Instacart Puts Creators At The Forefront Of Its The World Is Your Cart Campaign

Good morning! It’s Friday and the long weekend is just hours away. Later this month (September 22nd), I’ll be speaking on a panel called Leveraging The Power of Influencer Marketing at the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is interested in attending. I’d be happy to provide a ticket.

Today’s Edition:

• Instacart puts creators at the forefront of its new campaign

• Instagram tests new ways for users to shape their experience

• Snapchat introduces its BeReal-like camera feature

Instacart Announces New Creator Initiatives To Transition From A Transactional Brand To An Inspirational One

Instacart's new multi-layered The World Is Your Cart campaign has creators at the core.

The grocery delivery service launched Carts, a new shopping experience featuring curated, grocery lists from cultural personalities, retailers, and creators. Shoppers can discover and be inspired by these handpicked guides for purchasing groceries.

Recipe creators and publishers can also make their websites commerce-enabled through a new Recipe Maker API. Building on its Shoppable Recipes integration, creators can make their website content shoppable, allowing readers to purchase from Instacart in just a few clicks.

To top things off, Instacart announced a new affiliate network called Instacart Tastemakers for creators, publishers, and developers. This group will be able to earn a 3% commission for sales they drive via affiliate links.

As Instacart's biggest initiative to date, it's telling, but not surprising, that the campaign is creator-centric. Led by Lizzo, Instacart is transitioning from a transactional brand to an inspirational one with creators' help.

While shoppable content and affiliate programs have become common staples in brand marketing playbooks, creator-curated shops remain low-hanging fruit. Currently, brands sparingly leverage them compared to other strategies and tactics.

Through creator-curated shops on brand-owned channels, brands can further tap into creators’ influence — when consumers are in shopping mode and can easily take action. They also give consumers more of what they want, namely recommendations from people instead of corporations.

The great thing about creator-curated shops is that they are unique, but any brand can create them. Here are a few different examples from brands like West Elm, and Every Man Jack (my own shop).

Instagram Tests New Ways For Users To Shape Their Experience & Shares How Creators Can Make Recommendable Content

Instagram revealed it’s testing two new ways for users to better shape their Instagram experience.

Users will soon be able to mark multiple posts in Explore as Not Interested, which will hide those posts and reframe the app from showing similar content in the future. They will also soon be able to hide suggested posts based on certain words, phrases, or emojis in the caption or hashtags.

Instagram also shared tips and best practices for how creators can make recommendable content. Some are more generic such as posting original content and creating engaging Reels. Others are more specific, like including relevant keywords in bio and content captions to be more discoverable in search results.

In the wake of recent backlash, Instagram's announcements reveal a lot about its focus. It aims to give everyday users more control over the content they're seeing while helping creators get their content in front of new people. Although this might seem counterintuitive on the surface, the two approaches are required to support the different types of people using Instagram.

Snapchat Introduces Dual Camera For Creators To Capture Multiple Perspective At The Same Time

Snapchat introduced Dual Camera, a new BeReal-like camera feature.

Creators can capture multiple perspectives at the same time, using the front and back camera on their phones. Unlike BeReal, which only allows photos and a picture-in-picture layout, Snapchat creators have more functionality. They can also capture video, use other layouts such as vertical, horizontal, and cutouts, and access creative tools, including music, Stickers, and Lenses.

Dual Camera arrives as BeReal is on the verge of becoming a household name. Despite the timing, Snapchat can’t be considered a copycat as Dual Camera was initially announced last April as part of Director Mode, its new suite of camera and editing tools.

The same can’t be said for Instagram, which appears to be in full copycat mode. Weeks after launching a Dual camera for Reels, it was discovered to be testing a feature that mirrors BeReal. Called IG Candid, it sends out notifications at different times and gives users two minutes to capture and share a photo, which is then added to the Stories tray.

There's no denying the growing popularity of BeReal, but the question remains whether BeReal is an app or just a feature. Considering what has happened so far, TikTok and YouTube likely aren't too far from adding their own BeReal-like features. When that happens, we likely will get our answer.

