Author: Claire Winslow

1. Big alert: Broad core update now live

Google began rolling out the June 2025 Core Update on June 30, 2025 (around 7:34 a.m. PDT), and it will roll out over approximately three weeks across all regions and languages (Search Engine Land).

This isn’t a niche tweak—it’s a broad ranking shift across all types of content and search verticals, including organic search, Discover, and featured snippets.

2. Why this matters for PPC-savvy agencies

Many agencies separate SEO and Google Ads, but a core update—especially one lasting three weeks—can significantly alter organic visibility and traffic flows. If your client only relies on PPC, sudden shifts in organic clicks and SERP real estate can affect:

• Search volume and keyword competition Changes in who ranks organically can reshape CPCs, budgets, cost-per-acquisition, and dayparting strategies.
• Overlap & cannibalization A new organic top spot may reduce the effectiveness of your ad placements—or vice versa. Watch SERP placement closely.
• Content & landing page relevance Google’s quality changes often reflect shifts in user expectations. PPC performance can suffer if your landing pages aren’t aligned with evolving search intent.

3. Early signals and volatility to watch

As of July 2, monitoring tools like Mozcast, Semrush, and visibility scores show initial volatility—some sites already hit, others boosted (Search Engine Roundtable). SEO community chatter confirms:

“I’m seeing surges and drops beginning… for ~4K sites across verticals this morning” — Glenn Gabe

It’s early—but the rollercoaster has begun. Expect peaks and valleys throughout this three-week phase.

4. Big-picture advice from Google

For agencies and clients, the key is to resist knee-jerk reactions and lean on long-term content strategy. Google’s core update wisdom:

1. You can’t “fix” a core update directly—poor drops don’t necessarily signal a penalty (Search Engine Land).
2. Instead, perform a people-first content audit:
   • Is your content original, authoritative, and valuable?
   • Does it provide unique analysis or research?
   • Are titles honest and non-clickbaity?
3. After rollout (give it ~1 week), use Search Console to compare weeks before and after. Assess drop magnitude, query types, and page-level impact (Google Search Central).

Bottom-line: No shortcuts—focus on strengthening content relevance, depth, user experience, and expertise.

5. PPC-specific action plan

Task	What to Do	Why It Matters
Monitor SERP appearance & query trends	Use tools like Semrush, Search Console, and PPC dashboards to spot keyword shifts.	Adjust bid strategies early for rising or falling terms.
Reassess ad copy and LP messaging	Align ads with trending content angles and intents. Match landing pages to earned new organic successes.	Sustains CTR and conversion rates amid content churn.
Watch CPC & quality score	Core update volatility might alter ad position dynamics and keyword relevance.	Higher CPCs or lower quality scores can impact ROI.
Communicate proactively	Brief clients: core updates are gradual, organic swings are expected, and PPC helps stabilize short-term visibility.	Builds transparency and sets realistic expectations.

6. Next steps for agencies & clients

• Stay calm, create records: Track daily organic and paid traffic performance.
• Audit top-performing content: Ensure it’s user-first, insightful, and upholds E-A-T (Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness).
• Give it time: Don’t tweak campaigns mid-update unless urgency warrants—changes may swing again.
• Post-rollout adjustments: After July 21 (three weeks + buffer), reassess SEO and PPC priorities.
• Embed resilience: Foster evergreen content strategies, dynamic ad themes, and regular content refresh cycles.

Bottom line

The June 2025 Core Update isn’t just another algorithm tweak—it’s a three-week upheaval across organic search that ripples directly into paid strategy. Agencies that anticipate, adapt, and align SEO and PPC in response—not in panic—will help clients thrive through the turbulence.

Sources:

• https://searchengineland.com/google-june-2025-core-update-rolling-out-now-457731 
• https://searchengineland.com/google-advice-on-improving-your-sites-ranking-for-future-core-ranking-update-320184 
• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-june-2025-core-update-volatility-39694.html 
• https://developers.google.com/search/updates/core-updates 

Use these top 10 social media marketing best practices for small business to build your brand and generate a profit using social media.

Every business owner knows that marketing is an essential part of building your brand. Yet, as a small business owner, it can be hard to compete with the big dogs who can pour thousands of dollars into a national marketing campaign. However, traditional marketing is expensive, hard to measure, hard to change, and often a one-way form of communication.

There’s another (dare I say, better?) way to market in the new media age that allows direct, quantifiable, targeted messaging delivered directly to your target audience–social media marketing.

