← Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
154. The Weekly Scroll: Meta AI Agents, Long-Form Content on Instagram & New Reels Features
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This episode is sponsored by Shopify, HomeServe and Fora Travel. Shopify. Starting a business sounds exciting until you're actually in it. The website, the products, the emails, it's a lot. That's why I love Shopify. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your Brand's Style and HomeServe. Owning a home is amazing until something breaks. And it's never anything small. It's always those expensive, worst timing situations. That's why I love the idea of HomeServ. It's like a subscription for your home, helping cover those unexpected repairs and plans. Start at just 499amonth. And Fora Travel, are you the one who always plans the trips, hotels, itineraries, all of it? You're basically already a travel advisor. You're just not getting paid yet. With Fora, you can change that from building your business to protecting your home to even getting paid to plan your next trip. These are the tools that make it all easier. Launch your business with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com.com CHC and HomeServe. Protect your home systems at homeserve.com or become a fora advisor at foratravel.com CHC that's F O R A travel.com CHC welcome back to another episode of Call Her Creator where we build brands, businesses and lives that you actually love. Today's episode is our weekly scroll series where we talk about what's actually working in the world of content creators, business, and building a brand people actually care about. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Rhodes. I'm a social media strategist, creator, agency owner. I'm your friend who spends way too much time on Instagram. So I've got the best Instagram updates for you so that you don't have to keep scrolling. Let's cut through the noise, grab your coffee, throw me in your ears on your hot girl, walk your money, walk your school pickup line, wherever you are. And let's get into what's trending on Instagram right now. All right, so first Instagram update, because this one's actually. I'm really interested in this one. Instagram is currently testing the ability to add individual captions to each slide inside of a carousel post. So not just one caption underneath the whole carousel. Imagine being able to add a unique caption, like unique Context to slide 1, slide 2, slide 3, all the way through. And immediately my strategist brain goes, ooh, this could change a lot. Because if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know I love a good carousel. Carousels have been quietly crushing for a while now because Instagram has openly admitted they like them. Adam Mossery, the CEO of Instagram, has talked about this before. Carousels naturally keep people on the app a little bit longer because they require more interaction. People swipe, they pause, they consume more content, and then guess what? Instagram loves time on their platform. So from a strategy standpoint, carousel posts already tend to perform very well because they naturally create that longer attention. But this part, this opens up a whole new layer for us. Because right now, if you're creating a carousel, most people are relying on the design itself to tell the full story. The text on the graphics, the hook, maybe the caption underneath. But imagine if every slide became its own little mini storytelling moment. Now you can expand on your thought slide by slide, tell a deeper story, add educational content layer in that emotional storytelling. Or honestly, you can create almost a mini blog post experience inside of Instagram. Which side note, Instagram is increasingly rewarding content that keeps people there longer. So this aligns. So for creators this could be huge for educators. Amazing coaches love this brands storytelling gold even for product based businesses. Imagine slide one is your hook, Slide two explains the pain point, Slide three shows the solution, Slide four answers any objections and then slide five is your call to action. And every single one has contextual copy underneath it. That is huge. That is powerful. Now before everyone goes overboard and writes a desertion on every slide, please remember, just because you can doesn't mean you should. We still need content to feel super easy to consume. People's attention spans are still very short, so we need this to be easy. But strategically, this is an update that we need to watch. Because if Instagram rolls this out fully, I think carousel storytelling gets a whole lot more interesting for all of us. All right, next update is actually a big one and I think a lot of creators are going to miss why this matters so much. So listen up, Instagram is apparently looking more seriously at long form content again, which I'm very surprised by this because what have we learned from IG Live tv? It just went nowhere. It went away. So before you panic and think like great, another content format I have to master. Relax, let's unpack this first. So Instagram's VP of product basically shared that short form vertical video alone may not be enough for creators to succeed long term. Right? Especially as Instagram thinks more about TV connected devices and creator Monetization So immediately my brain goes, interesting. Because if you've been in this space long enough, what. What has happened? IGTV died. Instagram tried this before. It flopped. We all moved on. So naturally my first thought was, okay, what's different about this this time that's gonna make people actually do it? Honestly, I think creator behavior is a little bit different than it was five years ago. Audience behavior is a little different than it was five years. Five years ago. And then the platform competition itself is very different. Because if we zoom out, TikTok owns short form discovery, right? YouTube dominates long form trust, watch time. Honestly, revenue at the end of the day. So Instagram is sitting in the middle trying to figure out, how do we keep creators here longer? Because here's what Instagram knows. Short form gets attention. Long form builds deeper relationships. So that's why podcasts work. That's why YouTube works