Trends in social media: The Motherhood scours the headlines so you don’t have to. Check back throughout the month for more!
Influencer Marketing Industry Resources
B2B brands and influencers aren’t meeting ad disclosure rules—here’s what they risk – July 28, 2025
Business-to-business influencer marketing is experiencing growing pains as brands continue investing in the space. Sponsored posts and paid deals have become more common on platforms like LinkedIn, but so have complaints that brands and influencers are failing to meet Federal Trade Commission disclosure rules.
Always-On vs Burst Campaign Influencer ROI Showdown – July 28, 2025
Savvy marketers face a pivotal choice: Should you invest in sustained, Always‑On influencer partnerships that build long‑term brand equity, or deploy high‑intensity Burst campaigns engineered for rapid spikes in conversions? Which approach best aligns with your growth objectives and budget cycle? Recent patterns show that micro‑influencer cohorts often deliver superior bang‑for‑buck in targeted markets, while macro‑influencer bursts can ignite short‑lived awareness surges. Yet without rigorous attribution—UTM‑driven link tracking, affiliate‑style performance metrics, and multi‑touch modeling—true ROI remains elusive.
The new rules of influencer trips – July 27, 2025
Brands are swapping traditional influencers for ‘multi-hyphenate’ talent with cultural cachet. How does this change the brand trip playbook? This summer, brands are out in full force, flying and ferrying creators to far-flung European holiday destinations, from the South of France to Puglia. Only this year, it’s not your typical influencers filling spots on brand trips. It’s Substackers, brand consultants, photographers, chefs, gallerists and filmmakers — all of whom boast hefty social followings of their own.
Inside the reality-TV-star-to-influencer pipeline – July 25, 2025
Talent agency Kensington Grey has worked with several alums of the show and other unscripted hits that furthered the reality-TV-star-to-influencer pipeline. Contestants on reality shows like Love Island and The Bachelor are supposed to be there to find love, so when drama emerges, they’re often asking: Is this person here for the right reasons?
In creator marketing, loose disclosures are finally catching up – July 24, 2025
In creator marketing, disclosure has long been treated as optional by some influencers. Now, that loose approach may be catching up with them. A wave of lawsuits and watchdog scrutiny is digging into undisclosed or poorly labelled posts — and agencies are taking note.
Affiliate marketing vs. influencer marketing in 2025 – July 23, 2025
Where you land in the affiliate marketing vs. influencer marketing debate will depend on your goals and desired outcomes. Both are powerful digital marketing strategies—but failing to grasp their unique strengths, how best to combine them or how each delivers real ROI can lead to missed opportunities and wasted budget.
The art of the influencer brief – July 22, 2025
A few years ago, you could pretty much guess how an influencer post would perform before it went live. We’d pop a KPI of 3% engagement rate in a proposal, and that was job done. Entire agencies were built on how easy that was to hit. But things have changed. Audiences have got smarter and more discerning. Creators got savvier, and the platforms moved on. But the way brands brief creators remains stuck.
The Influencer Marketing Bubble Has Burst – July 22, 2025
For years, influencer marketing revolved around likes, reach, and engagement. But in today’s high-pressure, ROI-driven climate, those metrics no longer cut it. Marketers are being held accountable, and that means performance is the new benchmark. Why the traditional influencer model is breaking: When influencer marketing took off, it promised something different: Authenticity, connection, and built-in trust. And for a while, it worked. But inflated follower counts, fake engagement, and shrinking organic reach made it harder to justify rising costs with unclear returns. Meanwhile, tracking ROI remains a major challenge across fragmented platforms. Marketers are now under pressure to demonstrate real growth, not just visibility. From CMOs to social teams, the demand is clear: Creator efforts must translate into measurable business results.
Influencer marketing survival playbook: How the creator economy is shaping up in the back half of 2025 – July 21, 2025
Between the TikTok ban and the tariffs eating into marketing budgets, the first half of the year was full of growing pains in the creator economy. As the second half of 2025 shifts into focus, trends in how brands spend and creators monetize are coming into full view.
