Need help with your social media designs? Get KIMP!

KIMP’s Picks 10th May: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

Drowning in social media updates? Fear not, KIMP’s Picks is here to help! Every Friday we take a moment to reflect on the major AI announcements, marketing buzz, and trending social media discussions from the week. So, this is your key to catching up with the tech world in minutes.

Whether you are a tech enthusiast looking for a weekly recap or a marketer who cannot afford to miss out on trends, this roundup keeps you in the loop. Ready to cut through the social media chatter from this past week? Let’s go! 

In the Marketing Realm 

Small updates coming to GA4

Google Analytics is rolling out a new feature called “key events” (formerly known as conversions) to help businesses better understand user behavior and track what matters most. This can also be handy in evaluating channels that lead to conversions. 

With these details, advertisers will also be able to improve the conversions in their Google Ads through optimized bidding strategies. Google also mentioned that the feature will soon be available across other Google Analytics properties as well. 

Protecting your brand from ad hijacking 

Search Engine Land, a popular source of news and insights on SEO, PPC, and all things related to search engines, shared the below insightful post about ad hijacking. 

It delves into the topic of advertisers mimicking the ads of well-known brands thus hijacking their brand presence. The post briefly explains how ad hijacking works and about the possible harm it can cause to a brand that’s being hijacked. You’ll also find some useful tips for brands to spot and stop ad hijacking attempts on their ads. 

Standing out in a crowded market 

Adweek, a popular American advertising trade publication shared the below post that delves into the challenges of standing out in a crowded market and some effective ways to tackle these. 

The post talks about how it gets a tad bit more challenging, especially during holidays when almost every brand out there is placing an ad or sharing a post and hence the digital clutter. 

Handling ads during such times when consumers are distracted requires strategic planning. To address this, the post talks about paying attention to what customers want and identifying the right item-level promotions and other offers to appeal to them. So, if you are struggling to make your ads stand out, then this post is a good read. 

Amazon Ads are becoming more interactive 

The post here talks about some new updates coming to Amazon Ads. Keeping up with the evolving trends of connected television and the need to have a multichannel approach Amazon is reportedly bringing more new features into their ads. 

One of them is the Shoppable Ad format where users can use their TV remote to scroll through products and shop them directly from an Amazon Prime Video commercial. Another is the Interactive Pause Ad which places the ad right when the user pauses a video letting users directly add products advertised into their carts. 

Finally, there are Interactive Brand Trivia Ads that let brands add details about their products or even about the brand. All these formats are to let advertisers explore diverse options in promoting their products. 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

Some content ideas to explore

Looking for some last-minute content ideas to explore this weekend? Then this post from X might give you some inspiration. The best kind of content for boosting reach and engagement are posts that discuss current conversations. For this, you need to know what your target audiences are talking about – about popular searches on the internet or even trending social media topics. 

This week, it’s the Met Gala that everyone seems to be talking about. X shared that there were over 20 million posts shared within a day with more than 400 million video views and almost 4 billion total impressions on posts related to Met Gala. 

So, the Met Gala event is a good topic to talk about this weekend! 

Curating email lists for SEO 

The popular SEO software provider Moz shared the below post discussing email lists and how they can be a valuable tool in SEO. The post begins with a brief introduction to email lists and how to build them. From defining target audiences to developing opt-in forms to gather emails and leveraging social media platforms, the post delves into the many strategies involved in curating useful email lists for brands. 

The post then dives into the ways in which these email lists can be used in content promotion, segmentation, social media engagement, and other aspects to boost SEO. So, if you are working on enhancing your content strategy, begin with this post and make the most of your resources. 

In the Design Realm 

Freepik and Magnific join hands to enhance creative workflows 

Recently, Freepik, one of the most popular resources for stock assets, announced their partnership with Magnific AI, a renowned image upscaler tool. 

Freepik has been introducing several AI features to keep up with the evolving generative AI trends in the creative segment. And now this move is yet another step toward staying ahead in the game. Considering that most design tools like Adobe, Canva, and others now have AI-powered features built into them, Freepik’s move lets them join the league. 

