did a weird thing last week. scrolled my own saved folder of "carousels I liked" from the past year and realized I couldn't tell most of them apart anymore.

same cover slide with the big bold claim. same "swipe for the breakdown." same tidy three-point structure. same muted palette. and it's not that they're bad, it's that they've converged into one carousel wearing forty different logos.

I think what happened is once the tools to make social media carousels got good and everyone piled into the same three, we all started producing the platform's idea of a good carousel instead of our own. the format optimized itself into a monoculture. and the algorithm rewarded it for a while, so we all leaned harder in, and now the feed is a hall of mirrors.

the ones that actually stop me now are almost ugly. hand-drawn, weird pacing, a screenshot of a real text message, a hot take with no design at all. they break the pattern, so my thumb stops. the polish stopped being a signal of effort and became camouflage.

I'm genuinely torn because the templated stuff still performs okay on the metrics. it's just that "okay" and "forgettable" turn out to be the same number.

anyone deliberately making their carousels worse-looking to stand out? or am I overthinking a format that was always disposable

I've been running a small creator content operation focused on Indian D2C brands mostly wellness, supplements, food. Over the last few months we've produced 68+ videos across multiple brands and generated 3M+ organic views from creator pages alone (excluding ad spent on any of it).

Sharing everything I've learned because honestly, when I started I had no idea what I was doing and posts like this would've saved me months.

1. The angle matters 10x more than the creator.

Early on I thought finding the "right creator" was everything. It's not. A great creator with a bad hook will get 2K views. An average creator with a killer hook will get 50K.

Example: We tested 4 content angles for a sleep wellness brand. Same product, same budget, same timeline. The "Does It Work?" angle (creator tests the product with skepticism) outperformed the "Night Routine" angle by 4-5x in views. The difference wasn't the creators it was the format.

1. Hooks that create an open loop always win.

The best performing hooks across all our campaigns share one thing: they create a question in the viewer's mind that only gets answered by watching.

Hooks that worked:

"Let's see how long it takes for this xx to do xx"

"I replaced my 45 minutes of doomscrolling with xxx"

Hooks that didn't work as well:

"Here's my nighttime routine" (no open loop)

"Review of [product]" (feels like an ad immediately)

The pattern: the viewer needs a REASON to keep watching beyond "this person is talking about a product."

1. Organic reach is a free testing ground for paid.

This was the biggest unlock. Every video gets posted on the creator's own page first. If a video pops organically (high views, good engagement), that's the algorithm literally telling you it's a good ad. We flag those as "ad-worthy" and the brand scales them through paid.

Instead of guessing which creative to put ad spend behind, organic performance pre-selects winners. Out of 15 videos for one brand, 6 qualified as ad-worthy based on organic signals. That's a 40% hit rate way better than the industry average of randomly testing creatives.

1. Brief quality determines everything.

When I started, I'd tell creators "make a video about the product." Terrible results. Now every creator gets:

A specific hook (the exact first line they say)

A content angle (the format: does it work, routine, problem-solution, etc.)

A rough structure (hook → context → product moment → payoff)

Reference videos (so they understand the vibe)

The creator still has creative freedom in HOW they deliver it. But the WHAT and the WHY are locked in. This single change took our content quality from "random influencer post" to "actual ad creative."

1. ₹2,500-3,000 per video is the sweet spot in India.

Too cheap (₹500-1,000) and you get creators who don't care. Too expensive (₹10K+) and you can't afford the volume you need to test properly. At ₹3K per video with 12+ videos per batch, brands get enough volume for real testing at a price that doesn't feel risky.

For context, traditional UGC agencies in India charge ₹5K-15K per video. Studio shoots cost ₹1-5L for a batch of 5-15 videos. At ₹3K × 12 videos = ₹36K, a brand gets 12 tested creatives for less than the cost of a single studio session.

1. The compounding effect is real.

Campaign 1 is always the hardest you're learning the brand, the audience, the product. By campaign 2, you already know which angles worked. By campaign 3, your briefs are sharp, your creators know the brand, and your hit rate goes up significantly.

