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KIMP’s Picks 23rd August: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

It’s amazing how much can happen in just a week don’t you agree? The digital landscape is constantly evolving. And for anyone looking to keep up with the changes, social media has become the go-to source of information. Whether it is brands making big announcements, or industry experts initiating insightful discussions there is always something buzzing on social media. 

Are you finding it hard to stay in the loop? Worried about missing out on crucial AI updates, social media algorithm changes, and marketing inspiration? Then worry not, you are in the right place. Welcome to the KIMP’s Picks 23rd August Edition. KIMP’s Picks is our social media roundup series where we bring all the latest news and exciting discussions that intrigue entrepreneurs, marketers, and anyone who is struggling to stay up-to-date with the happenings in the world of tech. 

Get ready for this week’s recap. Let’s go! 

In the Marketing Realm 

Reddit continues to emerge as a trustworthy source of product research 

In a recent post, Reddit shared useful insights about how the usage of the platform has been changing. According to the data shared in the below post, Reddit has emerged as the 3rd most trustworthy space for product research next only to review websites and recommendations from family and friends. 

One of the key distinguishers is that, unlike other platforms, Reddit offers a more authentic and trusted environment for users to discover, consider, and purchase products and services.

So, if you haven’t already included Reddit in your social media marketing strategy as of now, this is your cue to start taking the platform seriously. 

Tips to gain more followers on Instagram 

This next post in the marketing segment is also about social media marketing but this time it is about Instagram marketing. What’s one thing that most businesses struggle with on Instagram? Gaining followers! Hootsuite, the renowned social media management tool, shared a resourceful post that discusses some tips and tricks to increase your follower count on Instagram. 

In the below post, they delve into the essential tips right from the basics of your Instagram content strategy to leveraging the most useful tools and resources on the platform itself. 

From choosing relevant hashtags to crafting engaging captions and adding relevant tags and more, the post talks about a wide range of tips useful to both creators and brands looking to boost their following on Instagram. 

B2B advertising on LinkedIn 

B2B advertising is not an easy art to master. However, the abundance of digital channels and social media platforms makes it easier for B2B companies to reach their target audience and deliver their message. 

LinkedIn is undoubtedly one of the most popular platforms for B2B advertising. In the below post, Social Media Today discusses some useful insights shared by LinkedIn about what works best in terms of B2B ads. 

This post discusses some highlights from a recent study by LinkedIn and Magna Media Trials. 

Reportedly, video ads are the top format for driving engagement and response. While creativity is valued, the post also highlights that clarity and relevance are essential for capturing the attention of B2B audiences. 

The study also highlights a gap in the market for more creative and engaging B2B content, offering opportunities for brands to stand out and drive results.

Campaign inspiration – leveraging nostalgia 

Agency Spy, a popular advertising-related blog belonging to the AdWeek Network recently shared a post featuring a campaign from Owens Corning. This one indicates the power of long-term partnerships and also highlights the impact of leveraging nostalgia in advertising. 

The campaign, titled “Build With Pink,” showcases the iconic cartoon character, Pink Panther, using Owens Corning commercial insulation products to combat various elements and protect homes. It builds on the storyline associated with the character and brilliantly squeezes in the brand’s message. 

This campaign shows that creatively integrating characters with a massive following can lead to positive brand sentiments. 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

Time to create content to appeal to holiday shoppers 

If you think it’s too early to plan your content for holiday shoppers, think again. Google recently shared some insights about the current state of holiday shopping and trends to look out for this year. 

In their post, they highlighted that the percentage of U.S. shoppers who start their holiday shopping process in July has gone up from 28% last year to 34% this year. 

Keeping this in mind, brands must adapt their strategies and focus on building relationships with deliberate and deal-seeking shoppers. When it comes to the content, provide clear information, highlight competitive pricing, and add personalized recommendations to build confidence and encourage purchases. 

Obtaining quality backlinks 

Getting quality backlinks can give a significant boost to your content marketing strategy. Wondering how to do that? Then the below post from Semrush is for you. 

In this post, Semrush explores some effective strategies to obtain quality backlinks. From beginning with linkable assets to fixing broken links and providing testimonials, the blog touches on diverse ideas for backlinks. These are strategies that work for businesses of all sizes irrespective of their industry. 

How to boost SEO quickly? 