Canva feature spotlight 

In a recent post, Canva spotlighted one of their features. This is a pretty useful feature especially when you are looking to create consistent aesthetics. 

The feature highlighted here is the Element Collection option on Canva. This option lets you create custom collections and add your favorite design elements to them. So if there are some elements that you wish to consistently use across various designs you can add them to collections for quick access. Have you tried this feature yet? 

Adobe talks about branding design 

One of the most important types of designs that a brand needs to invest in is branding design. And this is a huge segment that includes diverse design formats used in various applications. Adobe shared a resourceful post that discusses branding design and some useful tips to tackle it. 

The post talks about the core elements of branding design like logo design, brand colors, typography, and others. And then some tips to create a branding design that perfectly captures the essence of your brand. 

Having spoken about branding design, let’s also look at a design project that exemplifies a few strategies that make a branding design stand out. 

Branding design inspiration 

The Brand Identity is a great source of inspiration for creatives looking for design projects and campaign examples from brands around the world. This post here features one such design project that involves the branding design for Snakefire, a hot sauce brand. 

The first thing you perhaps notice about this design is that it does not look like any of the cliched designs you see on hot sauce bottles. The design takes after the idea that hot sauces are meant to spruce up the taste of a dish. The post also delves into the details like the intent of the design which in this case was to “celebrate life while rejecting death” and hence the symbols. 

Reportedly the design draws inspiration from the Aztec culture and feels fresh and authentic. This project is a reminder that a hint of out-of-the-box thinking can bring branding design to life. 

In the AI Realm 

Microsoft is working on a possible rival for GPT-4 and Gemini 

Microsoft is making significant progress in the world of AI with the development of MAI-1, a new large language model (LLM) poised to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini.

MAI-1 boasts an impressive 500 billion parameters, placing it in the same league as GPT-4. This significant increase in power compared to Microsoft’s previous models highlights the company’s growing focus on independent AI development, potentially reducing reliance on OpenAI’s technology.

While the exact purpose of MAI-1 remains unclear right now, Microsoft plans to utilize a vast array of training data, including text generated by GPT-4 itself, to refine the model’s capabilities. Ars Technica, the popular tech news site shared the below post discussing these details about Microsoft’s new venture. 

The OpenAI & Stack Overflow partnership will likely boost LLMs 

Stack Overflow, one of the most popular online developer communities recently announced a partnership with OpenAI. This partnership aims at empowering developers with enhanced AI tools. 

Through this partnership, OpenAI will be gaining access to the vast, vetted knowledge base of Stack Overflow to improve the accuracy and efficiency of AI development tools like ChatGPT. Moreover, this will also provide developers with easier access to reliable technical information and code.

Grok unveils chat history option 

Grok has steadily grown to become one of the most popular AI chatbots in recent times. X also made the chatbot available on the platform for Premium subscribers. 

Recently, X Daily News, the go-to destination for X-related updates shared the below post about a recent update on Grok, the chat history option. The post also gives a video preview of what this feature looks like. This will make it easier for users to go back to previous conversations thus enhancing the overall experience. 

Yet another Grok update 

Grok has been doing well since its launch. However, it’s currently available in a select few markets. Recently, X announced that Grok is expanding to the UK market. From answering questions to creating content, Grok comes in handy for a variety of applications. And now these applications will be accessible to the X Premium users in the UK as well. 

Another example of Sora’s capabilities 

OpenAI’s Sora is one of the most anticipated AI video models out there. While there is no solid information about the release date for Sora’s public access, the team has regularly been sharing examples of the results that Sora generates. 

Shaun Ralston, an OpenAI developer shared the below Sora example recently. While the video is a sample of the model’s exceptional generative AI features, it particularly exemplifies the rending capabilities of the model. The post contains an array of videos comparing the results for slight changes to the prompt. It shows how the tool can retain most parts of the video changing just the main subject based on the prompt.

These are interesting features that can come in handy during video production and editing! 

Google’s Threat Intelligence 

Google has announced a new security offering called Google Threat Intelligence, designed to empower organizations with a comprehensive and powerful defense against cyber threats.

According to Google, their products protect billions of devices, and 1.5 billion email accounts from millions of phishing attempts per day. Accordingly, their recent Threat Intelligence offering aims at boosting security. 

