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Social Media Marketing Talk Show
Instagram Updates: Algorithm Insights, Reels, Edits App, and More
00:33:37
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- [00:00]
Michael Stelzner
I am thrilled to announce our keynote speaker lineup for Social Media Marketing World 2025 includes, number one, a marketing futurist who predicts industry shifts before they happen. Number two, a viral video expert who has helped countless brands reach millions of people. Number three, an Instagram specialist whose AI strategies are revolutionizing content creation. Number four, a YouTube sensation whose strategies have generated over 350 million views. To discover who they are and how they can transform your marketing, Visit Social Media MarketingWorld.info.
- [00:45]
Jerry Potter
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Talk show, your guide to the ever changing world of social media.
- [00:52]
Ali Mason
On today's show, we're going to explore the most important Instagram updates for marketers, including Instagram sharing a little bit more about which metrics actually matter. If the insights have felt overwhelming for maximizing reach. And it's actually a little different than some of the stuff we've heard in the past. So we'll update you on that. Also, a fascinating new type of ad placement on Instagram that I think could really be powerful. And I haven't seen anything like this in this particular platform before. And a new test Instagram is trying where reach could be based more on people disliking our content rather than how much they like it. We'll update you on that as well. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a social media Executive examiner production where we break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. Today I'm joined by Ali Mason. Ali is a social media strategist and founder of something greater, social consultancy. Her company helps small businesses and experts build loyal and profitable audiences with social content. Ali, welcome to the show.
- [01:50]
Jerry Potter
Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, Jerry.
- [01:52]
Ali Mason
So let's talk. There's two parts of metrics that they've updated, one kind of overall and one specifically for reels. So let's talk about reels first, because this is obviously our best opportunity on Instagram to reach reach new people. So what has Instagram been announcing around reels and the reach we can get?
- [02:07]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, so lately a couple of different things have been happening on reels. I mean, I feel like probably most of the listeners of this show could agree that Instagram seems to be releasing new things every week about how the platform works, different ways that you can leverage your content. One of the big ones this time around is that they're actually expanding the length of reels that can be recommended in their recommendations or platforms. So in the past, basically your Reel had to come across a certain way. It had to be under 90 seconds. You couldn't have a watermark on it. There were several other things that would determine whether or not your reel could be recommended to new audiences. So, you know, you might still be able to publish your reel and it would go to the people who already follow you, but it wouldn't necessarily be seen by anyone else outside of that small bubble of people, unless those people started sharing it actively within their circles. Now, even if your reel is longer than 90 seconds, which, you know, I think on the creator's account they said 90 seconds isn't always enough time. Right. To share the story that you want to share, that still allows your content to be shared to those new audiences, which is really great for creators especially, who do things like explainer pieces or if you want to think about even like, you know, if people who are filmmakers or other types of artists. Artists, people who are really telling a story generally in a longer format, similar to YouTube or even some of the longer format TikTok videos that we've seen really perform very well in longer formats. Instagram hasn't really caught up to that until this point. So having those kinds of videos available to Surface to anyone gives creators who prefer to embrace that longer format just a little bit more of a reason to continue showing up. I mean, I'm not sure if you've ever seen this, Jerry, but I can tell when somebody brings a video over from TikTok that has performed well, but then it doesn't actually get to the end of the story. And then you have to go into the caption and it says, oh, to watch the full video, find part two, or go to TikTok to watch it. And it's just, you know, it's kind of sloppy. And so I think it's a really smart move on Instagram's part because it caters to what creators and small businesses are asking for. And it's a really great call for creators because it allows them to actually tell the story that they want to tell.
- [04:31]
Ali Mason
Yeah. And I think, you know, we all remember when Instagram was like, okay, reels are, I think, 60 seconds of the time. And then they were like, all videos are reels. You know, and so people were doing eight minute lives that were also reels and everything like that. So I love any sort of clarity like this. I do think we're in the phase right now where consumer behavior has to follow this. Right. Like, Instagram can say this all day and all night. And so I think it's important for us to keep in mind that we still want to treat it the beginning, at least that, hey, this person is used to getting something valuable in 30 seconds, so you still got to deliver that in the beginning. So. And then part of this is a new metric they're calling view rate specifically. So what exactly is view rate?
