Funny how everyone on LinkedIn uses the Summary portion as a buzzword garden - you've got the whole experience section for that.

But hey - I've got 15+ years working in agencies, with a heavy emphasis on social, content, influencers, and campaigns. As a Director of Creative Strategy, I've lead Social AORs and campaigns for Microsoft, Beats By Dre, Verizon, Spotify, Minecraft, Bethesda, Rock Band, and a slew more - a bunch of details on all of that below.

Besides that? Huge NBA fan who plays ball 4 days a week, vinyl record collector, colossal music fan, and guy who Postmates far too much. Let's make something cool.

Jack Appleby

Okay, I’ve identified seven ways to know if someone’s using AI to write their LinkedIn:

I actually haven’t, I just think it’s ridiculous that anyone cares. If the content in front of your eyes is good, enjoy it! If it’s not good, scroll on right past. But there’s nothing more silly spending time wondering who’s using AI or having emotions about it.

Social Media / Creator Consultant | Work: Microsoft, Beats By Dre, Verizon, Twitch, Morning Brew, Rock Band, Community (six seasons and a movie!) & a slew of video games.

Should your brand only hire Social Media Managers who have their own personal brand and social following?

OF COURSE NOT. It's okay if social's just a job to them. Not everyone needs to build a personal brand in their free time. Does it help? Sure! Can it help show how someone thinks? Yes! But should it be a determining factor? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

“Industry experience required.”

Easily the dumbest, most self-sabotaging phrase in hiring.

If I'm hiring a social media manager for a shoe brand, they don't need five years of footwear experience—they need to understand marketing. They need to get storytelling, and community, and human emotion, and how to make engaging content.

MARKETING IS A TRANSFERABLE SKILL, FOLKS. What, are we in a post apocalyptic society where whatever task you're assigned in the zombie wasteland is your new career for life? Come. On. 

None of your industries are special snowflakes, folks. Yeah, there will be some industry specific things; maybe it's legalities, or demographic preferences, or who knows what. Any half decent marketer can learn that stuff in 30 seconds. Stop pretending like your field is rocket science. 

What's funny is I benefited from this silly way of thinking! Check my LinkedIn—over half my jobs are in the video game industry because once I had gaming experience, those companies kept on calling me. Funny thing? I wasn't allowed to play video games as a kid. And honestly? I don't think my ~gaming experience~ is what made me good at those jobs—it was my social experience.

So uh, hiring managers and companies? Maybe we get a littleee more creative and a littleee less lazy with how we hire people, yeah?

Welp, I did it. I built a 2nd media business around my 🏀 passion, that’s now a 2nd major income stream.

This is the TikTok payout for How To Hoop Forever last month. That's not counting brand deals or in-kind trades.

I'm being paid to play basketball.
You can follow along: https://lnkd.in/eFHFcG_s

ChatGPT can now turn off em-dashes.

What will the LinkedIn AI Police who wanna scream about "I CANT BELIEVE PEOPLE USE AI" complain about now?

Every. Single. Brand. Should. Post. YouTube. Shorts.

Here's 3 very simple reasons why ↓

YOU CAN LITERALLY JUST REPURPOSE YOUR REELS + TIKTOKS
Short-form vertical video is short-form vertical video. These platforms are the sameeee. You've already made the content, so why not just post the content on another massive social network?

YOUTUBE IS THE 2ND LARGEST SEARCH ENGINE
We've heard a lot about the importance of social SEO—Gen Z loves to search YouTube and TikTok the way us millennials usually google things. Getting your social content on YouTube ensures you're in the mix for searches

YOUR BRAND'S YOUTUBE IS PROBABLY DUSTY
Let's be honest, you probably just dropped old TV spots onto your brand's YouTube. Shorts suddenly give that channel purpose, AND will give your next commercial better lift when you inevitably toss it on this channel!

Why isn't your brand on YouTube shorts? What's stopping you? Lemme know in the comments.