Another sign the creator economy is growing up: brands hiring agencies of record – July 21, 2025
Sign number 108 that creators aren’t just a tactic for marketers anymore: they’re hiring agencies of record to manage them. It might not be as headline-grabbing as Unilever’s influencer pledge or Publicis buying up Captiv8, but it signals the same shift: marketers are, for the umpteenth time, done dabbling. The era of patchwork partnerships and borrowed budgets is giving way to strategy, accountability and the infrastructure to match. Naming an agency of record is the industry’s shorthand for saying this isn’t going away.
How Sprite Used Pop Culture and Physical Experiences to Reinvent Beverage Marketing – July 21, 2025
The lemon‑lime soda teams with McDonald’s, Takis, Buldak and more to amplify—not quench—spicy flavors. Sprite has long been known for its crisp lemon‑lime refreshment, but the brand’s latest global initiative flips that perception on its head. Rather than masking the burn of chili or curry, “Hurts Real Good” positions Sprite as the perfect companion for those who crave intensity. This creative leap emerges from deep behavioral insights: today’s young consumers seek out spicy fare not as a last‑ditch thrill but as a defining lifestyle statement.
Influencers want brands’ sponsorship, but not their rules – July 21, 2025
Many influencers operate within very small and specific niches, which is useful for a brand seeking to customize its ads. Yet influencers are extremely selective about which advertisers they choose to work with. In September 2018, Snapchat launched a new generation of its Snap Spectacles. Instead of relying on a traditional advertising campaign to promote the camera-enabled sunglasses, the brand chose an influencer to get the word out. Luka Sabbat was a 20-year-old model and actor best known for playing a character based on himself on the TV show Grown-ish and for reportedly dating a Kardashian. More importantly, he had 1.7 million Instagram followers.
Influencer marketing survival playbook: How the creator economy is shaping up in the back half of 2025 – July 21, 2025
Between the TikTok ban and the tariffs eating into marketing budgets, the first half of the year was full of growing pains in the creator economy. As the second half of 2025 shifts into focus, trends in how brands spend and creators monetize are coming into full view. Amid the so-called cultural wars, marketers are pulling back on diversity, equity and inclusivity-driven campaigns, disproportionately impacting multicultural creators. Meanwhile, lifestyle and mid-sized influencers are feeling the squeeze as brands prioritize micro and niche content creators. Simultaneously, the creator lifespan has increasingly been a talking point on the heels of the TikTok ban, forcing creators to think about building businesses off-platform. The creator economy is taking in more ad spend than ever — as U.S. brands are expected to shell out $13.7 billion on influencer marketing by 2027, according to eMarketer. But as it continues to mature, the emphasis is less on virality and more on strategy for survival.
The economy is turbulent for influencers, too — here’s how you might see it online – July 16, 2025
It’s an unexpected place to spot a recession indicator — from videos reviewing the latest in skin care to picturesque posts of summer vacations — but the impact of turbulent financial markets and seesawing tariff policies threatens to upend the multibillion-dollar influencer industry for millions of online creators.
Sprout Social: State of Influencer Marketing Report 2025 – July 14, 2025
You can thank your favorite influencer. Chances are, they’ve inspired one of your recent purchases. According to Sprout Social’s State of Influencer Marketing report, 86% of consumers make a purchase influenced by a creator. And when it comes to daily, weekly, or monthly purchases, nearly half of consumers say influencer posts play a role. But what kind of content actually drives people to buy? The report highlights three content qualities that often lead to purchases:
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Genuine reviews (64%): People want honest opinions about what’s good, what could improve, and how a product fits into real life.
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Discount codes (55%): Limited-time or exclusive deals create urgency and make audiences feel like insiders.
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Multiple influencers posting about the same product (26%): Seeing trusted creators repeatedly recommend the same product builds credibility and social proof.
LinkedIn emerges as a haven for influencer marketing – July 14, 2025
LinkedIn is gunning for a top spot in the creator economy, and business-to-business marketers are buying in.