- [05:10]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, so view rate is how many of your viewers made it past the first three seconds of the video. It really is kind of like a completion metric. And we've always had it. It's just lately Instagram has been changing a lot of the things that they are calling their different metrics. So you might remember maybe four months ago, they changed reach to views. It's the same metric, it's just a new name. And so reach rate is really kind of like your retention rate. It's how long does your audience stay engaged with the video that you are posting. And the most important part of that is that first three seconds. So as creators, it's always been something, you know, that strategists and marketers and other creators talked about, where the first three seconds or your ability to hook your audience, it has been and always will continue to be one of the most important parts of any sort of strategy on how to create high quality video. Now we are actually just getting to see what has always been behind the scenes on Instagram. Right? Like, they've had these metrics available on the back end for years and they're finally allowing us to have access to that. And I think it's a really great move. Again, it's like anytime Instagram steps forward and kind of shares more transparently how the platform works, people seem. Well, some people still are kind of irritated, but, you know, people seem to be a lot happier about their ability to kind of cater to more of this. So, for example, in this specific one, it also breaks down your follower versus non follower reach, which is something that we haven't always had either. This is a newer metric just within the last maybe six months, depending on if you're a part of a test group or not, that we've been able to see how much of your reach is actually going to your followers versus your followers. And similar to this, with your view rate being able to break it down by your followers versus non followers, to me, it gives you the opportunity to decide how you want to leverage content similar to that in the future. So, say, for example, my goal for a video was to get people to sign up for a course that I'm offering or to buy a product that I'm selling the likelihood of new people who've never heard of me before actually going ahead and like making that purchase is not as high as people who already are familiar with my work. Right. So if I want to take a look at a video that performed well with my followers, it went more to my followers than non followers. I might want to replicate a similar kind of trend or topic or approach to the video as I did in that video itself, to ensure that it goes to more of my warm audience and that increases the likelihood of people converting. And similarly, if my goal is to get more reach from people who have never seen my content before, I might want to look at the things that are kind of like the patterns, the trends, the topics that are popular with my view rate performing well with non followers and then use the lessons I learned from that to create more videos that are going to increase my reach that way.
- [08:21]
Ali Mason
That's a great way to look at it. And I'm feeling really special right now because I feel like I'm always last to get the new features. But I've been able to see followers versus non followers now for like a really long time. So. Which is a great metric. It is a great metric for sure. And then my understanding too, is this right? That they did confirm and we kind of had this sense. But watch time is confirmed as the primary factor that's driving reach.
- [08:44]
Jerry Potter
Yes. Yeah. And watch time, I mean for the record, has been the driving factor on Instagram for as long as we've had an interest based algorithm. So once Instagram was bought by Meta, well, at the time Facebook, we started seeing trends toward what do people spend the most time on? And that being the really the biggest driving factor. One interesting thing that I always use to point out is even really recently, I shared these two posts on threads and one of them was kind of this very long narrative story. Honestly, it was about my dating life. It was like totally not social media related. It was like a personal share, you know, but it was quite long. It was maybe thrilled, four or five threads deep and it didn't get that many reposts. It maybe got like two reposts from the whole series of threads. It got like a decent amount of likes probably. I remember, like it performed better than most of my content. It ended up being like I got over a thousand likes on it on threads, which on threads I have like 4,000 followers or something. So like it was very significant for the amount of followers that I have and how much engagement I usually get. And there weren't any significant shares and I was just like, you know, but it performed so well. It ended up the reach was something above 70,000 views. So I was really surprised to see something that got so little engagement overall. Like, it had good likes, but it didn't really have high shares. It didn't have high reposts, but it got to a lot of people just by being recommended as a post that was popular. Well.
- [10:20]
Ali Mason
And obviously people paused while it was there and they clicked to read through them too.
- [10:25]
Jerry Potter
Exactly like that.
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Ali Mason
Like that is the retention on threads. Right? Is to. If you have a four part right.
