← Social Media Marketing Podcast
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- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
Before we get started with today's episode, I thought I'd share a special recipe for cooking up marketing success in 2025. Here's the ingredients. Two cups of AI marketing know how one heaping portion of Instagram growth strategies A generous serving of Facebook Ads mastery 3 tablespoons of networking opportunities A pinch of San Diego sunshine Mix all the ingredients together at Social media Marketing World 2025. Here's what Laura Kashla said. This was honestly the best conference I've attended in my professional life. Save your seat at the table today by visiting social media marketing world.info welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navig the social media jungle. And now here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want to know how to navigate the ever changing marketing jungle. Today I'm going to be joined by Chelsea Peitz and we're going to talk about a bunch of Instagram features that there's a good chance you probably are not familiar with and what they could mean for you and your marketing. If you're new to this show, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcasting app that you're listening to us on right now so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's transition over to this week's interview with Chelsea Peitz, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I am very excited to be joined by Chelsea Peitz. If you don't know who Chelsea is, she helps service industry professionals leverage social media to build powerful personal brands that generate quality leads. She's also author of what to Post. Chelsea is also a regular guest on Social Media Examiner's Social media marketing talk show. Chelsea, welcome back to the podcast. How you doing today?
- [02:18]
Chelsea Peitz
I'm amazing. So excited to be back. Of course, one of my favorite podcasts to be on.
- [02:23]
Michael Stelzner
Sweet. Well, today Chelsea and I are going to explore some of the newer Instagram features and what they mean for marketers. So before we go there, there are plenty of marketers that are listening that might not be as focused on Instagram. Maybe they're all in on another platform like LinkedIn or Facebook or something else. And maybe they're just kind of ignoring Instagram for whatever reasons. Kind of like I personally am, to be very honest with you. So why should marketers focus on Instagram. Those that are not maybe all in on Instagram.
- [02:55]
Chelsea Peitz
Absolutely. Instagram. I love Instagram. Of course I'm biased. I spend the majority of my time there. But I love talking to somebody like you who's like, okay, give me the inside scoop. What is it about this platform? And what's interesting about Instagram is that 90% of the accounts follow at least one business account. And above and beyond that, there's 70% of the users that are typically going to discover a new product. And oftentimes when they see even an Instagram ad, I think the stat is something like 50 of people actually go and visit that website and, or if you're me, actually purchase directly through Instagram right from the ad. So it's got a lot of bells and whistles, it's got product shops and it has the ability to reach new eyeballs because the algorithm is focused on discovery and recommendation. And any user of Instagram knows that at least 50% of the content in your home feed is now being suggested. So I think it's a really great opportunity for marketers and brands to actually get your content out in front of new eyeballs and potentially generate some, some leads and some brand awareness.
- [04:03]
Michael Stelzner
Very cool. All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to break down the different kind of mediums that you can use on LinkedIn and we're going to start with Instagram Stories, and we're going to just kind of talk about some of the features that not everybody may be familiar with. So what is the latest and greatest on Instagram Stories?
- [04:21]
Chelsea Peitz
Well, we are never at a loss for updates happening at all times in Instagram. And Stories is definitely a place that they are focusing on because their CEO, Instagram, said, Adam Sari, has recently said, listen, we know that people are spending more time sharing content privately, either in the direct messages or in Stories, and having those conversations and less in the feed. So they're really focusing on ways to elevate engagement opportunities inside of these particular areas. And one of them is a brand new option called Comments on Stories. And it can be a little bit confusing. So I want to explain a little bit what they look like and how they work. So just like a regular comment on a feed post, we know how to do that. What we're used to seeing inside of an Instagram story is a private message, a message box where we can send that directly to somebody and they get it in a direct message and nobody else can see it. Whereas now you'll also See a little comment bubble icon right next to that message icon and you can actually create almost like a post it note, a little sticky note that a bubble that goes onto that story that other people can also engage with and see, see. So it's kind of like just the comments in a feed post, but now they're going to live in stories. Now, the idea behind this is of course great for marketers who want to get immediate feedback on something. You can test out your ideas, you can even show products. And now you can have sort of a community coming together around that topic to give you immediate feedback and have them have conversations. So it could be really great for marketers who are trying to get some instant feedback or engage their audience into more engagement in those stories versus just the dms or going through manually and looking at every single DM that's coming in to try to get feedback from their audience. Now they disappear with the story unless you post them to your Instagram highlight on your profile. So keep in mind, if there's something there, it's going to show on that highlight forever. And yes, you can also turn them off if you would not like to have comments on your Instagram stories.
- [06:30]
Michael Stelzner
I know some marketers are thinking this, that's just another threat I have to manage. Right. So everyone sees all the comments, they're all public, and you can respond to them. Is it very similar to kind of what Reels has?
- [06:41]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes, it is similar to that. If people who are using or familiar with Instagram, they might also say, this kind of reminds me of Instagram notes. And they're very similar. It's a little circle bubble and you'll see it pop up. And yes, so it's another way to say, we know y'all are spending a lot of time in the DMs and the stories, but how can we get more engagement and not just one to one, but a community talking about the same topic? And yes, everybody can see those comments.
