← Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
163. The Weekly Scroll: Grid Changes, 20K Hacks & The Rise of Yap Videos
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Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search w h a t n o t Whatnot in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals. Hey friend, welcome back to Call Her Creator the podcast for ambitious creators and entrepreneurs who are ready to stop being the best kept secret and start building a life, a brand and the business that they're obsessed with. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Rhodes. I'm the founder of Influence Marketing Studio and someone who spent the last several years helping thousands of entrepreneurs turn visibility into opportunities of income and freedom. Around here we talk about everything from social media strategy and personal branding to confidence, mindset, business growth, and what it really takes to create success in today's online world. And if you're new here, one of the things I try to do every couple of weeks is bring you what I like to call the Weekly Scroll. Why? Because social media is changing constantly, especially Instagram. The algorithm changes, features changes, consumer behavior changes, trends change. So if you're trying to grow online, what worked six months ago, or sometimes even six weeks ago, sometimes even six days ago, might not be what's working today. So the Weekly scroll is where I break down the biggest updates, trends, creator news, and platform shifts that you actually need to know so you can stay ahead of the curve without spending hours scrolling yourself. Now, before we jump in, one of the biggest struggles I hear from creators and business owners is Kaitlyn, I know I need to post. I just never know what to say. So I recently created the Visibility Vault and I'm super excited about this. Inside of the Visibility Vault, I'm going to give you hundreds of canva templates and hundreds of swipe and customize captions. These are designed to help you show up consistently, create content faster, increase engagement, and stay visible online. I own a social media agency. A lot of these templates are tried and tested. We've used them on our Done for you clients so we know what works and what doesn't. So we're cutting out the noise of trying everything and throwing spaghetti at the wall and just using what works. So think of this as your plug and play content library. If creating content feels super overwhelming or you're constantly running out of ideas, this was made for you. The Visibility Vault I'm going to drop the Link in the show notes for you guys so you can check it out after today's episode. All right, let's get into today's weekly scroll and talk about what's happening in the world of social media right now. One of my favorite updates this week is something that we've all been waiting for. Instagram just changed your profile forever. Okay, so this is actually a pretty big one. Instagram has officially rolled out profile grid rearranging to all users. So what does that mean? You can now manually move posts around on your profile without deleting and reposting content. For years, creators have been asking for this. Before this update, if you wanted a certain post at the top of your profile, you're on. Honestly, your only option was either to archive content and delete content strategically, or maybe you could even pin it to your profile. But now you can literally drag and drop your posts wherever you want them to live. To use it, all you have to do is head to your profile and tap and hold on a post. Then you'll click the little select reorder grid and you'll drag your content into the position that you want. Now, here's why I think this is important for everyone. Most people think Instagram is just a content platform, right? It's not. It's a first impression platform. I think that people are going to social media before they ever even go to websites these days. So the second that someone discovers you, they're making a decision within a few seconds, do I follow this person? Do I trust them? Do I stay? Do I leave? Your profile is basically your digital storefront. And now instead of being stuck with content in chronological order, you can intentionally design the experience people have when they land on your page. Personally, I think that creators should use this strategically. You can move your best performing content towards the top of your profile. You can move your strongest authority building post towards the top. You can move content that clearly explains who you help and what you do towards the top so that people know you know who they want to hire. If you're a business owner, think of your profile like a sales page. If you're a creator, think of it as your portfolio. And if you're building a personal brand, which I think we should all be doing in 2026, think of it like your online resume. The biggest mistake you can make here is turning your profile into this perfectly curated Pinterest board that looks pretty but doesn't actually convert. Aesthetic is great. It really is. Sometimes I even get jealous when I see aesthetically pleasing profiles. But clarity is better in the long run. If you want to make money from your profile, clarity is what's going to help you get there. The goal is not to create the prettiest profile. The goal is to create a profile that