I’m super proud of this week’s newsletter.

I’m writing about moving SLOWER in social.

Why speed doesn’t get us anything, how we’ve held ourselves to a reactionary standard that’s honestly not worth much, and why slowing down and being more deliberate are what get you the best social media results. 

Sub here to get it tomorrow: Futuresocial.beehiiv.com

BIG NEWS: my newsletter Future Social just hit 80k subs, and we've kept a 39% open rate!

I'm so proud of this thing. I've never spent a dime on advertising—Future Social has solely grown from readers sharing my articles & encouraging other to subscribe. Hell, I don't even promote it very much, but I really pride myself on writing strategies & case studies that help our beloved social media industry to keep getting better.

If you're not subbed yet, would love to see ya:
https://lnkd.in/eCGxAWpJ

What are your Social Media Predictions for 2026?

I'm gonna feature my favs in the newsletter!

Here's a list of areas to challenge your thoughts—just drop a comment here with your predictions!

- What’s one big social platform shift you think everyone’s underestimating?
- Which social network is due for a major glow-up… or a major collapse?
- What’s one content format you think is about to explode?
- What’s a trend we’re all obsessed with right now that won’t survive 2025?
- How will AI realistically change the day-to-day job of a social media manager?
- What’s one new feature Instagram/TikTok/YouTube WILL roll out next year?
- What’s the biggest skill social pros will need by 2026?
- What’s a type of content brands should immediately stop making?
- What’s the next “For You Page” evolution? (More personalization? More curation?)
- What’s one creator behavior you think brands should steal?
- What’s a metric that will matter way more than it does today?
- What’s a metric we’ll all stop caring about?
- Will Threads actually become a thing? (Or… lol no?)
- What do you think the TikTok algorithm will look like post–ownership change?
- What’s one consumer behavior shift we’re all sleeping on?
- What’s a category of brands that will win big on social in 2026?
- What’s a hot take about the future of paid social?
- What’s your prediction for UGC creators in 2026?
- What new job title will emerge for social teams next year?
- What’s one way social media marketing will look completely different 18 months from now?

Or pick your own!

There's one major mistake I'm seeing brands make over and over in their Influencer Marketing efforts ↓

Brands are giving influencers unreasonably short timelines to create the content, then giving themselves what feels like eons to approve the content... then turning back and asking the creators for edits within 24 hours.

Influencer partnerships are just that—partnerships. It's gotta be a team effort on both sides. You're immediately alienating influencers when you ask for impossible deadlines, or when your brand doesn't deliver timely feedback after asking influencers to drop everything to make content.

Like, think about it. If you've identified an influencer as someone who can successfully drive business for your brand, you probably wanna do everything to make sure they have a great experience, because the last thing you want is them no longer supporting you!

The solves are simple:
- Be realistic in timelines, for both creators and approvals
- Have a clear approval process on the brand side
- Suggest timelines to influencers, but specifically ask them to feedback on the timeline and see what works for them.

Pink Instagram backgrounds now exist!

Buttt you can’t get them. The details ↓

So Instagram started a very exclusive awards program called Rings—basically the Oscars for Insta. Only 25 creators were selected worldwide for the honor.

Two of the benefits of winning Rings:
- creators get custom background colors
- your IG stories ring turns gold (example on left)

Personally, I don’t love the colors look (it’s hard to read & at a glance, it’s impossible to know why they have colored backgrounds when no one else does), but would you want the option to change your color?

No alternative text description for this image

Hot take: your brand’s social will fail if it’s all trend content.

You need to make real, original IP. Unique content!

Your social strategy can’t just be reacting to whatever’s new and hot on the For You Page. The celeb memes and popular songs you’re using? Yeah, those are copyrighted.

YOU DON’T NEED TRENDS. Your brand is interesting all on its own, I promise! And really, your content should constantly pay off the EMOTIONAL BENEFIT of your product, which really doesn’t need any ~culture~ (oh, I’m yelling again, sorry).