Social media connects your brand with an attentive and relevant audience that is open to your messaging and ready to engage. It also offers cost-effective ways to funnel cold traffic into profitable actions. With a smart social media marketing strategy in place, businesses can harness the power of social as an extremely useful marketing tool.

Here are our top 10 social media marketing best practices for small business:

---

1. If you build it, keep it up. If you can’t keep it up, delete it.

When first launching your social media presence, it can be tempting to create a profile on every social media channel available to you. Keeping up six different profiles with individually optimized content sometimes is not realistic. It’s better to have a limited, streamlined presence rather than spotty coverage all over the Internet.

2. Focus on 2-3 platforms where your demographic lives.

Not every audience is on the same page–literally.

Knowing where your audience lives online is a valuable piece of information in creating your social media platform strategy . Want to focus on a younger audience? Twitter and Instagram are good platforms to start with. Looking for an older, professional audience? Consider creating a LinkedIn profile. Need to curate your online reputation management? Google and Yelp are where you should live. Being able to tailor your strategy to your audience will save you a considerable amount of time and effort down the road.

3. Google yourself and your company from a private browser. The first page is your current online reputation.

Using Google Chrome’s Incognito mode or Safari’s Private Browsing mode with a single Google search provides a quick snapshot of your online reputation. Don’t like something that you see? Feel like something is missing? Now you know what to work on with your targeted strategy.

4. Research marketing rules of your industry, especially if it’s highly regulated.

Each industry has its own specific rules and regulations governing marketing and advertising. Knowing precedent can save you from various headaches, including getting your ad rejected on Facebook or even possible legal action. Examples of highly-regulated industries include financial services, healthcare, education, government, law, alcohol, and the oil and gas industries.

5. Don’t leave your social media marketing execution up to an intern. Your social media presence is the public representation of your company.

It can be the knee-jerk reaction to assign the young person on the team to cover social media. Though they might be a digital native who understands the difference between Tik-Tok and Instagram Reels, having a more senior member of the team guide strategy and execution will pay off in the long run. Social media is often the first place a potential consumer will encounter your brand, and an experienced team member leading your social media plan can help ensure it’s a good one.

6. Use the “4-1-1 Rule of Marketing” (or similar) to develop a content calendar.

The 4-1-1 Rule of Marketing is:

• 4 pieces of curated content created by others in your industry
• 1 piece of self-serving, promotional content to drive sales/traffic
• 1 piece of original creative content produced internally

For example, using this cadence as a guide for creating a content calendar would include sharing one piece of content promoting an upcoming special offer for your company with a direct call-to-action, one piece of original organic content, such as an infographic or specialized blog post, and four additional pieces of content, including retweets or reposts, industry updates, or article shares.

Whether you use this “rule” or something else, the bottom line is simple: Social media marketing is still about being social and organic social audiences don’t always want to be pitched. Instead, offer them more value by diversifying your content with more exciting and relevant information that builds engagement, connection, credibility–and yes, even sales–over time.

7. Use Facebook Blueprint to gain a solid foundation in social media marketing.

Facebook Blueprint is a library of online courses that allows you to “explore self-paced and step-by-step tutorials that can help you build your digital marketing knowledge and bring your business online.”

Consider it a free online marketing school. Love it, use it, and let it demystify the many facets of social media marketing for you.

8. Use Canva to make simple graphics.

Quality in means quality out. Creating high-quality content is a great way to develop your audience and increase engagement. Using a simple graphic design tool like Canva is an easy and effective way to create content for your feed.

9. If you blog, write for SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the single most important ways to get your online presence noticed. Writing “search engine-friendly” content will help give you a leg up in the competition.

Tips include:

• Keep content to 300 – 2,000 words
• Include at least 3 hyperlinks per post
• Add at least one picture
• Use keywords regularly, but be careful not to spam your audience.

10. Don’t boost posts without a strategy. Use Facebook Ads Manager to target your specific audience.

Facebook Ads Manager is a useful and powerful tool to help identify and build audiences. Creating core, custom, and lookalike audiences will deliver your content to people who are most likely to interact with it. Knowing your audience’s locations, demographics, behaviors, and interests can inform an audience segment as far-reaching or focused as you need. Keeping these audiences in mind throughout your social media advertising strategy, including any boosts, will help you get the most “bang for your buck” with your advertising budget.

From choosing your key social media platforms to executing your social media plan and reviewing your social media analytics, these best practices can help inform your social media plan, set S.M.A.R.T. social goals, and reap the benefits of social media marketing.

