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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Weekly scroll, powered by Clover creator. And my friends over at Stan, this week is a goodie. I've always got really good updates for you guys, but with it being the holiday season, I feel like there's a lot of things that nobody else is talking about. So you're gonna hear it all right here today. This episode is brought to you by Club Influence. Your all in one monthly membership for creators who want to grow on Instagram without spending hours researching trends. And before into today's episode, I have to tell you about this massive giveaway that Stan is doing right now. It. I can't even get over it. I wish I could actually apply for it, but I can't. So Stan is hosting a giveaway right now, and it's one you don't want to miss. They're covering one person's living expenses for an entire year so that they can go all in on their dream. It's called their Dare to Dream campaign. So one winner is going to receive $100,000 and then five runner ups will each receive $10,000 to support their business entries open up January 1st and they close on January 31st. So you've got one month, guys, to apply to this. I've got this linked for you in the show notes. So if you've been waiting for a sign to finally bet on yourself for 2026, this is it. A stan is going to give you everything you need to make your dreams come true so that you can focus on on that dream. All right, let's dive into this week's biggest shifts happening over on social. Now, this week's update is a little bit short because it is the holiday break. I'm not seeing a whole lot changing, but there are a couple big ones that I did find for us that are incredibly important for you. So the first update is for Instagram. Instagram is using AI to generate SEO summaries for posts. So if you've gone to a reel on Instagram right now, if you click on it, like to go put a comment, you might see like this little summary of what the video is about. And sometimes I'll see this for my own reels, and sometimes they make sense for what my video is. And sometimes I'm like, that's not really what my video is about. So the DL here is that Instagram is using AI to generate these summaries to help posts rank better for Google search. So these summaries are not written by the creator themselves. AI is basically scraping your Reel and trying to understand what it's about. So it is so, so, so, so, so important what you decide to put as your hook, what you put for your text overlay, what you put for your caption, because that's how Meta AI is going to generate that summary. And so another thing here too, I don't know if any of you guys like ever get really get into the SEO part of Post on Instag. When you go to your settings, there's actually a little part in there that says alt text, which is basically like alternative text. And that's for if you want to like explicitly explain what the post is about, you can always do that for your post. It will only help you with search engine optimization. But the goal here basically is to help Instagram content get discovered outside the app. So you have to be intentional about what your caption is about your text overlay. Because if you're say you're posting something really good, educational, maybe a reel or something, but then your caption just says something like mic drop, okay, guess what? AI is going to think that your reel is about mic drop, and then it's going to get indexed for people probably searching for microphones or mics. And that's not what we're doing here. So you need to be intentional about your caption. Meta has confirmed they're using AI to create these keyword rich summaries so that Google can better understand what a post is about. In theory, this means more discoverability for creators, but in reality, it does raise a bit of concerns around the accuracy, the creator intent, and how human the Internet really is becoming. So the bottom line here is that Instagram content is now being optimized for Google 2026, y'. All. We are not sleeping on social media marketing. We are utilizing social media as the number one sales driver for our business. We are posting consistently, we are optimizing our content, we are using, you know, descriptive captions, we are hiring the agencies. If we don't have time to do this, hello, Influence Marketing Studio. That's exactly what my team does. If you need a team to just take over all of this for you, like say you just don't have time for all this nonsense, we will do it for you. We will create the content, we will create the SEO enriched captions and we'll post it for you. So how can creators take advantage of this update? Well, one, you don't get to control the AI summary, but you do get to influence what the AI pulls from. So here's how to play it really Smart one, we're going to write captions like search engines are reading them because they are so use clear language, full sentences. An example of this would be like, instead of, oh, I'm obsessed with this. And that's all your caption says. Say something like, sharing my go to Instagram engagement strategy for small business owners in 2026. Number two, be very specific in your first two lines of your caption. AI is going to pull context from your caption. So, so tell it exactly what the post is about early on. Who's it for? What problem is it solving? What topic is it covering? Think of it like this. If Google summarized this, what would make sense here? And then third, optimize your bio. Guys, I always tell you to optimize your bio for SEO. If you need help with this, I have a free Instagram bio checklist where I kind of walk you through exactly how to write your bio for Instagram search. But you need to make sure that you are writing in there what you do, who you help, and then maybe some keywords that Google would want to see to for it to make sense to them. Last little tip here, don't rely on AI to do the storytelling for you. This update actually rewards the human clarity here. AI struggles with emotion and intention. So the clearer that you are, the better the summary will be. All right, update number two, Instagram is maximizing recommendations, which means smaller creators might win in 2026. We've already kind of saw this happening towards the end of 2025, but basically Instagram just confirmed that its content recommendation system is now fully rolled out. And this is one of the most creator friendly updates that we've seen in a while. The goal here is to level out the playing field so that reach is based on performance and not just your follower count. So if you're like, oh, I don't have enough followers to be posting content like this, you're wrong. You actually, this is the time to be doing that because the algorithm is going to favor all of your accounts no matter how many followers you have, as long as the content is good. So let's talk about what's changed here. So when you post a reel on Instagram, it's now shown to your followers and then there's a small test group of non followers. So if that group of non followers watches, likes, shares, see, saves it, then Instagram is going to push that reel to a larger audience and then a larger one after that. And then this just repeats as long as performance stays strong. So this means follower count matters. Less engagement matters. More smaller creators. You have a real shot at big reach right now. So you cannot sleep on Instagram. And this is everything that I have been talking about inside of my reinvention challenge, inside of call her creator. All of my content is about stepping into your light guys. For 2026, now is the time you will get paid for it from the Instagram algorithm. So Instagram says this system is already leading to higher view counts for many creators. And you know you also have to think about this. It's helped by the fact that people are watching more video overall. And reels. This is crazy. Reels are reshared 4,5 billion times per day across Instagram and Facebook. So more watching plus more sharing equals more opportunities for you to get discovered on Instagram. Now how can you maximize this update? What should you be doing? 