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Social Media Marketing Talk Show
Facebook Updates: eCommerce, Content Moderation, AI and More
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- [00:01]
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Got big marketing goals for 2025, but you're not sure how to achieve them. Learn what works from the brightest minds in marketing by attending Social media Marketing World 2025 this March. That's where you'll learn how to apply AI to your work, the latest in organic and paid marketing and strategies you can put to work right away. Secure your future by getting your tickets at Social Media Marketing World. I hope to see you there.
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Jerry Potter
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Talk show, your guide to the ever changing.
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Mari Smith
World of social media.
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Jerry Potter
On today's show we're going to explore some of Meta's recent updates. They've been making some big changes and announcements. Some of them, it seems like they tried to bury them the week between Christmas and New Year's, which is usually when companies announce things they don't want people to hear much about. We're going to jump into all of that right now. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk show from Social Media examiner. We break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. Today I'm excited to be joined by Mari Smith. Mari is a leading expert on Facebook marketing, author of the new Relationship Marketing as well she helps small and medium sized businesses master organic Facebook marketing through consulting, training and coaching. Mari, welcome to the show.
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Mari Smith
Thank you, Jerry. It's always a pleasure to hang out and talk story about this crazy thing called Facebook.
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Jerry Potter
Yes, well, and some of these announcements lately, which I'm excited to get into normally and you may feel the same way when Facebook announces something, even if I disagree with it, I go, I get why they're doing that. But some of this stuff, I'm like, where, where are they going? And so maybe you can shed some insight on all this. So first let's talk about the big announcement they made about content moderation. They've had fact checkers in place and all this stuff for the last several years and now it's all changing. So tell us about the changes and then what are your thoughts on them?
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Mari Smith
Yeah, well, it's definitely a huge aspect of it is to do with the incoming president and I guess as we've all just been kind of eating our popcorn and witnessing this movie in front of us. It's just the name of the game that Zuckerberg has been very influenced by the outgoing administration and clearly very influenced by the incoming. And so my understanding is that the third party fact checkers are being let go of the vast majority. They're moving the remaining ones, you know, locating from California over to Texas and they're going to adopt a system of fact checking, much like Elon Musk's X platform where it's got these community notes, kind of like up voting or downvoting. It's just my mind wants to say something like citizen journalism. You know, it's like the US users, we are the ones that are going to potentially be holding each other accountable as to what's true and what's not. I'm seeing mixed reviews on that Jerry, as to, you know, is that really the most effective way? Is it really going to be acceptable to users on Facebook? My concern, I will tell you is that what we're going to see with content restrictions removed, we're going to see just a big old giant free for all. And what I often have said, you know, decades of being on the Internet is that what happens is when people get behind a computer, get on the Internet, they can adopt a whole Persona of like false bravado. There's a degree of anonymity. So you'll see them getting all fired, fired up and it's like, would you really behave that way if you were in a room together, you crazy human beings. And so people think they, they can say whatever the heck they want. There's no recourse. By the way, there was a kind of, you mentioned about meta kind of quietly slipping these updates out when maybe nobody was watching too much, but not the fact checker. When that was Zuckerberg got on, got on his video and, and said that. But the very next day, you know I, I really enjoy Casey Newton. He's the writer, journalist, blogger of the platformer and it comes in by email and, and he just really has a very level headed view of what's going on. And the very next day after Zuckerberg's video it's like wait a minute, Manta has also kind of quietly dismantled the mechanism that can prevent misinformation really like spread virally. So these are grave concerns of mine. There's going to be this big free for all. We're going to see all kinds of information going viral. We don't even know whether it's true or not. You're going to have to do your own due diligence a lot before I go. Some positives or what to do about that. I will say that there, there is a potential upside to the removal of this. Heavy handed fact checkers plus some of their AI powered filters that were deleting either posts or full on accounts pages profiles of users that you know their Whole life flashing before them because some piece of content got erroneously triggered in the AI and they got taken down. And that was really difficult. So hopefully we'll see less of that. That's a good thing.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. And that was kind of what I thought too. And I told a couple of my clients, like, I have one client that deals in homeopathy, which is like natural medicine, right?
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Mari Smith
Yeah, yeah.
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Jerry Potter
Which is also, you know, often called not real or whatever else it might be. And so she has had this hard time getting her stuff seen or she believes that was the case. And so it's good to hear you say that too. Like certain industries that were being automatically flagged by the bots or what the AI checking, whatever it might be you feel like might actually see an increase in reach with this change.