Micro‑Moments And Nano‑Creativity: An Influencer Marketing Playbook – July 14, 2025
When I launched my first influencer campaign for a boutique brand, I assumed I needed big influencers because it looked glamorous on paper, but I didn’t see the results the brand wanted. Engagement was flat, and conversions were nearly zero. Then, an unplanned shift occurred as a nano-influencer with 4,500 followers attended our soft launch and posted an honest Reel from their perspective. Within hours, foot traffic and online chatter began. It wasn’t just exposure; it was a context-driven approach.
Influencers are linking supplements to customers – July 13, 2025
If you were walking down the street and encountered a shirtless man trying to sell you distilled yak protein, you’d probably walk away quickly. But in the world of social media, people can’t seem to stop giving influencers promoting supplements a lot of money.
How Tresemmé’s influencer-first strategy turned a legacy brand into a Gen Z favorite – July 11, 2025
Tresemmé has been around since the late 1940s, first in salons, then drug stores—and even backstage as the official hair care brand of New York Fashion Week for the past 33 seasons. But despite a comeback in the previous decade, Tresemmé had found it had a relevance problem in the age of TikTok.
Influencer marketing best practices for B2B brands – July 11, 2025
Social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, have led to the rise of influencer marketing, which is the strategic partnership between content creators and brands to promote products and services. While B2C brands popularized this approach, it can also help B2B brands across all stages of the marketing funnel. Yet, most brands limit themselves to top-of-funnel activities, such as generating brand awareness, said Nick Bennett, B2B marketer, content creator and bestselling author.
Why Everyday People Are Becoming the Most Powerful Influencers for Your Brand – July 10, 2025
Celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing have long been staples of brand strategy. But in today’s digital landscape, authenticity and relatability are becoming far more valuable than fame. Consumers are tuning out polished ads and turning their attention to brands that reflect real stories — told by people who look and live like them. That shift is changing how smart businesses build trust, market products and grow communities — and it’s opening the door to a more cost-effective, scalable and human-centered approach to influence.
Study Finds Language, Imagery & Follower Size Drive Instagram Engagement the Most – July 10, 2025
A study by Woodroof et al. unveils how agreeableness in captions, authentic influencer visuals, and follower-tier–specific tactics combine to shape sponsored post performance. In our modern, saturated social media environment, brands increasingly lean on influencers to cut through the noise. Yet follower counts alone no longer guarantee impact. A landmark study published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing by Woodroof and colleagues analyzes nearly a thousand Instagram posts from fashion influencers to reveal the nuanced interplay between an influencer’s linguistic style, visual presentation, and audience size.
A US-only TikTok could be on the horizon – July 8, 2025
TikTok might be sticking around in the US, but it may not be the TikTok you know. Aside from that one dark day in January when the app was temporarily unavailable, it’s been nothing but delays when it comes to the enforcement of the TikTok divest-or-ban law that passed last year. Last month, for the third time since taking office, President Trump issued a legally questionable executive order delaying the US operations’ required sell-off date, which keeps the app up and running in the US until September 17. Now, it seems TikTok may be working on a new, US-specific version of the app to avoid a ban ahead of the latest deadline.
LinkedIn influencer marketing: Untapped opportunity – July 8, 2025
Investment in influencer marketing is expected to exceed $10 billion in the U.S. this year, surpassing previous projections. But doing it right requires more than money — it requires marketers to constantly evaluate which platforms offer the most impact. While Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have been the go-to platforms for influencers, LinkedIn has emerged as an incredibly viable channel for brand-creator partnerships.
Micro-Influencer Swarms: Scale UGC with Briefs, Dashboards & DMs – July 7, 2025
How can a single coordinator mobilize a hundred micro-ambassadors to deliver authentic brand amplification, without expanding headcount? What systemic approach turns under-1000-follower creators into high-velocity PR conduits?
The next chapter of the creator economy is measurable, scalable—and human – July 7, 2025
Influencer marketing is growing up. No longer a sideshow to broader media plans or a playground for quick-hit virality, big-brand creator partnerships are booming—and they’re now being held to the same standards as every other line item on the marketing budget. That evolution was on full display at a private roundtable at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, hosted by Ad Age Creativity Editor Tim Nudd and Linqia Chief Strategy Officer Keith Bendes. Marketing leaders from some of the world’s most recognizable brands gathered to hash out opportunities and challenges of creator strategy.