Google Threat Intelligence utilizes Gemini, its powerful AI tool, to streamline threat research, analysis, and response. This significantly reduces the time it takes to identify and neutralize threats.

Stability AI announces Stable Artisan

Stability AI recently announced Stable Artisan which brings the Stability AI powered media generation and editing capabilities to Discord. This means that developers and creatives will now be able to tap into the power of Stable Diffusion 3, Stable Video Diffusion, and Stable Image Core right out of the Discord server.

With this update, you can now generate images, remove backgrounds, upscale images, or even generate short videos with simple prompts on Discord. If you have been using Midjourney on Discord then you might find it easy to adapt to Stable Artisan.

Midjourney allows alpha testing

Just now we spoke about the web-based Stability AI tools expanding to Discord with Stable Artisan. Another big news is that the Discord-based Midjourney applications will soon expand to web. Midjourney announced that users who have consistently used Midjourney and created more than 100 images will now be able to alpha-test the image generation functions on the web version of the tool.

In addition to the traditional image generation function, they have also introduced the Rooms feature to let creators collaborate with other creators from around the world. The video shared in their post gives a short preview of what these features look like. And we must say, they look very promising!

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes

Grok-powered Stories feature on X 

X recently announced a new feature called “Stories” for premium subscribers. This feature, powered by Grok AI, aims to provide users with summaries of trending topics on the platform.

Currently, this feature will be accessible for premium subscribers on web and iOS versions of the X app. Android support is expected to be announced soon. 

This feature can be accessed within the “For You” tab on the “Explore” section of the platform. Based on the previews shared in the post, this feature will make the consumption of news stories and gathering instant updates much more convenient. 

YouTube’s AI-powered “Jump Ahead” feature 

The renowned news website Mashable shared the below post discussing a new feature coming to YouTube Premium users. This is the AI-powered “Jump Ahead” feature. 

This feature utilizes the user’s watch data and AI predictions to identify potential “filler content” within videos. Accordingly, when the user double taps to skip forward 10 seconds, the Jump Ahead option will be displayed. And based on the user insights, the feature allows users to jump to the next best portion of the video. 

Reportedly, this feature is designed to allow users to skip the less engaging bits in a video and enhance the user experience by allowing access to more relevant content. Features like this one are also the platform’s way of encouraging more users to choose the Premium subscription. 

Instagram adds new interactive stickers 

Stickers are a great way to make your Story posts on Instagram more interactive. And recently they announced a host of new Stickers to enhance the user experience and to allow brands and creators to engage their users in more ways. 

The below post summarizes some of these new Stickers along with some previews. 

  • Reveal sticker lets brands and creators create Stories that can be revealed when a user direct messages (DMs). 
  • Cutout sticker lets you transform any photo or video into a reusable sticker for your Story posts. 
  • Frames sticker transforms photos into print-style frames adding a vintage touch to your posts. This can be a great way to share memories with a hint of nostalgia. 
  • Add Yours Music sticker blends the Add Yours sticker and Music sticker to let users talk about music that they are currently listening to or music that suits their moods while also allowing other users to add theirs. 
Meta is adding more generative AI features for advertisers

Meta recently shared the below post outlining their new AI tools introduced for advertisers. These tools are meant to make it easier and much more efficient to create ads for Meta platforms. 

These generative AI automation features are reportedly available to Advantage+ users to help them create ads faster and to expand their creative boundaries. 

One of them is text generation which can come in handy when creating text copy for ads or even ad headlines. The others include image generation using text prompts. This includes full image variations, text overlay, image expansion and more. 

That’s a Wrap!

That was a whirlwind of updates, wasn’t it? So much happening in AI, marketing, and social media these days – it’s hard to stay on top of it all! But hey, don’t worry about missing out on things – we’ll be back next week with another edition of KIMP’s Picks to keep you in the loop. Stay tuned!

Posted On

10 May, 2024

Related Posts
KIMP’s Picks 23rd August: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More
23 Aug, 2024
Read More
KIMP’s Picks 16th August: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More
16 Aug, 2024
Read More