I Accidentally Tripled My IG Story Views

Plus five post formats to try, how to bulk download your TikToks, the LinkedIn influencer campaign ecosystem, and more.

I want to start this newsletter with a big shout out to the Link in Bio Discord. The past few weeks have been filled with head-spinning platform news—TikTok ban, Meta policy changes, RedNote. The Discord has become a focused place to not only talk about the updates but also understand how they are impacting social teams.

One member of the Discord said, “i am remaining glued to this channel, which is currently my best source of knowledge on what's going on”. Another added, “I gotta say there isn’t a better place to follow the TikTok rollercoaster than here”. The Discord is only as helpful as the people in it, and I am so grateful to the community there.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the social news or just want to figure out how it might affect your brand, I highly recommend joining. It’s one of the best perks of a paid subscription.

Today’s newsletter will cover:

• Five post formats to try on your channels

• The wacky ecosystem of LinkedIn influencer campaigns

• How to bulk download your brand’s TikTok posts

• The book I pick up in creative ruts

• Social learnings from a Q&A with a marketing leader at McDonald’s

• How I tripled my IG Story views

Five Post Formats to Try

Spending some time with my zen garden. I feel like this trend is fairly evergreen but have seen a few examples pop up recently. Dean’s Dip here, Culver’s here, DUDE Wipes here.

Tap, hold and load in 4K. Easy, brand-safe Twitter format that’s been going around. CAVA did it here, the Mets did it here, and the Detroit Lions here. Choose a shareable hi-res photo and include “Tap, hold and load in 4K” in the caption.

Hopecore. This is a specific style of video on TikTok that I’ve mainly seen creators make. It’s like a fan edit for…hope and positive vibes. Earlier this week NFL on CBS tried making one and it’s quite funny. This McDonald’s post also feels like hopecore. Duolingo made “hopelesscore”.

Color palette posts. Shout out to the Discord for calling this one out. Show the color palette of a specific image or video. Disney did it here, Max did it here, and DreamWorks did it here.

Acknowledge the “end of TikTok”. Obviously this one depends on your brand’s voice and humor—but the vibes on TikTok right now are very last day of senior year. Can you acknowledge that? Scrub Daddy did it here and Saie did it here. Lots of viral creator videos addressing it too—this one is great.

Since Color Palettes Are Trending…

I love this Japanese dictionary of color combinations. It’s so satisfying to look through. I’ve found it useful for designing assets, figuring out what color rug to buy, and deciding what to wear. Highly recommend.

The Wacky Ecosystem of LinkedIn Influencer Marketing

First comes the LinkedIn influencer campaign. Next comes the LinkedIn posts about the LinkedIn influencer campaign.

As large-scale LinkedIn influencer campaigns start to gain popularity, an interesting ecosystem is developing. There are the influencers who are paid to post about the thing—Hootsuite’s new report or Notion’s new avatars. Then there are the LinkedIn users who build on the moment by analyzing it for their audience—free of charge, of course. The posts begin to muddy and in the moment I can hardly distinguish which are ads and which are thought leadership. That’s a good thing for the brand.

Still, I can’t help but ask myself thorny questions like: Is the campaign is being talked about because it’s good? Or is the campaign being talked about because it’s showing up on a platform where people already talk about campaigns? And does that even matter?

Agencies like Creator Authority and Creator Match seem to be behind many of the LinkedIn partnerships in your feeds. They are helping B2B brands like HubSpot and CPG companies like AG1 reach audiences on the platform.

Something I have noticed is that the same group of LinkedIn social influencers tend to get tapped for campaigns. One person I spoke with, who preferred to remain anonymous, told me, “I’m just wondering if we’re going to continue to just see the same folks in the social space do promoted content over and over. I’m sure there are other social crafters and creators who would jump at the chance to work with a brand.”

As more companies allocate influencer budget to LinkedIn, I’m sure we’ll see more and more voices show up in campaigns. The ecosystem, as it stands, is very good for brands. Assuming everything is executed properly, there’s essentially built in earned media and buzz thanks to the thought leadership nature of the platform. Somewhere to consider putting those TikTok influencer dollars after Sunday. Maybe.

One Thing I’m Doing Before the TikTok Ban

There’s a lot of speculation and predictions around TikTok right now, and I think the best thing to do is put the crystal ball away and focus on what you can do.

Now is the time to download every single one of your brand’s TikTok posts.

It was previously reported that the app likely wouldn't disappear and would instead be removed from app stores with existing users in the U.S. still able use it until it slowly becomes unusable. That won't be the case now. According to reporting from The Information, TikTok plans to shut off its app for U.S. users on Sunday, unless the Supreme Court intervenes to block the ban.

