Updates & Trends: Week of April 15, 2024

A quick rundown of recent updates in the world of social media marketing… Plus, we discuss some tips for managing professional versus personal accounts ✨

Questions? Ask anytime! Check back weekly for more updates and insights ✨

I am back after a two week or so hiatus. I was traveling, but I'm back in the office now, and I do have some updates for you.

We'll go through a few quick things and new features, and then I have another topic that I wanted to talk about because it's come up in conversations a lot recently. So the first thing, you may have noticed there's a new sticker available in Instagram stories. Some accounts have it, some don't. I tried to use it today, and this account doesn't have it, but some of my other accounts do. So over the next few weeks, you should see it become available. It is the notify sticker.

So what you can do is click on the sticker, drop it in one of your stories, and then your followers are able to click on it and turn on the little radio button to receive notifications for when you share stories, posts, reels, and go LIVE.

Also on Instagram: coming soon (probably with a slow roll out, so some people have it before others) they're developing what is called a Reels blend. My understanding of it's very similar to a blended playlist on Spotify. So If you tried this before, if you use Spotify, what it does is combine two accounts and then pick music that each of you likes and put it together in one playlist. You can do this in the future with Instagram reels. What it'll do is combine different types of content that you like, that your friend likes, and then put them together into one place. We're not exactly sure what that will look like yet, but that is supposedly coming down the pipeline.

On LinkedIn, they are experimenting developing some short form video content. So just like TikTok, just like Instagram reels and Facebook, which allows for reels, and then YouTube Shorts. LinkedIn is exploring their own option for that short form video content, so we'll keep an eye I'll look for updates on that.

And as soon as it's available, I'll definitely look forward to utilizing that as well. It's a great way to duplicate what you're already doing. Just use those videos in multiple basis so you can really get the most out of your content. So That's LinkedIn.

TikTok: I don't really have any updates for you. The ban right now is pending the Senate. They don't seem in a hurry to move forward with any of that. Yet, President Biden did say that if he receives it, he will sign off on it. There's a lot of moving pieces right now. Part of what the ban is asking for is for the US-based subsidiary of ByteDance/TikTok to be sold to someone in the United the United States because there are concerns about security breaches, and there are also concerns about propaganda and the potential for the Chinese government to be distributing information that may or may not be factual, that may qualify as propaganda. So that's that with TikTok.

And then all the platforms, whether it's LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, they're all adding in new AI integrations and features. They're all experimenting with this They've all had some version of it.

If you have Siri on your phone, you've been using AI for a while. If you have an Alexa or Google Home, all those things, you're already using some version of AI. What social media platforms are doing is just finding some integrations that can help either with content production, with communications, advertising in a lot of cases (because they're very big on selling advertising and features like that), chat integrations, et cetera. They're all different, and they're all in different phases. Some are active right now. There's a new AI sticker feature on some Instagram accounts. Meta is doing some group management with AI as well. Along with that, they're also updating their AI policies. What you may see, specifically, is stickers or labels just like the misinformation or unverified fact-checking stickers that you see, and like the sponsored content. You'll see, if you scroll by an ad, it'll say sponsored or promotion or whatever, depending on each platform.

You may start to see "This content was created by AI" or "this image was generated by AI," just like they started adding flags for brand partnerships, sponsorships, etc.

Those are my main updates. I did not really track the time here, but since we're here, we can talk also about another topic that's come up recently in a lot of conversations with friends, with clients, with people in my different networking spheres. We'll start by talking about engagement. I think we've chatted about this a little bit before, but there's inbound engagement and outbound engagement. So inbound is what we think of when we are talking about engaging with other posts. So that's liking people's comments, replying to their comments, responding to messages, anything that's coming into your account. That's an inbound engagement. What's really valuable in growing your account, reaching new audiences, et cetera, is outbound engagement. So that's when you find your target audience and you comment on their posts. You find complementary businesses. So with my clients, I usually work on generating a list of referral partners or complementary businesses, wholesalers, people they partner with, and engaging with those accounts. So that's outbound engagement.

And what I wanted to address since it's come recently is being careful about your engagements on your business and professional accounts versus some other accounts. So you've probably noticed by now I have several. I use them all for different purposes. They also allow me to see when these new features, like the new stickers and AI and other things, are rolled out. They show up differently on these accounts, but I also use it as a way to niche down and communicate with the people that I'm trying to reach with each of these topics. If you have a professional account, whether Whether you have a social media manager, whether you're working with me or not, it's important to be mindful of who you're engaging with and how you're engaging from your business account and not using it as a personal account. With those business and professional accounts, we want to keep them completely separate and use them as a way to connect with, like I said, your target audience, referral partners, networking partners, et cetera. If you have a business account, we want to keep that just for... I'll use @LuisTeachesJiuJitsu as an example because he and I were talking about this the other day.

He's a jiu-jitsu instructor. He's looking to connect with people in the martial arts and fitness spheres. When he scrolls, I want his entire feed to be about jiu-jitsu. He should all Boys see jiu-jitsu, fitness, martial arts, motivation, things that fit into that category and not random memes. He's very nice and interacts with my content, but even me keeping that separate for his personal account. That way, when you log into the jiu-jitsu account, you see only stuff related to that. You see the people that you want coming into your class. You see students, you see other teachers in the area, things like that, and different jiu-jitsu and martial arts brands. You can take that and apply it to whatever your business is, whether you're a hair and nails studio or you sell custom candles.

You want what you see in your in your Explore page, etc. All to fit into those categories. So you're always engaging with people that are in some way connected to or could be connected to your business, and then saving celebrities, influencers, even me if you want, putting those on your personal account and following from there. That way it's not confusing the algorithm.

You're telling, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever, that these are the people that you want your account to be matched with. This is who you want to be shown to. These are profiles like yours. That way the people that you're trying to reach will find you. And it's not confused by funny cat videos and memes and jokes and things like that or personal activities or celebrities. Definitely with a business account, there's no point in following any celebrities. It's not going to help grow your account unless you, for some reason, have some special relationship with them or you know them from another life. Their content is not going to be particularly helpful to you, especially if they have nothing to do with what you do in business. So I do recommend unfollowing some of those. Just keeping it for your personal account. You can do whatever you want with a personal at home account that you have, but we do want to keep the business and professional activities separate. So I will get off my soapbox, but that's my little update for today. It's come up a lot, not just with Luis, but you can go check out his account if you want.

It's come up a lot in conversations, so I just wanted to address that to the masses since we've been talking about it a lot.

And then other than that, just a quick rundown of what we talked about earlier in the video. We've got new stickers and features from Instagram, like the Notify sticker, AI stickers, an upcoming Instagram Reel blend, so you can find other ways to connect with and share content with your friends. No movement on the TikTok ban. Linkedin short for a video is on the way, and AI is popping up everywhere on different platforms. If you have any questions about that or topic that you want to see in a future video or in other content that my team is putting out, feel free to comment below. Send us a message, email anytime with a question, topic request, different idea for something you want to see.

And that's that. I hope you have a great week, and I'll talk to you soon.