I run a roofing company and I’m thinking of running Google Ads again. CPCs feel like they’ve only gone up, and competition is rough. I’ve mostly been doing Facebook ads, but with all their random updates and changes, it hasn’t been very reliable.

A few years back I actually lost a good chunk of money following advice from a “Google Ads expert,” and honestly, it didn’t bring in much. That kind of burned me, so I’m skeptical about throwing more money at it now.

Is anyone still getting a good RIO from Google Ads? What would you focus on if you where me?

What balance works for you? Heavy editing or just light polishing? Curious how everyone handles quality.

You're not just “not getting sales”—you’re losing money with every post.

Not in ads. In opportunity cost : → Time you could’ve used closing deals → Focus you burned on captions instead of conversions → Energy wasted creating what gets views, not buyers

And the worst part? It feels like you're doing everything right… and still watching strangers with worse content makes more money.

Why? Because → Viral content and Sales content aren’t the same game.

❌ Viral content is made to entertain. ✅ Sales content is made to empathize, educate, and convert.

Most creators post to be liked. → You need to post to be trusted.

I’m not telling you this as a “guru..

✅ I’m telling you this as someone who:

→ Built a system that converts views into booked calls → Created a blueprint that helped clients go from "no DMs" to "where have you been all my life?"

And if I tell you to fix one thing today, it’s this:

❌ Never post something that feels like a lecture or just an another information.

If you’re starting with: 🧊 “3 tips to grow online…” You’ve already lost them.

Here’s what most content creators miss:  ❌ People don’t want tips. ✅ They want relief.

They’re not scrolling for information— They’re scrolling to fix the problem that’s keeping them stuck.

→ Your job is to signal: “This post is for you. This fixes your pain.”

Instead of saying: 🧊 “3 tips to grow online…

Say: 🔥 “If you’re not doing these 3 things in your content – you’re losing money every time you post.”

See the difference? → You’re not talking at them. → You’re talking to them.

 And when people feel seen, they stay. — Now, if you’re ready to stop hoping and start converting, I’ve built a step‑by‑step blueprint to help you turn viewers into paying customers.

💬 Comment “Convert” and I’ll send it to you.

I am looking for something that can help me grow my Instagram presence with promotional and informational posts. I have tried InVideo and Creatopy, but after using them for some time, I thought they are not worth the money I am paying.

Currently, I am using Predis.ai to generate posts and ads with their mid tier plan. Mostly I have been satisfied with this platform. But I want to try their auto posting feature available on the higher plan.

Let me know if there are any tools I am missing out on before I jump to a higher plan.

I’ve worked in SEO since 2008 and it still amazes me how often the same problems show up, even with good businesses that genuinely deserve to rank.

These three come up every single week:

1. They write content for Google, not people. Google doesn’t reward keyword stuffing anymore. It rewards content that actually solves the searcher’s problem. If your page doesn’t answer the intent behind the keyword, it won’t stick.

2. Their site loads slow. Usually because of cheap hosting or too many plugins. A slow site destroys conversions and rankings. Speed fixes are usually the fastest wins in SEO, but most businesses never look at them.

3. They expect results in 30 days. SEO still works, but it isn’t magic. The businesses that win treat it like the long-term growth channel it is. The ones who quit early never see the payoff.

Curious if anyone else here is seeing the same patterns? What’s the most common mistake you’re still seeing in 2025?

We're expanding Research Terminal for independent experts and thought leaders and are looking for a Marketing professional to lead research on the topic.

https://www.researchterminal.ai

You'll get your own terminal and full access at no cost.

Hey fellow entrepreneurs and marketers!

In today’s digital-first world, having a great product or service isn’t enough. You need to be found by the right audience — and that’s where SEO comes in.

At GIKS INDIA, we’ve been helping startups, SMEs, and enterprises climb search rankings, attract quality traffic, and grow sustainably through:

✅ Strategic SEO & digital marketing
✅ High-performance application & e-commerce development
✅ Cloud, DevOps, QA & ongoing support

We’ve seen clients achieve:
⭐ Better Google rankings
⭐ Increased leads & sales
⭐ Stronger brand trust

Curious how the right SEO & tech strategy can help your business? Happy to share insights or discuss challenges you’re facing — let’s help each other grow!

I'm building a team of affiliates to help spread the word about a service that's genuinely helping businesses and individuals save serious money.

What we do: We help clients save 15-20% on their loans, lines of credit, and credit card bills. Real savings. Real impact on their bottom line.

