Steve Morris

Entrepreneur ( Publishing, Marketing, Advertising, Data, Internet and Innovation

[giovanni gallucci🌲🏕️ @galluccinet]

DAILY MARFA STRATEGIES TREND DIGEST FOR MAY 19, 2026: CONTENT CREATORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Instagram reset its ranking rulebook and most teams are still running the 2023 playbook. Two changes are now confirmed across Buffer (https://t.co/YfnXAJLTZu), Sprout Social (https://t.co/7ERXbkjnA0), Hootsuite (https://t.co/SyvxZkGU90), and the publicly circulating 2026 algorithm guides. First, a DM share is now weighted roughly fifteen to one against a like. Saves and DM sends together outrank public engagement on Reels. Second, every Reel, and now every photo and carousel after the April 30 policy expansion, gets an originality score. Reposts with watermarks, recycled clips, and copy-paste audio drag reach by forty to sixty percent. Adam Mosseri publicly framed 2026 as the Year of Raw Content. Meta says seventy-five percent of recommended content in the U.S. now comes from posts the system flags as original. Hitting Q2 and Q3 reach numbers with old-format content is mathematically harder this year, and the brief change is small. The distribution change is enormous.

Less is the new more. Sprout Social, NewEngen (https://t.co/58dvb4ihqy), and Sendible (https://t.co/1wubd6F4jq) all landed on the same finding this month. Frequency is dropping. Engagement on the strongest posts is rising. The new ceiling on Instagram is three to five feed posts and two to four Reels per week. LinkedIn is two to three posts a week. Trust scores for accounts under fifty thousand followers are consistently higher than the 500K-plus tier in food, outdoor, and home. Micro-influencers in the 10K to 100K band are driving two-point-four to six-point-seven times more engagement per post than macro creators, with roughly twenty percent higher conversion. The volume era was a publishing problem. The 2026 era is a craft problem. The brand teams who cut the calendar in half and put the saved hours into three good things instead of ten mediocre ones will look up at the end of Q3 with the strongest organic numbers in their category.

LinkedIn carousels are eating the feed. Native PDF document carousels are averaging around seven percent engagement. Single-image posts are sitting near two percent. That is not a marginal difference. That is a different platform showing up to the same login. LinkedIn's depth score rewards dwell time. Every swipe counts as a second of attention. External links in the body of a post are getting roughly sixty percent fewer impressions, and the practical move is dropping the link to the first comment. Newsletters from a named executive are the only LinkedIn format that ignores the algorithm entirely, with forty to fifty percent open rates, and most B2B brands still are not running one. If your LinkedIn strategy is a square graphic with a quote on it, you are paying for visibility you are not getting. Pull one framework out of your best blog post, newsletter, or sales deck. Build eight slides. Ship it. Track save count, not likes.

The operator-level point I want to land. The biggest unfair advantage in 2026 is gen AI inside the daily content workflow, not gen AI as an output. Most teams are still asking ChatGPT to write the caption. The teams winning right now are using AI for cut-down editing, voice-to-caption with iPhone and CapCut (https://t.co/4eqoPQbjDL), batch scripting for talking-head video, action cam B-roll selection, and rapid format testing on Higgsfield and similar tools. The AI Creator label rolling out across the platforms is not a punishment. It is permission. The brands using AI to ship more honest, raw, on-camera content from real operators are getting reach. The brands using AI to ship more polished slop are not.

About this digest. Written every morning by Giovanni Gallucci out of Marfa, Texas. Twenty plus years in social media strategy and organic communities. Built the Topo Chico digital identity from the ground up at Arca Continental before the Coca-Cola acquisition, then led social strategy at Coca-Cola for nearly six years. Six years at Frito-Lay as content creator, videographer, and video editor. Awards along the way include Ad Age, Emmys, Shorty, Telly, and Webby.

What this practice does and does not do. No paid ads, no email funnels, the focus is durable organic growth and storytelling that holds up over time. Embedded retainer engagements where I ship content week after week with the team, not deck-and-disappear consulting.

Two lanes. Outdoor lifestyle and clean-label food and beverage, also relevant for outdoor-adjacent government agencies, tourism boards, conservation nonprofits, and food-access organizations in those spaces. Reach out on LinkedIn (https://t.co/98NBkG3Sj7) or https://t.co/ihRVPX8NaJ. Coffee is fine. Tacos are better.

[This Week in Startups @twistartups]

Someone connected Open Claw to their Meta Ray-Bans.

Shawn looks at a box of lens wipes and tells his agent to add them to his Amazon cart.

No phone. No keyboard. No app. Just glasses.

[Trevor Noah @Trevornoah]

We’ve gotten so used to picking a side… that we’ve forgotten how to actually think through an issue.

Watch the full conversation with Katie Couric on my YouTube channel.

[Jeremy @bicepcurl]

Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first year grad student. You just got finished readin’ The Intelligent Investor - Ben Graham probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ’til next month when you get to AI growth stocks, and then you’re gonna be talkin’ about how software multiples don’t matter and exponential scaling was underpriced way back in 2023. That’s gonna last until Bitcoin makes a new high - you’re gonna be in here regurgitating digital scarcity, talkin’ about, you know, sovereign debasement and the asset repricing effects of monetary expansion. That’s gonna last until next year - you’re gonna get into prediction markets, talkin’ about how price is truth and the long-term effects of a hyper connected truth seeking machine.

[Sarah Cone @sarah_cone]

@0xHalion Congrats to you!

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@leekern13 Vvvvvvvvvvvvv

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@austinxwalker And education, 2 fields with the most potential

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@BonifaceOption There's a great book on this by Dava Sobel
https://t.co/ZIB1XSXPJL

Definitely worth a read

[Dimitris Papailiopoulos @DimitrisPapail]

Holy wheels, this car can drive itself

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@FredLambert N c '

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@ErikVanEes Limitless

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@jonstephens85 9

[Serus @serus_ai]

World-class online privacy suite for investigation & proactive digital defence.

Explore for free, today.

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@levan Let's see it!

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

In Israel, it is being reported that the unusual strike targets in Yemen are:

1. A military facility on the grounds of the Houthi presidential palace (not the palace itself, but a building within the complex).
2. A fuel storage complex.
3. Two power stations.

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@VerminusM If you are interested in any of these DM me and I'll send you a copy

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@VerminusM I have produced a few you might like:
Mesillat Yesharim: https://t.co/IED0U2Ctfo
Derech Hashem:
https://t.co/25Pi2ZEmkB
Worldmask:
https://t.co/8cp9rr9jFC

A Jewish state: Theodore Herzl
Speaking for success: Ofer Reshef
The Human Challenge: Rabbi Avraham Edelstein

[Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000]

https://t.co/PPOmLHWMTx

[Steve Morris @stevemo]

@jewinthecity K

[Earthyy 🌎 @Nostalgic_Earth]

Is it just me, or is finding people with pure intentions nearly impossible these days?

It feels like everyone just wants to use you, compete with you, or somehow tear you down..

Genuine people are just so hard to come by anymore.