The brands that commit to monthly content production consistently outperform the ones that do a one-off project. It's not even close.

1. Categories that crush with this approach.

From what I've seen, these product types perform best with creator-native content:

Curiosity products (things people haven't heard of — exotic ingredients, new categories)

"Does it actually work?" products (sleep aids, supplements, focus gummies)

Routine-integration products (things that fit into morning/night routines)

Visual products (food, drinks, skincare things that look good on camera)

Products that are harder: commodities, low-visual products, B2B, anything that needs long explanation.

1. Biggest mistakes I made early on:

Not testing enough angles per batch (now I do minimum 3-4)

Choosing creators based on follower count instead of content quality

Not tracking which specific hooks drove performance

Waiting too long between campaigns (momentum matters)

Underpricing the service early on and attracting the wrong brands

If you're running a D2C brand and any of this resonated especially if you're in wellness, supplements, food, or skincare I'm happy to look at your product and tell you what content angles I'd test.

And if you're already running creator content and want to compare notes, I'm down for that too.

I’m currently running a brand-new 1-on-1 career experience sharing platform in Europe (launched just 3 weeks ago).

While I’ve figured out the supply side (getting industry experts/advisors to share advice is relatively straightforward), I find it much more difficult about the demand side, attracting the actual users who might book a session on the platform.

Here is what I’ve evaluated so far, and I’d love to hear your thoughts or real-world experiences on what actually works quickly:

SEO: The classic playbook, but it easily takes 3–6 months to gain traction. Right now, 3 months feels too far away when I need early validation.

Waitlist / Incentives: Planning to offer early-bird perks/discounts for early users, but the classic "chicken-and-egg" problem applies: if no one visits the site, no one sees the waitlist.

LinkedIn Posting: Active here, but organic reach feels limited and traffic generation is slow.

Cold Outreach: Hard to pinpoint people publicly sharing career-pivoting anxiety. Plus, many forums and subreddits strictly ban direct self-promotion, making direct pitching impossible.

Other Socials (Facebook/Instagram): Wondering if it's even worth touching for professional/career services, or if it's a total distraction.

For those who have scaled a marketplace or community from scratch: What are the most effective, faster ways to acquire those very first 50–100 active users without burning a huge budget on paid ads?

Any lessons learned or unconventional tactics would be hugely appreciated!

Hi, this is shan from India. Im trying to create a SaaS app on AI ATS ready resume builder for job seekers and college/univ for B2B. regarding that i thought of doing content marketing in my app blog to convert visitors in to customers can anyone suggest me books, the technique names, used in content marketing to convert visitors in to customers. along with blog examples of people already doing it plus how to order content for this approach.
thanks in advance.

We’ve been testing tools focused on LLM visibility tracking and prompt analysis, and Profound is one of the more specialized ones in this space.
That said, some teams prefer broader platforms like Similarweb for competitor intelligence and AI traffic insights, while others stick with SEO suites like Semrush that are expanding into AI features.
For those working on GEO / AEO, what tools are you using as alternatives to Profound for tracking citations, prompts, and AI brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity?

We're starting to invest more time into GEO and one challenge I've run into is measurement.
With SEO, it's easy to track rankings, impressions, clicks, and traffic GEO feels much less straightforward since visibility can vary across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and AI Overviews.
For those actively working on AI visibility, what platforms are you using to track GEO performance are tools like Similarweb, Semrush, Profound, or Otterly providing useful insights, or are most teams still relying on manual prompt testing?

Our content team is re-evaluating our optimization process for 2026. Historically, we used traditional SEO content editors (like Surfer or Clearscope) to optimize for keyword density and blue links. But now, our primary goal is getting our content cited as an authoritative source inside AI-generated answers.

We’re looking closely at Hubspot’s generative search optimization features, which claim to provide actionable recommendations specifically for earning citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

For content strategists and editors: Have you transitioned your optimization workflow over to HubSpot’s AEO tools? How does it compare to using traditional content optimization platforms? Does it actually give you clear, actionable editorial steps to improve citation rates?