- [10:29]
Jerry Potter
100%. And this is always my argument for people who say like long captions don't work anymore. Right. It's like, well. Or that carousels don't work or whatever. Right. It's anything as long as the content is strong in its hook and people are actually interested in it and you provide value. Anything that you can do to retain more time on that piece of content is going to help it improve. And it's not going to work for every piece of content, but it does improve the likelihood.
- [10:59]
Ali Mason
Yeah. Okay. So there was another metrics update where they talked specifically about content overall and there was one thing that they didn't mention that gets more reach that I know used to be a big thing. So we'll update you on that here in just a second. By the way, we are getting very close. Were you one of the lucky ones that last year was one of the thousands of smart marketers that came to San Diego with one purpose in mind to give their marketing a special boost that you can't find anywhere else? If you're trying to figure out how to get more reach, like we're talking about exposure, sales. If you're trying to understand how AI tools can help you become a better marketer, this is the place you want to be. Social Media Marketing World. Don't be left behind. Transformation happens when you show up in San Diego March 30 through April 1. Allie's going to be there. I told Allie when we got on today. I'm so excited you're a metrics person. She's going to be giving a talk called mastering Instagram metrics using social data to meet your business goals. I'm going to be there. Will you be there? Go to Social Media Marketing World to grab your ticket today. You got virtual options or in person options. Again, go to Social Media Marketing World. All right, so we talked about the reels insights and then Adam Masseri, who I love his transparency, also talked about the three most important ranking signals for content overall, not just on reels. So what did we see in this update?
- [12:14]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, in that one, it was shares per views, the watch time and likes per. What was that one? I actually am. I'm forgetting the likes per, and I'm fine not missing it.
- [12:24]
Ali Mason
In my notes, I just had it down as. As likes. Yeah, so they, yeah, they talked about likes, which is interesting because over the years likes have carried, you know, a much lower ranking. And then sends, which is what they're calling shares now in their. We only care about what stuff people share with their friends, direction that they're going in in 2025, and then the watch time, like we talked about before.
- [12:44]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, exactly.
- [12:45]
Ali Mason
So what's your reaction to that?
- [12:47]
Jerry Potter
Well, I think one of the interesting things, and this isn't just me remembering from the previous post that Mosseri shared, and then also some of the other creator content that I've found about it, things on TechCrunch and other publications, but I believe the sends was per views. So this isn't necessarily a total metric. So when we look at like, it's like averages versus totals, this is kind of one of those situations where sends per views is the higher it is in a ratio. So even if your total views are lower, your content might still perform better if the sends are high per that number of views. So that's just something to keep in mind. One of the things that I kind of am really a stickler on when it comes to data is making sure that we can contextualize data so that we get the correct meaning. And that's one of the things that I found really, really interesting because one would assume that if you had a high sense per views, then that would automatically increase your views overall. It's kind of seeming like that may not necessarily be the case, but it might be just one small factor that influences how the video performs and whether or not it gets recommended to more people. Likes, I think, was a really. It's kind of maybe like a return to the. The golden age of Instagram. Right? Like, maybe it's like a little bit of a nostalgic throwback to help people feel like their content is performing better. Because quite frankly, you know, I've been doing this for 11 years, and it doesn't matter how successful a creator is. If their content isn't getting likes or the likes aren't reflecting in the content performance, then they are usually like, really unhappy. It's not good for the consumer. And really, you know, when we think about instagram as like a business. Us as users, we are kind of the, the consumers or the customers of Instagram. So if we're not happy because our likes aren't doing what we want them to do, then we're not going to maybe be as likely to open the app or use it or we're going to be complaining about it, of course. So, you know, I do think it's maybe it's like a PR move on Instagram's behalf. I'm not, you know, I, I don't have any inside scoop there, so this is just my own speculation, but that's potentially with likes, what is going on there and then with view rate, I mean we've, we've already talked about that before the watch time in total, just getting people to stay engaged with your content. One thing that I think would be really interesting though, and I haven't seen it on my personal accounts yet, but I would love to see like a watch time metric for even non video content. Like I want to know how much.
