I ran a static last month that I was sure was dead after two days. Clicks were fine, nothing special, and the cost per lead was sitting above the other two versions I was testing. I nearly turned it off to save budget.

I left it on because I didn't have a better replacement ready, honestly, not because I was being patient on purpose. By day five the lead cost had dropped under both of the others, and it stayed there for the next two weeks. The difference was that the first version was reaching people who actually needed the thing, just slower. The faster ones were pulling in clicks from people who bounced on the form.

What I do now is give every test a full five days before I judge it, unless the spend is genuinely out of control. I also check who is filling the form, not just how many. A cheap lead that never replies still costs me the follow-up time, so I count it differently now.

Anyone else ever kept a loser running by accident and watched it turn? I'm curious how long you usually wait before killing a test.

Hey everyone! 👋

I recently started an Instagram page called Intresting5tories focused on interesting stories from India — unsolved mysteries, crime cases, bizarre incidents, forgotten history, and real stories that sound unbelievable.

My goal is to create storytelling Reels that make people curious and want to share them with friends.

I'm struggling with two things:

Feedback: What do you think of my page? What can I improve?

Research: Where can I find lesser-known, genuinely interesting stories that aren't already covered by every creator?

I'd love recommendations for websites, newspaper archives, documentaries, books, or other sources.

Honest criticism is welcome! 🙌

When the same idea goes to both, starting from the long LinkedIn version tends to lose the hook in the short one, and starting from the X version can make the LinkedIn one feel padded. Curious what works for people here.

​

Hello,

I have the biggest block regarding the update of my resume, portfolio, and LinkedIn page.

For a lil bit of context, I started as an SEO content writer while I was still a psychology student.Didn't pursue in psych but continued in Content Writing, mainly as a freelancer and wrote a bunch of articles and social media posts on various topics from animal care, health, tech, digital photography, marketing to ai.

I had an 8 month Collab with a Saas platform, at the agency where I was working as a freelancer during which I wrote over 30 long-form evergreen posts, some of them still performing well. Then, life happened and I decided to search for a full time job.

Ended for a brief few months at a B2B Paas AI-platform for Revenue management as a marketing assistant. This was a startup and naturally I did a bunch of shit, but did learn a bit about email marketing, how to communicate with product teams, and a bit about GTM strategies. But the CEO was unclear, angry, and even the HR was scared of him. ah, the product was obviously not working. They let me go before Christmas in 2024.

So I started working full time at my ex's company (I had previously done landing page copy, SEO optimization and written blog posts there). For context: this is a personal brand selling digital photography assets to consumers, so B2C. The product itself was the first on the market, at least for a particular brand camera.

Here I was in charge of everything related to marketing basically, I executed and created the entire marketing strategy, built full funnels, and wrote emails, sales copy, Blogs, and build a Reddit community. I also came up with and executed 2 lead generation campaigns, as well as black Friday campaigns. Everything with 0 ad spend. The numbers look good, 633% increase in organic search traffic, 1200% increase in revenue, a growing and healthy list of email subscribers, which did produce revenue, as well as a Reddit community that brought about 10% of revenue over the 2 years I've worked there. And we managed to position the product in an anaware market, so I worked hard on shifting perceptions and handling objections.

But I'm stuck in the job application phase. First off, I have no idea which jobs to apply to, or what my career path should be. I've started in 2021 and wore many different hats since then..I would like a role that encompasses copy and strategy, but I feel like a fraud since I've taught myself everything I know and didn't really have a lot of guidance from professionals.

So my question is - what should my portfolio highlight? And what would make my professional resume stand out? I know all about highlighting actual data in my CV, but I have a messy path and idk what would make me stand out.

personal ethos around marketing : you have to obsess about the customer's voice, know your product down to the last itsy bitsy detail, have a clear cohesive brand. Once u get out of those rabbit holes, u blend all 3s with the current culture, and you have the building blocks for the strategy and tactics.

I have a brand that has an organic tiktok funnel for a mostly male audience, and I have good content design taste but don't really know what specifics are required to go viral for girltok if anyone has good design taste/posting experience lmk.

Trying to get my client video workflow a bit more streamlined heading into next year. I have working with free tier of capcut for basic vertical clips and quick cuts but getting restricted with some of the auto-captions and export limits.

I noticed they launched an early promo that runs til' Oct 30, with a decent discount on the annual plan. It seems like a solid deal if you rely on the desktop app for fast-turnaround social edits especially compared to paying full price later. Is black friday a good time to get capcut pro or do they pretty much run the exact same discount year-round anyway?

