tips to make content more shareable

[via Casey Lewis]

Happy Friday! I accidentally deleted this newsletter Thursday night and had to rebuild it in a rush. Fingers crossed all the links work, there are no typos and this week wraps up before anything else gets lost or any other networks shut down — what is going on this week?! 🙃

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Congress is PO’d that TikTok told users to call them to prevent a ban

• Instagram announced two new updates to DMs: Edit and Pin

• TikTok is relaunching its Creativity Program beta as the Creator Rewards Program

• Report: Your cheat sheet to Creator, Organic and Paid content*

• MrBeast recommends everyone slow down their video edits

• A guide to the best Creator Economy track events at SXSW

• The Oscars are on Sunday — ready, set, meme!

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💻 ROADMAP

📲 Meta Updates

• Instagram launched a new emoji game, hidden in your DMs

• Instagram announced two updates to their DM feature which will give you the ability to: 

1. Edit DMs for up to 15 minutes after sending 

2. Pin up to 3 messaging threads to the top of the inbox

Why the focus on DMs? Because more photos and videos are shared in DMs than are to Stories or Feed, said Adam Mosseri.

That has implications on the type of content you create. As a creator or brand, figuring out the key to shareable content is critical to having Instagram users slide your content into other people’s DMs. It’s not just about whether people like your content but whether they want to share your content and how sharing your content will reflect on them.

Some questions to ask yourself as you think about shareability:

• Does sharing your content help someone entertain their friends or coworkers?

There’s a reason creator comedians, like Yuri Lamasbella, and storytellers, like Reesa Teesa, are getting so much attention. These are entertaining clips people want to share with each other.

• Does your content serve to connect them to a community or others like them?

Here’s a good stage-of-life example from creator Sazan Hendrix in partnership with Macys as a new mom getting back into her jeans. It’s a very relatable moment.

• Does it provide useful information they can share with friends?

I’ve personally shared this Wirecutter posts on washing your cashmere at home.

📲 TikTok Updates

• TikTok partnered with the Oscars and ABC Network to live stream from the red carpet Sunday across all three handles with #FilmTok creators Joe Aragon (@cinema.joe) and Yasmine Sahid (@ladyyasmina1).

• TikTok hosted its US creator summit "For Creators: Future Formats" in Los Angeles and announced several updates, including:

  • It’s upgrading its Creator Portal to a Creator Academy. The new education hub will provide creators of all levels with resources, courses, articles, videos, and insights.

  • TikTok is relaunching its Creativity Program beta as the Creator Rewards Program, rewarding creators for 60+ second videos on 4 key areas: originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement.

  Takeaway from EMarketer principle analyst Jasmine Enberg who was at the event: TikTok is trying to cement itself as an entertainment platform — that monetizes primarily via commerce — and it's investing heavily in its biggest stars to do so.

📲 LinkedIn Updates

• LinkedIn is rolling out new career development and internal mobility features to help employees advance their careers.

• LinkedIn and Edelman released a report on B2B Thought Leadership Research that could help bolster any executive leadership program you’re building. 

For example: 9 out of 10 decision-makers and C-suite execs say they are moderately or very likely to be more receptive to sales or marketing outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership.  

📲 Twitter Updates

• Elon Musk said Twitter will hide Likes and Retweets from appearing on the feed and just show view counts, unless you tap into the post. Musk says it will make the feed “cleaner.”

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🧰 RESOURCE

With new technologies, content formats and user behaviors constantly emerging, how do you determine if your strategy is still relevant? 

Dash Hudson’s 2024 Social Media Trends Report is your cheat sheet to help you navigate the social media landscape and determine where to focus your efforts.

The Dash Hudson Trend Report: The Next Phase of Creator, Organic and Paid uses insights from hundreds of brands to reveal:

• When to use organic or paid media versus creator content

• How to ​​identify the best content to boost to get the results you want

• What type of content drives the most sales on TikTok Shop

• How to use AI to predict content performance 

*sponsored

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

⚖️ Furious Congress plows forward with TikTok bill after user revolt

Some TikTok users got push notification Thursday saying, “TikTok is at risk of being shut down in the US. Call your representative now.” People who logged on got an in-app notification urging app users to call Congress and protest a “total ban” which would “damage millions of business” and “destroy the livelihoods” of creators.