- [15:38]
Ali Mason
Time, how long they pause.
- [15:39]
Jerry Potter
Yeah. How much time are people spending on. I'm sure they have it. How much time are people spending swiping through my carousel or you know, reading my long caption like that's what I really want to know.
- [15:50]
Ali Mason
And you're right, they absolutely know. Like how, how long did somebody take to swipe through that 20 slide?
- [15:55]
Jerry Potter
Right caption. Yes.
- [15:57]
Ali Mason
Right. Well and then the other part I thought was really interesting. You were just talking about how to talk to your followers versus your non followers, where they are on the customer journey and things like that. And they did, I guess, point out that likes carry and they are. Adam Sarah always says slightly more weight. Now he never says more weight. He always wants to point this out, but he said likes carry slightly more weight in the ranking to reach your actual followers. So the connected content versus sends, which is what they're calling shares now carries higher weight, again, slightly higher rate for reaching unconnected, you know, people that are not following you yet. So that's an interesting thing to do. And I wonder if we could even experiment with, you know, calls to action if you're trying to reach your followers. It's like, hey, if this was helpful, you know, give it a, like versus, you know, hey, if this was helpful and you know, somebody else, you know, let them know about it, so.
- [16:47]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, exactly. And I think it just shows also how they're seeing consumer behavior working on Instagram right now too. Right. Where chances are, if you're willing to share this or send this to someone, you think it deserves to be seen by more people. Whereas if you are just liking it, then maybe it's something to keep within a closer network of people.
- [17:10]
Ali Mason
Yeah. All right. There is another thing they're testing that could absolutely hurt your reach, which we'll talk about here in just a minute. But there's a new type of ad on Instagram, and when I first read this, I was like, what is the point? And then I thought about it, I went, oh, my gosh, this could be really, really powerful. And they're calling them Instagram testimonial partnership ads, I believe. So tell us exactly what this is and your thoughts on this, Ali.
- [17:35]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, so I am kind of a fan of this, if I'm being honest. I do think that anytime that we have paid endorsements on social, there's a need for transparency there. So I'll preface all of this with the fact that I think if there needs to be a way to distinguish that these are paid, and I'm sure Instagram will, because I think it's legal, according to the fda, that you need to distinguish when something is paid versus when it's organic or, you know, just natural. But essentially what this is is creators can start working with brands online to write Testimonials that are 125 characters or less. So they would show up in the comments section of the brand's posts and they could submit those in advance to the brand. The brand would have to approve them, and they could get paid for those testimonials. Now, I think personally, it's a really great option because I know as a consumer, if I'm on Instagram or another social platform looking for information about a product, and I often do, one of the first places I'm going to go beyond just looking at the content itself and seeing, oh, does this product work? Or that product work is going to be the comment section to see what people are saying about the products themselves. Usually you can go into a post from a brand and find lots of information, for better or for worse. You have to obviously contextualize some of that for yourself. But what I think this will do is encourage users to participate in that kind of discussion and looking through to get really pointed reviews for different types of products. Now, there's always the danger that, you know, and I think influencers get a really bad rep for this. And I don't think it's the majority of influencers, but I think some endorse products they've never used or they don't have actual relationships with, or maybe they've only received and have used for like a week. Say it's like a skincare product that you're not going to need more time than that. Right. Like, if it's clothing, maybe it's a little bit different, but that's going to be one thing that I think both creators are going to have to look out for, because you want to be careful about who you give your endorsement to. And it's going to be something that brands are going to have to be creative with and be careful with. Because, you know, I think at a certain point it kind of becomes like the Instagram feed, where anytime there's an excessive amount of promotions that are popping up in the feed, people start complaining. Right. And so if a brand is receiving too many of these testimonials and their entire comment section ends up being these paid promotions, that could be a real problem for helping people to feel like what they're seeing is real and trustworthy. And it could really damage a brand reputation as well as a creator reputation.
