It was a busy week for social media, but three updates stood out as particularly relevant to small businesses, creators, and trade professionals.
1. YouTube Is Raising the Bar for New Monetized Creators
YouTube announced that beginning February 1, 2027, new creators seeking full YouTube Partner Program ad revenue will face higher thresholds. The requirement increases from 4,000 to 8,000 qualified public watch hours in the previous year, or from 10 million to 20 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days, along with 1,000 subscribers. Existing YPP members are not being removed because of the change. blog.youtube
The important takeaway for a welding business is not necessarily YouTube monetization. It is the direction YouTube is taking. The platform is putting more emphasis on consistent audiences and sustained viewing rather than hoping one Short goes viral. That reinforces the value of building a library of useful welding, fabrication, equipment, and educational videos that can continue attracting viewers over time.
2. Facebook Is Bringing More AI Into Creator Management
Facebook's redesigned Creator Studio is being positioned as an AI powered companion for creators, with tools intended to help people understand their performance, identify opportunities, and manage their presence more efficiently. The updated Creator Studio is now also appearing as a standalone iOS app. Social Media Today
For a small trade business, this could eventually make Facebook management less time consuming. The important thing is not to let AI replace the actual voice of the business. Use these tools to identify what is working, generate ideas, and save time on repetitive tasks while keeping your actual experience and expertise at the center of the content.
3. LinkedIn's Collaborative Posts Create a New Networking Opportunity
LinkedIn's new Collaborative Posts feature is rolling out globally and allows members and Company Pages to co-author posts with up to five other people or Pages. The feature works with text, photos, video, documents, polls, events, and other post formats. When collaborators accept, the post appears on their profiles or Pages as well. LinkedIn Newsroom
This could be particularly useful in the trades because so much work is collaborative already. A welding business could create a post with a customer, equipment manufacturer, supplier, employee, training organization, or another trade professional. Instead of simply tagging another business, you can potentially create one piece of content that represents a shared project and reaches multiple professional networks.
Note: We still don’t have this function available to us, it could be that our computers or programs need an update, or simply were not ones that have the feature yet. Sometimes new functions like this get added to chunks of accounts instead of everyone at once, so that could be the issues as well. We are keeping a close eye on this and as soon as it’s available to us, we will be using it, testing it out and then writing about it.
If you want to be part of our first collaboration post on LinkedIn, shoot us an email with your LinkedIn account link or handle and we'll get you in there and turnout into a party.
Trend to Watch Next Week
Social media is becoming increasingly collaborative.
The platforms are giving businesses more ways to work with creators, customers, employees, and other businesses instead of treating every account as an isolated publisher. For trade businesses, this is a natural fit. Your best marketing opportunities may already be sitting inside your existing relationships. Use these opportunity’s to grow even more.
One Action for Welding and Trade Businesses
Find one person or business you worked with recently and create something together.
It could be a project recap with a customer, a welding demonstration with a supplier, a shop tour with another fabricator, or a short interview with someone in your industry. Don't make the entire conversation about selling. Make it about the work, the lesson, or the relationship.
That gives both businesses something useful to share while introducing each audience to the other. This also is a great opportunity to take advantage of the collaborator posts.
Welding Industry Spotlight: ESAB
ESAB had an interesting week from a social and product marketing standpoint. The company is building anticipation around the next era of the Renegade VOLT, with a recent LinkedIn post teasing that a new version is coming. That is a good example of using social media to create curiosity before revealing the full product story rather than immediately dumping every specification into one post. LinkedIn
ESAB has also demonstrated how effectively welding brands can combine products, education, events, creators, and community. Its 2026 Blue Collar Tour is a particularly strong example, building on a 2025 campaign that generated more than 3.3 million social media impressions in 60 days and another 500,000 views through ESAB's own channels. ASIA PACIFIC ENGLISH
The ESAB Renagade Volt is already a welding machine that is changing the game in the welding industry but they are changing it again by adding spool fun capabilities. For those of you that weld, you know how big this is. Now the machine can do TIG, Stick, MIG, Flux-Core, and weld almost any metal out there. And YES, it should also be able to weld aluminum. That means a full mobile welding rig that can fit in the front of a 1980 Volkswagen Bug, 2020 Prius or even a Ford Model-A.
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Thank you for being a Slag Tag Media member and spending part of your week with us. The goal of this blog is simple: help you understand what is changing, show you how it applies to a real small business, and give you something useful to try.
If there is a social media question you've been wondering about, send it our way. It might become a future Members Blog article.
Keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep building your business.
Have a great weekend,
Jonny
slagtagmedia@gmail.com
P.S. For those of you that ate attending FabTech Expo this year in Las Vegas, Nevada, we have created a “Channel” on Instagram dedicated to all things FabTech and would love to invite you to follow it. It’s news, updates, events, and helpful tips, basically all the info you can find online all over the place… all in one place. https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY5TksiYmk8MPi5/