Jay Schwedelson: We are back for What's Up This Week from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in marketing, in business, and in life. So let's jump right into it. So let's talk about some LinkedIn stuff that came out this week. I think it's really important.

Jay Schwedelson: There's some things that we need to be changing in what we're putting out there on our personal pages, on our company pages. So Pangram, which is the AI detection company, they came out with some new data this week that showed that 41% of long-form content on LinkedIn now includes some form of AI generation.

Jay Schwedelson: That's ridiculous. That's a lot, and we all see it. You know, the three things every marketer needs to know, or I've been reflecting on this in my journey. It's all AI garbage. And so the game is It used to be about let's just post advice. That's what people want. No, what people want is something super usable and some-something that's super, not just something that AI could just, uh, shove in there.

Jay Schwedelson: So what we are seeing actually, and this is pretty wild from our Worldata Research Group, that stealable content is actually generating a 40% higher engagement, okay? That is something that you just can't find everywhere, and what people want is not just this generic, you know, garbage that's out there.

Jay Schwedelson: They want stuff that they can immediately use. So for example, what's stealable content? We say stealable content's doing 40% better. Those are, uh, templates. Those are AI prompts. Those are, this is the actual email I sent out. Here's a screenshot. Here's the checklist of the thing that you need to do based on what we just did.

Jay Schwedelson: Here is the exact wording. It is something somebody can steal from you. And the ultimate, uh, non-AI content that crushes it, so that way you don't just feel like AI slop and sameness, is real actual opinions, okay? Sharing a mistake that you made, a real customer conversation, a real screenshot, real data from something that you tried.

Jay Schwedelson: Realness works, okay? And if you even bring this over, forget about LinkedIn. If you bring this over to email, for example, and people say, "Oh, that's a bad word to use," that's garbage. If you put the word steal, for example, uh, at the start of your subject line, on the business side it lifts email open rates by over 25%. On the consumer side, it lifts email open rates by over 28%. You know, steal these latest deals, steal this, uh, new content piece, steal this whatever 'cause what does steal mean to us? Ooh, we're getting something that we shouldn't have access to. You're like, "Well, I can't say that. That's off-brand."

Jay Schwedelson: That's garbage. We're not telling you to actually go to a store and steal something. Don't be ridiculous. Come on. What are we doing, people? All right. The next thing is the influencer world is flipping upside down, and this is so cool, and this is something every brand should think about doing in their business.

Jay Schwedelson: Business, consumer, nonprofit. So the Wall Street Journal... Can I say that better? The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal came out this week- And they shared all this data about not just micro-influencers, but this idea of nano-influencers. Creating a group of people that have 500 followers, even less than 500 followers on any platform, and turning them into a giant marketing engine.

Jay Schwedelson: So first of all, the stat that they came out with is that 45% of the US influencer marketing spend is expected to go to creators with fewer than 20,000 followers in 2026. 45%. That is bonkers. All right? And so here's an example of what Target just did, and then let's talk about how you bring this into your own business.

Jay Schwedelson: So Target launched something called Club Target, and you can apply, okay, to be in Club Target as an influencer of theirs, and all you need is just 500 followers And they already have 15,000 creators or people in the program. And what they're doing is, with these 15,000 people, they're giving their...

Jay Schwedelson: these, these, these people in the club weekly challenges, okay? Weekly challenges to create certain kinds of content and then post it, and then they earn points if they can get engagement, and they can move up different levels depending on the engagement that they can get, right? It's basically turning loyalty marketing into influencer marketing, and this is a home run because, you know, you can then see, you could bubble up to the top, who are these, you know, people in, in your micro-influencers, your nano-influencers that are actually, uh, generating engagement, and yeah, give them a 50 buck thing here, a 100 buck thing there or whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: But in the world of business to business, you're like, "Well, I can't do that. I'm not, I'm not Target." But you can do that, all right? You can create a program, okay? The, the 90-day customer creator club or whatever. You could say, you know, to, to the 50 people, uh, that may be interested in this, "Share one thing you've learned from us.

Jay Schwedelson: Share us how you use this feature. Share one industry rule you completely disagree with us on. Make a 30-second video showing how you solve the problem." And then if they do that, they can earn points, they could earn swag, they could earn gift cards, they could earn early access to platform features, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: You don't need to be Target to bring this idea of nano influencers into your business. You could be in a boring B2B industry, a regulated industry, I don't care, but this idea of nano influencers is absolute gold 'cause we buy into what other people say, and I think that we're sleeping on this too much, right?

