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by Troy@ Dunket

Turn Your Scroll into Sales with Shoppable Posts

August 19, 2025
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The days of passive browsing are dead. Social media is no longer a playground for vanity metrics and pretty pictures. It is the battlefield of commerce, and only the bold survive. Instagram and Facebook have turned into storefronts where every swipe is an opportunity, every Story a sales pitch, and every Reel a chance to close the deal. If you are still treating your feed like a digital scrapbook, you are already losing.

Shoppable posts are not a trend. They are a weapon. And if you want your business to stay relevant in 2025, you had better learn how to wield it with precision and force.

Social Media: Discovery Meets Decision

Let’s cut through the fluff. Consumers do not wait to walk into a mall anymore. Their mall is Instagram. Their sales clerk is a Facebook carousel. Research shows 61 percent of consumers discover products on Instagram and 60 percent on Facebook. That is not traffic, that is money with a pulse.

Yet most businesses choke. They drown their audiences in weak tags, boring catalog titles, and checkout processes that feel like filing taxes. The result? Seventy percent of carts abandoned. That is not just lost sales, that is self sabotage.

Meta’s Power Move

Meta changed the rules again. First, they forced native checkout on Instagram and Facebook. Now in 2025, they flipped the script. Transactions are being pushed back to your own website. That means you are in charge. No excuses.

This is a wake up call. You can either build a checkout that slices through hesitation like a hot knife, or you can watch your so-called “followers” bounce at the final click. The choice is yours.

The Non Negotiables of Playing the Game

Before you slap a product tag on your next post, you better get your foundation right.

  • Eligibility and compliance: Meta does not let everyone in. You need verified domains, trustworthy policies, and no shady practices. Fail that test and you are invisible.
  • Catalog discipline: Lazy product titles and outdated inventory are sales killers. Keep your catalog synced, clean, and ruthless. Every title should scream benefit, not just description.
  • Tracking like a hawk: Meta Pixel, Conversions API, and UTM parameters are not optional. If you do not track your funnel, you are playing blind.

Tagging with Intent, Not Laziness

Stop spraying tags like confetti. Each platform has limits, and abusing them makes you look desperate.

  • Feed posts: Up to five tags per image, twenty for a carousel. Use them wisely.
  • Stories: One product sticker with up to five products. Keep it clean.
  • Reels: Tag during creation, and make sure it lines up with the star of the show.

Placement is everything. Tags should hover near the product, not suffocate it. And for the love of sales, stop tagging items that are not even visible. That is not strategy, that is amateur hour.

Creative That Demands Action

This is where businesses win or die. Forget generic product shots that look like stock photography rejects. Your content should bite.

  1. Show it in the wild. Lifestyle clips, raw footage, even gritty customer videos. If your product cannot live outside a sterile studio, maybe it does not belong in anyone’s life.
  2. Build momentum. Use a three post cycle: first a demo, then proof, then urgency. Keep your audience on a leash that gets tighter with every scroll.
  3. Limit options. Do not shove an entire warehouse down someone’s throat. Focus on top sellers. Too much choice equals no choice.
  4. Accessibility is power. Subtitles, bold text, and clean backgrounds. Not everyone scrolls with sound on, and chaos kills conversion.

Checkout: The Real Fight

This is where the game is won. If your checkout is bloated, you might as well hand your revenue to the competition.

  • Cut the fat. Fewer fields. More autofill. Faster clicks.
  • Express pay or bust. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, PayPal. If you do not offer them, you are living in 2015.
  • Transparency upfront. Shipping costs, taxes, duties. Hide them and you lose. Show them early and you keep trust.
  • Kill account walls. Guest checkout should be mandatory. People came to buy, not marry your platform.

Stories and Reels: The Conversion Machines

Stories and Reels are not decoration, they are where real buyers pull the trigger.

  • Stories: Use a three tile setup. Educate, compare, then offer. One product sticker per tile, always placed near the product, never in the dead corners.
  • Reels: Hit hard in the first two seconds. Tag when the product is steady and visible. Show it again before the Reel ends to catch double taps.