If you want relevance year-round, you need content that’s recognizable, repeatable, and uniquely yours. This is cliche, but the best brands in the world don’t join trends, they leverage social insights to start them.
So, I partnered with Hootsuite to create a simple checklist to help you build evergreen content that’ll do numbers without ever checking what’s trending. 
👉 Head to Hootsuite’s LinkedIn page for the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/eSa3qpNS

#HootsuitePartner

Brand partnership • Social Media / Creator Consultant | Work: Microsoft, Beats By Dre, Verizon, Twitch, Morning Brew, Rock Band, Community (six seasons and a movie!) & a slew of video games.

Can we stop trying to reboot Vine?

TikTok and Instagram have already won. You don't even want Vine back—you just don't realize it.

The nostalgia for the app is cute, but here's what'd happen:
- you'd log in on day 1 out of curiosity
- you'd love the shortest videos ever again
- by week 2, you'd forget its on your phone as your habits go back to Instagram (where your friends and creators are) and TikTok (where the best algorithm in the world knows what content you want).

VINE 2 IS NOT GONNA HAPPEN STOP IT!!!

If you get upset when your brand's social media comments turn negative... you've probably put too much of your identity into your job. 

You're not the company your work for, or the product, or even the social media content you make for the company. It's all work. And sure, you should be proud of when the work does well! But when it doesn't? Or when the company's under fire for some reason that has literally nothing to do with you? That shouldn't bother you.

But I see farrrr too many social media professionals (especially young ones) tie their self-worth to their social media jobs. That's always a recipe for disaster. 

Maybe I'm lucky—my social career began on 3 hated products. I worked community management for some EA video games: Battlefield, Need For Speed: The Run, and Mass Effect 3... also known as a massive game that launched with major glitches, the most hated rendition of a beloved franchise, and the long-awaited trilogy ender with an ending blasted by fans. All 3 got tonssss of negative comments, and I knew up front that those comments weren't a reflection of me.

So please, make sure you're not tying too much of yourself to your brands. Touch grass, as they say.

graphical user interface, text, application

Yeah, you could post memes & lols on LinkedIn...

Anddd it'll do truly nothing to help your career.

I loved a LinkedIn post I saw from Shannon Kelly Ash this morning. She ran a little experiment on her personal account:

"I posted a bunch of unhinged nonsense daily and gained 1,500+ followers and 400,000+ impressions in just over a month. Sounds pretty neat on paper, right? 

Except … visibility ≠ opportunity.

When I used to post polite content tips [3 likes], my inbox was full of job offers and freelance opportunities. Now? With exponentially more reach? Nothing."

This is the number one mistake I see people make in content. We think all engagement is good engagement. We think being the funny guy means we'll get attention... but it's not the attention you want.

You want to be an authority! You want to appeal to bosses & budget holders, not be one of those LinkedIn people who complains about the industry or pokes fun at things. That doesn't get you noticed by the right people.

So please, use LinkedIn, but if you're here to better your career? Share content that shows off that big ol' brain of yours.

And hey, if you need an easy way to start? I've got a $5/month thing I built that gives you daily LinkedIn writing prompts meant to mine your brain for thinking & ideas that are specific to YOU. Give it a look over here if you like: https://lnkd.in/gTTZVf4e

What's the best piece of advice you'd give to someone who wants to work in social media?

Black F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶
Black F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶W̶e̶e̶k̶
Black F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶C̶y̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶
Black F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶E̶x̶t̶e̶n̶d̶e̶d̶
Black Existence

Reply with your take, I'm gonna feature a bunch in my newsletter!

Ericsson

Member of the Ericsson Social Media Center of Excellence. 

Within this role, I'm responsible together with a great team for the management and development of Ericsson's global Social Media Strategy. Since June 2021, my role has expanded to be the primary social strategist for the company's Global Vision and Industry Leadership Campaign. The role involves working with stakeholders across the company to create and deliver successful organic social strategies, including an entire suite of activations focused on B2B and CSP awareness and brand building. Some of the social strategies include influencer marketing, internal thought leadership, and live/ hybrid events.