So what’s going on?

In simple terms: Congress wants to force ByteDance to sell TikTok or risk a U.S. ban because of security concerns.

We have been here before. But apparently members of Congress were so annoyed at getting spammed by students, adults, and business owners calling on TikTok’s behalf that a key House committee voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to advance the bipartisan legislation.

The Biden White House is expected to back the bipartisan bill.

So should you be freaking out? Well, we’re a long way — and probably multiple lawsuits — from a complete ban. Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on the situation and, if you haven't already, shifting that creativity and raw energy to other, slightly more stable channels.

Related: The White House briefed dozens of online creators before Biden’s State of the Union address

⏳ MrBeast says slowing down his video edits and focusing on storytelling is getting him better results

Expect to see longer videos and more personality on YouTube after the platform’s biggest star tweeted that views on his videos have “skyrocketed” since slowing down his videos.

The shift has been in the works for a while. Longer videos and slower edits were also a part of Night Media CEO Reed Duchscher’s 2024 predictions back in January (he’s MrBeast’s manager). It makes sense. Once a category gets saturated, creating content that bucks the trend is bound to stand out.

⛔️ Facebook, Instagram, and Threads logins restored after widespread outage

If you were online Tuesday, it was impossible to miss a major outage that logged people out of Facebook and made Instagram and Threads unusable for a couple of hours. YouTube was also affected. And then LinkedIn went down on Wednesday.

While outages bring out the best in brand humor, this also serves as another reminder for you SMBs and creators to own access to your audience that doesn’t depend solely on social media. And funnily enough, I got this series of tips (1, 2, 3) on launching a newsletter from social strategist Kar Brulhart as soon as I was able to log back on. The universe works in mysterious ways. 

💄 Is Trippin With Tarte Effective Marketing

Tarte isn’t the only company doing brand trips (I’m planning to write more about it!) or spend millions in marketing but they seem to get a disproportionate share of criticism around their marketing tactics.

I actually think the beauty brand did a lot this time around to address claims that the Bora Bora getaway was tone deaf or unrelatable: they ran a contest to bring a Tarte fan along on this trip and they hosted giveaways every day to give people at home an opportunity to win swag from the trip.

Several online analysts also suggested that Tarte is benefitting from the exposure — watch Sonia Elyss and Sabrina C — despite the criticism the brand is receiving.

Ultimately, I’m going to side with founder Maureen Kelly on this one when she says: “I find it so interesting that people don’t get outraged when they see the Super Bowl commercials or those Times Square billboards.”

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👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• TikToker Reesa Teesa signs with CAA -The Hollywood Reporter

• The best Creator Economy track events at SXSW -Passionfruit

• Is it ever too early for porn? Netflix doesn’t think so, greeting Instagram users with a “morning!” and a steamy sex scene -The Hollywood Reporter

• Reports show brands are seeing less engagement on TikTok over time -Social Media Today

• TikTok is going longform — marketers aren’t -Campaign

• LinkedIn is investing more in journalism and news -Axios

• Linktree is expanding into social commerce with affiliate partners and creator storefronts -The Information

• Why ‘surprise and delight’ doesn’t apply to influencer gifting anymore -Marketing Brew

• Brands: the topics you deem “unsafe” — reproductive rights, the Dobbs ruling, the presidential election — are those that women care about most -Campaign

• Please, let’s stop over Gen Z-ing everything — What marketers are doing wrong -AdAge

• The American Influencer Council is running a survey to increase transparency around the state of brand partnerships and financial sustainability. Take the survey and you’ll be entered to win a $200 gift card -AIC

Thanks for reading! Join me on the Sway Group podcast on Monday to dig deeper into the week’s social headlines.