From MySpace to Tik-Tok, the social media landscape has a history of fast change, with new platforms entering the marketplace just as quickly as others leave (RIP Vine). Many social media managers, CMOs, and small business owners often feel pressured to take advantage of the hottest trending channel or risk being a late-mover.

But an ineffective social media platform strategy can be costly, demanding, and downright exhausting.

With so many social platforms and evolving digital marketing trends, where do you even start developing an effective social media channel plan that’s still agile enough to maximize future growth opportunities? Just remember your ABCs.

Here are the top 3 considerations for building your social media platform strategy.

---

A is for Audience.

Where is your target audience already most active and engaged online? To answer this question, use your existing audience personas and social platform demographic data to develop a fact-based channel plan.

For example, if you have an eCommerce brand that appeals to customers under 35, consider Instagram as part of your social media mix. If you’re targeting 18 to 24-year-olds partial to bite-sized video content, Tik-Tok might be your frontrunner. And if you’re a B2B organization that would benefit from engaging with working professionals and taking part in a broader industry conversation, LinkedIn could be your primary platform.

Understanding who your ideal customer is and where to meet them where they’re already consuming social content will help you drive social ROI now and identify potential growth opportunities in the future.

B is for Bandwidth.

Social media has become one of the most effective digital marketing tools, but having a brand page is very different from maintaining an active and profitable online community. When identifying your core social media platforms, it’s important to (honestly!) decide how many channels you can manage at once.

When you need some extra support, here’s an easy breakdown of what a simplified social media team looks like:

• The Social Media Manager develops strategy, generates content calendars, and oversees content creation, scheduling, and approvals.
• The Copywriter is responsible for crafting post captions and supplying text for graphics. Sometimes, they’ll implement your hashtag strategy, too.
• The Graphic Designer creates and curates all social media graphics and imagery using brand standards to ensure a consistent visual identity.

Whether you’re a One Person Show or one of many savvy social media marketers on your team, remember that you do not need to be everywhere at once! Choose 2-4 strategic platforms , set social media goals that translate into real business value, and identify how each team member will contribute to these objectives–then continue on your way to social media marketing success. ✔️

C is for Content.

With the who, what, and where settled, next, you need to figure out what you’re going to say.

Each social channel has a preferred format (or two) for sharing and consuming content, and each one has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, too. As a social media marketer, it’s your job to understand how this platform nuance should inform your channel strategy.

Here are a few common content pillars for some of the most popular social media sites:

• Facebook: Linked content, like blogs, company or product news, brand marketing, local marketing, including community events and sponsorships, Live video
• Instagram: Product imagery, carousel (aka “swipe”) posts, social graphics (e.g., Did You Know?, FAQs, Q&A, quotes), User Generated-Content, Behind-the-Scenes or “A Day in the Life,” employee stories or “spotlights”
• Twitter: Real-time updates and breaking news, customer information and service, media and news, events, including sponsorships, peer or influencer retweets
• YouTube: Utilitarian videos (e.g., How-To, Instructional, Steps), experiential marketing, customer stories or testimonials, text-based instructional videos, meet the team
• LinkedIn: Industry news, company updates, employee milestones, press and media, original company data, customer success stories
• Tik-Tok:Trends or #HashtagChallenges, Before and After, Tips and Tricks

When developing your social media platform strategy, your ABCs – Audience, Bandwidth, and Content – will help you find your audience, establish realistic social goals, and generate platform-optimized content. And who knows, with a smart, data-driven channel plan in place, you may even start looking forward to the next time someone starts a question with, “Should we be on…”

Performing a Facebook ad account audit is the perfect way to understand your advertising performance-to-date better.

Whether you’ve just joined a company, brought on a new client, or feel like your own campaigns may be lacking something, a Facebook ad account audit is the perfect way to understand your advertising performance-to-date better–and make data-driven choices when optimizing future campaigns.

You can’t fix it unless you know what’s broken, right? During your account deep-dive, identify what’s worked well and what hasn’t really worked at all. Think of the entire account as a split-test to uncover the top performers.

So, where do you start?

How to (easily, quickly, and effectively) Audit Your Facebook Ad Account.

---

First, audit your Facebook Ads account by taking a deep-dive into your social media advertising performance-to-date.

1. Look at your platforms and placements.

Are the best platforms included in your paid social strategy? Maybe there’s an underperforming platform you can cut. Identify exactly where your ads are delivering and decide if these platforms and placements are doing the best job of achieving your overall social and business goals.

2. Check out your ad creative content and format.

Are photos, videos, and carousels being used? If so, what worked best? If not, what can you test in the future?