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Mari Smith
Yeah, yeah. And just to insert as a little sidebar that anybody in remotely to do with the health industry definitely needs to check the new rules for. On the ad site, organic, you should be fine. Now, as you just pointed out, Jerry, but I think that's really important to keep your eye on the new rules for paid placement to do with the health. So. But I do feel like this whole aspect of leaders in the industry, marketers, you know, this is the time to go high. They go low, we go high. You rise above the noise. You gotta be vigilant, do your own fact checking, do your own due diligence, be mindful of what you share. Don't be too quick to just go, you see something, oh, my God. And you share it. And then you're like, oh, my gosh, wait a minute, that wasn't even real or wasn't fact check or it was AI created. I strongly recommend command all of us business owners, marketers, really a page. Business page owners on Facebook. We really cultivate this culture of a healthy discourse of positive mutual respect. And that goes on your groups, too. I know with my social scoop group, I keep a tight rein on it, you know, my. My team and I. And I see people having at it buried, no. 2 or 3 threads down in the comments on my Facebook group, and they're duking it out. And like, sometimes I'm like, I feel like a school mom, you know, a school teacher. I'm like, do a little hand slap. No, no, no. Come on, kids, you know, let's. Let's have some healthy mutual respect here. We're not always going to agree with everybody.
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Jerry Potter
I love that you said that. And it's like, yeah, let's. Let's take the high road. And you know, the. One of the first places I saw this story breaking out was in a group of entrepreneurs. I'm in a Facebook group. And they just shared a screenshot. And I replied, hey, screenshots are part of how misinformation gets out there. Do you have a link for this? And I thought she was going to be like, oh, sure, here's the link. And she goes, no, I got it from my friend, but I trust my friend, so I know it's true. And so I was able to actually look at the screenshot. I know my way around the meta world and find the actual article and, and link to it. It was, it was legit, but it was funny that that happened. And then even my response with the source got flagged as spam. The group owner told me your comment with the source from meta was flagged as spam. So, you know, they're going to have to work through some stuff here. But I really like what you said about taking the high road in all of this.
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Mari Smith
Yeah, I really feel strongly about that. It's like, don't get disc. I want to also say, because I've seen flying around my feeds in my community, friends, fellow social media users, is people either deciding they're going to boycott all the meta apps or they're just going to delete it or use it less. All the things I'm like, please careful there too. You know, Facebook's here for the long haul. I mean, you do you fine. I'm not here to force Facebook on anybody, but I am here to, to say, don't get discouraged and just decide, no, that's. I'm going to jump ship. I always do the mom test. You know, so long as we have our mothers or grandmothers or friends, family, kids, extended family, community, I mean, Facebook is going to be here for the long haul. And I do feel it's important for us marketers and business owners to also maintain a presence. And so even if you just take a little bit of a break and then come back and see where things are at, we need people to shine their light brighter. And like we've been talking about here, Jerry, just to take that high road, lead by example. And I love what you did. That's a great example. With, with the, the screenshot and pushing for, for a link to the source, we're going to hopefully see more of that, just holding each other accountable. Like, okay, we know that this is absolutely for certain. Let's. Let's dig in and, and check together.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. I think the conversations at social media marketing World this year are going to be really, really interesting. So we are only a few months away now gathering in San Diego for the biggest marketing event of the year. Are you going to be joining us? If you want to make 2025 your most successful year yet, consider attending. You're going to learn from top experts like Mari and connect with marketers from all around the world. Attendee Laura Pence said, Social Media Marketing World has been my favorite and most effective event for networking. It's one of my favorite things to do as an adult. So Mari's going to be giving a talk called From Fans to how to combine MeTa, AI and Facebook features for maximum impact. If you want to look at tickets and grab yours now, just go to socialmediamarketing World Again, Social media Marketing Marketing World. So the other big announcements the last couple of weeks from Meta, this is the one that I mentioned kind of first snuck out between Christmas and New Year, which for decades that's where press releases go to die. Didn't happen this time about AI powered profiles, fake profiles from Meta, and then they came back and retracted it. So take us through what happened there and what you saw around all of that, Mari.