- [20:27]
Ali Mason
Well, the thing I loved about this is for years on any platform we know that like Instagram will prioritize showing comments from our friends and people we follow above or higher up before we click more or see all or re rank the re rank them right. On Facebook, an ad will come up from a page and it'll say, by the way, here's three of your friends that like like this company. And you're like, ah, now I don't think it about the Facebook pages as much anymore because I think we all liked 500 pages 10 years ago, but.
- [20:54]
Jerry Potter
I never unlike them.
- [20:56]
Ali Mason
Yeah, exactly. But it does totally works, right? We go, oh, that's interesting. So I think from a marketing perspective, if you had the opportunity to get in front of somebody and again, you don't have their trust yet, but all of a sudden they see even if it's like you said, it's going to have to have a designation like hashtag ad or, or something in the comments. But all of a sudden you see somebody who you really like and trust has written something about it. I think that could be incredibly powerful.
- [21:21]
Jerry Potter
Definitely.
- [21:22]
Ali Mason
And it looks like all the negotiation apparently happens outside of meta. So this is just another opportunity that you could give and just like you would if you were doing a sponsored video or something like that. So.
- [21:34]
Jerry Potter
Exactly. Really interesting though. Exactly. And I think one of the other benefits that you brought up that isn't immediately obvious is with paid ads, you know, you're kind of relying on still Instagram's targeting to make sure that that ad goes to the right person. Right. So there's still no guarantee that me, even though I might be the perfect person for this ad, there's no guarantee that I'm actually going to see it. But if I am interested in a product, this is like evergreen ads, right? So I can go to that product page, find the testimonial on the content, and it's like inbound versus outbound. And I find that really, really interesting and can be really strategic for brands.
- [22:16]
Ali Mason
Be interesting to see someday if you could have it show, like, ab. Test it. So half the time we show this influencer comment, half the time we don't. Or between influencers. Because obviously, from a budget standpoint, it would be good to know, like, hey, when this thing is pinned there, we get 10% more conversions. So.
- [22:32]
Jerry Potter
Exactly. Yeah.
- [22:33]
Ali Mason
Well, in all of the chaos around TikTok, at the beginning of the year, Instagram came and announced a bunch of stuff, and one of them they've been talking about was this new edits app, which is similar to, you know, TikTok's cap cut and things like that that we've seen. YouTube has their own video editing app that they've been slowly rolling out. So now they're saying they're going to use this new app to test other creative tools. So it sounds like things might show up in this edits app before we get them in Instagram. Is that your understanding of this?
- [23:01]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, that's the exact understanding. And I think it's a really smart move on Instagram's part, honestly. Again, I think TikTok did a lot to move our social networking space forward because it created a level of competition that we haven't seen in this industry in quite a while. And one of those things was the Cap Cut app. And so, you know, as a creator myself, I mean, I'm not sure how much video content you create, but working in the Reels editor is like one of those ongoing jokes with, like, other creators and social media marketers about just how hard it can be. And, you know, the app crashes and then your draft somehow disappears. And, you know, there's all of this kind of challenge and it's a real point of friction with Instagram's customer base. So investing in a standalone app where you can really work on the features and make sure that everything is working exactly the way you want, and then take the ones that are the most popular because you're going to have data on that and move those over to Instagram's Native editor, and hopefully they will be glitch free. I think that's a really, really smart move. But I think that's the risk that we really run with more of these features we start integrating into an app like Instagram, the higher the likelihood of things like crashes and data loss and all that kind of stuff. So it'll be interesting to me to see how seamlessly those features are added.
- [24:31]
Ali Mason
I love your optimism. It'll be bug free. Hopefully. We'll see. I've been called dangerously optimistic by people I'm in a mastermind with. Like, I'm always very optimistic, but. But even that one, I'm like, oh, that would be nice, Sally. That would be nice. All right. I really love this update and I'll tell you why in a second. But now Instagram is letting us translate DMS into other languages within the app. So tell us about this update.
