Check out Meta's Holiday Marketing checklist now that there are 99 days til Christmas

Hello and welcome to this week’s Social Buddy newsletter, where we share the news from the world of social media, insights and tools for creators, and the latest social media marketing trends. 

Some highlights you’ll find this week: 

🍂 TikTok shares the hottest fall trends to look out for

🎄 Meta shared a checklist and tips for the Holiday marketing season

📍 Pinterest opened registration to stream a free, online marketing event

Check out the biggest headlines from this week in social media: 

A new TikTok Trending report gives insight into the fall trends online

This past week, TikTok released a new TikTok Trending report for fall - a “sneak peak into some the trends that are already growing in app, from food and gaming, to literature and core aesthetics”. Some of the trends for this season include an outdoorsy autumn aesthetic, #Britishcore, Filipino food, and Booktok. The trending report also shared a list of creators to watch, giving some great exposure to popular creators on the app. It seems like TikTok Trending will be a season report, so creators can keep on top of trends as they ebb and flow on the app. We’ll be keeping an eye out for the winter report next! Read more. 

Meta dropped a holiday marketing checklist and playbook for advertisers. 

Meta is preparing for the holiday season and the inevitable advertising push that comes with it. While the weather might just be cooling down, we’re actually only about 100 days out from Christmas, so Meta is giving us an early gift in the form of a checklist and their Holiday Performance Playbook. The checklist, which you can find here, offers some advice on planning early, utilizing Meta AI and their Advantage+ ads, and setting up your campaigns. Their longer Holiday Playbook is broken into four steps: Plan, Experiment, Push, and Sustain, and offers almost 20 pages of tips and ideas for promoting your brand during the holidays. Read more. 

Pinterest announces Pinterest Presents 2024 and opens registration 

Pinterest marketers can mark their calendars for Pinterest Presents 2024, a “global marketing event” from the platform. The event will take place on October 1st, 2024, and you can register now to stream it from the comfort of your home. Speakers include the leadership at Pinterest, including their CEO, CMO, Chief Content Officer, and more, as well as leaders from top advertiser brands like Nestlé, Ruggable, and JPMorgan Chase. The event will also share product updates for both consumers and advertisers. Read more. 

TikTok is hosting a marketing webinar for small & medium sized businesses. 

TikTok announced a new webinar titled “Creative Made Simple” which is targeted towards SMBs looking to improve their TikTok marketing strategies. The webinar will take place on Zoom on Thursday, September 26th at 10 AM (UTC+1). The webinar will cover everything from content ideation to production tips to other creative tools on the app to optimize and grow your content and brand. According to TikTok, the webinar will be focused on practical, actionable insights and tips so that SMBs can hit the ground running for the holidays. Read more. 

A Threads experiment suggests that questions & posts that provoke responses improve reach

A social media experiment on Threads seems to suggest that posts with lots of comments may have better reach on the app than those with just likes and re-shares. Business Insider reporter Katie Notopoulos experimented by “rage-baiting” her audience on Threads to provoke responses on the app, and the post took off. While some of that success may be due to the rage-bait of it all, it also seems to suggest that the Threads algorithm pushes posts with more comment engagement and discussion on the Thread. Another way to start a discussion and get comments could be to ask questions that elicit responses, rather than going the rage-inducing path. If you’re using Threads, try asking your audience some questions and see where it takes you! Read more. 

YouTube Studio adds website visits as a new goal for promotions 

Aiming to drive traffic to your website from your YouTube channel is nothing new, but this week YouTube did add the option to their paid promotional options. Now, creators that run paid promotions on YouTube can make the goal “website visits” as opposed to the prior goals of more views or more engagement on your channel. This new goal will also make it easier to track how many website visits come directly from paid YouTube promotions. The website visits goal will be an option for ads on full videos, Shorts, and on skippable in-stream ads. Read more. 

Also in the news this week: 

• Spotify is looking to pay video creators to place their shows on their platform and beef up their video content library. 

• Meta updated their AI labeling policies to better reflect the amount of AI used in content.

• Threads now tells you when someone follows you from your post.

• Reddit published a 2025 “Moments” calendar.

• X has announced plans to “decouple” DM features from other in-app functionality, so you could block someone on DMs but still see their posts.

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Until next week,

Social Buddy