Here’s how you can bulk save all of your TikTok videos:

• Go to https://repurpose.io/

• Pay $35 for monthly use

• Select the option to bulk save all of your TikTok videos to Dropbox or Google Drive

• You should end up with all of your TikTok videos in a folder, without a watermark

• Once everything has been saved, make sure your recurring subscription is turned off (unless you want to keep using the service)

The Verge has more options for downloading here.

How I Accidentally Tripled My IG Story Views

A few weeks ago in one of Adam Mosseri’s AMAs he mentioned something about putting up a single Instagram Story slide in a 24 hour span can lead to more reach. I don’t remember the exact wording because it disappeared—but it resulted in a ripple effect of advice mirroring what he said. I thought it seemed backwards—wouldn’t Instagram want more content to keep people engaged on the app? I didn’t think much of it until I put up an IG Story on my personal account of just one slide asking people for Norway recommendations. It was the only story slide I put up that day and it got nearly triple the views than my usual 8-10 slide IG Stories get.

The one slide that accidentally tripled my IG Story views

I decided to conduct my own very unofficial experiment on my personal account.

Over the past 30 days I’ve tested three types of Instagram Stories:

• 1 slide in the span of 24 hours

• 2 slides in the span of 24 hours

• 3 or more slides in the span of 24 hours

Here are the results from my very unofficial experiment:

• The first slides of IG Stories that were only 1 or 2 total slides posted within the span of 24 hours received an increase in reach of about 250% when compared to the first slides of IG Stories that had 3 or more slides within the span of 24 hours

• The slide with the highest reach in the 30 days was the first slide of a day where only 2 slides went up in 24 hours

• Only posting 1 or 2 total slides also led to more link clicks within those stories thanks to the increased reach

Ultimately nothing I did was official enough to make any sweeping statements, but I’d say it’s worth trying out for yourself or your brand. I’m not going to “limit” my IG Stories per day but might try doing one slide if I want to to increase eyeballs on a certain update, event, or link. I do think this is sort of a bleak discovery. Instagram Stories were created to share more casual updates. Knowing that the platform doesn’t reward the behavior the feature was built for is frustrating.

What I Learned from a Q&A with the Senior Marketing Director at McDonald’s

I sifted through a recent Twitter Q&A with Guillaume Huin, Senior Marketing Director at McDonald’s, for all of the social media learnings. Here’s what stuck out:

On posting cadence: “I am not doing social anymore, but usually we try to post 3 times a week max. The magic is more in the community management, and the question is always : do we have something to say or do we have to say something. If it's the latter, stay quiet - no one wakes wondering what will McDonald's post today.”

Size of internal social team: “One director, 3 managers, 2 supervisors”

The role of agencies: “They are a literal extension of our work. Of our brand, even. It's almost like we co-own it. I will say, in the case of Wieden+Kennedy, that they helped us remember who we were, by telling us to focus on fans again and no one else. Like finding our soul again. On a more classic and general standpoint, agencies are here to help us define ideas, platforms and campaigns that will achieve the different goals we have set. These goals could be market share, guest counts, sales, trial rates, awareness, etc. The goals could also be linked to a specific period or more long term, so that we alternate between thinking in quarters and thinking in decades. Beyond my own team, I spend more time with agencies than any other entity within or outside the company.”

Voice and tone for social: “The simplest way to summarize it is : ‘a super fan of the brand who happened to get access to McDonald's social accounts’.”

Campaign timelines: “Anything with packaging and/or new food/ingredients will automatically take a few months. Anything non packaging/food related can happen... in minutes. We actually have something coming up soon that was not even planned 2 months ago. And yet, it's pretty big.. Patience.”

How the Mets and Grimace collab came about: “At first, it was a local activation to have Grimace throw the first pitch. There was nothing really planned around it, it was just for giggles and vibes. But then, as the Mets kept winning, Grimace became an icon synonymous with victory and we just added some fun to it, but the fans did it all honestly. We were playing along with them more than anything else. So, pretty organic I would say, you can't plant these kind of moments (at least I would never be able to unleash such genius). @amulligan89 and her team worked on it on the social side, kudos to her.”

Most important measure of success for campaigns: “Depends on the campaign, but sentiment is always a key one for me. No point having zillion engagements if overall sentiment is trending negative.”

“Fun” over data: “I think a lot of marketers take pride, for good reasons, in basing every decision in data and insights…But at least in my part of the house (campaigns/creative), it can get in the way of what ultimately matters. If I can tell that me or my team or the agencies will not have fun (yes, fun) working on something, it's an absolute red flag for me. Because before being marketers, we are fans of the brand, and if the fan in us is not excited, it's not worth spending a millisecond on it, because it will tank.”

Let’s talk about all of this the Discord! Thanks as always for supporting Link in Bio.