These formats are not playgrounds, they are cash registers. Treat them like it.

Numbers That Actually Matter

Stop chasing likes like a desperate influencer. Metrics that matter are brutal and simple:

  • Tag taps to product page views.
  • Product page views to add to cart rate.
  • Add to cart to actual purchase.
  • Revenue breakdown by format: Reel, Story, photo.
  • Assisted conversions where discovery starts on social but closes later.

If you are not tracking these, you are not in business. You are just posting into the void.

A Week That Wins

Here is how a serious schedule looks:

  • Monday: Reel showing a sharp problem to solution demo with one hero product.
  • Wednesday: Carousel behind the scenes, five tags max, collection link in caption.
  • Friday: Story sequence, three tiles with urgency messaging and product stickers.
  • Saturday: User generated content repost with testimonial and one tag.
  • Sunday: Setup or fit guide answering presale doubts.

That rhythm builds momentum, credibility, urgency, and loyalty. It is a strategy, not a shot in the dark.

Canada and US: Know the Terrain

Taxes matter. Canadians must deal with GST, HST, and PST. Americans juggle state sales tax. The beauty of Meta’s shift is that you now control it directly on your site. Pair that with clear return policies and reliable shipping, and you build the trust your competitors forget about.

Shoppable posts are not about looking trendy. They are about survival in the cutthroat arena of social commerce. The businesses that thrive are the ones that tag with intent, create with bite, and build checkout flows that are faster than doubt.

Scrolling has become the new shopping. And in this arena, the timid lose. The bold turn every swipe into a sale.

Related Posts
AI just crashed the advertising elite

AI just crashed the advertising elite. Are you still doing it the old way?

June 30, 2025
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AI just crashed the advertising elite. are you still doing it the old way?
 By Troy McMillan | Dunket

Let’s cut the fluff. AI didn’t arrive in advertising. It bulldozed through the front door and took the best seat at the table. And if Cannes 2025 is any proof, the brands still clinging to traditional workflows, slow approvals, and “creative gut instincts” are about to get trampled.

The game has changed. Not changing. Changed.

The so-called advertising elite has been caught napping while AI quietly rewrote the rules. Major global brands are no longer testing AI,  they are scaling with it. They are producing more content, faster, cheaper, and at quality levels that punch above what old-school creative teams can deliver. If your brand is still treating AI like a novelty or a future experiment, you’re not just behind. You are betting your future on yesterday’s rules.

AI at Cannes: not a buzzword, a takeover

Cannes Lions 2025 looked less like a creativity showcase and more like an AI expo disguised as a marketing summit. From Meta to independent agencies, everyone was showing off how machine learning is driving campaigns,  from concept to execution.

Advantage+ and other AI suites are turning static ideas into dynamic video ads, writing copy, segmenting audiences, and even deciding how much to spend on which creative. What used to take three weeks of meetings now happens in a single click. No, that’s not an exaggeration.

Big-name agencies were flaunting AI tools that generate thousands of ad variations with flawless branding, personalized messaging, and high engagement. If you think your 5-man team can outpace that, good luck. The smart ones are plugging into the new pipeline. The rest are about to learn what “obsolete” feels like.

Efficiency is the new creativity

Here’s a hard truth: creativity no longer lives in a brainstorm session with snacks and sticky notes. It lives in models that analyze what your audience wants, before they even know it. That’s where AI comes in. It predicts. It scales. It optimizes. And when it’s trained well, it outperforms most human creatives at the top of their game.

At Cannes, we saw examples where AI tools like Meta’s Video Gen 2.0 turned a single image into multi-scene video ads with music, animation, and audience-specific tweaks. While most SMBs are still emailing a designer for revisions, AI-driven brands are already testing 100 versions of a campaign,  live.

The scary part? The gap is only getting wider.

Real campaigns. Real results. No excuses.

Take a moment and process this: Meta’s AI-driven campaigns reported an average 22 percent lift in return on ad spend. Conversion rates went up five percent just by letting AI run backend optimization.

