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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Weekly scroll, where instead of scrolling for updates, I scroll for you. Every week. I hand pick the most important updates in social media, break them down into plain language, and tell you exactly what it means for your growth. 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 for the trends. We hand pick viral reels every single week and we send them to you in an email. Email content prompts, canva templates, it's all done for you. So all you have to do is copy, paste and post. And also, I want to shout out my friends over at Stan. This podcast is powered by Stan Store. They're hosting a massive 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 dreams. So one winner is going to receive a hundred $thousand and five runner ups will each receive $10,000 to support. Entries are open now and they close at the end of January. January 31st. So if you've been waiting for a sign to finally bet on yourself, why not do it right now? This is it. The link to enter this amazing giveaway is in my show notes. I hope you go do it. All right, let's dive in to this week's biggest shifts that are happening over on social media. Are you ready? I don't know. All right, so the first update we're going to talk about is did you guys hear about Instagram's data breach? So, over the past week, a lot of Instagram users started getting multiple password reset emails that they didn't request, and naturally people panicked. Here's what happened, though, in simple terms. And then I'm gonna go over what Instagram had to say about this. So a cybersecurity company called Malwarebytes reported that information from 17.5 million Instagram users may have leaked and was allegedly being sold on the dark Web. They claim this data could include things like usernames, emails, phone numbers, and other personal details that you just don't want out on the dark Web. Right. So Instagram has said there was no data breach. So I'm wondering who's telling the truth here. According to Instagram, the issue was that an external party found a way to trigger password reset emails for some users. That's why people were getting flooded with reset requests. Instagram says their systems were not hacked. Accounts are Secure and the issue has been fixed. So right now we have two sides. Cybersecurity experts saying there may be leaked data tied to an older Instagram API issue. And then we have Instagram saying there was no breach and no accounts were compromised. What is true is that incidents like this can happen all the time. Guys, phishing, it's so scary. Fake emails, scam messages, I get them myself. Even if you were not directly hacked, with this whole shebang, you need to protect yourself. So I wanted to make sure that I went over some diff different like digital hygiene if you will, so that you can protect your account. So first things first is to make sure that you have on Two Factor Authentication. This is something I turned on immediately when I started really treating my Instagram as a business as well as my Facebook too. Just because they're tied together, don't wait for tomorrow, do it today. This means even if someone gets your password, they still can't access your account without a second code. So this is especially important if Instagram is tied to your business, your income, your brand, deals. Basically, if someone tries to log into your account, it will send Two factor Authentication, which means your cell phone number or if you have like the, there's like an app you can set up too, we'll send you a code. You have to put that code in to get inside. So Two factor authentication, all day, every day, set it up. Number two, stop clicking links and emails, even if they look real. Like these people are getting really, really good at looking legit. Instead, maybe open up Instagram directly, go to your settings checked security alerts inside the app itself because typically they are not going to email you. Um, I know I've gotten some emails from Instagram like saying, you know, hey, did you request a new password? You're good. We didn't let them in. But other than that, I don't get any emails from Instagram except through like the creator program. So just make sure you're being smart. You're double checking that email address before you even click open the email. And if you're still not certain, go into the app and look in your settings first and then also check your logged in devices. Instagram lets you see every single device that you're currently logged into for your account. So if you see a location you don't recognize or a device you don't own, make sure you log out immediately and then you need to change your password. They say to expect more phishing right now. I guess anytime news like this breaks, scammers move super Fast. And they're probably going to try to hop on this train. So fake Instagram support, DMS will probably increase in the next couple weeks. Um, fake verification emails will increase, fake copyright warnings will increase. But Instagram's never going to DM you asking for your password, and like, with their email, they're never going to ask you for that. And if your Instagram is your business, you need to treat it like one. And this is the biggest lesson here. If your Instagram drives sales, leads, income, use