In this week's newsletter:

• Are you ready to design your LinkedIn digital business card?
• You can now create a rough Instagram Reel in about 10 seconds.
• LinkedIn just handed experts a direct way to get paid on the platform.

Hey Reader,

As I prepare to speak in Tokyo this December, a client mentioned something that stuck with me: many B2B SaaS companies in Japan feel like they’re losing business to AI.

This week, I got a small taste of why.

Google sent me a promo email inviting me to become a Google Voice business user. As a small business owner, I’ve been paying for a virtual receptionist service, the most economical way I found to have a toll-free number answered by a live person. The catch is that my plan is inexpensive, so the receptionist can only tell callers so much.

A little digging showed that Google Voice’s auto attendant could replace my receptionist for less, though I’d still need a separate toll-free number. So I kept going. After some back and forth with Google’s AI Overviews, I found a service with an AI receptionist I can train to answer questions. When it doesn’t know an answer, it takes a message, and I can teach it that answer for the next caller. I haven’t switched yet, but I estimate it will cost about a third of what I pay now.

Lower cost and higher quality. To me, that’s the promise of AI.

Here’s the thing, though: AI isn’t only replacing tools outright, like the Feedly test I told you about last week. Tools that build AI in are starting to win business from tools that don’t. That’s exactly what’s about to happen to my receptionist service.

My takeaway: it’s time to audit your marketing tech stack. For every tool you pay for, ask three questions. Can your favorite LLM now do this job? Does the tool have AI features you aren’t using, starting with an MCP connection that lets your LLM work directly inside it? And does an AI-native competitor do it better for less?

Which tool in your stack is next on the chopping block? Hit reply and let me know.

Let’s jump into this week’s updates!

Please note: Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through them, I may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you.

This Week's News

My AI Search Traffic Dropped 45%. Here’s What I Learned

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Everyone says AI search traffic is exploding, so I pulled 12 months of data across roughly 700 of my blog posts. My AI referrals fell about 45%. In this video, I show you why I’m more invested in AI search anyway: those visitors made up 1.6% of my sessions but 5.4% of my email signups, and in my SEO category, AI sent readers to narrow posts I had never invested in. You’ll also get my checklist and a free monthly test to start this week. Less traffic, it turns out, can mean better traffic. Neal Schaffer​

Making Instagram Reels Easier, Faster And Scalable - Instagram keeps shipping tools that make Reels faster to produce, and most marketers still haven’t touched them. This tutorial walks through First Draft, the one-tap editor that cuts a rough Reel in about 10 seconds, the hidden features in the Edits app’s Labs menu, and a three-post pinning strategy that turns profile visitors into leads. My favorite detail: the strategist behind it posted daily for a year with little growth before her brands added more than 120,000 followers. Open Edits and switch on everything in Labs this week. Social Media Examiner​

The New Rules Of Journalist Outreach, Based On Millions Of Emails - If you pitch the media by email, this study of millions of pitches deserves ten minutes. Much of the battle happens before anyone reads a word: domains with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up averaged a 30.1% open rate versus 7.8% for unauthenticated ones. Subject lines that state a finding beat ones that tease it, and AI inbox summaries pull mostly from your opening lines. The number to remember: a key stat in the first three words lifted opens to 46%, versus 38.9% in words four through six. Search Engine Journal​

Facebook Engagement Posts: What Actually Works In 2026 (And What Meta Quietly Demotes) - In Maximize Your Social, I argued that social platforms reward content people actually want, and Facebook has spent the years since making that literally true. In my latest post, I break down the engagement bait Meta has demoted since 2017, the one kind of ask it explicitly protects (help, advice, and recommendations), and why Pages that reply to comments earn about 9.5% more reactions. I also share the friend test to run before you schedule anything. Use it for a month, and you’ll know exactly which posts deserve your time. Neal Schaffer​

LinkedIn Adds New Creator Monetization Options - LinkedIn just handed experts a direct way to get paid on the platform. Verified Premium members in the U.S. can now offer paid one-on-one Advice Sessions from their profile, with payments handled in-app. LinkedIn is also testing pre-roll ads on creator videos that would give creators a cut, adding Creator Marketplace filters so brands can find you by expertise, and bringing back pinned comments. If you sell consulting or coaching, get your profile verified and test a session this month. Social Media Today​

This Week's Sponsor

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More Recommended Reads

What Is The Creator Economy, And What Does It Change About Your Marketing? - I wrote The Age of Influence in 2020 and have taught influencer marketing at UCLA Extension since, so this guide is for the marketers who sign off on creator budgets. I explain why only about 4% of creators earn six figures, why the IAB now counts creator ads as a media channel of its own, and how YouTube’s 2027 rule change more than doubles my own channel’s gap to monetization. Skip building an owned destination first, and you’ll be paying creators to send people to a platform you don’t control. Neal Schaffer​

How To Get More Followers On LinkedIn: Exactly What I Did To Get To 25K - Most LinkedIn growth advice is recycled guesswork, which is why I like this one. It pairs a creator’s climb to 25K followers with Buffer’s data on millions of posts. Switch your profile button from Connect to Follow, test carousels (a 21.77% median engagement rate, about three times video), and put links in your own comment, which earned roughly 15% more impressions than posts with no link. The bigger lesson: a focused following on three to five topics can outperform an account ten times its size. Buffer​

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How To Automate Content Creation: A Follow-Along Guide - Forget one-click AI articles. Ahrefs built a system that refreshes its data-driven posts every month, and this guide shows you how to build your own for the content chores you keep putting off. Start with one repeatable job, have the AI interview you until every unwritten rule is on paper, and make it keep a list of what it rejected so you can catch its mistakes. Their one hard rule: AI never publishes on its own. Let the machine handle the chores and keep the judgment for yourself. Ahrefs​

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The Marketing Automation Model That Drove 9x Qualified Lead Growth In A Secondary Market - A vendor case study, yes, but this one comes with a playbook you can copy. HubSpot’s Japan team went from 12 to more than 115 qualified leads a month in two months with zero additional headcount. An automation marketer owned the workflows while a local partner spent five days validating tone and pain points. They also built high-intent emails first, testing each against one question: would this make sense to someone who visited your pricing page today? How many of your automated emails would pass that test? Hubspot​

Why AI Makes Content Ecosystems Essential - AI made content cheap, so publishing more of it stopped being an advantage. Citing McKinsey research that fewer than 10% of organizations have scaled AI across their marketing workflows, this piece argues the edge now goes to teams that connect strategy, creation, distribution, and measurement. Start by mapping how content moves from idea to results, find the bottlenecks, and swap the plan, create, publish routine for a learn, create, measure, improve loop. Content is turning into an always-on operating system, and the teams that build theirs first will set the pace. Neil Patel​

LinkedIn Adds Digital Business Cards - LinkedIn is reviving an idea that never caught on in 2018, and this version looks far more usable. You’ll be able to design a digital business card with your headshot, role, and a QR code, then save it to your phone’s wallet so new contacts can connect in one scan. It’s rolling out globally over the coming months, so check your app now and have yours ready before your next in-person event. Social Media Today​

​Maximizing LinkedIn For Business Growth​

Whether you're a business professional looking to attract clients, a job seeker wanting to stand out, an entrepreneur building your personal brand, or a sales professional focused on social selling and lead generation, this fully updated and expanded 2nd edition of Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth delivers a proven, practical playbook for maximizing LinkedIn in 2026 and beyond.

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If I can be of any help to you or your organization, please consider joining my Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community or considering hiring me as a Fractional CMO. Need more info? Book a time with me simply by replying to this email!

Warm regards,

Neal

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