- [07:08]
Michael Stelzner
Got it. Okay. And I'm assuming that the comment rules that are set up on Instagram can apply because I think, can't you set certain words that don't show up and all that kind of stuff so people don't have to deal with the, the crazy people commenting.
- [07:21]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. And if you have a really big brand account, you know, you have a lot of followers that might be something that you're like, yeah, let me just go turn that off in the settings because it could be overwhelming if you do get a lot of people that are commenting on there. If you want to just sort of avoid the overload of all of that. But I found it a little bit confusing. And the people that I talked to said, what exactly is this thing? Why am I seeing this? And where they were also seeing my comment on their end, they were like, but wait, I saw you comment somewhere. But I don't know where it went. So I think they have a little bit of ironing of working out to do on the user experience. But I think it could be cool for. For marketers who want to get more immediate feedback from people and have sort of a community.
- [07:59]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so we've got this comments sticker. What else on the stories front, there's.
- [08:04]
Chelsea Peitz
Lots of stickers and there' lots of new fonts. Personally, I'm a big fan of the new fonts because I think it gives you a way to be a little bit more creative and interesting visually. There's lots of stickers that have to do with the add yours. And that's been around for a while. And that's another engagement technique. Hey, how can we get people to participate here? And add yours was really, hey, add your picture to this. Like, you know, the first thing in your camera roll or what are you seeing at the conference today to get people engaged and share their content into sort of like a shared album. If you now they have an add yours music, which you can pick your song that you're listening to. And what happens is anybody who adds to it, you'll be able to see all of those different songs that they might be listening to. I don't think that's going to be as big of a of a marketer play as some of these other ones that I'm kind of excited about. I think it's really cool they have a reveal sticker. And this reveal sticker, it basically blurs out your Instagram story. So think about this. If you have a new product or a new launch or maybe a new course or something that you want to tease out to people, it could even be for like a giveaway or maybe a new lead magnet. So what happens is it blurs it out and there's a little sticker that shows up on your story. And you can put a little message, like you could have a little teaser in there that's like, you know, click to reveal or message me this word if you want X, Y and Z. And then what happens is they have to direct message to actually have it. Reveal. Now, if you're using manychat, that could be really cool too, because then you can have those flows Set up where people are messaging you a certain word. So. So that's kind of a cool thing.
- [09:43]
Michael Stelzner
Just to clarify, so this click to review isn't just quite literally a click? Or can it be. Can it be just a click or does it have to be like a dm?
- [09:51]
Chelsea Peitz
You have to dm.
- [09:52]
Michael Stelzner
Okay. All right.
- [09:53]
Chelsea Peitz
Which is why the manychat thing could be cool. Because if you've got people messaging a certain word, you can have that set up there as well. But it's kind of like a fun little way to maybe have like a reveal. What you're kind of referencing is what they call frames. And this in it looks like a Polaroid picture and they call it frame. And it looks exactly like a little Polaroid and you can place it on your story. So you can have an image in the back and you can put this little like Polaroid frame on there and that's blurred out and then people can actually tap on it. I believe you can shake your phone too, but honestly I've never tried that. So it's kind of a fun way to have the reveal. Tap to the reveal. And that could be cool because that could be for like a discount code, you know, tap to reveal this or the frame could actually have that discount code in. In it as well. But the whole point here is easy engagement. How do we increase it and can we get more people in DM conversations with us?
- [10:48]
Michael Stelzner
Very cool. All right, let's talk about good old fashioned feed posts because there's been some updates there.
- [10:54]
Chelsea Peitz
Those are still relevant. Yes, we love a good old fashioned feed post. Lots has changed in the feed post and this is probably the one thing I am most excited about. They've changed carousel post and carousel posts are multiple images or videos. So those are the ones that you swipe through. And for years, I think since 2017, they've capped that at 10, which is a lot. Okay, I'll already tell you, 10 slides is a lot, but now they've doubled it. So for those marketers who have maybe products or something coming out for the fall or like a holiday sale, you're going to be able to showcase many more products or many more aspects of those products. Also, better storytelling. Even if you're in an industry like real estate, you could show more of the house and the property. Just because we can use 20. I don't recommend always using 20 because another thing to keep in mind is that the algorithm is tracking are we going through to the very end? So you're going to be able to add way more now here's the cool thing. For marketers, this could be really helpful if you have collaborators. If you've got multiple people, not just you, then you can have a little bit more than the 10, or you can go all the way up to the 20, which would be a nice way to incorporate somebody else's perspective.
- [12:15]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. And I love the idea of the real estate agent. Almost like a photo album, right?
- [12:19]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah.
- [12:19]
Michael Stelzner
And I would imagine even if you're putting on events, this could be kind of cool. You could have a whole bunch of pictures right. Of the experience. Or if you're a restaurant or any kind of a space where there's lots of things that lend themselves to visuals. I could see a nice array of photographs.