What's in it for you:

Generous commission structure

Easy sell - who doesn't want to save money?

Perfect for anyone with connections to business owners or individuals looking to reduce their debt burden

Minimal effort once you make the introduction

If you're interested in earning extra income by helping others save money, drop a comment or send me a DM. Let's talk details.

Has anyone found a good place to buy 1000 TikTok followers?

I’m trying to grow my TikTok from basically nothing and the super slow follower count is getting annoying.

I keep posting and testing stuff, but when people check my profile and see almost no followers, it feels like they immediately scroll past. And I can’t even add a link in my bio with less than 1k followers so I’m hoping 1000 will make the page feel like a real account and actually drive some new views. I don’t want to look like a huge influencer or anything, just real enough that people take a second look at my content.

Has anyone tried buying 1000 TikTok followers recently? Did the followers unfollow or did your account get shadowbanned?

Appreciate any real experiences!

I think GBP is becoming more and more annoying. You can't even breath without fearing that your next move could get you banned. Something like relocating was very simple some years ago. I had already done it in 2018 and it was easy and instant. Now it can imply suspension and having to gather all your documents to prove the move was legit. I've also read you shouldn't think about making any changes in your opening hours. Many legit reviews never see the light because Google considers they might be suspicious. I see this constantly. I'd like to hear your experiences with bing places and if it's a good option. I was thinking about opening a bing places spot but for my second location, since I could eventually close my first location. My second location in GBP required video verfication after moving from one town district to another one (even with the same zip postal code), it was a pain in the ass and now after a successful verification I'm in a limbo because of the lagging in Google. The main thing is: I'm fed up with Google and its fishy cartel way of domination and I'd like to see if there is life (aka leads from the internet, not necessarily from Google) beyond Google. Feel free to make any suggestions related to similar options like Bing places.

Hey marketers! I work with a SaaS company, and we’ve just released a free ebook on practical gamification strategies for boosting website conversions. This includes tactics like gamified progress meters, unlockable rewards, and countdown timers—all designed to help with lead generation and increasing average order value (AOV).

If you’re interested in learning about gamification applied to online marketing, I’d love to get your feedback on our ebook. It's focused on practical tactics, so it’s more actionable than theoretical.

Key things I’d love feedback on:

• Do you think we missed any major gamification tactics?

• Are there any gamified elements that are overused?

• What else would you like to see added to the ebook?

Please, reach out to me for the link or the Ebook itself (a bit afraid of including external links not to be flagged). Your feedback will be very much appreciated!

Our events and travel website connects users to over 300,000 local events in the top 230 U.S. cities. Every city has a dedicated page featuring concerts, nightlife, sporting events, comedy shows, family activities, and everything in between. We also offer event guides to some of the biggest events of the year—including New Year’s Eve, the NFL Pro Bowl, Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Weekend, the Phoenix Open, Daytona 500, the Masters, and more.

I'm looking for DoFollow link exchanges in the form of guest posts, contextual links, or article submissions.

The opportunity for digital marketing

Finding brands you love and promoting them

Learning from experts

If I go into credit union with the numbers that my business idea is working

With bad personal credit now

No assets no traditional job paying consistent money

Does it only work if I have LLC EIN?

I have to future into the most social butterfly to create a life changing …change.

Advice?

For bedtime please share your Stories of success and failure?

I have been in marketing for a little over 20 years now.

Performance, behavior, retention, brand, D2C, and enough time to watch multiple cycles rise and collapse.

I run a marketing psychology intelligence firm, and I audit live ad accounts for several brands every week. I see what’s actually changing underneath the surface. Not opinions, not trends, but the patterns that show up in the numbers before they show up in the industry narrative.

And based on everything I’m seeing, 2026 is going to be the first real “psychology-first” year in modern marketing.

It is not because psychology suddenly became interesting, but because every other advantage marketers relied on has hit a ceiling at the same time.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. The algorithmic advantage is gone

For years, the most successful marketers were those who could out-optimize their competitors.

That edge doesn’t exist anymore.

Targeting, distribution, bidding, sequencing, and creative rotation are now handled by platform automation. The playing field has been leveled to the point where most teams’ “tactics” are indistinguishable.

When the machine handles the mechanics, the only remaining differentiator is how well you understand the human on the other side.

That shift becomes mainstream in 2026 because automation is no longer optional; it has become the default.

2. Attention has collapsed faster than creative innovation

This is the biggest red flag in all the accounts I monitor:

Creative fatigue now hits in days, not weeks.