Crafting strong SEO strategies can be challenging. What’s even more challenging is reaping results quickly. If you think that your SEO efforts are taking a long time to show results, then this post from Search Engine Land, a leading authority in SEO and search-related news and discussions, is something you cannot miss. 

The highlights that the very popular approach of “checklist SEO” is not for everyone.  It recommends exploring ideas like the  SEO Eisenhower grid. The post also digs deeper and talks about using agile SEO tools to enhance SEO performance. 

In short, it thoroughly analyzes a few quick tips to boost SEO. 

In the Design Realm 

What’s new in Canva 

Canva introduced many new and exciting features within the past few months. This has made the platform versatile and suitable for organizations big and small. One of the recently popular applications of Canva is to create Documents on it. Given the convenient collaboration tools, creating and sharing documents relevant to team communication feels simple on Canva. 

In their post here they highlighted 5 updates that have come to Doc on Canva. This includes the addition of an outline frame similar to the one you see on Google Docs. This lets you quickly and easily navigate through the document. 

The other features include Page Breaks, Highlight Block, Columns, and Suggesting Mode. Have you explored these features on Canva? 

The power of visual communication 

In a recent post, Canva analyzed the “power of design proficiency in business growth”. In simple words, this post takes a deep dive into the need for creating stunning visuals and how to make the most of them in brand communication and marketing. 

It begins by explaining the significance of visual storytelling in today’s competitive world and how visuals are no longer just a matter of concern for creatives in the team. The post also highlights the need of the hour – introducing basic design knowledge even to the non-designers in the team. This helps eliminate common design-related mistakes and strengthens the brand. 

Creative billboard design 

Ads of The World is one of the best ad libraries where you can find inspiration from brands in various industries around the world. They recently featured a billboard campaign created for Artipelag.

For this outdoor campaign, a metal sunflower sculpture was installed in a public space, with its shadow tracking the sun’s movement throughout the day. This unique installation served as a visual metaphor for the exhibition’s theme and attracted attention to the event.

The campaign’s success lies in its ability to capture attention through a simple yet innovative concept. It also emphasizes that immersive ads that encourage users to stop and engage are the ones that yield improved conversions. 

In the AI Realm 

Midjourney web experience now open to everyone 

About a week ago, Midjourney announced that users who have created at least 10 images on the platform can access their web interface. This was also when they introduced a new web editor to provide users with functions like reframe, repaint, and other edits. 

And this week, they announced that their new web experience is now open to all users. Anyone can now visit the website and start generating images using AI. Additionally, they are also introducing free trials for a limited time to increase the number of users exploring the tool. 

As for creating the account or accessing the tool as a new user, Midjourney now supports login through Discord as well as with Google email. The former lets you access your old designs directly on the web interface. 

OpenAI & Condé Nast join hands to boost news discovery 

A leading media company Condé Nast and OpenAI have announced a partnership. This partnership will integrate content from renowned Condé Nast brands like Vogue, The New Yorker, and Wired into OpenAI’s AI products, including ChatGPT and the experimental SearchGPT.

A few weeks ago, OpenAI announced SearchGPT, a new search feature that aims to provide users with faster more intuitive information from reliable sources. By combining conversational models with web-based information, SearchGPT offers direct links to news stories, allowing users to explore in-depth content from original publishers. 

Now with partnerships like this collaboration with Condé Nast, OpenAI aims to improve the accuracy of the information and answers delivered to users. 

Fine-tuning capabilities for GPT-4o

If you are looking to tweak the performance of GPT-4o and optimize it for your applications then there is good news from OpenAI. OpenAI has recently introduced fine-tuning capabilities for GPT-4o. These allow developers to tailor the model’s performance to their specific needs. 

Moreover, by training GPT-4o on custom datasets, developers can enhance the model’s accuracy and effectiveness for various applications, from coding to creative writing. According to OpenAI, one of the key benefits of fine-tuning is the ability to customize the model’s structure and tone of responses.

Sakana AI makes headlines with AI Scientist

In the world of artificial intelligence, companies like Stability AI, Midjourney, and OpenAI get a lot of attention. However, there are several silent players who end up creating a buzz with their innovative tools and developments in AI research. 

One such recently is Sakana AI. They have made waves by introducing a new frontier in scientific discovery with their tool called AI Scientist. 

In simple words, AI Scientist helps automate the entire scientific research process. From ideation and coding to experimentation, analysis, and paper writing, this tool promises to accelerate the pace of discovery. 