- [12:35]
Chelsea Peitz
I think conference is a genius idea. And of course I'm thinking of social media marketing world because I would swipe through all of those photos. I want to see the speakers, I want to see the behind the scenes. So something like that, where you know, people are going to want to swipe through all of those in some cases. I'm really excited to have more of that storytelling ability. So I totally agree with you. I think more in depth storytelling, more comprehensive event recaps and of course step by step and how to tutorials. You might have had to like kind of shrink them down before. So if it is something a little bit more complex, I could see that being useful too.
- [13:09]
Michael Stelzner
Anything else on the feed front?
- [13:10]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes, another really big exciting announcement for carousel posts or really posts of any kind. And I'm thrilled about this because I've been using often, like many of the marketers here, third party tools to create text based graphics or layer text over graphics. I'm so excited because now you don't have to use anything but Instagram. So talk about easy. I can actually upload images or graphics or videos and now I can add text, I can add font directly over those images. So I can essentially make my text based carousel posts right inside of Instagram and I can also schedule them. It has made my life so much easier. And also I think that it looks very native to Instagram because it's the same fonts that you're getting in the stories and the reels. And so I personally am so excited that I can now add text to my carousel post. And you can also add stickers. So if you do want to jazz it up a little bit, or if you wanted to use say a cutout sticker that your company logo or if you're a local business, maybe you have somebody that's sort of the face of your business or even a mascot, you can include that in your content. And so it's a smart move on Instagram's behalf because we're all using a lot of these third party tools. And some of the really popular third party tools are getting pretty pricey because I just saw my prices go up. So I love this idea.
- [14:34]
Michael Stelzner
So does this mean it's almost like a Canva, if you will, competitor? Is that really what you're talking about? And do they have templates? Because I remember with Stories there were basic templates you could, you know, use with colored backdrops and stuff like that. And on Facebook, obviously we have something very similar. Is it something along those lines or is it even more sophisticated than that?
- [14:53]
Chelsea Peitz
It's pretty basic. It's definitely not going. I wouldn't say it's a competitor to Canva. It's definitely like when I get the job done and I want to create something, but maybe I don't have time or the desire to go into another app. It's great if you want to just make it look like it's created right inside of Instagram. I still use Canva even though I create these carousels inside of Instagram right now as well, because I have my specific fonts and styles and templates that I've made. So I would be excited to see if they come up with more templates so that there is a library that we can pick from. But right now it is pretty basic. Bare minimum, add your text, you get to select from the 14 fonts that are available and then the just the basic colors that you have in there and whatever stickers are in the menu.
- [15:37]
Michael Stelzner
Anything else on the feed front?
- [15:39]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. I'd say the last thing that is kind of a cool update for marketers especially is you can add product details to your posts now, which is pretty amazing. So people can actually start shopping from your post and you can also tag your broadcast channels. And I know we're going to talk about that in the live section. That's going to be helping people to get more into your community. And lastly, again, we're looking at engagement. And the reason I think we're looking at engagement is because the engagement has changed on a lot of these social platforms. They're actually consuming silently now because we're watching a lot of video content. So again, more things to encourage engagement. And one of those things that you can now add to your posts, your feed posts, are polls and prompts. And those are ways for people to easily see that there is a poll there that they can participate in and how much easier it is to click than stop and maybe make a comment. So other ways that Instagram is saying, hey, try these things, we want to try to get you some more engagement, and it's a little bit easier and faster. So I would encourage people to try the polls. The prompts are going to be maybe for a little call to action that you sort of want to have have pinned sort of at the top so people don't miss it. And the cool thing about both of them is that you get a little visual icon on the actual post so it's not buried. And you have to tap and open the caption, which is helpful, so people know, oh, there's a thing here that I can participate in.
- [17:02]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so just to clarify, the polls and the prompts are not the main thing you see in the feed. They're something that's in the caption, but there is some sort of a little signal that it's in there so people know to open it up. Is that what I'm hearing? You say?
- [17:15]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. At the very bottom corner, you'll see in. In little white font, it will say like poll. And it might also tell you how many people have voted. I see different things, so I'm assuming they're testing, but I use it, and it's great. And people do participate. And it's just like the Instagram stories, where you can see what the percentage of and then you can of course see the final information. So it's just an another way to create easier engagement for people that are scrolling through that feed. And hopefully we'll stop the scroll a little bit more for you.
- [17:43]
Michael Stelzner
Earlier you said you can add product details to. I don't know if everybody understands what that means. Maybe you could describe that.
- [17:49]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. So this will add almost like a little button to your post, a visual button that will let the community see your info. Say, about a product. Let's say you make sweatshirts or hats or clothing of any kind. And so you are posting about your product. And maybe now you're using those 20 slides, it'll add a button to it and it'll send you an order request to your direct message. So they're helping small businesses out, especially that are selling products. You have Instagram Shop, which is great. And then they're also gonna be to make it easier to just click with a button and get those product details and then go shopping, which anybody who has a shop, we love an easy user experience to check right out. In fact, I think it's a little bit too easy because I seem to be buying more on Instagram. It auto fills my information and then it just shows up at my door.
- [18:37]
Michael Stelzner
So this product details to posts only is for products that are in Instagram shops or is it okay, you do.