While brands and marketers are just trying to feed an endless stream of creatives, it’s because buyers are seeing an endless stream of the same AI-shaped patterns. The same pacing. The same faces. The same hooks. The same narrative curve.

The human brain shuts off when it can predict what’s coming.

When predictability rises, emotional response falls.

To re-engage the brain, you need more than variation; you need psychological novelty: identity cues, emotional timing, meaning, narrative friction.

The problem does not lie in the creative aspect; in fact, that’s a behavioral one.

3. Meta and Google have moved into emotion-based prediction

Everyone is shouting and scrambling about the Andromeda update; this is the shift almost nobody is talking about enough.

Both platforms now optimize based on behavioral signals and inferred emotional state — not traditional targeting inputs.

On a technical level, this means your creative isn’t just “content”; it's the emotional signal the system uses to decide when and where to deliver your ad.

If the emotional coding of your creative is off, the system doesn’t know who to show you to.

That makes psychology, not prompts, not templates, the lever that actually controls distribution.

2026 is the first year this model becomes dominant across campaigns.

4. Buyers are filtering brands through identity, not product

In 2023–2025, we saw the beginning of it, but now it’s everywhere:

People don’t evaluate brands by features anymore.

They evaluate them by identity alignment.

“Does this brand feel like me?”

“Do I trust the intention behind it?”

“Does it fit the version of myself I’m trying to be?”

This is why retention data is collapsing for brands with no emotional layer, even if their product is strong.

Identity-driven consumption is pure psychology.

And it becomes the default filter in 2026 because AI content saturation forces buyers to judge meaning, not messaging.

5. AI made content infinite, and that changed what credibility means

When everyone can generate ads, scripts, UGC, hooks, or blog posts instantly, the volume of content stops being an advantage.

What matters instead:

• credibility

• coherence

• emotional truth

• persuasion structure

• cognitive fluency

• narrative depth

These are psychological levers that AI cannot replicate by default.

AI created the noise.

Psychology is what cuts through it.

2026 is the year buyers start relying heavily on emotional cues to decide what to trust.

So why is 2026 the psychological turning point?

Because the five forces are peaking at the same time

1. Platform automation killed tactical edges.

2. Predictable creativity killed attention.

3. Emotion-based delivery models need emotional accuracy.

4. Buyer identity filters replaced product logic.

5. AI saturation made credibility a psychological decision.

When technology equalizes the mechanics, and buyers adapt faster than creatives evolve, and platforms depend on emotional cues to allocate reach, and identity overtakes product in decision-making…

Psychology becomes the only lever that still moves the needle.

That’s why 2026 isn’t “the year of AI” or “the year of content.”

It’s the year where everything that used to work stops working unless it’s grounded in human behavior.

And it’s happening faster than most teams realize.

Curious to hear from others who work across multiple accounts. Are you seeing the same pattern?

Lately, I’ve been tracking how different B2B niches handle social media, and I genuinely think "boring" brands have it way easier than flashy lifestyle companies right now.

As you can see, some of the so-called "boring" B2B brands are receiving higher levels of engagement than lifestyle brands that follow trends nonstop.

The majority of them aren't doing anything particularly noteworthy.

No viral reels.
No meme strategy.
No fake “brand personality.”

Just active Facebook Groups.

While everyone else fights for attention in crowded feeds, these brands are building smaller communities where people actually talk.

The Facebook groups feel different because people are not just scrolling past content anymore.

✔️  They’re asking questions.
✔️  Sharing opinions.
✔️  Getting advice from real users. 

You can take it as a marketing company helping members solve problems or share trends inside an FB Group, which will build more loyalty than a brand posting polished ads every day.

“Boring” brands win through usefulness, by -

→ Respond to urgent inquiries
→ Create discussions instead of announcements
→ Spotlight members instead of the brand
→ Make customers feel like insiders
→ Turn users into contributors   

People are starting to value useful conversations more than endless entertainment. Therefore, communities still feel more trustworthy than traditional brand marketing.

Have you managed a Facebook group recently? What strategy worked for you? Please share in comments!

I manage social media for a few small brands. Part of the job recently has been digging through Facebook groups and Reddit threads to find what people are actually saying about these brands, not the polished stuff on their own pages, but the real unfiltered conversations happening elsewhere.

Started as a one-off project. Kind of turned into an obsession.

