In this week's newsletter:

• If your traffic is flat, you may be doing better than you think.
• How does LinkedIn decide which posts reach people who don’t follow you?
• AI can draft a blog post in seconds, which is why so many read the same.

Hey Reader,

Every year I grade the LinkedIn profiles of a group of insurance professionals before I teach them a webinar for one of the world’s largest insurance companies. This week was that webinar, and one number from my grading stopped me.

Of the people in this year’s group, nearly 70% had not posted a single thing on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. Two years ago the group averaged 1.7 posts a month. Last year it was 1.1. This year it’s 0.7.

Here’s the thing, though: they haven’t left LinkedIn. This group likes and comments more than previous groups did. They’ve just stopped posting.

One attendee’s question hinted at why. So many posts in the feed read almost identically, and they’re boring. Then came the part I loved: a colleague had posted a photo of herself in a Halloween costume with a dull pun about insurance, and it was her most successful post of the entire year.

Which got me thinking: AI made it easy for everyone to publish the same polished post, and I suspect a lot of smart people looked at that feed and decided they had nothing to add. That makes this the easiest time in years to stand out. The content is already on your phone. It’s the photo from the meeting, the conference, or yes, the costume party, plus one sentence about what you were doing there. (One of this week’s picks tackles this exact problem for teams.)

So here’s the challenge I gave them: post once a week with a real photo for the next three weeks. Then hit reply and let me know what happened.

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.

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This Week's News

How To Edit Videos With AI (No Editing Skills Required) - Video editing no longer has to be your bottleneck. YouTuber Justin Brown took each video from 14 to 22 hours down to under an hour by having Claude Code or ChatGPT Codex edit footage on his computer. His steps start before you film: record one continuous file, always use the last take, and pause between statements. Social Media Examiner​

How To Use AI For Competitive Intelligence (10 Prompts To Try) - Most AI competitor research just produces more data faster, and nobody acts on it. This guide gives you 10 ready-made prompts built around decisions instead: scheduled checks on rival pricing pages, summaries of your lost-deal notes, and one that tells AI to argue against your plan before you commit. Start with the pricing-page monitor. Semrush​

SEO Statistics: 21 Numbers That Actually Matter In 2026 - I’ve run my blog since 2008 and spent eighteen months working through a roughly 700-post archive, so I care whether a statistic is current. Each of these 21 carries the year it was measured, starting with 68.01% of US Google searches ending without a click. I also share the one-minute test that showed half my Search Console impressions were hidden. Neal Schaffer​

4 Ways To Create Passionate Fans For Your Business - Customers leave when a cheaper option shows up. Fans don’t. David Meerman Scott shares four ways to build them, including a dive resort that turned 55 dive sites into a challenge to bring guests back, and a dentist whose skateboarding posts helped grow new patients by more than 100%. You’ll finish with an idea you can try this month. Social Media Examiner​

YouTube Influencers: How Brands Find, Vet, And Work With Them - I wrote The Age of Influence and teach the subject at UCLA Extension, and YouTube is where I see brands leave the most money on the table. I show you how to find creators through YouTube search, vet them on average views instead of subscribers, and budget with CPMs of $15 to $30. Neal Schaffer​

​Digital Threads​

Digital Threads is a practical guide for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to grow their online presence with confidence. Learn proven digital marketing strategies, make the most of social media and AI tools, and build your brand without a massive marketing budget.

More Recommended Reads

New Research: Traffic To The Open Web Has Fallen 12% In 5 years; Visits/Web User Are Down 30% - The web has 24% more users than it did in 2021, yet visits to the top million sites are down 12% from their 2022 peak. Rand Fishkin’s new Similarweb study works that out to about 30% fewer visits per person. If your traffic is flat, you may be doing better than you think. Sparktoro​

When 40 Employees Share The Same LinkedIn Caption, Nobody Believes Any Of Them. Here’s 5 Ways To Fix It - When forty employees post the same LinkedIn caption, buyers read it as an ad. Having AI rewrite it forty ways doesn’t help, because it’s still one perspective. The five fixes start with a different angle for each role and four quick prompts that get people adding their own take. If your team’s posts all sound alike, start here. Oktopost​

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How Clorox’s Fresh Step Made 3 AI Ads In 30 Days At One-Tenth The Cost - Three finished TV spots in 30 days, at one-tenth the usual cost. That’s what Clorox’s Fresh Step got by handing its brief to an AI-powered agency, talking cats and all. Those savings can fund ten campaigns for the price of one, so you test more and adjust after launch. What would you try with that much room? Marketing Dive​

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LinkedIn Explains Its Improved Content Recommendation System - LinkedIn just explained how it decides which posts reach people who don’t follow you. Its new Profile Relevance model matches each post to a member’s professional context, including job title, industry, and seniority, and tests showed an 18.8% drop in hidden posts. A clear profile and a consistent topic now matter as much as the post itself. Social Media Today​

How To Use AI To Write A Blog Post (That Isn’t Slop) - AI can draft a blog post in seconds, which is why so many read the same. This five-step workflow puts a human checkpoint at every stage, from brief to final edit. It comes with seven prompts you can copy, including one that makes AI list every claim you need to verify. Skip the edit and your readers will notice. Hubspot​

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Warm regards,

Neal

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