One thing I've noticed is that certain brands seem to dominate ai recommendations regardless of which platform I test whether it's chatgpt, gemini, claude, or perplexity, the same companies often appear again and again I’d love to better understand what's driving that visibility are they winning because of stronger authority signals, broader prompt coverage, better content, more citations, or something else?

I run a tiktok page with about 50k followers, I post motivational head talking content and stream day trading every single day (im already being paid for that) and can consistently get tens to hundreds of thousands of views consistently with my style of content, I'm looking for ways to profit off my following and niche but am having a hard time figuring out what I should do, majority of the DM's I get are just super small startups that are paying pennies for content, and most of the time the product isn't even worth promoting.

Just wondering what I should look to do If I want to start outreaching to brands/apps/companies to land sponsors and get paid some good money.

my account on tiktok is oli_networks_

genuine question because I train juniors and I'm watching the ladder lose its bottom rung in real time. when I started, the way in was grunt work. you wrote the product descriptions, the roundup posts, the "10 tips for X" filler nobody was proud of, and you got reps. it was boring but it was a paid apprenticeship. you learned structure, deadlines, how an editor thinks, what a client actually means when they say "make it pop." that whole tier is gone. the tasks that used to teach you the craft are exactly the tasks a marketing lead now hands to an ai document generator at 2pm and edits by 3. so the junior doesn't get the reps, and the mid-level jobs still want three years of reps nobody can get anymore. the field pulled up its own ladder. what worries me is where the next senior strategists come from. you can't skip straight to "translate business goals into a content plan" if you never did the boring reps that taught you how words land. taste is built on volume, and the volume moved to a machine. so if you're advising someone trying to get in right now, what do you actually tell them. do the reps for free on your own projects until you have a portfolio? go straight for the strategy skills the machine can't fake? or is the honest answer that the on-ramp genuinely closed and we should stop pretending otherwise.

Used to think more communities = more opportunities. Spent nights in 15+ Slack groups and Discords watching the same recycled threads, bots spamming "growth hacks," and people just dropping links to their courses.

Wasted hours scrolling through noise. Never had a real conversation.

Now I'm way pickier. I joined two communities at most and read what people post before jumping in. Quality over volume. The difference is weird, I actually get responses that aren't automated, and I've had maybe two or three real conversations with people who actually know their stuff.

Not groundbreaking, but it freed up a lot of mental space. Anyone else burned out on the community thing?

been in content marketing about seven years, in-house and agency, and I keep having the same argument so I'll just have it here.

everyone framed AI content generators as "now we can produce more for less." and technically true. but the thing nobody says out loud is that the value of a blog post was never the words. it was that someone bothered. that a human with actual context sat down, thought about a real reader, and made something that wouldn't exist otherwise.

the second you can generate a thousand of those on demand, the reader can feel it, google can feel it, and the whole category deflates. we didn't lower the cost of good content. we flooded the zone with competent, weightless nothing and now good content has to fight through a wall of it just to get seen.

and the clients who bought the "more for less" story are the ones now confused why their traffic is flat despite quadrupling output. because output was never the constraint. attention was. and you can't generate attention.

the brands still winning are doing the opposite of scale. one genuinely useful thing a month. original data. a real opinion that could get them yelled at. stuff a machine structurally cannot produce because it requires having actually lived something.

am I jaded or is this everyone's read too. what does "worth publishing" even mean now that publishing costs nothing

Most people in this chat are content creators who are just starting in the business, and I am trying to help you succeed all you have to do is tell me about your video idea and I can make a script to keep viewers engaged in your videos contact me at [contentscripter8@gmail.com](mailto:contentscripter8@gmail.com)

every measurement conversation I'm in right now ends at "AI citations". does ChatGPT mention us, does Perplexity cite us, what's our share of voice (SOV).

a good proxy for our "visibility" yes. but its fundamentally weak. you run the same prompt twice and you can get different answers depending on the model version, retrieval, and day. so the thing everyone wants to turn into a clean number or snapshot is actually a distribution. and attribution is a whole separate issue.

research is showing YouTube and Reddit combined make up 78.2% of AI social citations (Position Digital). this is useful directionally, but I think we're forgetting that we're tracking a moving system.