Social Media Strategist

Adobe

Influencer

Empathize It

In a world driven by selfies and social; where empathy and entrepreneurs are considered contradictory. This podcast aims to put empathy back in the boardroom by hearing from the best entrepreneurs around the world and learning how they’ve learned to “empathize it,” and how it’s actually driving the digital economy.
https://noholtzbarred.squarespace.com/

Podcast Host

BizTank

Produce content for publication in a magazine for Jewish entrepreneurs with a distribution of 10K+.  

1. Digital Marketing Strategy 
2. Summary of AI from Mobile World Congress

Contributor

Adweek

Selected as one of the mentees to join Adweek's Executive Mentorship Program 2020. This program connects marketers with some of the world’s top CMOs, CBOs, CEOs, Chief D&I Officers, Chief Creative Officers, and more to help shape the next generation of marketing leaders.

Adweek CMO Mentee

United Hatzalah of Israel

- Develop and implement innovative marketing strategies to achieve corporate revenue goals.
- Responsible for launching multiple digital fundraising initiatives raising over $6 million dollars during COVID19 
Examples: Saving Lives Sunday; Race to Save Lives. 
- Prepare budgets and manage expenses to achieve organizational financial objectives. 
- Develop global marketing plan to increase donor support across 5 countries (fundraising offices).
- Manage all marketing communications including advertisements, promotions, PR, and web marketing.
- Conduct extensive market research to identify consumer trends and competitive markets.
- Introduce new products, platforms and digital enhancements to increase efficiency and transparency between teams. 
- Assist product team in developing, improving and launching new digital products and programs.
- Analyze market trends and identify new opportunities for organizational growth. 
- Develop best practices for digital communication, operational efficiency and data analysis. 
- Launch marketing programs and global promotions to improve brand recognition.
- Manage all the marketing activities to meet established goals and timelines.
- Manage brand assets and maintain brand quality standards.
- Supervise and train team members in their assigned job responsibilities.

Director of Global Brand  

Huawei Technologies

Key Opinion Leader

Blue Thread Marketing

Manage all digital strategies for a boutique digital marketing agency with clients that span 8 countries with customers ranging from startups to entire cities. a multi-faceted player with primary responsibilities across all digital planning, marketing preparations and brand landscape developments and analyses, internally and on the client side.  
▷ Create and develop compelling digital marketing strategies focused on cultivating  engagement across client assets 
5 years of working with digital, marketing, online ads, and integrated campaigns (can be combined)
▷ Leverage digital tools for outreach increasing community, brand awareness, web traffic and securing 3rd-party partnerships
▷ Oversee Paid Search (PPC) campaign development
▷ Generate and develop new business opportunities 
▷ Coordinate with team to prepare data-driven reports that meet KPIs and benchmarks to ensure performance is optimal
▷ Identify and monitor trends in social media and implement improvements. Drive innovation by leveraging new media platforms
▷ Conduct internal training sessions on digital media best practices. Educate web, marketing, press and PR team and stakeholders on social media strategies, trends and best practices. Conduct hands-on social media boot camps to train stakeholders
▷ Speaker 
I have been privileged to submit content on websites of large, industry-recognized organizations such as Social Media Today, Post Planner, CoSchedule, and Social Media World.  A recent feature on Fast Company about "Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Should Be Posting On Facebook This Week"

Chief Digital Strategist

National Institute for Social Media

The mission of the NISM Industry Advisory Committee is to utilize the collective insights and expertise of all committee officers to develop and maintain a system for competency verification that adheres to accreditation standards and standard psychometric principles, and awards credentials to qualified social media practitioners that demonstrate competence through a system of certification and continuing education.