This isn’t some agency case study fluff. These are measurable results from brands who took the leap.

Meanwhile, if your team is still debating fonts or brainstorming a “catchy headline,” you’re spending valuable time and money building ads that AI could have finished,  and optimized,  in half the time. You are not “being thoughtful.” You’re being outpaced.

Still not convinced? Let’s talk creative integrity

“AI kills originality.” That’s the excuse. It is also nonsense.

Some of the most compelling campaigns at Cannes were built with AI and human strategy in tandem. Dove’s campaign retrained AI models to represent authentic beauty standards. Vaseline’s team used AI to identify misinformation and rally trustworthy creators around a product narrative.

The winners were not ditching humanity. They were scaling it.

If your idea of brand building still involves one-size-fits-all messaging, AI is not your problem. Your entire playbook is.

Why SMBs should stop waiting and start moving

Let’s call out another myth: “AI is for big brands with big budgets.” Not anymore. Many of the tools demoed at Cannes are accessible, affordable, and scalable.

AI-generated videos. Chatbots. Brand consistency checkers. Audience segmentation. You can get most of it right now for less than your next agency invoice. If you are running a small or midsize business and you are not integrating AI into your marketing, you are choosing to play small.

This is not about cost. It’s about mindset. The ones who move now will compete on a level playing field with brands five times their size. The ones who wait? They will get priced out, phased out, or ghosted by customers who expect better, faster, smarter experiences.

Here’s how to actually keep up

You do not need to throw out your whole marketing team or cancel all your existing tools. But you do need to act. Here’s what to do:

  1. Audit your current process
     Find the time sucks. Are you still manually writing product descriptions? Designing every single ad by hand? That’s your first red flag.
  2. Choose two AI tools
     Try automated video ad creation and a basic chatbot. That’s it. Start small. Measure impact. Scale what works.
  3. Test, don’t tinker
     AI is about speed and iteration. Run ten versions of your Facebook ad and let the algorithm pick the winner. This is not a theory anymore. It’s performance marketing at its most ruthless.
  4. Teach your team to ride the wave
     AI will not take their jobs,  unless they refuse to adapt. Train them to use the tools. Creativity isn’t dying, it is evolving. Fast.
  5. Watch your competitors squirm
     Most businesses are still hesitant. That gives you a short window to leapfrog them. Use it.

This is the new brand war. And AI is your weapon.

Marketing is not about who had the best idea in a room. It is about who got the best idea in front of the right person at the right time, and then scaled it. AI is making that possible at speeds old strategies cannot match.

So if you’re still obsessing over that perfect tagline while your competitor is rolling out a thousand AI-tested variations, ask yourself this:

Are you building a brand for 2025, or are you stuck in 2015?

AI just crashed the elite circle of advertising. It is rewriting the rulebook. You can sit on the sidelines and watch, or you can jump in and rewrite your own future.

But know this: the next awards at Cannes will not go to the cautious. They will go to the fast.

AI Just Turned Content creation into a Science

Stop Treating Content as Art Class, AI Just Turned It into a Science

July 13, 2025
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Let’s get something straight. Content creation is no longer your artsy little side hustle. It’s not about vibes, aesthetic filters, or that quirky caption you spent two hours writing. The truth is, AI just pulled the rug out from under the whole content game, and if you’re still treating it like a craft project, you’re already behind.

While your creative team debates font choices, AI is writing blog posts, designing graphics, cutting reels, and posting them across ten platforms in the time it takes you to finish your overpriced cold brew. If you’re not integrating AI into your strategy, then your “strategy” is just guesswork with extra steps.

Content Is No Longer Cute, It’s Calculated

Welcome to the new content economy. It’s fueled by algorithms, refined by data, and executed by machines that don’t take coffee breaks. Generative AI tools like Jasper, ChatGPT, Writesonic, Adobe Firefly, and Synthesia are running laps around traditional content teams. They don’t get writer’s block. They don’t miss deadlines. They don’t ask for time off to “recharge.”