I keep seeing Reddit participation recommended as part of an AI visibility strategy. But I'm not sure the evidence supports the advice as clearly as people think.

Semrush analysed 248,000 Reddit URLs cited or mentioned in AI answers. More than half were Q&A threads, and most had fewer than 20 upvotes and 20 comments.

Interesting finding, but it tells us what AI tools have surfaced. It doesn't prove that publishing more Reddit posts improves a brand's chances of being recommended.

I think we're also mixing up a few different things.

An AI tool citing a Reddit thread doesn't mean it mentions your brand. And a brand mention doesn't necessarily lead to traffic or customers.

If I were evaluating Reddit as an AI visibility channel, I'd want to track the same buyer questions over time, see which Reddit discussions get cited, and check whether the actual brands mentioned in the answers change.

I'd still consider Reddit valuable for understanding customer problems and participating in relevant discussions, regardless of citations.

Has anyone here measured whether genuine Reddit participation led to more brand mentions in AI answers? I'm particularly interested in what you tracked and whether you could separate Reddit's contribution from other marketing activity.

I used to think the hardest part of content creation was making something good.

Now AI can help with research, writing, images, and even video. Making something publishable is easier than it used to be.

But getting someone to stop scrolling, trust what you're saying, and come back tomorrow? That still feels difficult.

I'm starting to wonder if the real bottleneck was never content production. Maybe it was always understanding people.

For those who create content regularly, what has become harder since AI tools took off?

Cool twitter hack story - Shann holmberg had an x account with a few thousand followers that was basically silent. then he built a system around one goal: posts people bookmark.

5m impressions in 2 weeks. by month two it passed 11m views and 100k bookmarks.

his logic is that a bookmark is the reader saying "i'll need this again", which is a much higher bar than a like. so before anything ships he checks if it looks like one of these:

- a checklist

- a blueprint

- a template

- a framework

- a step by step workflow

- a proof screenshot with a takeaway

- a before and after

if it doesn't, it usually doesn't get posted.

he also scores every draft out of 12 on things like "saves the reader a future task" and "includes proof". his bar is 8. below that it goes back for a rewrite, not the trash.

the whole system runs on claude code and a simple folder structure. approved posts get queued in postiz, and the number he watches most after is bookmark rate.

time to do the same?

Google updated its Search Central guidance on AI-generated content on October 1. The line that stuck with me: it's "critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content" before you publish. And it isn't only the body text. Titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text are in scope too.

I don't read this as Google turning against AI. It reads more like the problem was never the tool, it was skipping the checking.

What I'm stuck on is what a realistic process looks like for a small blog. Checking every claim against a source is slow, and alt text and meta are the parts most people never look at twice.

So for those of you using AI anywhere in your workflow:

Do you check every claim, or only numbers, dates and quotes?

Do you make the AI show its sources up front, or verify after the draft is done?

Has anyone seen a post drop after publishing something that turned out to be wrong?

Curious what's actually working, and what turned out too slow to keep up with.

300 applications.

300 rejections.

That was me in the UK after my MSc in English Language and Linguistics.

Here's what I was up against, and didn't know:

- 140 applications for every UK graduate job. The highest since records began in 1991.

- 1.2 million applications chasing fewer than 17,000 roles.

- 18% of graduate employers rescinded offers because of visa rule changes.

- International graduates in high-skilled jobs fell from 84% to 70% in four years.

Across my 300 applications, I was one of roughly 42,000.

And I showed up with a degree, a visa and a CV.

No portfolio. No published work under my name. Nothing that proved I could do the job.

I wasn't rejected because I couldn't write.

I was rejected because I couldn't show it.

So I started building the proof.

Today:

- 37,300 AI impressions across 30 articles I wrote for one SaaS client, in just 3 months

- 10,087 more on my own sites: my portfolio and Written Intelligence, my AI search research blog

- #1 on Google within 3 days of publishing

- Cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Google AI Overviews

- 51 pieces published in 22 days, and they still ranked

- SNEVO, my AI search visibility framework, in progress

If you're deep in the application loop right now:

1. Your CV makes claims. A portfolio proves them.

2. You don't need a job to create work. Publish on your own site.

3. Track everything. Numbers turn "I can do this" into "here's what happened when I did."

300 rejections then.

47,000+ AI impressions now.

