Let’s go through the latest in digital marketing news, resources, tools, and jobs…

“How to Increase Your LinkedIn Followers — What I've Learned From 25K of My Own and Millions of Posts of Buffer Data”
Tamilore Oladipo
Tamilore explains how to increase your LinkedIn followers in 2026 based on her experience and Buffer's data: Stick to three to five topics, try carousels, and don't worry about posting too often.

How to build brand loyalty: 7 strategies that work for 2026
Christina Newberry
Christina shares seven strategies for building brand loyalty: use user-generated content to build emotional connection, personalize experiences across every touchpoint, and stay authentic while avoiding behaviors that erode trust.

Fix AI slop with social listening: a 6-step workflow
Andreea Stefan
Andreea shares a workflow for finding your next useful post or article: start with what people are saying, find a pattern worth responding to, decide what your social team can answer now, and more. 

Holiday shopping is happening earlier than ever; here’s what brands need to know
Jasmine Williams
Jasmine shares the data from Sprout Social’s Q3 2026 Pulse Survey, which points to three factors that will define the holiday season: campaign timing, price sensitivity, and meeting shoppers where they’re increasingly discovering gifts on social media.

OpenAI launches visual ads that appear alongside image generation results
Sarah Perez
OpenAI is adding visual display ads to its ad product lineup so ads will appear alongside images users ask ChatGPT to generate. The new ads will begin to appear later this month in the U.S. only for now, and will feature products and services from an initial test group of advertisers.

Why Legacy PPC Account Structures Are Sabotaging Your Smart Bidding Strategy
Sarah Stemen
Sarah shares how to give Smart Bidding stronger conversion signals by consolidating redundant PPC campaigns while preserving the splits that protect margins and business goals.

Top PPC tactics to try for all levels of AI adoption
Navah Hopkins
Navah shares tactics across three core areas: bidding, creative, and reporting at each level of AI trust: AI-informed, AI-assisted, and AI-delegated to help you get more from your campaigns.

Merchant Center UCP Integration Hub Rolls Out in the US First
Hana Kobzová
The Merchant Center UCP integration hub is rolling out gradually in the United States, offering merchants new capabilities. This update reflects a name change on the help page and a shift in rollout timing, with Australia and Canada following next year.

Content Effort: One of Google’s Signals Your SEO Agency Doesn’t Want You to Know About
Ann Smarty
Ann argues that Google is starting a war against low-effort AI-generated content, and the key is “low-effort”: “When it comes to AI-generated content, it doesn’t matter whether it can be detected as AI. It doesn’t even matter if it is actually useful”.

How To Build A Content Distribution System That Compounds
Ross Simmonds
Ross explains how to keep content working long after launch with a content distribution owner, a repeatable checklist, and a 90-day plan to earn backlinks and AI citations.

How to plan 2027 when traffic is down, and AI won't attribute
Kevin Indig, Amanda Johnson
Traffic is down, attribution is broken, and the final budget meeting is in 3 weeks. Kevin and Amanda share what to bring: The visit isn’t where your planning should start, off-site distribution and community time need their own budget line, and no single metric proves influence, so measure the signals as a set. 

How to build topic clusters for SEO and AI search
Adam Tanguay
Adam goes through how to build a topic cluster that gets ranked, gets cited, and drives the pipeline, plus the mistakes that can ruin your program.

From influencers to AI, here’s what Gen Alpha thinks about your brand
Julia Waldow
A panel of Gen Alpha shoppers spoke candidly about what they want and don't want from the brands competing for their dollars: “Barker said that if she sees a headline on TikTok about a brand controversy, she’s not going to want to buy from that brand. And Hamilton said that how a brand treats its employees will affect whether she shops that brand”.

Pinterest expands creator content promotions
Andrew Hutchinson
Pinterest is giving creators more exposure and brands more promotional options by letting businesses sponsor creator Pins, boosting exposure and expanding promotional opportunities.

What Comes After The Creator Economy's Attention Era?
Dor Isseroff
Dor argues that the industry's next stage will be measured by whether more people can build sustainable careers within it: “It should be reaching the point where earning a sustainable living from a relatively small but committed community stops being exceptional”.

10 Rules of Viral TikTok Hooks – Real Brand Examples
Nadica Naceva
Nadica shares 10 TikTok hook rules through 16 real examples: make the topic clear before the hook ends, give viewers a reason to care, make the hook understandable on the first listen, and more.

​How to Coordinate AI Search Optimization Across Marketing Teams [Video]​
Aleyda Solis, Steve Toth, Ray Martinez and Emina Demiri-Watson 
Learn about the most common AI search optimization coordination challenges, do's and dont's and practical tips to succeed in the latest episode of Crawling Mondays with Steve Toth, Ray Martinez, and Emina Demiri-Watson.​

Local vs Global AI Citations: What Changes Across Markets, Topics and Platforms?​
Aleyda Solis
How much do AI platforms use local websites as citation sources when answering questions in different markets? How much does this change between ChatGPT, AI Mode and Gemini? The main finding is that local domains (.br, .uk and .es) represent 41.4% of citations in Brazil, 38.3% in the UK and 24.0% in Spain.

​Re-imagining AI Visibility KPIs in a Query Fan Out world​
Wil Reynolds
Wil explains why a brand mention alone can give a misleading picture of AI search success. Through answer and query fan-out examples, he explores the importance of recommendations, credibility, and recognition by trusted sources, proposing KPIs that include human sharing and mentions from relevant publications and experts.