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Mari Smith
So first of all, it was a couple years ago that Meta released these celebrity based AI chat bots Personas. And even when I saw them, like whatever Snoop Dogg and whatever else there was, I poked around and played with them and I just remember thinking, what a joke, what a PR play. These celebs got paid millions of dollars and it was just a headline grab. That was my opinion at the time. I'm like, this is going to die on the Vine. Nobody's going to be bothered interacting with them. And sure enough, that is what happened. They pulled the plug on that, the celebrity ones. But meanwhile, what you're talking about here is indeed there was AI created Personas, particularly in the Instagram feed. There's a whole story blew up that some people were interacting with it and it was getting a little out of hand. And so then I think, you know, Meta pushed back and said, oh no, okay, like they scrambled to, you know, nip that in the bud. But what is happening though is over time and apparently it's been happening since 2023 is there, there's testing in the wilds. These AI Personas that look and act and feel just like a real legit profile. They got profile pictures, a real looks like a real person, they can create content, they can interact and engage with users and even have conversations. And you're like, whoa, are we in the Twilight Zone. My big question is like, why, why, why, why, why would they do this? I think you mentioned it a bit earlier, Jerry. That's like, almost like we can, we can read between the lines and we can say, oh yeah, you like, follow the money or whatever it is. Two reasons why Meta is pushing, well, will be pushing more heavily, just supposedly just barely. Testing these AI created Personas is, number one is certainly to try and appeal to the younger generation and to stay relevant to them. It's new and hip and exciting and they might be curious to come and oh, wow, I can interact. I can create an AI Persona. I can interact with one that's fun. Who cares if it's fake? You know, just get in there because, you know, Facebook is Meta's Legacy platform. It's 20 years old now, about to be 21 in fact. And Zuckerberg has been obsessed for years to keep on attracting that younger demographic. And we're talking like 13s and up, right? I don't know, are we even on Gen Beta now? I mean, I know Gen A or Alpha is still those youngers, but he has to keep going to the youngers because in order for him to stay relevant, we never want to see in the news, oh my God, Facebook's losing users by the tens of millions or hundreds of millions. You're going to see a drop in the stock price, you're going to see investors going crazy. So he has to Trump saying he, you know what I mean? Meta and the whole team, that's the number one reason trying to appeal to the younger generation. And number two is it sounds weird, but it's to spark more content, to create more content, to spark more engagement, to, to get that more time on site across all the demographics. And so honestly, I think coupled with the AI powered discovery engineering, where the vast majority of the content you see in your feed, I saw yesterday, I was doing some research and it's like they're declaring it's a third, a little over 30%, but it's actually 50. I've heard them say as much as 50%, but I often see people will say, you know, they there, it's like 90% of the content they're seeing. The thing is, okay, well, we even need followers anymore because now people love vanity metrics. Unfortunately, this is, this is all, this is just gonna appeal to people's egos because it's getting more and more difficult to grow your followers. But guess what, that's not the name of the game anymore. We've kind of been sold a bill of goods there. It's been shifting this way for the last couple years. Right. With the discovery engine. Now you want to really pay close attention to followers and non followers. Every piece of content you look, did this get seen by more non followers? Okay, well, followers aren't as important, but people love those vanity numbers. Right. So you've, you've seen like the follow for follow and people that will pay for bot followers.
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Jerry Potter
Oh yeah.
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Mari Smith
And so on.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. And that's what I was looking at. And I was, I was doing what you do is I was going, why are they doing this? What's in it for them? And I was even thinking of the computing costs of. Because we keep hearing about how expensive it is to run anything AI. Right. But I thought about again, people coming back because their posts are getting more likes.
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Mari Smith
Yes.
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Jerry Potter
Or maybe the mental health benefit of that. But from a marketing standpoint, I was thinking like, can we get more social proof now, you know, on our stuff and then where are the ethics on that? And then if we look at our analytics or our insights, as Facebook calls them, is it going to show real likes and you know, AI likes or you know, what is all that going to look like?
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Mari Smith
So yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. Because in my research there I was, I saw something go by about how meta hopefully will put a disclosure on there because they've been quite good about that with the watermarks on their images generated by meta AI and eventually see the movie gen and the videos have the, the watermark. So and even like you got that little label like it'll say, do you have AI content in this post? Put the AI info. So surely we are going to see those disclosures on not only the profile but like anywhere it goes, every comment it leaves you, oh, that's right, this is an AI I'm talking to here, not a real person.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah, well, and then related to that too is this other story where people are reporting seeing posts or some are saying ads, not from them with their face in it. So what have you seen around that and what are your thoughts around that?
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Mari Smith
I think it is intrusive and creepy.
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Jerry Potter
Creepy for sure. Yeah.
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Mari Smith
Somewhere inside a meta, deep in the belly of the beast, some team got together and decided, oh, what if we create deep fakes of users and that that's going to really spark more interested in using our AI tools. My understanding is how it's working is that that meta is using people's selfie images that have been uploaded to the generative AI. Image tools. So hopefully those of us who've not yet done that, you won't just suddenly see a random selfie that you took that's been doctored with AI and then represented to you in the feed. Hey, come and use your AI. So I have been resistant to that personally, and now I'm glad. But it's like they've been pushing it in, I think mass under Instagram, Facebook, where it's like you take a selfie face on, and then left side, right side, because it's getting almost like this 3D image of you. And then. And they do. They have that real, like, exciting dopamine hit, kind of like, ooh, imagine myself in a sea of unicorns. Imagine myself in a hall of mirrors, you know, imagine myself on the moon, whatever. And you, you're tapping into people's creativity. And so now that's where they're kind of taking that concept. And I'm sure it's somewhere in their small print that you've agreed. Right. The minute you put yourself.
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Jerry Potter
Oh, yeah.
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Mari Smith
Into their AI tools, you're saying, yeah, sure, have at it. Do what you like with it. Meta. Right, for sure.