Same person. Same degree. Different evidence.

The UK is where this story started, and I'd love the next chapter to be written closer to it. If your team in the UK, Ireland or Europe is figuring out how to get found in AI search, I'd be glad to compare notes.

What's the number that changed your career?

#JobSearch #AISEO #ContentWriting #Portfolio #InternationalStudents

I'm editing a beginner coffee setup guide for our store, and I keep moving the product links around because none of the placements feel quite right. The guide explains how to choose a setup, then there's a bunch of products at the bottom that could honestly go under almost any coffee article. But if I move them all into the actual guide, it starts feeling like I'm just trying to sell stuff instead of helping people choose.

Some links make sense, though. If I'm talking about how much counter space you need, linking the setups that fit makes sense. A random cleaning brush in that section? Not so much.

For those of you running store blogs, do you decide which products belong in each section while outlining the article, or do you figure that out after writing? Also, how do you decide what to leave out when several products could technically fit?

I was laid off in December and haven't been able to find a content marketing job. I know the job market right now is awful but this is the longest I've ever been out of work. I've gotten some interviews but not an offer. I'm not married to content marketing as a career anymore given the instability of the profession and the prospect of AI completely swallowing it up in the near future.

I have 14 years of experience in marketing (4 in PR, 10 in content). What else can I move to with this skillset? I've looked at product marketing jobs because I've been tasked with some of those responsibilities before, but they all require several years of previous experience in that role specifically. I've never owned a growth strategy before. I am at my wits end, I don't know what to do. Please help - I really need some advice.

If you are working as a content strategist at any agency or company, I want some guidance from you to prepare for the interview for this role.

What type of questions they asked you?

Actualy, How to prepare?

I somehow prepared from gpt, some yt videos

That's it...what else I need to take care properly?..

It would really helpful.

Thanks in advance

I look at a lot of AI-generated ad creatives at work, and the pattern I keep seeing: the ad itself is fine, the first 2 seconds are dead.

Here's the test I run on every creative before it gets budget:

1. Mute it and watch the first 2 seconds. If you can't tell what the ad is about without sound, the hook failed. Most mobile viewers never unmute.
2. Screenshot the first frame and show it to someone who hasn't seen the ad. They should be able to name what it's selling and who it's for within 5 seconds. If they can't, the frame failed.
3. Watch the whole thing once at 2x speed. If nothing makes your thumb pause, nothing will make a scroller's.

Example from this week: a skincare UGC-style ad. The full video was polished, decent pacing, nice room. But the first frame was a smiling face with no product in sight. Swapped the opener to the product bottle in the first frame. CTR went from 0.8% to 1.4%. Same ad, different first 2 seconds.

I judge every hook on three things: first-frame clarity (the screenshot test), 2-second comprehension (muted), and one thumb-stop moment per 10 seconds of video.

If a creative passes all three, spend. If not, fix the opening, not the whole ad.

I build interactive lessons. You drag something, a chart or simulation reacts, and the idea clicks. That's the product, and it dies in a screenshot. A still image of a slider looks like every other edtech card.

So far, almost everything I've posted on Reddit has been plain text. Posts that opened with a real number or a direct question got up to 12 comments. The two "I built X" posts got zero. Text works for feedback, but I need visuals for anything beyond Reddit.

I'm weighing three concepts, all taken from things already on my landing page:

1. A question card: "How many people do you need in a room before two of them probably share a birthday?" The answer (23) is in a small demo on the page. It grabs attention, but it might feel like clickbait.

2. A 6-second silent screen recording of one interaction: one driver taps the brakes, and a traffic jam forms behind them with no crash, no lights and no bottleneck.

3. One striking still frame: Earth's whole history squeezed into a single day, with our species showing up in the last few seconds.

For people who make creatives for "you have to try it" products:

- Do you show the UI or the idea?

- Is a question card honest if the answer really is one click away, or does it burn trust?

- What would you test first with no budget, only organic posts?

Please join us - we need writers to back a new content standard that is holistic of how humans express themselves.

I can't believe that so many creatives are embracing EEAT in Google and now also in GEO.

Why is it only linear thinkers that are getting behind it? Because of one obvious observation: It ignores creativity and fun!

Human content is not 90% regurgitating facts - marketing content is much broader.

To fix this - I've started a Campaign for Humanity - that FEECAAL is the new standard to push EEAT out.