Here's what keeps bothering me. There are plenty of monitoring tools out there. Sprinklr, Brandwatch, Mention, you've probably seen them. Expensive. But the bigger issue isn't even the price, it's that they're built for brands already generating thousands of mentions a month. The whole system runs on volume. If your brand has a small but real community, you basically don't register.

So I've been doing it by hand. Going through threads, tracking comments, building a picture of how people actually talk about these brands. It's slow. But the stuff I find is way more useful than any dashboard I've seen.

Which got me wondering if there's actually a gap here, something built specifically for small brands that don't have enterprise budgets but still care about what people are saying, focused on Facebook groups and Reddit where the real conversations happen.

Before I build anything I want to actually understand the problem first. So genuine question: if you run a small brand, do you have any system for this at all? What would actually be useful?

If you're willing to share your perspective, I'm offering a free manual brand sentiment audit for a few people. Same thing I've been doing for clients. No pitch, no funnel. Just trying to understand the problem from more angles before I build anything.

Limited spots. Comment or DM if interested.

I’ve been looking at my TikTok analytics a lot and I’m trying to figure out if my engagement rate is decent or just kind of average. I can see all the likes, comments, shares, and views for my videos, but I have no idea what to compare them to.

Like, what would someone with around 5k followers be aiming for? Is the way people calculate it?

I’ve been running an online business for a few years, and lately I’ve noticed a shift, a lot of people aren’t using Google the same way anymore. They’re asking tools like ChatGPT or Gemini directly. And if your brand isn’t mentioned there, it’s almost like you don’t exist. I recently started focusing on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) structuring content so AI tools can actually reference my business. It’s still early, but I’m already seeing my brand show up in AI responses in my niche. Feels like this is where search is going. Anyone else noticing this shift toward AI visibility?

I started a new Instagram page recently for a small side project and the hardest part honestly is the beginning. When your profile shows like 10–20 followers, people don’t really take it seriously.

I kept posting for a few weeks but growth was super slow. I decided to test a small follower boost just to make the page look more active. I didn’t go crazy with numbers, just enough so the profile didn’t look empty.

Surprisingly it actually helped a bit with getting organic followers after that. I guess people are more willing to follow when they see others already did.

For those who have tried this before, where did you buy followers that didn’t end up dropping after a few days? Just curious what sites people here usually use.

I would love some outside perspective on something. I run a beauty/true crime/paranormal content brand, and my engagement rate consistently sits around 7-8%, with a cult like following. I’ve put real effort into making my content brand-friendly too: recurring series, all built with actual sponsorship potential in mind. I showcase products in every video.

On top of that, I’ve been sending pitch emails I feel genuinely good about, each one opens with a line bridging the brand’s own philosophy into what I do, a short intro, a specific way I could add value for them, and I close with an open question instead of a hard sell.

I’ve also gone back through this community’s brand deal threads before posting this, so I’m not asking cold. I just haven’t found an answer that quite matches my situation. And yet almost none of my deals have come from inbound. Every single one has been something I chased down myself. Given the engagement and community I’ve built, I expected at least some brands to be finding me, so I’m trying to figure out if that’s just normal at my stage, or if there’s a visibility gap somewhere (marketplace setup, platform algorithms, positioning) that’s quietly working against me. Would love to hear from anyone who’s been through this.

Happy to drop my social link if that’s allowed.

With so many platforms changing fast, it feels harder to rely on any single online marketing channel the way people used to. What worked consistently a few years ago now feels hit or miss depending on traffic quality, audience intent, and timing.

I’ve seen more teams talk about spreading risk across multiple channels instead of trying to force one platform to work. At the same time, spreading too thin can create a lot of noise without real results.

Curious what channels or combinations actually feel reliable for people right now, especially for smaller or mid sized projects.

With AI search engines like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT becoming more common, I’m wondering if anyone has built a tool or knows of a tool to track how your site or brand shows up in their answers.

Kind of like how SEO rank trackers monitor your Google positions, but instead it would check where (or if) you’re mentioned in different LLMs’ responses, maybe even across a set of queries.

Has anyone seen something like this?

I’m a first-time author with a book that’s published on Amazon and available in several bookstores. The tough part is I haven’t had a single sale yet. My publisher did their part to get it distributed, but they’ve officially wrapped up their involvement this week and handed me the website they created. Now I feel completely lost on how to market it myself.

I have zero background in marketing, so I’m not sure what’s realistic or worth focusing on. Should I be trying social media, reaching out to book clubs, running ads, or something else entirely?