1. Create for non followers. Like yes, you want to keep some of your content for the people that are already following you and nurture them and sell to them. But you also need to keep in mind that you know every other couple posts act like you're reaching out to no one to like people who don't know about you. Right? So your reel needs to make sense for someone who's never seen you before, heard of you, like would you ask yourself questions like would this content even make sense for someone who's never heard of me before? Does it explain why they should care within the first three seconds that they're watching it? And if not, the test audience won't pass it along. So you really have to be intentional with your content. 2. Focus on that early engagement. That first test group matters. So to get them to engage, there's things you can do to increase your odds. 1. Make sure that your topic is very clear immediately. 2. Don't have like this long intro or inside jokes to where non followers aren't going to understand because they'll just keep scrolling. And three the obvious one strong hook in the first, second and a half on top of this early watch time and shares are what unlock the wider distribution. So make sure that you're posting consistently. Doesn't really need to be perfect. I've been having a lot of fun this holiday season. I've not really been like posting too much Instagram growth tips, but also like personality type content and shareable content. I did a funny espresso martini reel. It's gotten like over 200,000 views at this point. It's because I'm playing around with my audience and my content and I'm just testing things and it's, it's, it's fun. So maybe once a week carve out one post a week where you just get to have fun with your content and post for a brand new audience. And then another tip here is to be picky about the audio that you pick. So reels with audio are usually easier to recommend and reshare. That doesn't mean that every reel needs to have trending audio, but silence can sometimes hurt your discovery. So if you're doing a video without any kind of audio in the background, make sure that you are giving a ton of value or else it might not get shared as much. Even like subtle background music can typically improve the performance. So if you ever see my little podcast snippets, I always have or I always try to have some audio in the background playing to where it's not just quiet right? I want, I want to keep people engaged and then keep your content recommendation friendly. So if you want to maximize reach, avoid posting low quality videos clickbait that doesn't deliver. You're just going to make people mad. Sensitive content, borderline content like political content, if that's not your niche, just I personally stay away from that stuff because I'm not trying to ruffle feathers. And then also here, expect unpredictability. And don't panic. Instagram straight up said reach is going to be harder to predict. That's not a flaw, it's the system working. Some posts will outperform unexpectedly. We never know why. Your job is just to stay in the game long enough to catch the wave. Update number three for Instagram. This is a good one to Instagram. Reels Camera just got an upgrade. So Instagram just rolled out new updates to the Reels camera, making it easier to film and edit content directly inside of the app, especially for creators posting on the go. So you can now record up to 20 minutes of video directly in the Reels camera and Instagram says this unlocks more creative freedom and longer storytelling along with smoother in app editing and usability improvements. So some other updates with this include easier removal of clips with a new like undo option, a slider to control touch up intensity, improved green screen functionality in case you're new here, I am a huge fan of the green screen effect and I believe that it performs really really well. When people do green screen reels and like explain something or maybe talk about a headline or have that in the background, they always typically perform really well. So if you haven't tried the green screen effect, definitely recommend doing that. The app now Also has an enhanced timer and countdown tool. So the goal here is to make reels creation faster and more intuitive without needing a third party app. Duh. They want to keep us on the Instagram app as much as possible. So if you utilize the edits app, they're going to favor your reel. All right, some takeaways on how you can take advantage of this. Record long but publish short. So maybe you record that 20 minute video, but you're going to cut it up into quick bite sized pieces of a video batch content directly in Instagram. This is huge for creators who don't want to over edit and overdo it. We typically schedule a lot of our content for our clients. For myself, if it's a reel, we, we schedule it inside of the Instagram app and then keep your content short and sweet. If your goal is reach or discovery or new followers, stick to short form reels even though longer recording is available. Think of the longer camera feature as kind of like a behind the scenes tool. Like I'll kind of, if I'm ever doing like behind the scenes of like a day in the life of myself or like I'm doing something, I'll go ahead and record the whole thing and it might be 10 minutes but I'm gonna split that up into like 30 or 20 or 10 second clips. I never, I would never post the whole 20 minute video. The chances of you getting someone to stick around for the full 20 minute video are slim tonight. So I keep them very short and sweet. And that is your weekly scroll. The social media updates, the news, the trends you actually need to know heading into 2026. If this episode helped you or if you learned something new, it would mean the world to me if you shared it to your stories, you tagged me and call her creator or my personal Instagram Kaitlyn Rhodes. And if you want more updates like this, the trends, the hacks, the growth strategies, come join us inside Club Influence. I will link it in the show notes. We are a group of small business owners, creators who are really just trying to make it over on Instagram. We share weekly trends, we've got Canva templates in there, we've got a chat going on. So we're always there to support one another and I hope you guys have a lovely holiday week and I will see you back next week as we step into 2026.