Hi CCs,

This week’s lineup is full of wild growth stories, from making $10M on LinkedIn with no ads to building a newsletter empire in the cybersecurity niche.

Plus: rethinking your personal brand like a magazine, the return of the OG Instagram aesthetic, and some spicy Doritos marketing.

Let’s get into it. 😊

xx
Winter

🔥 Featured Content

Personal branding masterclass: how I made $10M+ on LinkedIn - Chris Donnelly

Nathan Barry, the CEO of Kit, sat down with Chris Donnelly to break down how he built a $10M-a-year business with no sales team and no paid ads—powered entirely by content and personal brand. [WATCH]

Brands pay him thousands for a single video

The hosts of Growth in Reverse podcast sat down with Matt Johansen, creator of the Vulnerable U newsletter (nearly 30,000 subscribers) to unpack how he’s grown a must-read — and must-watch — newsletter in the cybersecurity space. [WATCH]

Demis Hassabis: future of AI, simulating reality, physics and video games

In this episode, Lex Fridman chats with Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel Prize winner for his groundbreaking work in protein structure prediction using AI. [WATCH]

🤳 Content Inspo

Tell your story and re-introduce yourself. [LINK]
This is great for both personal brands and companies alike. If you’ve started to build a community, share your back story and pin it to your Instagram grid to build resonance. Make sure to share to LinkedIn as well. 🙂 

Promote your brand’s newsletter in an engaging carousel. [LINK]
Share why someone should subscribe to your newsletter and exactly what they get in return. This means ensuring you have an intentional newsletter strategy.

Address a purchase objection. [LINK]
Whether it’s cost or something else, start by showing a comment of someone’s objection/critique (can even be on a different brand in a similar niche if you don’t have a ton of comments yet), and then show what goes into your products/service. Great hook opportunity.

💬 Tip of the day:

💎 Creator Spotlight

Greg Sebell is an agency owner and creator who makes inspiring and thoughtful content about creativity and branding. I particularly love this recent video about thinking about your personal brand like a magazine. Check him out and follow here.

📡 On Our Radar

The return of the ‘OG Instagram’ aesthetic. [LINK]

From cheating exposés to dating background checks, TikTok detectives are thriving. [LINK]

Amazon’s ad business stays strong as CTV, DSP offerings improve. [LINK]

Doritos parodies retro adult films to promote new spicy chip flavor. [LINK]

Starbucks CEO cites marketing as a bright spot of turnaround efforts. [LINK]

How McDonald’s dug into nostalgia and reignited the chicken wars. [LINK]

🎶 TikTok

TikTok adds new website visitor retargeting options. [LINK]

TikTok announces expanded launch of its version of community notes. [LINK]

TikTok adds more safety tools for parents, teens and creators. [LINK]

TikTok adds YouTube music to its ‘Add to Music App’ options. [LINK]

TikTok expands ‘out of phone’ offering to more high exposure surfaces. [LINK]

TikTok launches ‘next up’ live singing competition. [LINK]

📸 Meta / Instagram

Doubleverify expands brand suitability measurement across Meta Ads. [LINK]

Instagram provides an overview of when to use different post types. [LINK]

Instagram restricts live streaming to creators with 1k or more followers. [LINK]

Meta reports increases in users and revenue in q2. [LINK]

Edits gets more creative options, including new fonts and audio tools. [LINK]

Meta adds new follow-up messaging options for brands. [LINK]

🧵Threads

Threads expands api functionality to enable third-party management. [LINK]

🤳 YouTube

YouTube eases its monetization restrictions on bad language. [LINK]

YouTube launches new age detection process to protect younger users. [LINK]

YouTube expands access to premium lite, adds new community post options. [LINK]

☠️ 𝕏 

X touts better looking ad formats and improved targeting systems. [LINK]

X premium users can now sign up for its coming text-to-video option. [LINK]

X adds more functionality to its updated DM system. [LINK]

🟦 LinkedIn

LinkedIn adds connection-based leaderboards for in-app games. [LINK]

LinkedIn wins legal case against data scrapers. [LINK]

Linkedin’s latest ad system updates. [LINK]

LinkedIn reports ‘Record Levels’ of engagement, looks to address artificial interactions. [LINK]

🍥 Pinterest

Pinterest shares tips on how to maximize marketing efforts. [LINK]

👻 Snapchat

Snapchat shares insights into how social platforms encourage fast food purchases. [LINK]

🤖 AI Boom

Confessions of a recovering AI porn addict. [LINK]

Apple AI reasoning model research paper, “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models” explained. [LINK]

Zuckerberg outlines his vision for the development of AI Superintelligence. [LINK]

From Meta’s massive offers to Anthropic’s massive valuation, does AI have a ceiling? [LINK]

Fundamental Research Labs nabs $30M+ to build AI agents across verticals. [LINK]

OpenAI reportedly raises $8.3B at $300B valuation. [LINK]

Google rolls out Gemini Deep Think AI, a reasoning model that tests multiple ideas in parallel. [LINK]

Female-founded semiconductor AI startup SixSense raises $8.5M. [LINK]

Amazon CEO wants to put ads in your Alexa+ conversations. [LINK]

Reddit revenue soars as it bets on AI and advertising. [LINK]

Apple plans to ‘significantly’ grow AI investments, Cook says. [LINK]

Your public ChatGPT queries are getting indexed by Google and other search engines. [LINK]

Winter Mendelson
Co-Founder and Creative Director: Posture Media
Host: deepfeed Podcast

🦇 Let’s connect on Instagram and LinkedIn

P.S. I will probably have typos in the event that my dad is unavailable to proofread. Sorry in advance.

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