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Jerry Potter
And, you know, the discussion among some of the team here at Social Media examiner, it's like, okay, well, what's next? Like, next, is it going to be letting advertisers target you with a photo of you or target your friends with a photo of you or, you know, something like that, which even this first thing they've done essentially violates their own rules. Like you, I know you focus on organic, but, you know, on the paid side, one of their big rules is you can't act like you know too much about them. Right. Like, when I worked at an agency, you know, I remember the best example of something that we tried to run as an ad and it got rejected was for a restaurant, and it said, tired after a long day. Let us take care of dinner. You know, come pick it up to go. And it got flagged. And I ended up talking with somebody at Meta, and they said, well, you can't let them know that, you know, they're tired. I remember thinking, like, everybody's tired. That's not a. You know. So we had to change to say, if you're tired after a long day. We couldn't say tired after a long day, or, you know, we know you're tired after a long day because it was too personal. So.
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Mari Smith
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're right. Those are personal attributes that you're calling out, like thinking, hey, are you a woman? In her 50s that lives in Oregon that might want to get fitter. It's like, whoa. How did you know that, you monkeys?
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Jerry Potter
It's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Awesome. Well, Mari, thank you for sharing all of your insights on this.
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Mari Smith
And yeah, can I say another quick more thing about. Of course, I do feel like. I do feel there's potential upside with these. What they're calling like the customized AI characters, so, you know, flash forward into the, into the future is that you might be able to have all these different Personas and, you know, conversing with one another. And eventually between the curiosity and the novelty, I think people, the masses, I call them, I will go again. I don't even care that it's fake. It's at least it's giving. Get me some reach and engagement, like appealing to that vanity. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. It's crazy.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah, well, I think that's the big thing is we have to wait and see and time will tell and anyone who's, you know, a bad actor is going to find ways to exploit the new system, as you know, as they often do. So anyway. All right, Mari, we will see you at Social Media Marketing World very, very soon.
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Mari Smith
Yay. Thanks a lot.
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Jerry Potter
All right. Still to come, e commerce updates and a Messenger update that could be good for business. First, though, Meta is enhancing monetization for anyone who is promoting products in their content. Now, more specifically, if you work with influencers or affiliates, this is an update where rather than having to send somebody to the caption of an Instagram or Facebook reel, instead they're actually adding a more, a more beautiful link that goes right in the main interface so people can go and buy through affiliate links right from there. And so if you have people or you are creating content around your products, around your offers for a lot of major retailers, instead of, you know, including Amazon and different ones that have these affiliate programs, those will be directly in the main video interface. So it's just a much better way to have that and hopefully will increase conversions all around. Of course, in certain situations, you have to follow all the guidelines, the paid partnership labels that will all be part of it. But if you want to look into this, it's under the earn money option with reels and videos and then post settings for photos and text content. And this, by the way, is should be available to pretty much everybody using a business page or a professional profile. So something to look into here in the next couple of weeks and on a semi related Note Meta is testing Ebay listings on Marketplace. So it's a new test program where Marketplace will show listings from ebay. Now the transaction doesn't happen on Marketplace. It still sends them them back to ebay, but it's a new integration. Now they are testing this in Germany, France and the United States. And a few people have speculated this is Meta bowing to concerns from the EU that they have too much control over Marketplace. And so it's kind of like, oh, here's some stuff from other places, but we'll see where that rolls out. And an update on Messenger Live Location Sharing so this kind of came out of the idea that one of the most asked questions on Facebook messenger is where are you? So they've now allowed users to share their location directly through the messaging platform. Now, from a business standpoint, you're not going to generally ask people where their location is I would assume. But beyond that, maybe there is a way for businesses who get asked where they are all the time to take advantage of this or specifically anyone who is doing stuff mobile. Maybe you are doing stuff and you're at a big festival and you wanted to be able to basically, basically give out your exact location of where your booth was or if you're a food truck or you do pop up shops or anything like that. So it'll be interesting to see how this rolls out and if there are business applications. But like a lot of this stuff, you know, we have to wait till we have our hands fully on it to figure out exactly how to do it and how to best take advantage of it. So quick reminder, you can learn more about an all access virtual or AI ticket to Social Media Marketing World today. We would love to have you join us either virtually or in person in San Diego. Just go to Social mediamarketing World Again. Social mediamarketing World thanks to Mari Smith for being on the show today. You can find her on Facebook under Mari Smith M A R I Smith. And if you want to add another podcast to your listening lineup, a couple of you to check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast as well as the AI Explored podcast. Get them wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time. May you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks everyone.
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Mari Smith
Bye. The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a Social Media examiner production.
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Jerry Potter
For more social media Insight, visit social.
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Social Media Marketing World Promo
Mediaexaminer.Com Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting social mediamarketingworld.in fox.