TL;DR
- TikTok comments are becoming content: Voice, polls and photo formats are creating more opportunities for audiences to actively participate beneath the video.
- TikTok is moving into episodic entertainment: The Next Episode gives brands and creators an opportunity to build recurring formats rather than relying solely on one-off posts.
- Instagram is giving creator content more visibility: Tagged posts can now appear directly on a brand’s main grid, creating another way to amplify creator partnerships and UGC.
- YouTube creator content is getting bigger: Creator-led documentaries, shows and original productions are moving further into spaces traditionally occupied by film and television.
- LinkedIn is pushing back against AI slop: As generic AI content proliferates, original expertise, experience and human perspectives are becoming increasingly important.
1. TikTok comments are becoming content
Anyone who spends time on TikTok will know that sometimes the comments are just as entertaining as the video itself. They have become a place where people go for reactions, additional context, jokes, opinions and conversations that build on the original piece of content.
TikTok is now giving users even more ways to participate. In September, the platform announced a suite of new comment features including Voice Comments, Comment Polls, Photo Carousel Comments and Live Photo Comments.
Voice Comments allow users to leave audio responses of up to 60 seconds, while Comment Polls give creators the ability to ask a question with up to five possible answers. Users can also add up to nine images to a Photo Carousel Comment, adding another visual layer to conversations happening beneath a video.
With TikTok reporting that more than 1.7 billion comments are shared globally every day, these features could make the comment section an increasingly important part of the overall content experience.
What this means for brands
Rather than thinking about comments purely as an engagement metric that is measured after a campaign, brands can start considering how participation in the comments could become part of the creative idea itself.
For example:
- Polls could involve audiences in decisions, from choosing a favourite flavour or product to deciding what a creator tests next.
- Photo comments could encourage visual responses, giving communities another way to share experiences, results or reactions.
- Voice comments could create new reaction and conversation formats, particularly for creators with highly engaged communities.
- Creator briefs can actively encourage conversation, rather than simply asking creators to end a video with a generic question designed to generate comments.
The most interesting part will be seeing what TikTok users do with these tools organically. Many of the platform’s biggest behaviours and formats have emerged when creators take a feature and use it in ways that weren’t necessarily anticipated.
2. TikTok wants brands to think in episodes, not posts
TikTok is also experimenting with what happens when creator content moves beyond individual posts and becomes something audiences return to regularly.
This month, TikTok and creative agency Amplify launched The Next Episode, a new initiative designed to connect brands with creators to develop original, social-first entertainment series. The formats can include micro-dramas, interviews, game shows, docuseries and reality-style content, giving creators the opportunity to build recurring concepts rather than producing isolated pieces of branded content.
Importantly for marketers, brands can either integrate into an existing creator-led series or work with creators to develop a branded series from the ground up.
It borrows some of the mechanics that have long made television effective, including recurring formats, familiar personalities and episodic storytelling, but rebuilds them for a social environment where creators already have established relationships with their audiences.
What this means for brands
The opportunity is to think beyond sponsoring an individual post and towards becoming part of a format.
- Build familiarity over time. A recurring series gives audiences multiple opportunities to encounter the brand rather than relying on one piece of content to do all the work.
- Develop recognisable formats. Recurring themes, segments, challenges or storylines can give audiences a reason to return.
- Give creators greater creative involvement. Rather than simply delivering a brand message, creators can help develop the format and storytelling around it.
- Think longer-term. Episodic formats naturally lend themselves to ongoing creator relationships rather than one-and-done partnerships.
For brands already moving towards always-on creator programs, this is an interesting evolution of that thinking: consistent creator presence can become recurring entertainment rather than simply a regular cadence of sponsored posts.
3. Instagram just made creator content easier to bring onto your grid
Instagram has introduced a relatively small feature that could have a very practical benefit for brands investing in creator content and UGC.
When another account tags you in a photo or video, you can now choose to add that post directly to your main Instagram profile grid. Previously, tagged content generally appeared within the separate Tagged tab unless the content was reposted or originally published using Instagram’s collaboration functionality.
The original content remains on the creator’s account, while the tagged account can choose to display it alongside its own posts on the main grid. It can also be removed from the grid later without affecting the creator’s original post.
For marketers managing brand accounts, this creates a much simpler way to give strong creator and community content greater visibility.