well. That's why longer storytelling content converts differently. And I've said this before, but a 30 second reel view and a 40 minute podcast listen are not the same level of trust. Not even close. If someone listens to me talk for 45 minutes while they're on a walk or in their car or folding laundry, doing their life, that is a much deeper relationship for me than someone casually consuming one of my reels while waiting in line at Target. Both of them matter, and I appreciate both of them, but they serve different purposes. And I think Instagram knows that. Which means this could actually be a very interesting shift if it were to work. Because if Instagram starts creating more support for longer storytelling, that's going to change. The content strategy could mean more long form video opportunities, more serialized storytelling, more. More podcast integration, more creator monetization options, more opportunities for educational creators. So this aligns with what I'm already seeing. People really are craving that depth again. And I don't know if you guys saw my post yesterday. I am so sick of all of, like, the creator AI slop, Like the AI twins. And it's not because of this, it's because of this. Like, we are craving that depth again. We're sick of seeing the same thing over and over again. So yes, there may be short attention spans, and yes, hooks may still matter, but there's also this growing desire for some substance. People want connection, they want stories, and they want actual perspective. Not just three tips before your coffee gets cold. And I think creators who understand both of these will win. This is so important, because I do not think this means stop making reels. I think this just means that Short form is still gonna be the discovery engine, but long form is going to be that relationship building, that trust building, and that's how people go from follower to buyer. So I like this update. That's the strategy, in my opinion. Watch this update closely. If Instagram does start leaning into long form in a bigger way, the creators who know how to tell stories and not just chase all the trends, they're going to be in a really good position. All right, next update. Kind of wild. Kind of plays into what I just said, though. But Meta is reportedly preparing to launch AI agents that can actually perform tasks for users. And if you're hearing that and thinking, cool, another AI headline. That's what I thought too, but stay with me on this because this one's a little different. We are moving from AI that answers questions to AI that takes action for us now. And that's a very different world. So think less of like, hey, write me this caption and more, hey, monitor my competitors, summarize what they're doing, identify these trends, surface content ideas, maybe even help automate some certain business workflows. That's where this is headed. And honestly, I think a lot of people are underestimating how big this shift is, because right now most people use AI like the glorified assistant it is. That's where. Why. That's why we're seeing the AI twins and we're seeing the same captions over and over for everybody. But that's useful. Yes, but it's boring and I'm sick of it. And I know a lot of people are sick of it. I think what Meta is exploring sounds more agentic. I think that's how you say that, agentic, meaning AI can actually do things on your behalf. So if I could use Meta to do a competitor summary and give me a trend report and send me questions that my audience is already asking in my niche and suggest ad campaigns for me, I would love that. I would love to not have to manually dig for that. It's fascinating to me from a business owner perspective, that's a huge time saver. But. And this is a big but, please do not hear this and think amazing robots will run my business because no AI can support execution, but it cannot replace the strategy behind it. And let me say that louder for the people in the back. AI can help you move faster, but it cannot think for you. And that's where I think some creators are going to get themselves into trouble, because the easier automation becomes, the more generic content becomes. If you're not careful, if Everybody's AI is generating the same safe ideas, the same content prompts, the same templated messaging. The brands and the creators who win are going to be those people that are actually humans, the one that misspell a word, the ones that aren't using an AI twin for all of their content. I'm. I have sometimes a hard time knowing if it's a AI twin or not, but I am getting pretty good at being like, okay, that's a AI twin. That's not real B roll. Okay, real life moment. There is nothing more humbling than owning a home and realizing, oh, I'm responsible for everything. Like, when something breaks, there's no landlord to call. It's just you, Google, and a potential dollar problem staring you in the face. And you never know what it's going to be. It could be a water heater going out or a burst pipe. It's always unexpected and it's always expensive. And the worst part, a lot of those things, the plumbing issues, the H vac breakdowns, they're not always covered by your standard homeowner's insurance. That's where HomeServe comes in. They offer plans that help protect against those kinds of repairs, starting at just 4.99amonth. So instead of scrambling to find someone last minute, you can call their 247 hotline and get connected with a local, experienced technician. It's super simple. You just choose a plan that fits needs and your budget. And if something on your plane goes wrong, you just call to start the repair process. And honestly, that is a peace of mind for me. If I needed something like this, HomeServe is what I would use. HomeServe has been helping homeowners for over 20 years with a network of 2,600 local, experienced contractors and over 4.5 million customers. So if you want to help protect your home systems and your wallet from covered repairs, go to homeserve.com, find a plan that's right for you. That's homeserve.com not available everywhere. Most plans range between 4.99 to 11.99amonth. Your first year terms apply on covered repairs. Let me ask you something. Have you ever had an idea for a business but you immediately thought, what