- [18:43]
Chelsea Peitz
Have to put your products in Instagram shops. So that is the first step and it might have something like the product price and the product name. And so we're going to to see more coming in the future for people that are selling actual products and just making it more streamlined and easier for them to sell those products and for the consumers and the users to actually find out more information about how to get them.
- [19:04]
Michael Stelzner
All right, we have a whole bunch more to talk about, folks. So let's talk about live video. What has changed when it comes to live video?
- [19:12]
Chelsea Peitz
Live video by and large is still fairly what we're used to. But the big change I think that not a lot of people are talking about is that you can now go live inside of your broadcast channel. And for those who aren't quite sure what a broadcast channel is, this is something that professional accounts with 10,000 or more followers are able to set up. And the idea is to create a stream of one way broadcast. That's originally how it started. So let's say it's the, the people who are who have bought tickets to go to Social media Marketing World or maybe the people who are attending. You could create a broadcast channel and you could give updates to the people who are in that channel who have said, yes, I would like to subscribe to this channel and you can send information about your event to one place so that everybody in that group, let's say there's 200 people that joined, all 200 people, will get that notification. What I love about it is there's no algorithm. You don't have to fight for visibility. This is a way to get your information that somebody raised their hand and said, yep, I want to follow this channel to get this information. And it really had been one to many. That's changing a little bit, which I think is awesome because now you're able to go live into your broadcast channel. So think in terms if you have maybe like a VIP client group or a coaching group or an event group, you can now provide even more value and more community just to those people. And now they're also rolling out the ability for the people inside of that broadcast channel to have some level of communication and they're calling it replies and it's a little confusing. So I'm going to do my best to explain it. It's not turning the whole thing into like a group chat where everybody's just talking. They really want to keep the broadcast channel as one thread, as one home feed with the person who created that channel being able to post these messages out to the people who've said I want to be in this channel. But when you click on one specific message, you're going to then be able to see comments that people have left regarding that message. So all of those little replies and messages aren't going to be in between all of the broadcasters information. So it sounds a little bit confusing, but what we see here is that you're going to be able to pour into your community even more. You're going to have these private areas where you can go live and you can, you know, share product reveals, launches, get feedback, and now get to have a little bit more interaction. So I think this is a big one that people haven't really tried yet or heard much about.
- [21:56]
Michael Stelzner
If you're feeling lost in a changing world, come to a place where everyone knows your pain. Navigating disruption is easier when you're surrounded by peers facing similar challenges. That's why we designed Social Media Marketing World to help you make meaningful connections with themed networking spaces, interactive workshops, and tons of attendee led meetups. Maddie Young says, this was my very first time at Social Media Marketing World. It exceeded every expectation I had. The value of the sessions and networking experiences cannot be overstated. It don't go it alone. Join marketers just like you. Navigating a rapidly changing world. Grab your tickets today at social media marketing world.info so just to be clear, I'm definitely a rookie when it comes to this and I'm sure a lot of people are like, oh, I don't even know what this is. So a broadcast channel sounds like a Facebook group, but it's just one to many really is what I'm hearing you say. Right. It's kind of like a email newsletter for lack of better words. Right. That's probably the best way to think about it.
- [23:02]
Chelsea Peitz
Exactly.
- [23:03]
Michael Stelzner
But. But you can post only live video into it or you can post anything into it.
- [23:07]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes, you can post a variety of things into this. You were originally only able to post like text based updates or some videos, whatever you would post like pictures, videos or text. You'd also have links in there. Again, it would be something like I was in one for an event and it was helpful because the event coordinator was sending information, sending out the marketing pieces and telling Telling people, hey, look at this, you know, let us know. You could put polls in so people could give feedback, but it was very limited.
- [23:35]
Michael Stelzner
It's kind of like their answer to Facebook groups, isn't it? It's.
- [23:37]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah, but.
- [23:39]
Michael Stelzner
But without allowing the members to really.
- [23:41]
Chelsea Peitz
Interact with each other and.
- [23:43]
Michael Stelzner
Right.
- [23:43]
Chelsea Peitz
I think you hit the nail on the head. I think that's probably where they're going because there has been a lack. There is no group.
- [23:49]
Michael Stelzner
Right.
- [23:50]
Chelsea Peitz
Environment where people can be a group in Instagram. So I think that this is probably their trial into getting into that and allowing people to have more replies now, more than just a poll where they were able to click on something. I definitely think that it's leaning that way, but I think it's gonna be great for somebody with subscription, like kind of like a subscription model. Hey, go to the broadcast channel at this time and we're gonna have like a, you know, a live class, like.
- [24:15]
Michael Stelzner
A members only kind of thing. Or a customer.
- [24:17]
Chelsea Peitz
Exactly.
- [24:17]
Michael Stelzner
That's where it's like managing it seems to be a nightmare. I mean, I don't even know how you would manage that. Right. I mean, how do you get people in and out of it and stuff like that? I mean, we're not going to go down that path. But it does sound interesting and fascinating. What's your take on this? Is this something that's experiment or do you think this is going to stick?