The committee is provided with full autonomy from all internal or external organizations in the management and administration of certification in an effort to protect the certification program(s) from undue influence. Autonomy is required in order to serve stakeholder interests, primarily those of consumers of professional services.

First International Board Member

Jerusalem Development Authority

Lead the strategic planning and management of Jerusalem’s brand and voice across relevant social media platforms including ensuring that the brand is sufficiently represented, leveraged and protected.

- Lead strategic planning and management across relevant media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other digital community sites. 
- 5 years of working with digital, marketing, online ads, and integrated campaigns (can be combined)
- Creation and management of digital campaigns with an annual budget of 1.5 million NIS
- Oversee a social media team across 6 countries, that writes, produces and distributes numerous posts a day across social media platforms to promote Jerusalem areas, staff, leadership, events, research and initiatives.
- Strategically analyze social media platforms and recommend strategies to leverage the Jerusalem brand. Perform inventory of enterprise-wide social media channels to develop strategies to ensure brand consistencies.
- Prepare social media metrics reports and review data to determine effectiveness of campaigns to maximize traffic and awareness, as well as increase revenue.
- Ensure 360-degree integration of social media channels with all Jerusalem tourism events, websites and other collateral.  
- Develop and manage blogger outreach program. Establish relationships with influential bloggers, and use their platforms to promote Jerusalem initiatives, events, and spaces.
- Identify and monitor trends in social media and implement improvements. Drive innovation by leveraging new media platforms.
- Responsible for bringing TBEX, the largest travel bloggers conference to Jerusalem (March 2017) to generate positive digital content about the city via influencer marketing, resulted in a social reach of 80 million people.

New Media Director

I'm a passionate marketer with 12+ years of experience specializing in end to end B2B social media marketing and content creation.  My expertise lies in developing rich, data-driven content, engagement, and influencer marketing strategies that resonate and drive results.

At Ericsson, I am part of the Digital Center of Excellence and lead social strategy for the CSPGA Global Campaign.  An integral aspect of this role is to manage end-to-end organic social media marketing campaigns and activations to deliver against brand awareness objectives.   

In my career, I've excelled in environments where building and strengthening brand connections with enthusiastic consumers and online communities across social media platforms is crucial. One of my passions is nurturing emerging industry talent, empowering them to become future leaders.

My experience includes a wide range of skills and accomplishments:

Channel and Content Strategy: I excel at crafting comprehensive social media strategies across platforms.
Platform Expertise: I have a deep understanding of functionality, native features, and user habits across all leading social platforms.
Data-Driven Content Strategy: I believe in the power of data to drive effective content strategies.
Brand Storytelling: I'm skilled at conveying brand stories that resonate with audiences.
Integrated Communication Leadership: I have experience in managing agency relationships and ensuring seamless communication.
Content Curation and Development: I'm adept at curating and creating compelling content.
Brand Strategy: I've contributed to brand strategy, positioning, and development.
Experimentation: I'm always eager to experiment and have a deep passion for new platforms.
Budget Planning: I'm experienced in budget planning and resource allocation.

Notable Achievements:

🚀 Adobe Insider
✔️ Ranked among the top 100 Digital Marketing Influencers in 2019.
📊 Launched a UGC campaign that increased Jerusalem's social media presence organically: Facebook by 52%, Twitter by 732%, and Instagram by 20,000% over four years.
🖊 Contributor to Fast Company, National Geographic, Social Media Today, Business2Community, and Social Media World.
🖥 Spearheaded the Jerusalem Travel Bloggers Summit in 2019.
🗣 Speaker at several industry conferences, including Social Bakers Engage Prague 2018, TBEX (the world's largest travel bloggers conference), IMEX (the world's largest travel industry expo), and IMTM.
👍 Mentor to several startup accelerators.

taplio

The Battle

Jack Appleby

Mordecai Holtz

Followers

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Performance ScoreJack Appleby's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Jack Appleby

Mordecai Holtz

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jack Appleby's LinkedIn Performance

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