How CEOs Who Became Influencers Are Supercharging Company Sales – July 2, 2025
It is not easy for a startup to launch a brand and carve a niche for itself in a market dominated by corporate titans. But Jake Karls, Co-Founder of Mid-Day Squares, a chocolate bar company in the growing “functional,” better-for-you-ingredients market, has successfully used social media to become an influencer and build a loyal customer base — despite competition from Hershey’s and Mars that together control the lion’s share of the chocolate market in North America.
Dear Pharma, The Creator Economy Is NOT Only For Beauty – July 7, 2025
The pharma industry has always relied on a select few channels to reach its audience: doctors, medical journals, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. For decades, this model seemed sufficient where authoritative voices shared tightly regulated messaging, and ads filled the gaps with glossy, compliance-friendly content. But the world has changed.
How Influencers Are Using Soulbound Tokens for Identity and Loyalty – July 6, 2025
Influencer marketing is entering a new era where on-chain credentials replace static media kits and spreadsheet-driven performance reports. What if every creator collaboration, benchmark achievement, and loyalty milestone were minted as an immutable Soulbound Token (SBT) in their wallet, verifiable at a glance and impossible to counterfeit or transfer?
How Influencers Are Driving NFT FOMO—and When It Backfires – July 6, 2025
TikTok’s fast-paced environment has become the epicenter for NFT hype, but with skyrocketing floor prices and “to the moon” mantras come critical questions:How are influencers engineering these surges, and at what point does the momentum collapse into community backlash? Recent patterns reveal a two-pronged trend—short-form creators weaponize real-time price alerts and third-party sentiment indices to fuel instant mint velocity, while gated Discord and Telegram channels create an echo chamber that amplifies scarcity signals.
Glossy Pop Newsletter: When it comes to brand trips, is all press good press? – July 4, 2025
Over the weekend, TikTok was flooded with posts of major influencers — including Kennedy Eurich, Brandon Edelman, Halley Kate McGookin and Jazmyn Smith — partying in Tulum with the electrolytes brand Waterboy. At the same time, dozens of posts criticizing the brand’s social media strategy for the trip began circulating: Why weren’t the influencers showing the products? And don’t electrolytes help thwart hangovers? Why, then, were they posting about how hungover they were? The marketing experts on TikTok (read: everyone) had questions.
Influencer trip challenges—what brands can learn from Waterboy’s controversy – July 2, 2025
Influencer trips have become a staple marketing tactic, but growing scrutiny over appearing out of touch has made it essential for brands to get them right. For Waterboy, its Tulum, Mexico getaway became a case study in the risks of ceding control to unfiltered, creator-driven content.
Social Good
Storytelling For Social Good: How To Inspire Action Through Compelling Narratives – June 30, 2025
If you’ve ever donated to a nonprofit or volunteered at one, you might have been moved to do so because of a compelling story. Effective storytelling is a powerful tool for nonprofits. Compelling stories have the power to humanize issues, spread awareness, shift people’s perspectives and inspire action around causes. Effective storytelling is an art that nonprofit leaders and their teams can excel at with the right approach.
Non-Profit
Bursting The Bubble: How Outside Voices Strengthen Nonprofit Marketing – July 7, 2025
When was the last time someone inspired your organization to think bigger, act bolder and break through long-standing barriers? I’m talking about the kind of outside perspective that doesn’t just validate your current approach but propels you toward innovative strategies you might never have considered on your own. If you’re struggling to remember, you might be missing one of the most powerful tools in nonprofit marketing.
Healthcare
How Women Can Drive Mission-Driven Marketing In Healthcare – July 8, 2025
Women are increasingly finding themselves at the heart of transformative efforts in the healthcare marketing sector, a field that is at an exciting juncture. Currently, we are witnessing an increasing number of women in leadership roles across industries, who are rewriting the rules of engagement through their efforts. And in marketing, in particular, the number of women in the field has been growing. In 2021, research by LinkedIn found that women made up about 66% of healthcare marketing roles in North America.