a strong, unique password that nobody can guess. Write it down if you need to. I'm one of those people that can never remember my password, but I'm not going to put a stupid password that holds the key to my Instagram, because that's where my business comes from. Right. I've also enabled two factor authentication. I keep my email secure too. I know whoever your email provider is, they sometimes will have, like, security check ins, make sure you're doing those, and then don't reuse the same password across different platforms. Okay? You need to make a different password for every single platform. Creators lose their account every day, not just because of hacks, but just because of weak security habits. So this is your reminder to go get your shit together. All right, next update. And honestly, check here. This feature has not been officially announced by Instagram yet, but I saw it on threads, so I wanted to share it because I thought it was kind of cool. They're saying this could either be in, like, early testing. Maybe it's available to some users, maybe it never even rolls out. But what they're saying is Instagram is testing a new stories feature called Top 5. So here's how it works. Kind of cool. Instead of posting a story to everyone or to your close friends, you'd be able to post a story with only five specific people to choose from. So those people would see your story with a pink story r signaling that it's something more private, more exclusive. Think of it as like, you know, what was it your top eight on. On MySpace, if. If you're getting in somebody's pink circle, you're on their top five. On Instagram, it's more intimate than close friends. It's more intentional than posting publicly. This fits Instagram's bigger trend toward private sharing, smaller circles. You know, they say that there's more engagement happening in the DMs versus on the public feed. So I do see this update coming to fruition. I don't know for sure, but I think it would be super cool to, to have this update and there's a couple things that, you know, we could do as businesses too. Imagine if we had this update and like, you could encourage people like, hey, my top five people that engage with me the most. I'll add you to my exclusive friends list for stories next week where only you're going to hear from me instead of everybody else. I just think it would be a really cool way to get your engagement up with your current audience because at the end of the day, that's what we want to do. We want to nurture the people that are already following us. They're our warm audience. It's easier to sell to them. So this is just a way to push that engagement a little bit further. I think it's a really fun idea. If this does roll out, it's another signal that personal connection is being prioritized over mass reach. It's not trying to go viral. It's quality over virality. Right. Quality over virality. All right, next update. Threads is testing live chats for communities. So this is another tester out there. We don't know if it's going to happen for sure or not. Threads is reportedly working on a new feature for communities called live chat. And what that means. It's kind of like if you go live on Instagram, but it's like a chat, right? Instead of Communities being mostly post based, Threads would allow creators to open a real time group chat inside of a community. According to early reports, creators would be able to set a start and end time for the chat, choose who's allowed to message, name the chat, and add a profile photo. So think of it as like a scheduled live conversation instead of an endless comment thread. Now this, this feature hasn't been officially rolled out yet, like I said, but it lines up perfectly with where meta is headed. And I told you guys, more private conversations, more real time interaction, less passive scrolling. I think that this could be a really good update for all of us. This is Threads signal that you don't just want to post content, but you want to start a conversation. Feeds can be super noisy, comments can get buried, but a live chat can that, that can create the urgency that you need and the presence that you need to get closer to a group of people. Like, I don't know, it just reminds me of like a Slack channel or maybe even like that group text that you have on your phone, but inside of a platform that people are already using. So I'm a fan of this update. All right, next update. What is working on Instagram? Right, so this isn't a specific update that I saw online. That's actually all I have for you as far as platform specific updates. But I kind of wanted to start talking about what I'm seeing working. Right. Like I can give you guys all the updates in the world, but at the end of the day, don't you want to know like what's actually working on Instagram right now so that you can execute on it? So I thought I would do a little section here where I talk about some of the hot trends I'm seeing on Instagram. Um, you can take this one specifically that I'm talking about today and use it for Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, all the above. Okay. So talking head reels. I don't know if you've been looking at my profile lately, but I have posted quite a few talking head reels in the last week or so. Right. So it's one of the biggest things that I'm seeing work