Jay Schwedelson: We're just sleeping on it too much. So what else is going on out there? So did you see this thing from Hanes? I'm not on board with this. Hanes, the underwear brand this week, they came out with a new campaign called Get Comfortable, and one of the things in the campaign, the big lead in the campaign, is this...

Jay Schwedelson: they have this viral video going out there showing a dude playing pool, you know, with a stick, and getting pantsed. You know, somebody comes up behind him and pulls his shorts down. You get to see his underwear, and it's this whole idea of getting comfortable. Let me tell you why I'm not on board with this.

Jay Schwedelson: Like every- everybody I'm seeing writing about this, this campaign is like, "You know, this is great. It's breaking through. You're not gonna forget that." Okay. I'm not on board Let me tell you about the single most scarring thing that you could do to a kid, okay? Who do you think gets pantsed in school? It's not the cool dude or the dudette.

Jay Schwedelson: It's the kid that's struggling to make it through the day, right? That, that's, you know, maybe, you know, people don't say the nicest thing to that kid, right? And this idea of, of n- creating, making pantsed be something that we should be doing to each other, I'm not on board this. I am taking a firm position against getting pantsed.

Jay Schwedelson: Maybe I have PTSD from getting pantsed when I was a kid. But I don't think a campaign around pants is good for society. We don't need to be pantsing each other. It needs to stop, and I'm gonna start a petition, no more be- no more getting pantsed. Enough with this. Um, another thing that's going on out there is Meta.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, Meta, and you haven't seen this, but they're testing it to a number of their users. They're treat, uh... Within Facebook itself, they have been changing the feed for some of their users, and they're testing a feed that looks much more like TikTok, where it's that one giant vertical video that's full screen that you kinda flip up and whatever, and this was reported by The Verge.

Jay Schwedelson: Why does this matter? Because in some way, shape, or form, everything is becoming a version of TikTok with just some other lipstick on it. And Facebook's the same thing. And why it matters to us as marketers, what we need to be thinking about doing, like, yesterday, okay, is we have to stop creating content for Facebook.

Jay Schwedelson: In general, we need to create vertical, personality-driven standalone content. I know I release this thing horizontally, but all my other videos are vertical, short-form videos 'cause you can do it on every platform. It's what's coming to Facebook. That's what we need to be doing, period, end of story. All right, before we get to the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I need to let you know that Knak is the sponsor of this thing.

Jay Schwedelson: Why? 'Cause I use Knak to build my marketing campaigns, to create brand permissions, to personalize our content. You're like, "What's a Knak?" K-N-A-K. If you do anything with email, with landing pages, if your brand has a hard time organizing stuff, if you wanna use AI, know the latest stuff, you gotta go to Knak, and you don't need to do anything.

Jay Schwedelson: It's the easiest demo to get. You go to KNAK.COM/DEMO. Check out Knak. All right, let's get into pop culture. Pop culture, what's going on? This isn't really pop culture. This is just... I, I, I am c- I cannot get enough of Netflix documentaries. I didn't realize it until last night when I started watching the new one, A Toxic Love Story, which is on Netflix, and so far it's good.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm only halfway through. But then the other day, I watched Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea. And if you haven't seen this documentary on Netflix about the Concordia disaster, which is very sad, people died, terrible, and the ship that went down, you're never gonna wanna go on another cruise again. But the, the documentaries on Netflix are out of control.

Jay Schwedelson: I watched Maternal Instinct. This woman was terrible, but I- it's, I mean, anytime they put anything out, I'm watching it, and I cannot believe these stories are real. I don't know how they keep pumping them out. Like, what do they do? Do people make the documentaries, and then they buy them, and they stick them on Netflix?

Jay Schwedelson: I have no idea, but it is the number one form of content that I am consuming. I'm a horrible person. I don't know why I watch all of this stuff, but it's wild. Uh, one thing, if you have any goal in life, here's the one goal you should have for your life. Do not ever become the focus of a Netflix documentary.

Jay Schwedelson: That's it. If everybody had that one goal and we all accomplished that goal, the world would be a much better place. That's it. Hard stop, end of story. Listen, I appreciate you being here. It would mean everything if you follow the show, you subscribe to the show, you leave the show a review. It helps us circulate it with the algorithm, all that stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram, @jayschwedelson, my full long name. I share horrible garbage there. Let's hang out, let's do stuff, and we'll check you at the next one later