- [24:58]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, this one is really, really cool. I mean, personally, I don't know that I have like a super broad multilingual audience, but even if the audience that I have is, you know, maybe not English first language, but they know English well enough to be able to engage with my content, now they can choose to translate any DMs, I send them into a variety of other languages. I think. I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's something like 90 different languages. It's really impressive. And basically there's just like a little button where you can just click translate on, you know. And I know this has been a thing with closed captioning that they've tested over the last couple of years, being able to translate your videos into different languages, but having it in something like your DMs in comments, like in any space, where it allows people to have a better understanding of the message that you're trying to send. I think it's a really incredible accessibility adaptation on Instagram's side that allows users to really reach audiences in new, new demographic areas that they wouldn't otherwise because they just don't speak the language.
- [26:07]
Ali Mason
Yeah, I've. Occasionally I'll get a dm, you know, and it'll say habla espanol? And even though I took Spanish, I can't advise people on marketing in. In it.
- [26:16]
Jerry Potter
Yeah.
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Ali Mason
But years ago when I worked at an agency, we had a chain of Tex Mex restaurants. And occasionally we would get DMS on the business page, private messages that were in Spanish. And so our to put it into Google Translate, translate it, write our response, and then text the whole thing to one of the local managers of the restaurant that spoke Spanish and English really, really well. And then he would usually say, oh, change this and this. And then we'd reply, and it worked. But this is obviously on a whole new level. And obviously AI I'm sure, has made everything much better than Google Translate was nine years ago or whenever. This was definitely really cool. So I got excited about that. I was like, oh, that would be so, so neat. Now I'm. Now I'm waiting for a DM in another language. So we'll see.
- [27:00]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, exactly.
- [27:01]
Ali Mason
All right, so a weird test that Instagram is throwing out there right now that could impact reach. And we'll talk about that right after we talk about a bunch of updates that I think can save us time, get us more engagement. So run through these additions that Instagram announced for us.
- [27:16]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, so we already tapped on the DM translation. Another one is this 30 second song preview. So Instagram obviously has its own commercial license library where we can share all kinds of music and our stories and our reels and all of that good stuff. But now we have the option to send these songs in a chat. So essentially gives us the opportunity to. To have a new way to share new music. I think it's great for leveraging trends. So, you know, I, I don't know if you use Instagram's broadcast channels, but I know as a marketer and as a consumer, I'm in a few of them and I think it could be really great. You know, I know a lot of people who share upcoming music that is starting to trend on Instagram. I think it could be a great use of this feature to help share that with your broadcast channel. Also, I think if you are a musician, like, this is a great way to give people kind of like a sneak peek at your latest release. And, you know, some people just have music as like a really big part of their brand. I love sharing music with my audience. I think even something like that could be a really fun way to connect with your audience and make yourself more relatable. Right. So it gives you the opportunity to share this really personal thing about yourself. Here's what I'm listening to this morning. And share a music sticker with your followers.
- [28:38]
Ali Mason
Yeah, I love that. Okay, what else did we see in this update?
- [28:41]
Jerry Potter
We saw a new scheduling feature that allows you to schedule messages for future delivery. Yes, we all love a scheduling feature. If you work in marketing around applause. Yeah, I mean, you can assume what is great about this? Like, you know, if there is a platform that I'm working on. And it doesn't allow scheduling. I am struggling with that. I really need a scheduler on all things. So it just allows us to really kind of, you know, you could schedule something for later in the week. If someone sends you a dm, that's saying like, hey, I'm kind of interested in a product you have or a service you're offering and they ask a couple of questions but then the conversation just kind of dies out or they'll say, oh, I'll get back to you. You can immediately schedule a DM to follow up with them in a couple of days is assuming that they haven't already, you know, messaged you back. So I think that stuff like that would be really great.
- [29:32]
Ali Mason
Right, right. That's. That's the danger.
- [29:34]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, that is the danger. And I mean that is the danger with scheduling anything because I think we've all seen the events that can happen on a wide scale in our culture. And you always have that one brand that forgot to unschedule their post for the day and it ends up being a bit of a social nightmare on their brand's behalf. But that is something to keep in mind when you're scheduling anything.