AI Is Transforming B2B Healthcare Marketing, But Humans Must Lead – July 8, 2025
It started with a campaign to target overburdened hospital chief information officers. A midsized healthcare IT company, looking to introduce its new revenue cycle data exchange solution, struggled with low conversion rates from traditional email campaigns. After leveraging traditional marketing approaches, the marketing team decided to try their hand with AI—not for automation alone, but for intelligence.
Social News
LinkedIn’s Latest Ad System Updates – July 27, 2025
If you’re a regular reader of Social Media Today, you’re likely across all of the latest updates and improvements within LinkedIn’s ad systems. But if you’re not reading every single post, you may have missed something, and that tweak could end up playing a big part in improving your LinkedIn marketing and outreach process.
Reddit Shares Insights on Its Influence in Consumer Purchase Pathways – July 27, 2025
As AI previews and summaries continue to take over online discovery and search, human-sourced insight is becoming more valuable, both as a beneficial reference point for people in their shopping process, and also as a data source for AI models.
Pinterest Shares Tips on How To Maximize Marketing Efforts – July 27, 2025
You may not want to do it, you may not want to even think about it, given the broader concerns in the economy/government/world. But right now is the time to start planning your holiday marketing strategy, in order to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your efforts, and meeting those increasingly early shoppers.
Social Media Age Checking Requires an Industry Standard Detection Process – July 27, 2025
Over the last few years, there’s been a big push to increase the age of access to social media apps, due to concerns around exposure to harmful materials, predators, misinformation, etc. Indeed, in the last year alone, several European nations, including France, Greece and Denmark, have put their support behind a proposal to restrict social media access to users aged under 15, while Spain has proposed a 16 year-old access restriction. Australia and New Zealand are also moving to implement their own laws that would restrict social media access to those over the age of 16, while Norway is also developing its own regulations.
US TikTok Ban To Be Upheld if a Deal Isn’t Finalized by Current Deadline – July 24, 2025
So this may mean nothing, because it isn’t coming from Trump himself, but it could be reflective of broader U.S. government policy, and the approach the White House is now looking to take on the TikTok U.S. sell-off negotiations.
Elon Musk Says He Is Bringing Back Vine in AI Form – July 24, 2025
Okay, I don’t know for sure what this means, or how it would work in practice, as Elon sees it. But after many teases, Elon Musk has today again claimed that X is going to bring back Vine, though this time “in AI form.”
Shorter Video Ads on Facebook Get More Replays via Looping – July 22, 2025
Hey, did you know that if you run shorter video ads on Facebook, that they’ll actually auto-play more times? It may not be a significant factor, but it’s something to consider either way.
Instagram Tests Like Counts For Individual Frames in a Carousel – July 20, 2025
Instagram’s testing a new addition to its post analytics which would show how many likes each specific frame within a carousel post has garnered (sort of), which could give you more insight into what your audience is most interest in.
LinkedIn Stops Resurfacing Old Posts, Shares Updates on Hashtags and AI Functions – July 20, 2025
LinkedIn says it’s rolled back a recent algorithm change that led to people seeing a lot more older posts in their feed, while it’s also provided some more guidance on hashtag use (or lack of use) to help guide your process.
Instagram Tests Auto Scroll Option for Posts – July 20, 2025
Instagram’s testing a new auto-scroll option with some users, which could make it easier to consume a heap of posts that are fed to you by IG’s algorithm.
Data Shows Best Content Format on Social Platforms in 2025: Millions of Posts Analyzed – July 16, 2025
Video, photos, carousels, or text? We dug into Buffer’s data, analyzing millions of social posts from Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and X to find out which content format performs best. If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, it’s easy to believe that video is the be-all and end-all. Instagram Reels, TikToks, LinkedIn’s new video feed: it’s everywhere, and it feels like every platform is building for it.
