Wednesday, January 29

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Will Microsoft acquire TikTok?

• X is launching X Money with Visa partnership

• Join me for a virtual happy hour with Oddit on February 6!

• 📊 Stat of the Day: Disney brands claimed 11.2% of overall TV viewing in the US in December, ahead of YouTube’s 11.1% market share. (Source: Nielsen)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: How to win on Instagram Stories in 2025

📈 Ready to boost your website’s conversions?

Join me and Oddit’s co-founder and head of design for an interactive, dynamic virtual happy hour on February 6th! Here’s what you can expect:

✅ See Oddit in action as they elevate attendees’ websites in real-time with tailored conversion optimization strategies.

✅ Get expert insights on enhancing your site’s design strategies and user experience.

✅ Collaborate with founders and marketers from all industries as they share similar challenges and offer new solutions.

The webinar is at noon EST on 2/6 and is free to attend. Secure your spot! →

💡 Today’s Insight 💡

How to win on Instagram Stories in 2025

🗞 TL;DR - Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has been sharing the elements that the system factors in to decide who gets to see your Stories content. With Stories posts more prevalent than feed updates, they can play a key role in dictating your Instagram performance and helping strengthen your community.

💡 Insight - First, Mosseri prefaced that Stories are designed for friend sharing and are less optimal for discovery. He notes, “For the vast majority of creators, posting to Feed is going to be the best way to reach as many people as possible.”

While Stories won’t help with reaching new audiences or mass amplification, they’re still pretty important to help engage the audience you already have in the app. Mosseri says to think of them “as a way to reach your most passionate audience with behind-the-scenes, timely content.”

The three most important signals Instagram’s system factors in when ranking Stories are:

• The likelihood that a user will tap on the story

• The likelihood that a user will like the story

• The likelihood that a user will reply to a story with a message

Overall, building more engagement with your Stories will help your Stories appear higher in your audience’s feeds and build stronger community overtime.

⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

🤔 Microsoft is (maybe) in talks to acquire TikTok. Although, TikTok, Microsoft, and ByteDance have not responded to the reports. This would mark the second time Microsoft has been positioned to acquire TikTok and follows many other recent reports of rumored buyers.

🤔 Not sure how to navigate the TikTok ban/no ban? The newest episode of The @MarketingMax Show goes deep into how to prepare, and what your business can do, if TikTok gets banned. Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple (& don’t forget to subscribe)!

✉️ OpenAI launched a Substack newsletter for its Education Team. The content is intended to help educators explore how AI can help them teach and learn more effectively with OpenAI’s tools.

💰 X is finally launching Money with Visa. The partnership is the first for what the social platform is calling X Money Accounts, which enable X users to move funds between their bank and digital wallets as well as with other peers, like with Zelle or Venmo.

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