- [24:37]
Chelsea Peitz
I think it should be sticking. I wasn't sure. I didn't set one up because I was asking myself the same exact thing. Is this really going to stick around? And then as they started adding going live in it and the replies, I think that this probably will stick around for a while. They've also just added an option in your posting section if you're making a post to the feed, like let's say the carousel we talked about. I don't have this because I don't have a broadcast channel set up. But if you do, you might see this where now you can tag a broadcast channel. So they're really opening up a lot of ways to let people know one, you have one that they can get involved in it because for the longest time it just sort of lived on your profile and you were the one that had to get the word out out that you had one. So I think this is gonna stick around for a while.
- [25:25]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, crazy question. I don't know if you. You're part of one, but what about on the notification front? Does it show up in the feed? Does it show up under the notifications thing, does it show up in the dms?
- [25:33]
Chelsea Peitz
That's what I was worried about. I was like, oh, great, I don't want to join a bunch of these things and then get all these notifications. So inside of your inbox there's different tabs. So it's all the same messaging inbox, but they have thankfully organized it into tabs and channels is one of the tabs. So when I go into my inbox, what's nice is that I'm not. I don't have a barrage of stuff floating into my feed or notifications, but I know that all of the channel notifications live within my inbox in that specific tab. And I can just tab over from my personal messages over to my broadcast channels go into my requests. So I feel like it's a much better system than I was expecting when they talked about rolling this out. So I am not inundated or overwhelmed with them. I have a dedicated tab I can go right to and go through all of the ones that have updates back.
- [26:22]
Michael Stelzner
To the live video. I think you might have briefly mentioned that you can go live from the desktop. Or did you not mention that yet? I don't know.
- [26:28]
Chelsea Peitz
I don't think I mentioned that. But yes, you are able to go live from your desktop, which has been a major challenge, you know, over the years. And people said, why can't we go live from the desktop? Because we want to use other tools. So, yes, you've been able to go live from the desktop with Instagram for a bit now. Now, and you still are able to do that as well. So if you didn't know that, yay, you can go live using your desktop as well.
- [26:49]
Michael Stelzner
But the key is you have to have a third party app, right?
- [26:52]
Chelsea Peitz
Well, actually it was Instagram Studio and I haven't actually used anything live except Instagram, but it's called Instagram Studio. I can't remember if it's called Instagram Live Studio, but it's something Instagram Studio and you can set it up. And yes, a lot of people are using their desktop and are using third party. Like you are here to stream to multiple places.
- [27:12]
Michael Stelzner
Very cool. Okay, we haven't touched on reels yet, so let's touch on reels because I know there's a lot to talk about there.
- [27:19]
Chelsea Peitz
There's always a lot to talk about on reels. That definitely is still one of their, if not the major focus for Instagram. And I, as somebody who creates a lot of reels, I'm really excited that they have continued to upgrade the editing features. One of the things that drove me nuts about this was that I would create an edit inside. Just like using any kind of video editing, I would be trimming something, or maybe I would delete something or move something around and rearrange the order of my video clips. And then I made a mistake, and it was the wrong one, and I couldn't undo it. So I know this seems like a small thing to a lot of people, but I think it's a huge thing for us who are using the editing features. There's now an undo button and a redo button, which is hugely helpful. Cool. There's also the ability to create duplicates. Or if you have a reel that is created in your drafts, now, you can create a duplicate of that, which could be really helpful if you're testing something and you don't want to go back and edit the other one and lose all of what you had before. So you can just duplicate it. Or if you have, like, a template that your company is using or that you have a standardized style, you can go ahead and make other duplicates and not have to recreate the whole thing and upload everything.
- [28:39]
Michael Stelzner
Why would somebody duplicate, like, help everybody understand why they would duplicate a reel? Because it sounds like you're just copying it and republishing it. But that's not really what we're talking about. Or is it?
- [28:50]
Chelsea Peitz
It's not really what I'm talking about. For me, what I use it for is sometimes I want to try different editing. Editing. I might be. Want to try a different order. I might want to try just, you know, something different altogether. But I don't want to start over and upload all 30 of my video clips and try to trim it all up. So I know that maybe I just want to move a few things around. So for me, it's helpful as I'm testing things out to duplicate it, and then I can edit that one and see, you know. Oh, yeah, I like that. I'm going to go with this one. Also, if you're somebody who generally has, I wouldn't say a template, if you will, But I mean, a template in the sense of this is generally like, we do this theme of the week, it's this day, and we do this style every single time. It could be helpful to at least just already have that editing template ready for you, and then you can swap out or replace content. So for me, it's an easier way that saves me time where I can test different things out, and then I can say Okay, I actually like this one. I'm going to go with this one. And sometimes I don't like it and say, you know what? I'm going to stick with this one. I'm glad I practiced over here. And then this is the one I'm going to go with. So it was really hard because you had to remake everything if you wanted to test something.
- [30:02]
Michael Stelzner
So we're not duplicating something we've already published. We're only duplicating a draft. So do you recommend that people always keep a draft of what they did if they think they're ever going to reuse it? Because once you publish it, you lose all that editing capability, Right?