One thing that BeReal does have going for it is its core of unfiltered and raw content. Instagram and Snapchat’s features encourage the layering of creative tools as opposed to BeReal’s current focus on authentic, in-the-moment content. That could make it sticky enough to withstand a mass exodus.

YouTube Experiments With Promotions In YouTube Studio To Make Ad Buying Easier For Creators

YouTube is experimenting with a new Promotions tab within YouTube studio to simplify ad buying for creators.

Creators that are participants in the experiment will be able to run ad campaigns from YouTube directly instead of using Google Ads Manager, leveraging a simpler end-to-end workflow in YouTube Studio.

By integrating advertising solutions into YouTube Studio, creators can easily run promotions to grow their YouTube channels and reach a wider audience. As a result of the more convenient workflow and ease of use for ad campaigns, more creators will use Promotions. YouTube could potentially earn more ad dollars with increased use of Promotions, especially from creators who lack the knowledge of how to use Google Ads Manager.

YouTube rivals like Instagram and TikTok have also made buying ads easier for creators. TikTok, for example, launched a Promote button last year to allow users to turn organic videos into ads.

Twitch Experiments With Creator Chat Highlights & Pinned Chat To Improve The Chat Experience

Twitch is experimenting with new ways to improve the chat experience.

First, it is expanding access to Creator Chat Highlights. Launched last year, the feature allows streamers and moderators to quickly recognize viewers and important messages and take action (e.g., welcoming a new viewer with First Time Chat Highlight).

As of this month, all streamers and moderators will be able to use the tool, including a highly-requested VIP Highlight, so streamers and moderators can pinpoint their most important viewers.

Second, it announced it’s experimenting with a Pinned Chat feature. Pinned Chat allows streamers and moderators to pin new and existing messages to the top of the chat to amplify them for an extended time. They can choose to pin messages for seconds, minutes, or until the stream ends.

Like existing pinned comment features, creators can use Pinned Chat to highlight important and relevant messages to better engage, interact, and get input from their communities. Creators who host talk-style streams, where viewers contribute with content through questions and comments, will find this valuable.

Examples of use cases are pinning announcements, interesting questions from viewers, FAQs, and Q&A.

After years of a relatively stale chat experience, Twitch is empowering streamers and moderators with new tools that create a more dynamic chat experience built on personalized engagement and interaction.

Twitch Rolls Out Creator Mode To Help Creators Manage Their Channels On The Go

Twitch rolled out Creator Mode, a new mobile experience that consolidates all creator actions into a centralized place.

Creators can access Creator Mode in the Twitch app via a new Create button. Here, they can use mobile-friendly features to go live, edit their stream, and view their activity feed.

Functionality is limited at the moment, but Twitch plans to add new features, including Clips Download, which makes it easy for streamers to access and download clips from their channel.

Other forthcoming updates are making Stream Summary available on mobile, enabling Raids from mobile devices, and introducing a revamped IRL workflow.

Live streaming has historically been a desktop-first experience, but Twitch is investing in a mobile-friendly experience now that more people are creating on their mobile devices. Twitch helps support creators' needs with Creator Mode providing tools that allow them to manage their channels on the go.

LinkedIn Rolls Out Pinned Comments For Creators To Highlight Thoughtful Comments

LinkedIn rolled out Pinned Comments, one of the most highly-requested features from the LinkedIn community.

With Pinned Comments, creators can pin a comment on their post via a new “Pin this comment” option. The pinned comment and replies to it will be automatically moved to the top of the comments section.

Creators can use this to highlight thoughtful comments or responses to their posts, which can help drive more conversations. By doing so, they can gamify engagement by rewarding their followers for going beyond hitting the "Like" button. Those who get their comments pinned can benefit from exposure and visibility, which can also help them develop their LinkedIn profiles.

LinkedIn joins Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms that support pinned comments.

What I’m Reading

• How the head of Facebook plans to compete with TikTok and win back Gen Z (The Verge)

• How Pinterest’s new app Shuffles aims to buck the social video trend (Modern Retail)

• Discovery and attribution: what’s driving Instagram’s new QR code push? (The Drum)

• After Rewind’s demise, YouTube launches event to showcase gaming creators (The Washington Post)