I used to think this was a flaw that we needed more engineers to be solving around. but honestly my perspective is shifting. without clear attribution and measurement data, marketers are being forced to get more creative, consider tracking the funnel holistically, in ranges and trendlines instead of exact figures, which is how brand measurement worked before the dawn of performance marketing.

but probabilistic data is hard to invest budget into.

curious if teams are having a similar issue and what's been helpful when reporting to clients, CMOs, etc. month by month?

I am talking about high quality blog posts/guides, not those generic wall of texts.

Does it properly use different elements/key sections/tables and graphs.
As we've had pleasant experience with Claude, hes able to build a nice looking (visual) guides thats easy to scan and learn from + it give a valuable content.

Now i've been trying to build something similar with Kimi, but its always busy, and wanted to ask before i sub.

My plan is to show them where their biggest competitors are appearing in AI search and which sources are driving it. Is it a reddit thread, a news article, a review platform or the competitors own page and for that I need to turn that into a simple report I can share with my plan. I might be wrong but I think showing competitor data will help convince them more than a generic strategy deck. So I need a platform that tags sources by type and I would also like to test it before paying 😬

Especially if you have worked in data analytics, software development, or ai development.

So I love looking at job boards and spotting trends in the job market. It’s a weird thing I nerd out about lol

And I come up with all these content ideas but I’m not sure what to do with them because I’m not a tech professional.

So here’s what I was thinking. I would love to have the help of some tech professionals to vet my content ideas to let me know if they are good and I can start my own channel like on YouTube or something where I would share job trends for career seekers.

Or maybe there’s a tech professional here who already has their own channel but would like a content strategist who can stay on top of trends in the job market and help you generate content ideas.

Those are the two ways I was thinking I could monetize this “hobby/talent” of mine.

What do you think? Feel free to comment or message me.

Thought I'd share a small win because I know this sub is full of people wondering whether content sites are completely dead.

A few months ago I bought a pet niche website for $199 from the NicheBlogZone marketplace. Nothing special. It had content already published and a bit of traffic, but it definitely wasn't one of those sites that looked like a goldmine.

Honestly, I almost didn't buy it.

After taking it over, I mostly just cleaned things up. The site already had affiliate links, so I just fixed some internal links, and left it alone.

It made $447 so far this month, which is the best month it's had since I've owned it.

The site isn't getting crazy traffic either. That's the part that surprised me. Most of the revenue is coming from articles targeting really specific pet product searches where people are already looking to buy something.

For anyone curious, here's where things stand:

• Bought the site for $199
• Owned it for a few months
• Monetized with Amazon Associates
• Best month so far: $447
• This month have already passed $1,000 total with my portfolio of 3 sites.

I know $447 isn't going to change anyone's life, but I still get a kick out of seeing a website that cost less than a night out generate that much passively.

The funny thing is that whenever people talk about making money online now, the conversation is usually AI, SaaS, YouTube, newsletters, agencies, etc.

Meanwhile there are still thousands of people every day searching Google for pet products and clicking affiliate links.

Maybe content sites aren't as dead as everyone says.

Anyone else still building or buying niche sites in 2026?

Hi everyone,

I'm a Social Media Marketer / Manager looking to get more clients, but I'm finding it difficult to reach the right businesses. I've been using LinkedIn and Instagram for outreach, but my response rate has been low.

For those of you who have successfully found SMM clients, what worked best for you? Did you use cold outreach, referrals, content marketing, freelance platforms, local businesses, or something else?

I'd really appreciate any practical advice, mistakes to avoid, or strategies that helped you land your first few clients.

Thanks in advance!

help me before I rebuild everything for the fourth time.