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What this means for brands
Creator content no longer needs to disappear into the Tagged tab once a campaign has gone live. Brands can curate relevant tagged content and make it a more visible part of their owned social presence.
This could help brands:
- Extend the visibility of creator partnerships by bringing selected campaign content onto the brand’s own profile.
- Show more real product experiences alongside polished brand-created assets.
- Bring UGC and community voices into the main feed, helping potential customers see how other people are using and talking about the product.
- Build a more community-led Instagram presence, where the brand grid reflects not only what the brand says about itself, but what creators and customers are saying too.
As brands continue investing in creator content, features like this can help those assets work harder beyond the initial campaign post.
4. YouTube creators are hitting the film festival circuit
Creator-led entertainment is also becoming significantly more ambitious. This September, YouTube debuted five creator-led shows across the Venice International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, bringing YouTube creators into two spaces traditionally associated with filmmakers, studios and established entertainment companies.
The projects demonstrate just how broad creator content has become. Mark Vins of Brave Wilderness premiered the feature-length documentary Reef to Ridge, which follows an expedition through the Galápagos, while Ziwe premiered new episodes of her interview series You’d Be an Iconic Guest in Toronto. Other projects shown across the festivals explored topics ranging from Ramadan to Nepal’s Gurung honey hunters.
Rather than creators simply producing longer versions of traditional social videos, these projects show creators developing documentaries, interview programs, travel storytelling and entertainment properties with increasingly sophisticated production values.
What this means for brands
For marketers, it is another reason to broaden the definition of creator content.
Creator partnerships can now potentially span:
- Short-form social content designed for fast discovery and engagement.
- Recurring episodic series that build audiences over time.
- Long-form interviews, documentaries and educational content.
- Travel, entertainment and specialist formats built around a creator’s established expertise and community.
This creates opportunities for brands to think beyond asking creators to make content about a product. In the right partnership, a brand can instead help enable content that the creator’s audience genuinely wants to watch, with the brand integrated naturally into the story, experience or production.
The line between creator, publisher and entertainment producer is becoming increasingly blurred, giving marketers a much larger creative canvas to work with.
5. LinkedIn continues its crackdown on AI slop
LinkedIn is taking a different approach to the growing volume of content being published across social platforms, focusing on reducing the visibility of low-value content that appears to have been produced primarily using generative AI.
The platform describes “AI slop” as low-effort, likely AI-generated content that may appear polished but lacks a clear point of view, unique perspective or substance.
More than one million LinkedIn members used the platform’s “Seems Like AI Slop” feedback option within the first weeks of its launch, while LinkedIn says its efforts have already resulted in a 40% reduction in views of content classified as AI slop.
LinkedIn is also changing its own AI writing functionality. Rather than offering tools designed to rewrite or “enhance” posts, the platform is moving towards proofreading and clarity tools intended to improve writing without replacing the author’s individual voice.
What this means for brands
This isn’t necessarily a signal for marketers to stop using AI. Instead, it reinforces the importance of using AI as a tool within the content process rather than a substitute for original thinking.
For brands using LinkedIn:
- Start with genuine expertise. Original research, industry knowledge, customer insights and first-hand experiences give content something AI alone cannot manufacture.
- Use real people and perspectives. Executives, employees, customers and subject-matter experts can provide a distinctive point of view.
- Use AI to support the process. Research, structuring, editing and proofreading can all benefit from AI without handing over the entire creative process.
- Avoid content for content’s sake. Publishing more frequently isn’t necessarily valuable if every post sounds interchangeable with everything else in the feed.
As AI makes producing content easier, having something genuinely useful or interesting to say could become an even bigger competitive advantage on LinkedIn.
What it all means for marketers
Taken together, this month’s updates show social moving beyond simply giving brands more ways to publish. Platforms are creating more opportunities for participation, recurring storytelling and creator-led entertainment, while simultaneously putting greater value on original, human perspectives.
For marketers, that means thinking beyond individual posts. A TikTok comment section can become part of the campaign experience. A creator partnership can develop into a recurring series. Great UGC can become part of a brand’s own social presence. And creator storytelling can extend all the way from short-form video to long-form entertainment.
The opportunity isn’t necessarily to create more It’s to think more creatively about how people can participate in it, where creator content can travel and what will make audiences want to keep watching.