What’s Up THIS WEEK! 🚨 BIG Instagram CHANGE! Big LinkedIn Change! 👽 Aliens Are HERE! | Ep. 476

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life, and we still have our other episodes the rest of the week. So what is going on? Well, Instagram is doing it. They're doing the thing they said they would never do. This just came out in the last 48 hours.

0:35But Instagram is now testing allowing links to be in post captions. So when you have your post and then you have the captions and you would have a link in the captions, they've never, ever allowed this. Right now, they're only allowing it for a small number of people that are meta verified. So the people with the blue check mark that are paying to be basically Instagram verified or meta verified, they're paying that monthly, whatever it is, 10 bucks, 20 bucks a month, whatever it is. They're giving a small number of meta verified users the ability to put links in the captions. Now, if they roll this out, and it sounds like they're going to be rolling it out to all meta verified subscribers, people that are doing that, okay, paying for that blue checkmark, that they could put links in their post captions.

1:30Way more people are going to have blue checkmarks because the value behind having links in your captions is wild. They said they would never do it, but here they are. They are doing it. What else is changing in the world of social media this week is LinkedIn. LinkedIn themselves announced that they did a massive algorithm change. So if you're seeing funky stuff, this just came out. If you're seeing funky stuff on your feed and in your account, don't be surprised. As a matter of fact, for me this weekend, the weirdest thing happened. Out of nowhere, I got 300 new followers. I had not posted. and I had no increase in profile views.

2:13I just out of nowhere got 300 additional follows. And I was like, that's really weird. I couldn't figure out why. And then the next day when I woke up, they were all gone. And what they're doing with the algorithm that they're saying they're doing is they're moving to more of an AI driven interest-based thing as opposed to just the people in your network. So get ready to start seeing a lot more different stuff and get ready for the engagement on your posts that start changing a lot because they just rolled out the new algorithm just in the last few days. So a lot of other random little things going on in the month of April.

2:51So World Data Research released some interesting stuff that you're probably sleeping on. Number one, for my business to business marketer friends out there, right now is a great time to put the word, not word, it's the letter, letter, yeah, letter and number Q2, like quarter two. If you put Q2 in your subject line leading into the first week of April, starting right now into the first week of April, it actually is lifting email open rates. If you put that in the subject line by over 20 % because we're done with Q1. Q1 ends on March 31st, right? So just by talking about what are the big trends in Q2, what's going to happen in Q2, our Q2 launches, whatever, now is the time to stick that in your subject line.

3:37It is helping boost open rates a lot. And on the consumer side, but also on the business side, a little known email fact, April is the biggest emoji performance month for subject lines, for email subject lines after November and December. November and December crush it because it's the holiday season. Everything crushes in the holiday season. But because of spring sales and travel promotions and everyone getting ready for the summer and all the different holidays, this is the time you want to be thinking about using those emojis in your subject line. This is when performance is the highest is the month of April.

4:11So that's kind of interesting, a little bit at least. Did you see would happen with the dude. So there's this health bar called David. David is the name of the health brand bar. You know, one of these like, you know, kind of like a kind bar or whatever. It's called David. And it's really popular protein bar. Well, now they're facing a class action lawsuit because apparently the bars contain a lot more calories than were disclosed. But the best thing that happened. The ultimate thing that happened with this David Barr controversy, which was on like the nightly news, it was all over the place. The founder of this thing is called, his name is Peter Rahal.

4:54Okay. He goes out on X and this is the post that he writes, which makes him a legend. He writes, no one is getting Regina George. The confusion comes from how calories are being measured, when food is burned, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he starts out his post by saying no one is getting Regina George. When you reference Mean Girls about the bars that Regina George ate in Mean Girls, and they made her get fatter than she wanted to be, you are a legend. Now, if he is actually fooling everybody doing something bad, no bueno, that's very, very bad. But at least he put out a really good social media post.

5:36All right, before I get into the ridiculous portion of what's going on in the world, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by CallRail. Listen, if you are running ads, if you're doing any kind of marketing and you're not totally sure what's actually driving your leads, you need to check out CallRail. CallRail shows you exactly which campaigns are driving the results and they can prove what's working. And here's the thing, just for listeners of this podcast, they're offering a 14-day trial with no credit card required. You just go and try this thing out. Just go to callrail.com slash do this.

6:17Callrail.com slash D-O-T-H-I-S. Do this, and you get the 14-day free trial with no credit card needed. You got to check this out. All right, let's get back to the absolute nonsense that's going on. All right, so I'm having a problem because my problem in the universe is that I've been trying, when I go out to restaurants now, I'm like trying not to eat the bread. They always bring you bread when you go out to dinner. So I've noticed, and this just happened to me this weekend, it seems like tides are shifting a little bit, but I'm still getting screwed. So I go out to dinner, we're out to dinner, and now the waiter comes over and they don't just bring you the bread.

6:58bread, they said, would you like the bread? And my problem is, is that I have no ability to say no. So I say, yes, I would. And then I eat the bread because I'm a disgusting animal. So I know they're trying to solve for this by saying, do you want the bread? And I'm just supposed to say, no, we don't want the bread, but I'm weak minded. And I say, yes, I do want the bread. So like, maybe we just need to do the reverse. And if you don't say, where's my bread? bread, they don't bring the bread. Why are we talking about this? I don't know. What else weirdness is going on? So I saw that Disclosure Day is coming out.

7:38This is the new Steven Spielberg movie that is about whether or not aliens are here on earth and are real. And Steven Spielberg was at South by Southwest and he was on a panel. And they asked Steven Spielberg, because he's made like other alien movies like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whatever. He said, Steven Spielberg, do you believe that there are aliens? He's like, oh yeah, I definitely think there are aliens. I think they're all around us. And then I think there are definitely aliens out there. So then I was like, I don't know why I've never really thought about it. I'm like, do I think there are aliens?

8:10And I've come to the conclusion, I don't know that I think there are aliens on earth, but I think that there are aliens out there. I do. And I don't know what that means. I don't know how much I care. I don't know if you think there are aliens. Some people I meet, I think are very weird. They possibly are aliens, but that's a whole different thing. I also think we're always negative about aliens. We think aliens are going to come over here and like blow up the earth, but maybe they'll be super cool, right? Maybe they, I don't know, maybe they have like another version of TikTok that we could all get addicted to and lose our minds over.

8:41I don't know. Other things I'm excited about, I'm going to start watching Scarpetta on Prime with Nicole Kidman. This just came out. Very excited about that. The Secret Lives of More and Wives. New season is now out. Excited about that. Not excited about what's coming out. I should be, but I'm not. This weekend, Sunday, is the premiere of The Bachelorette. You'd think I'd be excited because I'm a big Batch Nation person. But the person who is the new Bachelorette is actually the star, one of the stars, Taylor, Frankie Paul from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. They've jumped the shark. They're getting a celebrity to do it.

9:25This is going to be the beginning of the end. So that's what I have to say about that. What have we talked about? I don't know. Listen, go to jschwedelson.com. We could work together. You could hire my agency. I could do brand deals with you, all this stuff, and leave this thing a review. It helps circulate the show. You'd be my best friend. Please leave a review. You're awesome. Later. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency, work with me directly, get access to all of my free resources at jayschwedelson.com.

10:05And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy stupider people have done it. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might've been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.