makes someone instantly understand who you are, what you do, and why they need to follow you, and why they should buy from you. So if you haven't checked this feature out yet, go play with it. I have a feeling that we're about to see a lot more strategic Instagram profiles over the next few. I'm definitely going to be playing with this feature myself. I'm going to be strategizing what content I should put near the top of my page. And, you know, once I do this, I will definitely keep you guys updated on what I'm doing and the strategy behind it. All right, update number two. Instagram is putting ads after your reels. So if you've noticed Instagram getting a little more aggressive with ads lately, you're not imagining it. Instagram just announced it's expanding a new ad placement and it's called Post View Reels Ads to advertisers worldwide. The way that this works is when someone watches an eligible reel that's longer than 60 seconds, Instagram may show a video advertisement immediately after that reel ends. Now, the viewer gets a five second countdown letting them know, hey, an ad's coming and they can choose to skip it. Now, before you roll your eyes and think, okay, great, more ads, let's talk about what this actually means to me. This isn't really like an advertising story. It's a real story. Because every decision that Instagram makes tells us what they want more of, right? And Instagram is basically screaming from the rooftops, please keep making reels. They need somewhere to put these ads, right? So Meta recently reported that people share more than 4.5 billion reels every single day across Instagram and Facebook. And what's even crazier is half of all time spent on Instagram is now spent watching reels. That's huge. So when Instagram creates new ways to monetize reels, they're telling creators exactly what they want to do with your attention. If you've been wondering whether reels are still worth creating, if carousels have just taken over, there's your answer. They're still both very much working, right? The platform is just heavily investing in ads now, so they're going to be investing in reels because that's where user attention lives. Now here's what I think is most interesting for creators and Business owners. These ads only appear after reels longer than 60 seconds, which we're going to talk about this in a while. In a little while. I've got some yapping reels for you guys to steal at the end of this episode. This just tells me that Instagram is going to continue to reward deeper engagement and longer watch times. For the past couple of years, everyone's been obsessed with making the shortest video possible because they want watch time to complete. But we're seeing a shift with more people talking, educating, telling stories, more longer form reels that keep people engaged. And if Instagram is comfortable serving ads after those videos, then that means that they're seeing enough viewer retention to justify it. So if you have something valuable to say, don't be afraid to make the reel 60 seconds or 90 seconds. I think 90 seconds is pushing it. I think 60 is probably your sweet spot. But the goal is not to keep it as short as possible. The goal is to get attention and provide value. Attention is still the currency on Instagram, and they've showed us exactly where they're placing its bets. It's longer form video. All right, update number three. There was a huge hackathon, basically, on Instagram. More than 20,000 Instagram accounts were hacked. It's kind of scary. Meta recently confirmed that 20,000 users were impacted by a security breach that allowed hackers to gain access to accounts through one of Meta's AI powered support tools. And the wild part about this is that the hackers didn't use like some sophisticated Hollywood style hacking method. They basically just tricked the AI support bot into sending account verification codes to email addresses controlled by the hackers. So basically AI got manipulated, which I did not think was even allowed with AI. Now, before you panic, Meta says they've already fixed the vulnerability. But I think that this is a much bigger lesson here for creators and business owners. We are entering an era where more and more of our online experience is being handled by AI. Customer service support, moderation, account recovery, AI. And yes, I think it's powerful. But this situation proves something important. AI is not perfect, which means you need to take your account security more seriously. Because for a lot of creators, your Instagram account is not just a social media profile. It's your business, it's your audience, it's your leads, it's your income. Just like me, it's years of content and relationships and trust. So if your account disappeared tomorrow, how much of your business would disappear with it? That's the real question here. So let this be your reminder today There's a couple things you can do. One, and I tell everybody this, turn on Two Factor Authentication. It is the easiest thing to do. Don't wait till tomorrow, don't wait till next week. Today, turn on Two Factor Authentication. That means that when someone tries to change anything on your profile, you're going to get a text alert or an email first that's saying, hey, is this you? Number two, make sure the email connected to your Instagram account is secure with a password and it's up to date. And number three, start