if nobody buys? Or what if I don't know what I'm doing? Because I've been there. When I started my business, I didn't have a full team. I didn't have the perfect systems in place. I just had an idea and the willingness to figure it out as I went and Honestly, having a platform like Shopify would have made that process so much easier. Shopify is the commerce platform behind million businesses around the world and literally powers 10% of all E commerce in the US so whether you're just getting started or scaling, it grows with you. You can build a beautiful online store with their ready to use templates, use built in AI tools to write product descriptions and content, and even run email and social campaigns all in one place. And one of my favorite parts, that shop pay button, it makes checkout so seamless, which means fewer abandoned carts and more actual sales. So if you've been sitting on an idea or you're ready to take your business seriously, it's time to turn those what ifs with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.comchc that's shopify.comchc so I'm just someone that I want actual perspective, I want actual taste. I want you to tell me how you feel about X, Y, Z instead of just throwing some slop on some B roll and being done with it. I think that differentiation is going to become so valuable to us in this space. And that's the bigger lesson here. Now, from an Instagram standpoint. Okay, this next Instagram update kind of has me raising my eyebrow a little bit. I don't understand it. I don't want it to work. I don't know why they're offering this. I'd rather you give me more reach to my current audience than roll out this feature. So Instagram is reportedly testing something called swap, which would potentially allow users to take someone else's reel and swap out the on screen text with their own version. And my immediate reaction was, why? Because we didn't just have this whole conversation about Instagram wanting to reward original content. Like they literally just said that aggregators who repost are not going to get support from them anymore when it comes to the algorithm. So now we're potentially making it easier to remix someone else's real framework. Interesting, right? Very interesting. So let's unpack this because nuance matters here. At first glance, some creators are going to hear this and think, oh my God, amazing. I can make easier content because I'll just swap out the text on someone else's reel and I get the appeal for you there. But strategically, I actually understand what Instagram may be trying to do here. What they might be saying is, hey, we know trends work, we know formats work, we know people like participating in ideas. That's not new, that's Basically, the Internet formats repeat, hooks repeat, concepts evolve. No one invented point of view. No one invented three signs. You need to hear this. No one's invented talking head storytelling. Those patterns, they happen. But there's a line between participating in a format and then becoming a copy machine. And I think this is where creators need to be really, really careful. Because if this feature does roll out, lazy creators are going to get very excited. Like, perfect, I'll just steal a structure, swap some words, and call it strategy. No, babe, because if everyone starts doing that, your content becomes instantly forgettable. And that's already happening. And you know what I mean? We're already seeing the same hooks, the same delivery, the same script energy, the same B roll. So at some point, you stop building a brand and you just start becoming Instagram's algorithm wallpaper. Like, that's the risk here. So can remix culture be useful? Absolutely. I'm not like, anti inspiration. I literally teach people to study what's working. And I believe in frameworks, I believe in patterns, I believe in testing hooks. But I also believe that your audience should know it's you, and that's the difference. A trend should be the vehicle, not the identity. And strategically, I think Instagram's bigger message remains add meaningful creative input. So add your own story, add your own angle, add your own experience, add your own opinion, make it spicy. That's what typically works the best, by the way. Not copy paste prey. That's just not a content strategy. That's content cosplay. Can I put that on some merch? Because truly, if this rolls out, I think smart creators will use it for inspiration. But the creators who win will still make content feel unmistakably theirs. And that's what builds trust and recognition and an actual brand. So, my take. Watch this feature. But let's not confuse accessibility with originality. Okay? There's a big difference there. All right, friend, that is your weekly scroll. Those are the updates, the shifts, the trends. This week. If you're listening to this, thinking, okay, this is super helpful, but I still need actual content ideas. I need execution. I need someone to tell me what to post. Well, hey, that's literally why I created Club Influence. Because knowing what's changing on Instagram is one thing, but actually showing up consistently with content that builds trust and grows your audience and helps you monetize, that's a whole different game. So inside Club Influence, we give you the strategy and the execution. Weekly trending reels, ideas, hook ideas that stop the scroll, canva templates, content inspiration, and the kind of ideas that help you stop staring at your phone wondering what to post. Because let's be honest here, consistency is what gets a whole lot easier when someone hands you a game plan. So the best part is it's ridiculously affordable, like less than your emotional support iced coffee affordable. So if you've been wanting support and strategy, come join us. I'll link Club Influence in the show notes for you, or you can head straight there after this episode. And if this episode helps you, please screenshot it, throw it on your stories, tag me, call her creator so I can see you listening because that's genuinely what makes my day. And if you've been loving this podcast, a quick review helps this show reach so many more people who need this kind of support. So please leave me a review. All right, friend, go make some good content and I will see you next week.