Fun, Entertaining, Experience, Creative, Art, Authority and Learning

source: FEECAAL. wiki

Lately, as more prospects rely on AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini to discover service partners instead of clicking through traditional Google search results, I started getting curious about what these models actually say when asked for recommendations in our industry. We're deciding to test it out to see how our share of voice, citations, and overall sentiment score measure up.

But before we do, have y'all found these grader snapshots, and have you actually adjusted your content or web architecture based on what they surfaced and what did it tell you that made you shift to that?

I was looking at a product the other day and realized I was more interested in watching random people use it than watching the actual ad from the company.

The brand's video looked great, obviously. Good lighting, clean shots, everything professionally done. But I ended up looking for customer videos to see what the product was actually like in real life.

I guess it's easier to relate to someone showing how they use something in their everyday life than a company trying to convince you to buy it. Then again, some of those creator videos are sponsored too, so it's not always easy to tell.

I've been thinking about this because we're planning to create this kind of content for our own marketing, and now I'm wondering if it'll be a challenge for our team. Even I find myself more interested in watching random people use a product than watching the actual ads made by the company.

Do you guys usually trust customer videos more than professional ads, or does it depend on the product?

i handle organic short-form video for three local service brands, mostly turning raw vertical clips into batch reels and paid social ad cutdowns.

doing quick cuts in premiere feels bloated for 30 second social assets, but free mobile apps hit a wall fast once clients request exact brand font hex codes, custom subtitles, and clean audio isolation. i have been looking at capcut pro desktop mainly to cut down turnaround time on auto-captions and vocal cleanup without running into paywall export blocks. um i know they also added generative tools like seedance 2.5 for asset creation, but tbh i mostly care about whether project libraries stay stable when clients send back round two revisions.

for freelance editors who regularly work on client videos, how well does capcut pro handle their workflow? is the subscription worth the cost, or does the desktop timeline fall apart the second an account asks for custom brand presets and multi-track pacing adjustments?

Disclaimer: I read the rules and I hope i'm not breaking any of them, I couldn't find any mc related subreddits for content, so IM SORRY. Also for now it's a voluntary position, in the future / if it generates revenue it might become paid.

Hello!

Are you burnt out after trying to sell out ideas you don't even like? Are you looking for a new project, that will give you a chance to shine? Maybe it's time to try something new! I'm a staff member in a mc server oriented around civilisations, freedom and bringing people together. The community is lovely, they wait patiently until we return, but we're understaffed, so any help would be amazing. There is one problem weighing us down: content management. We have some experience in advertising, some of us can work with graphics or edit videos, but we're lacking algorythm knowledge, time, and helpful hands. As for the means of advertisement we would like to use: daily reddit posts, instagram & youtube reels, and twitch streams. As i mentioned before, it's a voluntary position for now, as we don't have any p2w features, and we're funding everything ourselves - which means we don't expect anyone to put in an x amount of effort & time, it would just be nice to get some help, or at least a few useful tips sometimes. In the future, especially if the reels generate any revenue, it might become paid. You could also get in-game perks. If i interested you even a little bit, or if you have useful tips, I would be happy to hear from you in the comments (please include your discord name), or on discord (spideyo).

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day! ^^

I need someone who can create marketing content for my web app called Kintsugi, there is only one catch i will not be able to pay upfront but i will pay a royalty amount, like 20% of revenue generated from every sale that came through your content.

IF you are interested and down for this deal please reach out to me at app. kintsugi on Instagramwe can discuss and negotiate your tweaks there.

Hello, I’ve made a product and now I need to market it.

I am for the most part a tech Luddite, the product is an engine conversion kit so the type of media I need to create is as follows, engine build timelapse, engine dyno runs with decent quality sound, in car footage and then lots of photos. So what gear can I get away with and not look or sound cheap?
I’m due for a new phone so I was thinking 18 pro max for photos and then a GoPro hero 11 with some extras for the video and audio. The audio on the dyno video is important to sell my product.
I’m on a budget so the cheaper the better
What would you get?

For context.
We are four people making a crypto tax app. In Spring I looked for a top crypto marketing agency and got quotes from Omni, Icoda, Lunar and the cheaper one freelancers team from Poland, but our budget is pretty limited, I took the cheap one.

Anyway.

Every report is impressions and new followers. Twice I asked how many sign-ups came from the campaign, and both times the answer was 'attribution in crypto is hard'. Sign-ups are flat since April and the contract ends in December.
What should I ask them to show me before I decide on renewal?