building an audience off of social media. I tell you guys this all of the time, but make sure you've got that email list or something that is collecting leads for you. One of the. I mean, just, just a little reminder like, we don't own our Instagram followers. We borrow them at the end of the day. So you've got to grow an email list. You've got to get them talking to you in other places rather than just on Instagram. Maybe you're pushing them to your website, maybe you're pushing them to an email list, maybe you're pushing them to Facebook, even that's still owned by Meta. But you've got to be building some kind of community somewhere else to where you can own these people. If, if something like that, you're like, well, how do I get their emails? I would love to talk to you about that, chat with you about that. You can go to influencestudio.com um, we have a new offer where we're helping people set up basically a funnel for themselves so you can create a lead magnet or a freebie, and you offer that in exchange for their email address. And this helps grow your emails. So if that's something that you've been thinking about but you haven't really pulled the trigger on, please go visit us at influence with an estudio.com I'd love to chat with you about building some kind of funnel. And this will help you grow your email list. This also is good for when you're ready to sell offers as well, because you're sitting there building that email list. So when it's time to launch a new offer, you're able to email them directly with whatever that is and get them to buy directly through email. There is nothing more humbling than owning a home and realizing, oh, wow, I'm responsible for all of this. When something breaks, there's no landlord to call or maintenance request. It's just you, the panic, and what could easily become a very expensive repair. It's honestly Shocking how fast home repairs can add up. And here's what a lot of people don't realize. Regular homeowners insurance doesn't always cover the everyday wear and tear stuff like plumbing failures or electrical issues. That's where HomeServe comes in. HomeServe offers plans that help protect against covered repairs starting at just 4.99amonth. So instead of panic searching for a contractor when something goes wrong, you can call their 24.7hotline and start the repair process. And honestly, that's peace of mind. If I had needed this during one of my surprise home repair moments, HomeServe is absolutely what I would have wanted in my corner. They've helped homeowners for over 20 years, have nearly 4.5 million customers, and work with a trusted national network of 2,600 local contractors. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe. For 50% less your first year, go to HomeServe.com CHC that's HomeServe.com CHC for 50% less savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Okay, if you're someone who wants to make money online as a creator, listen up. I know a lot of people. They assume you need a massive following or some fancy setup or years of experience before you can actually start earning online. And that's just not true. Fanview is a platform that helps creators monetize their content, connect directly with their audience, and build reoccurring income doing what they're really good at creating. And what I actually like about this is how simple it is. You create content around your niche, you upload it, you build your audience, and start creating income from it. Whether you're into lifestyle, fitness, business, education, literally, whatever. It's built to be beginner friendly. So if you've been sit here thinking, could I actually do something like this? The answer is positively yes. If you want help getting started, Fanview has a creator academy that walks you through the whole thing step by step. And if you're ready to start your own creator journey and see what's possible, head over to fanview.com and get started. So could you still run your business? Probably. But is it much easier when you have email addresses and an audience? Absolutely. Right. It's like you're not having to start from scratch. All right, this is what I was telling you guys I was going to talk about, and that is the rise of talking head videos or what everyone is calling right now, the Yap video. Okay, can we talk about that right now? Because if you've been on Instagram Last week, I was bombarded by a certain creator who launched a yap challenge. I swear every other video was this person and her name and her picture. And I was like, holy crap. Like, talking head videos are not new. What? What is going on? But she obviously did a beautiful job at creating an audience and launching a challenge that got a ton of traction. She ended up making $1.2 million on this launch. Goals, that is goals. But yapping yap videos. So for years, people have over complicated what content creation is. They think that you need fancy transitions, perfect editing, B roll trending audio, a production team, but you don't. One of the biggest content trends online right now is literally people sitting in their car and talking. That's it. They're sharing stories or an opinion or a lesson or an experience. And people are zoned in. They're watching because humans connect with humans. Now, if you're sitting here thinking, caitlin, I don't even know what I would talk about. Let me make this very simple for you, okay? The highest