- [30:16]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. Which I'll tell you about another really cool update for that. Yeah. You know, I found had so many challenges with glitches happening and losing content that I'm a little bit nervous and I kind of save everything. I always have a duplicate of a draft because I've had many things where I've lost it. So you probably don't need to do that. And that's because of. Maybe I have a little bit of stress from that happening in the past. But yes, if you know that you can easily recreate, let's say, a B roll video that you've done in the past and you just need to make a few changes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Save that draft, make a duplicate of it, and that way you can save yourself some time. I also was one of the people who was like, oh, this is great. I just posted a reel and I made a spelling error or I accidentally posted the wrong one. And what used to happen is you'd have to delete it and then start all the way over. And now you don't have to do that. You can go after you've posted something, say, oh, no, this just happened to me last time week. I was like, oh, no, there's five spelling errors. So I went back to it, I tapped the three dots, and now you can move it instead of just deleting it, you can move it back to Drafts.
- [31:32]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, do you have a limited amount of time in which you can do that?
- [31:36]
Chelsea Peitz
Not that I know of. And here's the cool part again. I thought, okay, well, that's better than nothing. I can at least move it back to.
- [31:42]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, that means you can move anything back to Drafts and make a copy of it, right?
- [31:45]
Chelsea Peitz
I haven't tried it with my older ones, so sometimes they do updates where it only, like, allows. Allows you to do your new ones. But yes, I mean, theoretically, I was thinking of that too. That you can go back now and you can edit. You can also edit your frames and your cover photo, which is going to be so helpful if you forget to do that, like I have a million times. But I want to tell people that have experienced a lot of glitches like me when they saved things. I thought, okay, well, this is better than having to redo the whole thing. But certainly it didn't save the captions. It probably didn't save all the stickers I added and all the edits I did. It did. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so great. So, yes, you're going to be able to go retroactively back to your reels that you've already posted and start being able to edit them more, which is going to be so helpful. And yes, hopefully you'll be able to go back, make a duplicate, put it back in drafts, make a duplicate if you want to. Or so it's just so much better. So these little things are going to make your life as a marketer so much easier.
- [32:43]
Michael Stelzner
Is the desktop version of Instagram have all these same features or do you have to use the mobile app to get all this stuff?
- [32:48]
Chelsea Peitz
I use the mobile app to do everything and I would say, you know, the majority of the features are usually on both if you're on Instagram.com or on the app. But I would say Reels is probably going to be a really a phone app where you're editing directly onto it. Unless you're using a third party app like Adobe Premiere and you're using like a desktop app to do the editing, you're still probably just posting it, you know, either through your scheduler or through the phone. And you can schedule directly inside of Instagram if you're not using a third party scheduler as well. But I just do everything directly on the actual app. I don't know why. I just find it easier and more simplified. I only go on instagram.com for commenting because I like a keyboard versus actually typing in with my thumbs.
- [33:38]
Michael Stelzner
I don't know if you talked about splits yet, but I know this is something we talked about when we were prepping. Talk to me about what that can do on the editing side ahead.
- [33:44]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. So what's nice about going into the editing features now is that it's getting much better. It's not anywhere near some of our, you know, favorite third party apps, like, let's say, Cap Cut, that has so many features in it, it's almost overwhelming. But what's really nice now is that if you're not much of an editor, but you need to make a few changes, or maybe you said in the middle of a sentence or you just screwed up and you just need to start over again. There's in the editing features, you can, in addition to trimming off the beginning and the end, you can also split clips, which means you can split it right in wherever you tell it. This is the exact area I want you to split and make two clips. And then you can also rearrange and reorder those clips. Another update that they did was replace. So the hard part was you were like, okay, I switched this, I moved it around, but I, I have something else I want to, to swap out for this video. And you would have to upload the new one and then reorder it, delete the other one. Now you can just click replace and it'll go right to your camera roll and it will remove the one that you've designated as the replacement one and it will say, we're going to swap this right in there. So they're getting much better. It's not anywhere near like a cap cut level yet. But of course the goal is, hey, we want you to make the stuff inside of Instagram. That's exactly what they're doing with the carousel post where you can now add tag. Hey, you don't have to go to Canva to make a carousel post. You can just do it right here. Hey, you don't have to go to Capcut to do your editing. You can edit right here. But I still think they have a long way to go to get to some of those favorite third party tools that we're using.
- [35:21]
Michael Stelzner
Isn't it true that you can also download your final product and use it in other platforms? Is that true?
- [35:27]
Chelsea Peitz
Absolutely. And that's what I do. Even sometimes while I'm making something, save it. You know, even if I'm like, oh, maybe this isn't quite ready yet. I'll save everything to my camera roll before I post it. Because that way, yes, you can use it on other platforms, but I also think it's a good fallback because glitches happen all the time. And with the amount of updates that Instagram is doing at how often they're doing it, there usually always seems to be glitches that happen during those updates. And so as a fallback, I always save my reels. Now remember, you can't save your reels with the music. So if you have trending music or an audio track that you've used inside of your reel, it's going to just download the silent video. So that may not be a big deal at all. If you're not talking in it. You can just, you know, upload it again in the future and put some music on. It'd be way faster than recreating the whole thing. But if you are talking and doing talk to camera style reels, educational content, just know that you're gonna have to take the music out, out before you save it to your camera roll. And that's what I do. I'll take the music out, save it to my camera roll. That way I have it, and then I can go back and add that music if I wanted.