- [29:55]
Ali Mason
The thing I love about this is, you know, if you're managing a big brand, lots of messages, obviously back and forth, like almost real time communication is so powerful, but it's just not in the cards for everybody. And so sometimes you reply when you can. Right. So maybe it's 9 o'clock at night and you're a local business and so you decide to reply. But at the same time, I don't ever want to set the precedent that you're going to get a response at 9pm if you're like an 8 to 5 business. So that's the kind of thing that I love, whether you can just schedule it for the first thing, you know, 8:03 tomorrow morning or whatever it might be, because as soon as you let those boundaries down, people will expect it.
- [30:28]
Jerry Potter
I agree.
- [30:29]
Ali Mason
So, okay, a couple of other quick updates. Now, users can pin things at the top of group chats or individual chats, including specific messages, images, memes or reels. This is something we've seen on some other messaging platforms like Telegram, so no surprise there. And then users can also generate and share personalized QR code codes for group chats by accessing the group name at the top of the chat and then selecting the QR code option to create an invite link. That's a QR code. So really interesting to see all of these. All right, we gotta talk about this. Instagram is testing a downvote button on comments. Okay. And it's interesting that this came out right after their announcement a month ago of there's no more fact checking. Everybody gets free speech. Let's see what happens. So what are you seeing about this and what are your thoughts around this downvote test?
- [31:18]
Jerry Potter
So I think that your point is one of the biggest ones, that it's really important if you're going to take away some of those algorithmic guardrails, that we have some sort of safety in place to be able to moderate the types of comments that are coming in on our content. So I think in one way it's kind of giving the power back to users and allowing there to be some moderation, even though Instagram has rolled back their automatic moderation. The other part of it that I actually, I think is going to be really helpful is that so many people have kind of gotten really tired of seeing the DM automation messages in the comments. So, you know, if you're using manychat, which I really, I have to say, I still really support manychat, I think it does really great work for helping, helping people convert their audiences. And I've seen just incredible growth in conversion from using an automated tool like that that hand delivers a link to someone. I wouldn't give it up, but people love comment sections. And the comment sections that are the most engaging are the ones where you can find lots of really organic, interesting comments from users, not the repetition of a keyword that you need to say in order to get a link. Think. Right. And so I think we're going to see people down voting a lot of those single word keyword messages to kind of try and get them out of the chat. That's something that I predict will happen, but I mean, we can only. Only time will tell.
- [32:54]
Ali Mason
Yeah, well, and it'll be interesting to see, like, let's say a lot of comments get down votes. Like, will that impact the reach? Because I gotta think as they're putting this together, if Instagram is seeing that the comments on this post are frustrating people or angering people, they may not want. Because they want Instagram to be a happy place. Right? A place people enjoy. Not one of those places you go to get mad.
- [33:16]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, exactly.
- [33:17]
Ali Mason
So that'll be interesting. That was my thought as a marketer, but I was also thinking from a mental health standpoint, like, sometimes if you see something you dislike, it feels good to be able to at least hit a button. And move on. Right?
- [33:26]
Jerry Potter
Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
- [33:28]
Ali Mason
So from a mental health standpoint, it could be interesting as well.
- [33:30]
Jerry Potter
So, yeah, I'm curious to see how it impacts reach.
- [33:33]
Ali Mason
Yes. Yeah, that'll be the biggest one. One quick reminder. Social Media Marketing World takes place March 30th through April 1st. Grab your ticket today at Social MediaMarketing World. Again, Social MediaMarketing World. Ally, where is the best place to discover more about you?
- [33:46]
Jerry Potter
You can find more about me pretty much on every channel at that Ally Mason. And My website is www.somethinggreatersocial.com awesome.
- [33:55]
Ali Mason
All right. And if you want to add a podcast to your listening lineup, couple more for you to check out. The Social Media Marketing podcast as well as the AI Explored podcast. Until next time, may you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
- [34:07]
Jerry Potter
The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a social media examiner production. For more social media Insight, visit social mediaexaminer.com.
- [34:20]
Michael Stelzner
We'Re in the biggest shift in marketing history with AI and social algorithms transforming everything. That's why Social Media Marketing World 2025 isn't just a conference. It's your complete marketing transformation. Whether you join us in San Diego or virtually, one breakthrough could change your entire career. Secure your spot today atsocial media marketingworld.in fox.