Sunday is finally the start of daylight saving time for those of us in North America! Remember: we’re springing forward, so we’ll move one hour ahead.

For those of you in Europe and other parts of the world… we’ll be back to our normal time zone differences by the end of the month.

🧠 Stat Of The Day 🧠

Global advertising and marketing spend is expected to rise 7.7% to $1.76 trillion in 2024. (Source: PQ Media)

🚫 Escape THIS UGC pitfall

Authenticity matters in UGC. Brands waste time trying to hire influencers from marketplaces, leading to inauthentic, influencer-generated content. You need real content generated by real people who love your products.

This exclusive document reveals the secrets to generating authentic UGC for your e-commerce brand by building a commission-only ambassador program.

⚡️Today’s Headlines⚡️

💼 LinkedIn launched new tools aimed at internal career advancement

🙈 X may stop showing the number of likes & reposts on a post

😀 LinkedIn’s adding more context to one of its most useless features

🎨 Adobe added Firefly AI features to its Express mobile editor

🧵 Threads now lets you save drafts and take photos within the app

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🛠️ Things Worth Checking Out 🛠️

🔥 LINKEDIN GROWTH - I recently hired Chase as my LinkedIn growth coach. With over 275,000 followers and millions in revenue, he's cracked the LinkedIn code. He's now sharing the secrets he introduced me to in this 100% FREE 5-day LinkedIn course here.

💰 FREELANCER PRICING 101 - The unofficial 2024 e-commerce freelancer compensation guide just dropped, and it's full of insights! Get it here.

📱 ANTI-SOCIAL - Germany’s getting attention for their relatively light use of social media – only 51% of adults report using social sites compared to 93% who say they’re online. Sounds kinda nice?

✨ Today’s Insight ✨

Your social content might not be driving readership

📰 TL;DR - A fascinating new report from earned media insights platform Memo looked at how social media engagement relates to article or blog content readership. The study shockingly found no clear connection between social engagement and actual readers of the news.

💡 Insight - Does this mean you shouldn’t promote long-form content on social? Nah, that’s a loose argument to make. First of all, the study didn’t account for how content is shared on messaging apps like Messenger or WhatsApp, both pseudo-social networks in themselves. Data suggests that fewer people are engaging with content in-stream, and more are sharing links in message threads across the board.

Second, even if the correlation isn’t as clear as we’d hope between exposure and link clicks, there are still benefits to generating brand awareness through social media. Sharing long-form content on these platforms is a way to showcase your brand expertise on a topic and generate original content.

Memo also found that posts with a more negative than positive sentiment generated more engagement online. So, maybe it’s worth taking a contrarian POV, posting that hot take, or playing with a clickbait-y title. Your content doesn’t have to be entirely negative, but something more controversial is going to get more attention than a lukewarm take.

*Want to get in front of 100,000+ Founders & Marketers? Click here…