- [36:38]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, so if you're talking and there's music, you won't have any audio on the download is what you're saying.
- [36:43]
Chelsea Peitz
Correct.
- [36:43]
Michael Stelzner
Wow. Okay. All right. You mentioned music a little bit. Talk to me about that and whatever else is new to reels.
- [36:51]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes. So I don't know that you would need or want to add up to 20 different audio tracks to one reel, but you can do that. So it used to be one audio track. That's all you could upload. So if you really want to get into that cinematic storytelling, maybe you want to have like music that helps the story along or has different beats. Yes. You can add multiple audio tracks now to one reel, which I think is pretty cool. I haven't actually added more than one audio track. I usually just have one audio track that I might be having in the background. But for those people who want to add more of that cinematic storytelling, you can add up to 20, which is a lot of audio tracks.
- [37:30]
Michael Stelzner
Well, and I would imagine if you've ever done any video editing, I mean, you could drop in sound effects or whatever. Right. Like especially. I don't know if they even have audio tracks that have special. Like, I know they have ones with certain people just saying a couple words and stuff. But can you layer them on top of each other too, you think or no?
- [37:46]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes, you can. And I really wish that they would up their game on the sound effects because I love using sound effects in my video editing. I usually use a third party for that. I used to have sound effects, but I no longer have access to it. It used to be actually a designated button, so maybe it's just my account, but it had, you know, some basic sound effects. But yes, you can actually search inside of the audio library. You could put the word sound effects, but it's. The search isn't really, really great. So Sometimes it's a hit or miss. And then if you do hear a sound effect in the menu that you like, there's a little bookmark. So you, you can save it in the future. But hopefully they're going to just make it easy and have a sound effects library that's going to be a button and we can add. But yes, you could do sound effects. You could do like people clapping or, you know, the whoosh or the ding. And those sound effects usually do have enough impact on attention because our brain, you know, when they see movement and hears, those sound effects can also add to like a word coming onto the screen with that as well. Too. So, yeah, lots of, lots of ways to enhance the watchability and watch time and hopefully retain some attention using music and sound effects.
- [38:55]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, I want to get to AI, but I want to make sure we haven't skipped anything on reels. Do we have. We covered everything on reels and if we have, we can talk about AI.
- [39:03]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah, I think that one last thing that we should talk about is you can add multiple collaborators to reels. It used to just be one person. Now you can add up to five, which is kind of nice if you're going to be collaborating with multiple people and you weren't able to invite them to be collaborators once, once you posted the reel, and now they've made it available so that, oh, wait, we forgot to invite that person. If you've posted the reel, you can go back and you can add somebody and invite them as a collaborator. So I think that's a really helpful tool for marketers.
- [39:33]
Michael Stelzner
Real quick, explain the application there for people who may not understand.
- [39:36]
Chelsea Peitz
So a collaboration post is a little bit different from just tagging someone in the post. A collaboration post means that you're going to invite. It says, invite collaborator. There's a button when you're posting and let's say I wanted to invite you to be a collaborator in my post. So I would invite, you know, Michael Selzner to be a collaborator on this post. Then you will get a message like a DM notification says, chelsea is asking you if you'd like to be a collaborator on this post. You don't have to be. You can, you know, do nothing or you can say, yes, I'm going to click on this and I'm going to accept this invitation. And then what happens is once you accept a collaborator invitation, that post that I made not only goes to my profile, it also goes to your profile, which is a great way to cross pollinate audiences to get more reach and more visibility. And let's say you and I are collaborating for an event and maybe you don't want to have that on your profile forever. Maybe six weeks after we've collaborated and posted and the event is over, if you wanted to, you can actually remove the collaboration from your side so it doesn't show on your profile any longer. So collaboration post means the post goes to both people's profiles and both people's audiences.
- [40:50]
Michael Stelzner
Very cool. All right, so little tease here. We're going to talk about AI. And Mark Zuckerberg has made some pretty substantial investments in an open source large language model called llama. And you don't need to really understand what the heck that means, but they've also integrated into what they call meta AI. So talk to us a little bit about the AI integration into some of the cool stuff going on in Instagram.
- [41:16]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah, there's been a lot of trials on different types of AI, from AI AI stickers in Instagram stories, or creating AI versions of celebrities that you can chat with, to what I think is probably the most commonly used one is meta AI. And this is very similar, if not exactly the same, as like a GPT or a chat GPT. And now what you'll see when you're on your app, whether you're in Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram, when you go to the Explore page, which is the little icon that looks like a magnifying glass up at the top, it's going to say, say meta AI and you can type in there and search something like you're normally used to searching. You can search for a username, you can search for a word or a hashtag, but you can also tap on the little like icon for the AI and have a conversation just like you would with ChatGPT. So here's how a marketer might use this. You might say meta. Can you give me Maybe the top 10 hashtags that are relevant, relevant to this particular industry that are being used right now on Instagram? And then it's going to go through just like ChatGPT, and it's going to share that information. And then from there you can continue to drill down and ask it questions about whether it's content or Instagram related ideas. So it's very similar to any other kind of GPT that you might be used to working with. And they have a desktop version too. So if you kind of like more of a desktop version. But I do everything on my phone. Phone pretty much. So I've used it on my phone.