Google Pixel devices are getting smarter 

The Google Pixel brand has grown to become one of the most dominant players in the smartphone segment. And to make things more exciting for Pixel users, Google has announced on-device AI image generation and image editing through Pixel Studio. 

This generative AI tool for Pixel devices will make a debut in Pixel 9 and run on Tensor G4 and will be powered by their famed text-to-image model, Imagen 3. 

Walmart is a success story in AI integration 

Walmart is among the early adopters of AI technology in their operations. Reportedly, the company used AI to revamp their product catalog and rework over 850 million pieces of data. Based on the results and the time and effort saved in the process, the incorporation of AI made it 100 times more productive than manual methods. 

The below post shared by Modern Retail discusses the progress that Walmart made in detail. It also briefly discusses the AI assistant likely to be introduced by Walmart. 

Walmart’s successful use of AI in their workflow is a good example of the kind of progress brands can make with the effective use of this technology. 

Microsoft announces Phi 3.5 models 

Back in April, Microsoft introduced the Phi-3 models. And now they have launched 3 Phi 3.5 models namely – Phi-3.5 Mixture of Experts (MoE), Phi-3.5 Vision, and Phi-3.5 Mini. 

Here’s a post from Gadgets 360 discussing this move from Microsoft. Reportedly, all of these are open-source and available for download from Hugging Face. These are compact lightweight models for research and commercial purposes. A notable factor is that these models will also be available in multiple languages. 

The Phi-3.5 Vision model with its image encoder is to process information from images. Whereas, the Phi-3.5 MoE model uses the Mixture of Experts technique. Therefore it has demonstrated superior performance in certain benchmarks compared to competing models like Gemini 1.5 Flash and GPT-4o Mini.

Runway makes video generation faster with Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

Next up in the world of AI is the next big thing from Runway ML. They have launched Gen-3 Alpha Turbo which is the latest iteration of their AI video generation model. The significant detail here is that this new model boasts significant improvements in speed and affordability. Therefore video generation is reportedly becoming 7 times faster than their previous models and more accessible to a wider range of audience as well. 

With the competition in the generative video sector building this move from Runway ML shows that they are serious about establishing themselves firmly in the segment. 

Luma Labs announces Dream Machine 1.5

Luma Labs has released version 1.5 of its AI video generation model, Dream Machine. This update introduces significant improvements in realism, motion-following abilities, and prompt understanding. 

This means that even with simpler prompts you can still create more realistic videos that are accurate and closer to the prompt. It is also built with the ability to follow natural motion patterns to make the human subjects in the video more realistic. Moreover, the model also lets you tweak the text rendering within videos. 

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes

YouTube partners with Shopify to boost e-commerce efforts

YouTube has announced a significant expansion of its partnership with Shopify. This partnership allows more merchants to participate in the YouTube Shopping affiliate program. This move aims to enhance the shopping experience for viewers and provide new opportunities for brands and creators.

Given that about 30 billion hours or videos were watched on YouTube in 2023, shopping is definitely a crucial topic. Therefore this move embraces this trend. 

As of now eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the U.S. can easily sign up for the affiliate program. Creators can tag products from 1000s of brands and make it easier for customers to shop directly from videos. 

Meta announces new Threads features 

Meta announced that Threads on web is getting a host of updates. One of these includes detailed analytics for posts. This lets users gain more insights into their audience and therefore enhance their content strategies.

Another feature is that Threads now supports multiple drafts for posts. This way you can record all your great ideas and post the ones that you finalize. In addition to these, Meta is also bringing content planning features and a suite of other tools to help creators and businesses improve their pages and content. 

X will now let you export analytics reports 

DogeDesigner’s page is one of the most reliable sources of up-to-date information on everything that’s new on X. From rumored features to previews of the new features, this page is filled with updates about the platform. 

The below post discusses one such recent update on X, namely the option to export account analytics. There is also a video preview of how to do this. Given that the default analytics included in social media platforms are the most reliable sources of information on how your posts and your page are doing, the option to export this data can be quite handy for creators and businesses alike. 

Let’s Conclude…

With that, we conclude the KIMP’s Picks 23rd August Edition. Did you like the quick recap? If you would like to get more of these weekly updates, stay tuned. We’ll be back next week with the next social media roundup post so that you stay in the loop. 

Posted On

23 Aug, 2024

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