The creator playbook: go vertical, stand out, skip the slop

What’s this? Every platform is suddenly becoming a film studio.

Now Reddit is entering its vertical era: The platform is testing TikTok-style video and audio playback for viral posts.

This means short-form vertical content is essential, even on a text-first platform. Or, what was once one.

You might want to start thinking about how your written wins could become watchable ones.

Speaking of social content, it’s still dominated by the shy majority: On Instagram, viewers outnumber creators roughly 2:1. The creator pool is growing, but most users still lurk.

That means there’s real room to stand out, simply by actually posting.

And it matters what content you create: Snapchat just declared war on AI slop in Spotlight.

Low-effort AI content is fast becoming a liability, and not just here. LinkedIn made similar noises recently, so this is a pattern, not a one-off.

The lesson? Create more, but create well. Volume gets you in the room. Quality keeps you there.

AI is rewriting search, and your marketing has to keep up

Remember when ads just sat there? ChatGPT has other plans.

Your next sale may happen outside of your website: OpenAI appears to be building chatbot-native ads that don’t just display, they launch AI agents to act for the user.

That’s a big shift. Rather than nudging users to click, these ads could kick off tasks like booking, buying, or comparing right inside the chat. Your website traffic will matter even less.

You’d be paying for actions taken on your behalf, not impressions. That’s new.

Meanwhile, visibility is getting democratic: One study counted the sources in Google’s AI answers and found 168 citations, with no single domain dominating.

If this is a frequent occurrence, it means that being #1 matters less. However, being one of many credible voices will matter more. So even smaller domains can now have their moment.

But you can still not appear. Google’s AI Mode shows roughly 95% fewer product listings than standard search for identical commercial queries.

That’s a major discovery channel quietly shrinking. If shopping traffic is your bread and butter, AI-first search could be leaving you hungry.

What we think: AI is changing both where ads live and changing how search works. Try to adapt early and you might reap the benefits, even as a small business.

Search is turning into a creator platform and your rankings won’t save you

Mikael Arajuo lays out something uncomfortable over on Moz: your rankings can look perfectly healthy while you quietly lose the user somewhere between the query and the click.

Here’s why.

The old rules of search are quietly retiring. For years we optimized on three assumptions:

• The user knows what they want,
• The answer lives in one document, and
• A click means satisfaction.

All three are cracking. SparkToro found 68% of US Google searches now end without a click at all.

So Google is copying TikTok’s homework. Creator platforms win by keeping users inside.

That’s exactly what AI Mode does, right? It turns a query into a session, suggesting follow-ups and deepening the topic until you never leave.

Follow-up queries are reportedly climbing 40%+ month over month.

The infrastructure is already live. Google Creator Profiles are real, followable, and indexable. Barry Schwartz already has 670k+ followers on his.

Authority is migrating from the domain to the individual. Your LinkedIn and YouTube presence now feeds what Google cites.

Domain Rating isn’t dead, but it’s no longer as important. A low-DR site with a coherent creator presence can out-cite a bigger domain.

There are two layers to play now.

• The Authority Layer (Instagram logic): who you are, built across platforms.
• The Relevance Layer (TikTok logic): whether your specific answer beats everyone else’s at the exact moment the query gets synthesized.

But don’t torch your whole strategy. Transactional searches still send clicks to websites. AI Overviews don’t appear everywhere. Treat this as a compass, not a map.

The Crew’s take: Stop treating Domain Rating as a proxy for AI visibility. Start producing dense, attributable, verifiable content with a real author’s name on it.

Your videos are also your company’s vibe check

As far as attention is concerned, video takes the cake.

And when consumers are checking out local businesses, they aren’t looking for Hollywood production. Instead, they want your authentic content.

You are the premium creator, as 36% of consumers watch videos posted by businesses about products/services to gather info. Also:

• 31% rely on videos from everyday people on social media, highlighting the massive weight of authentic user-generated content.
• And 27% value behind-the-scenes content, so showing your team’s faces actually builds trust during the consideration phase. Everyone likes a peak behind the curtain.

Consumers use video to vibe check your business. They want to see the product in action and the people behind it.

Pricey commercials are out; transparency and social proof are in.

What you can do: Create a brand video series like “meet the team” or a look into the process. Showing the real people builds a level of trust that static images can’t touch.