- [42:49]
Michael Stelzner
I just wish that what I'm about to say is possible, but I'm guessing it's not. I would love it if you could say, hey, meta, tell me my top Instagram posts or what's getting the most reach or interaction. I mean, I'm guessing it's not there yet, right?
- [43:03]
Chelsea Peitz
I mean, we could try it. I'm in it right now.
- [43:05]
Michael Stelzner
Ask it what your top performing post is from the last week and let's just see if it's smart enough to tap into your actual data. My gut tells me it's probably not doing that, but that would be so helpful.
- [43:18]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah, I, I'm, I'm with you. I don't think. Let's see what happens. So I typed it in. It's thinking like, nothing's happening. Oh, wait, I'm unable to directly access your social accounts. But like, don't you think that's probably coming?
- [43:31]
Michael Stelzner
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, like, but what it does.
- [43:33]
Chelsea Peitz
Say is how to go and check it.
- [43:35]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, okay.
- [43:35]
Chelsea Peitz
So it does say, here's how to go find your top performing post and you go to your insights. Or you can use third party tools set. So it's unable to directly access that. But you. I would be. I'm with you. I think that's going to be able to do that. I also put in here, can you provide some ways a marketer could use you? So if you're not even sure you can put that in there.
- [43:53]
Michael Stelzner
Right.
- [43:54]
Chelsea Peitz
And it spits out, you know, a versatile AI assistant and it talks about content creation, research, analysis and like underneath it, what it can do. So all you have to do is go to your Explore page and you'll see in the search bar it says ask Meta, AI or search. So you just tap, it's like a little ring, it's like a purple and blue ring and you just tap on that little icon and it's going to open up the chat.
- [44:16]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. My assessment, and for those that don't know, I have another show called AI Explored. My assessment is this is just Facebook and Instagram, the company Meta integrating their AI across the board. And my instinct says it's the exact same thing on Facebook and messenger and WhatsApp app and Instagram. I don't think it's contextually yet focused on just the stuff on the platform that you're on. I think it's just their way of getting people to use this for free as an alternative to ChatGPT. Would you agree with that?
- [44:47]
Chelsea Peitz
Agreed. And I think it's definitely, you know, in Its learning phase. You're the expert, of course, on AI, but they're gathering information and seeing how people are using it. There's one other thing that I saw that is coming out and I don't know if this will stick because they tried a few other things with AI and they're already gone. But they rolled out the ability for certain accounts, not all accounts. They're testing it for you to create your own AI, almost like a little chatbot version of yourself.
- [45:14]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah, like a custom GPT. Yeah. Okay.
- [45:17]
Chelsea Peitz
Yes, create a custom AI and it would say, you know, to engage with people. Let's say you have a celebrity account or a really large brand account and you can set up some, only answer these basic questions. So it would be very clearly labeled, you know, this is Mike's AI. It's not going to be a stand in, of course for you. I have not used it. I've seen other people that have gotten access to it. But you can, you know, chat privately, you can make the AI public for anyone to discover and then it will have the whole AI studio policy. So again, my assumption is, since I haven't personally used it, is if you do want to create one of these things, you'll have to go into their AI studio and set that up. It kind of reminds me, if you remember Mike, the Facebook page, they had sort of like a little like you could set up the questions and it could kind of respond back and forth if somebody DM a specific thing. But yeah, it's going to be the ability to create an AI version of yourself for certain accounts. Now they're testing it. Don't know if that's going to actually be launched and loaded.
- [46:20]
Michael Stelzner
Chelsea, outside of people coming to meet you in person at Social Media Marketing World, which I know you will be there, where's the best social platform for them to connect with you? I'm assuming it's Instagram and tell them how to find you and then if they want to connect with your business, where do you want to send them?
- [46:33]
Chelsea Peitz
Yeah, that's Instagram is the best place to find me and you can find me by my name. It's Chelsea Pites and it's P E I T Z and my website is also Chelsea pites.com so you'll be able to find me in both places just by my name. And I'd love to hear from you. I love everybody saying hey everybody, heard you on the show or I listened to the podcast. I'd love to say hello.
- [46:54]
Michael Stelzner
Thank you so much, Chelsea, for sharing all your insights with us today.
- [46:57]
Chelsea Peitz
Thank you so much for having me.
- [46:59]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 6:36 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a longtime listener, would you let your friends know about the show? I'm Stelzner on Facebook, Stelzner on LinkedIn, and Ike Stelzner on X. And do check out our other shows, the AI Explored Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast and I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting social media marketing world.in fox.