An Overview of LinkedIn’s Ad Options and Targeting Tools – July 13, 2025
Are you considering adding LinkedIn ads into your digital marketing mix? It could be worth a discussion. LinkedIn is now seeing more engagement than ever, and with over a billion members, its audience is also significant enough across most sectors to provide some benefit.
Instagram Expands Google Access to Public Posts to More Regions – July 13, 2025
A quick note of clarity here: Over the past week, several people have emailed me asking why SMT isn’t covering Instagram’s shift to enabling all posts to be indexed by Google, which some have suggested is a major change in content discoverability.
YouTube Clarifies Changes to Monetization Rules Around Inauthentic Content – July 13, 2025
After announcing a change to its monetization guidelines to disincentivize the posting of duplicate content, YouTube has now been forced to explain the change in more detail, as creators speculate on the potential impacts of the update. As you may be aware, YouTube recently announced an update to its enforcement of “mass-produced” content, with improved detection measures now coming into effect.
YouTube Updates Trending Content Displays To Keep Users Watching for Longer – July 10, 2025
YouTube’s making a change to its in-app discovery elements, with the removal of its “Trending” and “Trending Now” listings, which will be replaced by a series of category-specific charts. The update aims to align with emerging user behaviors across different content categories, and encourage more focused topical engagement.
TikTok Launched Its Own Font To Expand Its Familiar Style – July 10, 2025
Hey, are you really, really excited about TikTok, and want to show everyone how cool and in touch you are with the latest TikTok-aligned trends? This could help. TikTok’s looking to expand its impact on broader web culture, with the launch of its own “TikTok Sans” font, which enables you to take that familiar TikTok text style across to other platforms, apps and tools.
Edits Gets New Performance Insights, Improved Audio Editing Tools – July 9, 2025
The updates just keep on coming for Instagram’s new video editing app “Edits,” with this latest round of improvements including expanded performance insights, improved audio editing, and refined sharing options from the app.
LinkedIn Provides More Analytics Data to Third-Party Platforms – July 9, 2025
LinkedIn has launched a new set of Member Post Analytics APIs, which will enable third party social media management platforms to integrate more LinkedIn post performance data, in order to make it easier to manage your LinkedIn strategy. So now, you’ll be able to access more information on your LinkedIn content, including video performance, and compare that to other platforms all in-stream.
Meta Adds New Facebook and Instagram Management Options for Third-Party Platforms – July 9, 2025
Meta has added some new elements to its Marketing API, its connector that enables third party platforms to facilitate Meta ad management, with a focus on providing more tools to enable creator monetization in its apps.
Edits Gets More Features To Help Manage Video Projects – July 7, 2025
The updates keep coming for Meta’s new “Edits” video editing app, though last week’s round of updates was more about managing projects than creating them. Late last week, IG announced a new round of features for the “Ideas” tab in the app, which are designed to help creators keep track of their inspirations for future projects.
YouTube Enables Creators To Share More Data With Brands – July 7, 2025
YouTube has begun informing creators that they’ll now be able to share channel and audience data with brands for potential partnership opportunities.
TikTok Is Reportedly Developing a US-Only Version of the App – July 6, 2025
We have yet another wrinkle in the ongoing TikTok-U.S. saga. According to a new report from The Information, TikTok is in the midst of developing a new U.S.-only version of the app, as it closes in on a deal with a U.S. partner, in line with the requirements of the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.”
Threads Turns Two, Continues To Gain Momentum – July 6, 2025
Threads celebrated its second year of existence over the weekend, and if you logged on, you may have been shown this pop-up notification in your feed. Yes, a party hat, that you can’t place on your profile image, and just sits as an overlay, no matter where your head is placed in the frame, if indeed it is your head that you’re showing in your Threads profile.
TikTok Cuts Staff as Its Shopping Push Fails To Reach Targets – July 2, 2025
While TikTok’s in-stream sales push is seemingly gaining some traction, it’s clearly not happening fast enough, with the platform undertaking a new round of layoffs in its U.S. eCommerce division. As reported by Bloomberg, TikTok has initiated a third round of layoffs in its Shop department, which comes after the platform failed to meet its performance goals in 2024.
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