Updates and trends for the week of April 29, 2024 ✨

❌ TikTok ban signed into law

❓What does it mean to subscribe to someone on Instagram & how is it different from “following?”

🎉 Celebrate “National Small Business Week!” And support businesses you love by buying from them AND engaging with their social media and sharing online reviews

Check our social media throughout the week for exclusive giveaways for #SmallBusinessOwners!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, hello. It is Monday again, and that means it's time for another round of updates and trends. What's going on in the world of social media and marketing this week? We will get right to it.

We'll just jump in with the biggest news that came out at the end of last week: The US government has signed into law the TikTok ban, so it hasn't gone into effect immediately. There's still a lot of steps to take, and there's still as an option for ByteDance to sell TikTok to a It's a US-based company, but this is the big major update that we've been talking about and awaiting for the last couple of weeks of these updates. So the TikTok ban is in place. They are moving forward with that in one way or another. So I'll keep updating you as that changes. But at this time, I do want to encourage you to start bringing your TikTok following, if you have one, to other platforms, collect their contact information, add them to your email list, and move them to other sites that at at least at this time, are still available and not being restricted or banned in one way or another.

If you want to talk about it, I'm happy to discuss. I had some nice conversations yesterday with one of my content creators and some friends at a LinkedIn meetup that we did. We were talking about the implications and why does the government want to ban TikTok? What does it mean? Is there merit to some of their arguments? How will that impact people, especially influencers and businesses that a lot of their income to their presence on that particular platform. So again, I encourage you to start bringing people from there to other sites like Instagram or wherever else, collect their contact and figure out other ways to connect with them in the event that TikTok shuts down or is no longer available to you in the next few weeks or months. So that's the major update there.

I did also have one question come in from an audience member about what it means to subscribe to someone on Instagram You can also do it on Facebook. They're a little different, but you may have noticed recently that people you're already following now have a subscribe button available when you're looking at some of their content, especially reels.

It'll pop up next to their name or "handle." And in addition to already following them, you'll see that there are options to subscribe. So this is a way for creators to monetize their content and offer unique content to the people that want to actively be involved in their audience and keep up with what's going on there. So creators can have subscribers, almost like if you've ever belonged to a Patreon of a podcast or something like that or some other digital format, where you pay to get exclusive content from a creator. So what you're doing on Instagram is subscribing, and you can pay to get additional stories that pop up first. You get more reels and exclusive content that people that don't subscribe won't be able to see. So that is newer. You'll start seeing more. I've got some notes here. You'll start seeing more subscriber-only lives, subscriber-based stories. If you subscribe to someone, you get a little badge that says you are a subscriber. This is also different than broadcast channels, which we can talk about a little bit, but that is just a newer feature on Instagram that provides more in different ways for creator accounts, specifically, to connect with their audience and also to monetize what they're doing.

You may or may not know this, but social media is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of technical know-how, especially as new features are added and as social media platforms grow. But it is a way for people who spend a lot of time creating to then monetize their content. So that's update number 2. That was an audience question.

The last thing I want to talk about today will be quick, but this is National Small Business Week. So if you're in a small business, there's really nothing There's nothing small about it. It takes over your whole life in most cases, which is great. If you're passionate about it. It gives you a lot of opportunities, flexibility, and that is what people love about it. But there's nothing small about it. It takes up your whole life. So this week is National Small Business Week. There are a few different ways you can support small businesses. If you have a friend, a family member, a neighbor, or just someone in your community that you know and you want to support, obviously doing business with them is the best way to support.

So patronizing their business, buying from their online shop, stopping by their restaurant, whatever it is, supporting them that way. There's a few other ways you can support their business and celebrate National Small Business Week without even leaving your house. So I wanted to make a couple of recommendations there. The first one, of course, engaging with them on social media. We've talked about this before, about like, share, and comment on their posts, bookmark them, get that little icon in the corner, save their posts for later. All of that helps them reach more people and grow their presence online. Another thing that is incredibly helpful that you can do is write a review. You can do this on Google, Facebook. You can even send them a testimonial directly and just say, Here's some of the great things about your business, or, Here's what I think you're doing really well. Here's some examples of why other people should support you. You can do it from your couch. It doesn't cost any money. It only takes a few minutes, but it is really helpful just to have reviews being updated. And the more reviews you have, the more trust you can build with the community. And when people are thinking about doing business with someone, they're able to reference that and say, "Oh, these people had a good experience. I would like to do that, too." Again, totally free. You can do it for your friend, your neighbor, your spouse, the guy down the street, somebody downtown that you just love their business and want to support them. All that is really helpful.

Just to recap for you, we talked about the TikTok ban that is going into effect. I will continue to update you as changes come out. But in the meantime, start planning on pulling those people from TikTok to other platforms. Two was subscribers on Instagram, so you can subscribe to a creator. It's just a way for monetizing content. You can go in, support that account, get exclusive content that isn't available to the general public.

It is National Small Business Week. I forgot to let you know earlier, but I will tell you now, I am going to be running some giveaways online as a celebration for National Small Business Week. We will be doing giveaways of different offers and packages for small business owners to celebrate Small Business Week.

If you are a local or small business owner, I encourage you to keep an eye out, maybe turn on some notifications for my content because we will be doing some fun giveaways and some really cool package of them offers that will help you as you grow your business and show up online.

That's it for today. I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning in.