Instagram can’t decide what original means, while TikTok is busy rewarding creators who do

Instagram is having a consistency problem.

A since-deleted Help Center article accidentally revealed Swap, a feature that lets users plaster their own text over someone else’s Reel.

This comes just as Instagram started penalising aggregator accounts for reposting without meaningful creative input. Can’t make up your mind, Instagram?

We went over the major details here if you want a refresh…

Original-first accounts are largely safe for now. But Swap would muddy the waters even further between remixing and reposting.

What you should do: Build original content habits now, before the rules tighten, and the bots get better at catching the grey areas you thought you could sneak through.

Community could build momentum: TikTok is spotlighting ten creators for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, pushing discovery through official accounts.

The platform is also surfacing API-owned small businesses in-feed, giving minority-owned brands a visibility bump beyond their usual reach.

Does your audience overlap with or want to connect with API communities? If yes, this is a low-cost moment to participate in something that already has momentum behind it.

If the fit isn’t there, note the format. TikTok runs these cultural showcases regularly, and the playbook is consistent: hashtag hub, creator spotlights, in-app commerce tie-ins.

Knowing the pattern makes it easier to move quickly when a moment matches your audience.

Two new safety nets save you from copyright strikes on YouTube and negative keyword fumbles in Ads

Background music has been giving creators serious foreground problems.

Those days could be over: YouTube is testing an AI music generator inside YouTube Studio that produces four royalty-free instrumental tracks on demand.

Meaning, you can swap out copyright-flagged audio without losing your video or your monetization.

You can find it inside the existing Replace Song option. Just press Create, pick your track, and you’re done.

A copyright strike can yank a monetized campaign video offline mid-flight. This sidesteps that. Currently US desktop only, wider rollout is coming later this year.

Measure twice, cut once: Google Ads is testing a feature that shows you the impact of adding negative keywords before they go live.

Preview up to 10 negative keywords at once, see what changes, then decide. No more making a change you can’t easily undo and watching your reach crater.

If you’re working with a tight budget or running sensitive campaigns, this is worth checking out.

It’s not yet confirmed as fully rolled out, so go see if you have access.

How to build location pages that get cited

Your location pages are live, indexed, and could be completely useless…

Chris Shirlow breaks down exactly why most location pages fail, and how to build ones that actually work.

The main culprit: Pages are either too thin, such as an address and a phone number, or too generic—having the same template with city names swapped, for example.

Search engines and LLMs spot these tricks easily.

A well-built location page can do five things at once: Rank organically, link from your Google Business Profile, get cited in AI answers, serve as a paid ad landing page, and convert visitors into leads.

But that’s not an easy fit. Usually, business would create two types of location pages:

• Physical location pages for places customers visit.
• Service area pages for areas you cover without a physical presence.

But if you get this wrong, you’ll confuse users, Google, and AI systems altogether.

What you should do: Don’t try to trick Google. It knows when you just swap city names.

The pages that win contain neighborhood-specific details, regional challenges, and expertise you can’t copy and paste.

Why this matters: In a 30-query experiment across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, each platform cited completely different source types.

Perplexity is pulled directly from business websites 73% of the time.

This means that your own content can win if it’s built right.

For paid traffic, the rule is simple: If your ad promises “24/7 Emergency Plumber in Orange County,” that exact promise needs to be the headline when someone lands.

The bottom line: Generic location pages bleed money and traffic. Location-specific ones rank faster, cost less per click, and convert better.

How are users approaching conversational AI?

It seems like AI will be reading bedtime stories for us.

Users are increasingly leaning on conversational AI to skip the fluff and do the “heavy lifting” of reading.

When it comes to the “what,” users crave efficiency:

• The top use case for conversational AI is summarized content at 46%, as users battle information overload.
• 45% use AI for product/service details, and 44% use it for comparison insights, meaning the AI is now the ultimate pre-purchase advisor.
• 39% seek creative ideas, proving that “writer’s block” might soon be a relic of the past.

See that? Users want the gist without the click. If your content is a 2,000-word wall of text without a clear summary, you’re basically invisible to 46% of AI users.

A content tip: Use TL;DRs and clear bulleted summaries at the top of your long-form content. If the AI can summarize your point easily, it’s more likely to cite you as the source.

Almost half of users are having AI summarize content instead of reading it themselves. Pro subscribers already knew this. You can too.

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