And let’s be real, most companies don’t need a team of creatives. They need output. Fast. Frequent. Consistent. That’s exactly what AI delivers, and it does it without whining about “creative energy.”

AI Is the Content Director Now

You think you’re in charge? Not anymore. The second you let an AI tool into your workflow, you’re letting it dictate the pace. And that’s not a bad thing, unless you’re married to the old school idea that “good content takes time.” Spoiler alert: speed wins.

Here’s what AI is doing better than your marketing intern and that overpriced agency you hired last year.

  1. Writing at Scale
    AI writes faster than you. Period. Blogs, emails, social posts, product descriptions, all done in minutes. You could be spending hours trying to come up with a clever way to say “50 percent off” while the bot spits out ten usable versions with hashtags already baked in.
  2. Visuals on Demand
    Why wait two weeks for a designer to “find inspiration” when you can generate graphics and video assets on command? Adobe Firefly and Synthesia take simple prompts and turn them into scroll stopping visuals. No meetings. No revisions. Just results.
  3. Brand Voice Mimicry
    The old argument was “but it won’t sound like us.” That ship has sailed. AI now lets you plug in your tone, playful, formal, sarcastic, whatever, and it sticks to it. Shopify Magic and other tools let you pick a vibe and replicate it across platforms, so there’s no excuse for inconsistent messaging anymore.
  4. Content Everywhere, All the Time
    You’re not just competing on Instagram anymore. You’re fighting for attention on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, and whatever platform shows up next week. AI tools like StoryChief and Buffer help you hit them all at once. One blog post becomes five tweets, two reels, and a carousel with a call to action.
  5. Analytics and Optimization That Don’t Sleep
    AI doesn’t just post content, it tracks it. It knows what time your audience clicks, what headlines work, and which posts flop. Then it uses that data to do better next time. Your intern’s “gut feeling” about what works isn’t even in the same league.

Still Want to Do It the Old Way?

By all means, keep wasting time. But while you’re storyboarding your next explainer video with sticky notes and markers, AI just published six blog posts, created a product video, optimized a newsletter, and scheduled the next two weeks of content across six platforms.

And here’s the kicker, your competition is already using it. The bakery down the street is getting 35 percent more engagement because they fed their content calendar into Jasper and let it rip. The logistics company that used to outsource video now builds training modules in Synthesia in under a week.

If you think your industry is immune, think again. This isn’t a tech trend, it’s an operational shift.

But What About Quality?

This is where people start crying foul. “But the content isn’t as good.” Says who? The audience? The bots doing the ranking? Or you, the same person who hasn’t hit their quarterly engagement goal since 2022?

Let’s cut the nonsense. “Quality” is subjective, and in today’s landscape, quality means relevance, clarity, and frequency. The prettiest post in the world means nothing if it shows up late or not at all.

And let’s not forget the most painful truth: most people can’t tell the difference between human written and AI written content anymore. So stop pretending they can.

How to Not Get Left Behind

This isn’t a call to fire your whole team and worship the machine. It’s a wake up call to stop pretending that content creation is sacred and untouchable. It’s business. And business moves fast.

So here’s what you do if you don’t want to get buried:

  • Automate the basics. Blog outlines, captions, promo emails, let the bots handle them.
  • Focus on strategy. Use your human brain where it counts: brand direction, positioning, big ideas.
  • Test relentlessly. Let AI generate, then use data to double down on what works.
  • Train your team. If your copywriter or designer can’t use AI tools by now, they’re dead weight.
  • Stop being precious. Good enough is better than perfect and late.

Final Thoughts: Adapt or Scroll in Silence

You’re not competing with just other brands anymore. You’re competing with algorithms, bots, and businesses that move faster than you because they let go of their ego and embraced the tools that actually scale.

This isn’t art class anymore. This is a lab, and the experiments are already running with or without your approval.

If you’re still hand crafting every sentence and designing every post like it’s going to hang in a gallery, just know, you’re not being meticulous. You’re being replaced.

Adapt, automate, or get left scrolling while the rest of us scale.