on Instagram and all these bigger creators that I look at, like when I go to their page, what is different? What are they posting more of that I'm not. And I notice like a lot of them are showing up with like a series or they're talking and they're, they're educating with their voice. They're not just you know, throwing a trending audio and doing a short video. They're doing these longer ish videos like 30 seconds or less that actually are like conversational teach worthy moment, authority driven moment. Something I teach about in social media school. By the way, if you've ever taken my course, I have some specific content pillars that you should post your content around. And like I said, some of those are like authority content, like you showing yourself as the expert. And then there's like conversational content and engaging content where you're getting people to share stuff. So you can lean into any type of content pillar here and you can make it into a talking head. You do not need fancy edits. You don't have to use trending audio, you don't have to overly produce these reels. So if you go to my account right now and look at my talking head videos from last week, they've got minimal editing on there. So I, I will put record them with a microphone. I see that they do better when I have better audio. So I did invest in a really good microphone. It's a DJI mic. I'll link it in the show notes for you guys. It's really, really good microphone. So first off, I level up my audio with A microphone, and then I'll get in front of like a ring light, and then I'll talk. Okay. And I will just teach one specific thing. I'm not like, trying to cover several different topics. I'm focused on one specific pain point that my audience has, and I'll talk about it. And then I pull that video over into Edits, the Edits app, and I just minimally edit it with text overlays. Sometimes I'll put screenshots over top so that people can like get a visual while they're listening to me talk. But I've noticed, like, I posted one yesterday and I had a ton of purchase confirmations in my email afterwards. People were buying my Instagram starter growth kit because of the talking head video I put out there. So people are kind of getting tired of the mundane, right? And all of our Instagram feeds are flooded with AI content. So the best way for you to really pop out and show up for these people is to just talk to them. People want to hear from someone, not at them. And talking head reels feel more personal, more trustworthy, and they're just easier to connect with your audience with. So they also keep people watching longer too, which Instagram loves, by the way. Now, I'm not going to say that me putting these talking head videos got me like a million likes versus me posting trending audios, because you'll actually see my trending audio reels perform better. But when it comes to conversions, that's where the talking head come in. And I think this works because it helps me build trust really quickly. Like, they see that I am educated enough, I can talk about what it is that I say I'm good at. It feels like a one on one conversation. I believe it helps stop the scroll because I'm making eye contact and I'm using my voice. And I'm just trying to position myself as the authority and not just the audio, Right? So this format rewards clarity over the creativity. You don't have to be super creative. You just need to be super cleared on what it is that you're talking about. Now with that, a lot of people are like, okay, Caitlin, great talking head video. I don't know what to talk about. And of course you don't, so that's why you're here. So I've got a few out of the box ideas for you guys. How many did I put together? Okay, I put three ideas. So if you can at least take one of these ideas and go create a talking head video, tag me in it. Post it to your stories tag, call her creator. I would love to share your video for you. Okay, so the first one I have, this one's super simple, but it's powerful. Your hook is going to be, I used to believe this until it cost me. Okay, and you're going to start with a belief that you've outgrown something that totally doesn't make sense anymore. Maybe you used to believe in it, but now you know it's totally not true. An example would be something like, I used to think posting every day was the only way to grow until I burned out and my engagement dropped. Like, okay, what, why, why does this work? Because one, it's honest. Two, it shows an evolution. It shows a story of how I went from X to Y to Z. And it invites people into the conversation like, oh, okay, so like she actually stopped doing this because she believed in it, but this happened. You know what I mean? Like, you're explaining something, something in real life that you did that changed and here was the outcome and here's why they need to listen to it. Those work really, really well. If you ever need like a, a good hook for something like that, you could always go into ChatGPT and just say, like, you're looking for like a hook around beliefs that you've outgrown and just see what, what ChatGPT has that pertains to your specific niche. And again, try to focus on one specific pain point at a time. The next one I had for you guys was if I had to start from zero today, these always work very well. I've seen them work on any niche. Instagram