performing yap videos aren't just you educating. They're actually observational, which is the easiest type of video to create. So what I mean by that is instead of posting a video that says three tips to grow your Instagram, you would say something like, I think a lot of business owners are secretly waiting for permission before they start posting. Or instead of saying something like, here's how to become more confident, you say, nobody talks about how awkward confidence looks before it becomes actual confidence. Or instead of how to get more clients, you say, I don't think most people need another strategy. I think they need more reps with this. That's what the creators are blowing up right now doing. They're not teaching, they're making an observation. They're making people think. So a couple other hooks that I wrote down for you guys while we're going through this. These I like to ask. This is my secret sauce. So if you share this, I know you got it from here. But I like to ask Chat to write Gen Z slang hooks because they're usually like, very trendy. So right now, the couple hooks that it had given me for this, like, if you want to start a yapping video, your hook could be something like, this is going to sound insane but. Or I fear that nobody talks about this enough or can we normalize talking about. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I genuinely don't care. Here's what I think about xyz. The older I get, the more I realize xyz. I think A lot of people are lying to themselves about this specific thing. You see how this is just like getting you thinking, like, wait, stop. What are they about to say? It's kind of piquing that interest and curiosity. It's a curiosity driven hook. At the end of the day, you can get into ChatGPT and ask him to come up with some curiosity driven hooks that are based on your specific industry. That's kind of what I do whenever I'm coming up with hooks. But your hook at the end of the day is what is going to stop the scroll. You have three seconds to do that when you're talking on video. So you need to make sure that it is visually appealing. So you're showing off what's going on in the video. You've got the text hook on top and then of course the caption too. At the bottom of your video, that's gonna be a hook too, like, hey, down here, read this. So none of these require trends. None of them require crazy transitions or even a script. It's just you talking to, like, a girlfriend facetiming somebody. So stop trying to sound smart or stop trying to act like you know everything and just sound real and use the real type of language that you typically would use with Girlfriends. The videos that perform the best, honestly, they don't feel rehearsed. Anytime I write a script out and I rehearse it, those videos end up tanking. But if I just kind of sit there and talk about something that's on my mind or on my heart, like while I'm drinking my coffee, they always perform so much better. And one other thing that I've noticed that works really good too with talking head videos is if I'm using the green screen effect in the back so I'll have a screenshot of something that I'm talking about so I've got the visual behind me. Those always seem to perform very, very well as well. All right, that is a wrap on this week's Weekly Scroll. If there's one thing I want you to take away from today's episode, it is that opportunities are still there for you. Instagram is evolving. People are still consuming. Content creators are still growing. Businesses are still making money online. The people winning right now are not necessarily the most talented. They're just the ones that are willing to stay visible. They're posting the reel, they're sharing the thought, they're recording the yap video. They're showing up before they feel ready. Because visibility right now is what is creating opportunities for people and opportunities can truly change your entire life. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, all right, Kaitlin, I get it. But I still don't know what to post. I've got you. First, you can check out the Visibility Vault. I've linked it in the show notes. Inside you're going to find hundreds of Canva templates and hundreds of swipe and customized captions that are designed to help you create content faster and stay more consistent without reinventing the wheel every single time. And then if you want a complete content plan where you can just create reels and Canva templates and content and optimize your profile, then that is going to be the visibility blueprint. Inside of that, I will walk you through exactly what to post over the next four weeks, including talking to camera videos, the YAP videos, the story driven content, authority building posts, engagement posts, and everything in between. I don't want you to feel like you have to create more content. I just want you to be super intentional with your content so that you get seen. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. If you love this episode, please be sure to follow my podcast, download it, leave a review, and send it to a friend who needs to hear it. And remember, the life you're dreaming about is not built in private, it is built through visibility. I'll see you next week for another episode of Call Her Creator. Until then, keep showing up, keep creating, and keep becoming the person that you are meant to be.