3. Figure out who you’ve been talking to.

Are your audience demographics consistent with industry research or proven performance data? How do they compare to Facebook Audience Insights for similar interests or competitors? Your ideal customer avatar?

Are you using a variety of audience types, including core, custom, and Lookalike? Is there a significant amount of audience overlap between similar segments? Are you using data to inform top-funnel targeting with Lookalikes or only relying on core, or saved audiences instead?

Speaking of saved audiences, how do your interest targets look? Have you considered adding in any competitors? Are there other categories that could help find your target audience?

Next, make a list of Action Items.

---

Your ad account audit is complete–woot!–and you have a pretty good understanding of the who, where, what, and how of your previous paid social campaign performance. As you review your notes, make a list of action items you need to complete before launching optimizations.

For example, do you need to create new or edit existing audiences? Should you develop new split-tests to improve performance? Can you work with your designer to mix up ad creative with new formats and designs? What do you need to create to get a more well-rounded creative bucket?

Finally, take a peek at the competition.

---

Even though you have a better overview of your own accounts, you shouldn’t stop here! Your next step is to look at what your competitors are doing; they may have a new (or *gasp* better) way of doing things. You won’t have transparent access to their ad content, audiences, or campaign performance like you do for your ad account, but you can still sleuth out a few things that probably work well for them.

Look through their brand pages to see what type of organic content is working well for them (and what isn’t). Don’t forget to scroll through their website and see how it compares to yours–believe it or not, having an optimized website, especially on mobile, can affect your campaigns’ effectiveness.

There is also a helpful tool called Facebook Ad Library, which will show you all active ads for any Facebook page–pay dirt! ? While it won’t provide a full breakdown of things like campaign objective, or audience targeting, Ad Library does give you enough information to understand what your competitors are doing with platforms, copy, creative, calls-to-action, ad format, and more.

From here, you’re ready to move forward by applying what you’ve learned from your audit and competitive analysis to produce the most effective social media advertising campaigns possible. Now, go forth and advertise!

In a new format, old social mediaposts can find new life. Use these 4 tips tosave time andwork smart whencreating content for social media.

For those of us in digital marketing, it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. And until science catches up with Harry Potter and “Time-Turners” become a thing IRL, social media managers have to find creative ways to build fresh, engaging social media posts on a time crunch.

Luckily, sometimes the best, freshest social media content is actually old content.

If you have a great piece of content — whether it be a compelling photo, info-packed blog, or awesome video — there are countless ways to repackage and put a new spin on it.

In a new format, old content can find new life. You can increase your reach, inspire engagement, and build authority on a given topic — all while saving resources and maximizing your social media content strategy.

Here are four ways to repurpose your social media content.

---

1. Make a video.

According to Social Media Today, video remains the top-performing content format across the board. Video generates more engagement than still photos on Instagram, and LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to reshare a video than they are any other type of content.

Not all of us are cinematic geniuses, but with the variety of easy-to-use tools on the market, creating good social content with video is easier than ever. Canva has animation features and great stock imagery options that can turn your standard graphic into a video. Lumen5 is super easy (and fast!) to use, especially for info-packed videos. Even turning a collection of photos into a slideshow from iMovie or your phone can be enough to spark higher engagement.

2. Show, don’t tell.

As a copywriter, this one kills me to say, but it’s true: sometimes an image can tell your story better than words. If you’ve got a great blog or piece of website copy, chances are it’ll make an even better infographic!

Distill your content into a few neat bullet points, open up your design tool, and voila! an infographic is born. (This blog itself would make a great infographic, right?)

3. Share a link.

Everyone has different ways they prefer to engage with social media content. My best friend devours true crime podcasts and documentaries, but as a writing-minded person, I learn best by reading. If our favorite brand puts out a podcast or video on their new products, my friend would be the first person to watch — whereas I’m more likely to click on a link and read about it.

Link shares are often one of the most straightforward ways to share content, and they’re also one of the most effective! (Some of us are cool, visually-minded people while others are self-proclaimed nerds who love to read. ??‍♀️)

4. Embrace the throwback.

Sometimes, repackaged content doesn’t even need a new format. Analyze your content reports for your best-performing content and build a best-of series that spotlights everything great your followers might have missed the first time — or would appreciate seeing again.

If you’ve got a great piece of content that’s outdated, you can always go back and freshen it up to be relevant again. Sometimes editing an old blog or infographic is quicker than writing a whole new one!

---

When you’re thinking creatively with your content planning, the possibilities for any one piece of content are endless. Save time, work smart, and you’ll (almost) never feel burned out on creating content for social media again!