growth coaches, I've seen it work on fitness coaches. You could even like say you're an AC company and you're like, okay, but how do I make that work for me? You could even say, like, if I had to start from zero today, you could say something like, if I got my first, if I wanted. Hold on. Like, maybe you talk about like how to take care of your air conditioning for the first time if you were just starting to take. Maybe I'm trying to think, how could we lean into this? Maybe you talk about first time home buyers and they've never, you know, taken care of an AC because they've always had landlords or they've always lived in apartment homes and they've always taken care of it. So maybe you say, you know, if I was a first time home buyer, here's what I'd do to make sure my air conditioning last. You totally don't use that one specifically, but maybe take that and put it into Chat GBT and see what it says. But you're basically just telling them like, hey, it's okay to start from zero. Here's how you're going to do it. And you kind of give them like some tips or some hacks so that they're not having to just learn everything on their own. It kind of feels like you're being generous to them positions you as an experienced person in that field and it helps you cut through their overwhelm. So you're helping them figure it out. And from there I can tell you that's authoritative content and that's where they're going to want to follow you because they trust you. The last one I have here is the thing everyone is ignoring right now, and I love this one. You're gonna call out a blind spot, right? You're gonna make them. So maybe it's something like the reason your content isn't converting has nothing to do with your hooks. Or hey, here's why you can't lose that last ten pounds. Maybe another one is, hey, here's why you keep getting xyz. Hey, here's why you haven't been able to secure a home loan. Hey, here's why you keep losing. What is it when they put in, like real estate when they buy a home, here's why you keep losing out on the home of your dreams or something like that. It's a pattern disrupt, right? So you're, you're, you're calling out that blind spot and you're teaching them why. And what this does is this encourages, saves. People typically want to save this stuff or at least share it with someone who they know is struggling with that problem. And both of those are algorithm signals. Like, hey, this content's doing really well. Let's make sure we continue to push it to more and more people. So an easy one for, for, for all of this. The easiest way to do this is to just film it in one take. Like, look at the camera like you're talking to a person. Keep it under 45 seconds. And that might mean you run the camera for a full minute while you talk. And then you go back in and you cut out dead noise. That's what I typically have to do. Scripting also will help here. If you have an idea, go ahead and put it into Chat gbt. Ask him to put a simple script together for you. Talk about that script over and over. Like, read it over and over and learn it. And then from there you can go Record yourself and you' more confident in what you're talking about so that you don't have any mess up. Make sure you say things clearly and then let it be imperfect. Like it does not need to be a perfect video. People want us to be messy right now because again, AI is taking over. So us being messy, not perfectly packaged like that, is what the Internet wants. So give it to them now. Before I wrap this up, I want to remind you that if you're listening to all of this thinking, okay, I get it, but I still need help doing this consistently, Caitlin. Like, I need you in my back pocket. It. That's exactly why Club Influence exists. Club Influence is where we take what's working on Instagram right now and we turn it into something that you can use inside. We break down weekly Instagram trends in plain language. We give you specific examples and ideas, we give you caption starters. There's talking head prompts in there that you can film in one take. There's hooks, there's constant ideas, posting guidance. Everything you need to stay consistent and not burn out is inside of Club Influence. I built it for creators and business owners who want to grow and not like force that growth. It needs to be sustainable growth that they can keep up with. So that's why we we send you stuff every Monday so you have a week to complete stuff. So if you're ready to stop guessing and stop overthinking and start showing up with intention, Club Influence is waiting for you. And you can find the link in my show notes. I'd love to have you inside. We're also accepting clients right now for social media management. If you did not know, Influence Marketing Studio is my done for you social media agenc. So we will post on Facebook and Instagram for you a couple times a week, depending on what you're looking for. We create a mix of carousels, posts for you, reels, static images, all the things, storytelling, captions. We do it all for you so that if you're interested in that, you can go to influencestudio.com influences with an E and you can click on my services page and you can learn more about social media marketing. All right, friend, that's your weekly scroll for this week. I love you. I'm cheering you on and I cannot wait to see you next episode.