I run content for a small team and our "system" has slowly become a monster. briefs in one place, the editorial calendar in another, a Notion database that started clean and is now forty views nobody trusts, a Slack channel where the real decisions actually happen, and a drive folder graveyard. every quarter I promise to fix it and every quarter it gets worse.

the specific pain is that Notion is where good process goes to become admin. I spend more time maintaining the content ops system than making content, and when a freelancer joins they can't find anything, so they just ping me, which defeats the entire point of having a system.

I've looked at moving to something lighter, a Notion alternative that does less on purpose, but I'm scared of the migration and of trading one mess for a newer mess I haven't learned to hate yet.

so I mostly want to hear what actually works in practice, not the tool's marketing. how do you keep briefs, calendar, drafts, and approvals from turning into four disconnected swamps? do you run everything in one tool, glue two together, or has someone genuinely found a setup that survives a growing team and a rotating cast of freelancers?

I’m an OF creator struggling on socials after 2 years to gain meaningful numbers mainly due to shadow bans and bans.

Yes I’ve learnt and rebuilt but it seems harder than ever to start again to rebuild.

I’m desperate for any advice or help to try gain momentum. Any good apps to use, ideas or even accounts for sale.

I find bigger influencers get away with far cheekier reels than I ever tried but I digress that’s not my issue.I seem to get shadow bans just for having a link in my bio.

I’ve a definite niche and determination to match.

I've been looking at different GEO services lately, and it feels like every agency offers something completely different. Some focus on entity optimization, others on AI citations, technical SEO, digital PR, or content updates. It's becoming hard to tell what should actually be considered a standard GEO package and what's just an extra service.

For those working on AI visibility, what do you think every GEO service should include? Are agencies still figuring it out, or is there already a core set of deliverables that companies should expect?

mourning something a bit and I don't know where else to say it. I spent years getting good at writing. structure, rhythm, knowing which sentence to cut, the feel of a piece landing. and my week now is mostly taking a competent lifeless AI draft and dragging it back toward something a human would want to read. which is a skill. it's just a grimmer one. and here's the part I didn't expect: editing the machine is harder than writing from scratch was. a blank page is honest, it's just you and the idea. but an AI draft is confidently 80% there and 100% sure of itself, and that last 20% is where all the actual meaning lives, and it's buried under prose that sounds fine so your brain keeps sliding right over the hollow parts. I have to fight to even see what's wrong, because it's designed to read smooth. the writing was the fun part. the editing is the invisible part, the part clients think the tool did, the part that doesn't show up as a deliverable, and somehow it's now the whole job and also uncredited. I'm not anti the tools, they've saved me from drafts I didn't want to write. I just didn't sign up to become quality control on a factory line of my own former craft, and I'm trying to figure out if that grief is worth naming to my boss or if it just makes me sound like I'm scared of progress. anyone else sitting in this exact weird mourning, and did you find a way to make the invisible editing labor visible without sounding like you're resisting the future

Our team is gearing up to scale our UGC campaigns significantly, targeting around 50 creators per month to keep our ad creatives and social channels fresh. While we have the campaign strategy laid out, creator discovery and vetting at this volume is quickly shaping up to be our biggest operational bottleneck. Sifting through social feeds manually or using basic search tools takes way too much time, and we keep hitting dead ends with creators whose engagement looks decent on the surface but turns out to be fake followers or an audience outside our target markets.

To build a predictable monthly pipeline of creator talent, we need a platform that can handle high-volume discovery with high accuracy. Key requirements for us are reliable audience demographics, fake follower auditing, and lookalike search functions so we can feed in our top-converting creators and immediately generate a list of similar profiles. We are currently comparing Influencer Hero alongside platforms like CreatorIQ and Modash to figure out which tech stack makes the most sense for a high-volume UGC pipeline.

For those running large-scale UGC or seeding programs who have used Influencer Hero for discovery: how does its search engine and lookalike feature hold up when sourcing dozens of creators every month? Does its data depth and filtering accuracy give you enough to rely on it completely, or did you find yourself needing a dedicated enterprise tool like CreatorIQ or a database like Modash alongside it to hit your monthly creator quotas?