New Ways to Expand Reach and Engagement on Instagram

0:00Elizabeth Marberry: I'm Mari Smith, known as the premier Facebook marketing expert, aka queen of Facebook, and this is actually my 14th time because I have been at every single social media marketing world.

0:09Michael Stelzner: There is no amount of sophisticated technology that can ever take the place of live, in person, IRL, heart to heart, face to face.

0:19Elizabeth Marberry: You could very well meet some of your best friends, clients, joint venture partners, alliances, have opportunities, podcasts, speaking engagements, it's extraordinary. So come on in for this beautiful, in-person experience. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.

0:38Elizabeth Marberry: Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.

0:47Michael 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 more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, Jerry Potter and I are exploring important updates from Instagram with our special guest, Elizabeth Marbury. Take it away, Jerry.

1:10Elizabeth Marberry: Thanks, Mike. Great to be here. Instagram has been releasing a version of the app that runs on TVs and is now available on most smart TVs. So is this panic time to start creating content that works on TVs, or are there small changes we can start making to prepare? Plus, we'll show you how to take advantage of some of Instagram's other recent updates to increase your reach and engagement. We're very excited to be joined by Elizabeth Marbury. Elizabeth's an Instagram marketing strategist who helps small businesses drive more organic leads and sales. And her podcast is called Strut It, Bold Visibility Through Instagram Marketing.

1:45Elizabeth Marberry: Today, Elizabeth, Mike, and I are going to explore what these latest updates from Instagram mean for small business marketers and owners like you. Elizabeth, welcome back to the show.

1:53Michael Stelzner: Thanks for having me. I'm so pumped to be here. Let's do this.

1:57Elizabeth Marberry: So I was shocked when I saw actually starting with my kids, them watching YouTube shorts on TV, you know, buried in the middle of the TV. And I'm like, what is going on? Why are they doing this? What a terrible viewing experience, but it's becoming more and more normal. So it's not shocking. But Instagram for TV has expanded now to include Samsung TVs on top of Amazon Fire TV and Google TV, which basically means that it's on more TVs now than that it doesn't exist on. So this includes users being able to cast reels from their phones to TVs. Instagram stories are coming to TV. So do you know anyone already watching Instagram on a TV, Elizabeth?

2:36Elizabeth Marberry: Or do you watch Instagram on TV?

2:38Michael Stelzner: Well, I do as of this morning prepping for this interview. So it was really cool. I tested it this morning on my own TV because I have a smart TV. And I was shocked at how easy it was to set this up. It was almost instant. So you download the app to your TV. There's a QR code. Within seconds, my Instagram account was on the big screen. And like what stood out to me was really how the content was organized around my interests. So we know that Instagram is now a recommendations based algorithm. And it was organized in a very fascinating way, very similar to Netflix. There was a for you section at the top.

3:21Michael Stelzner: So based on kind of the content it thought I would want to consume. And then this was super interesting based on your recent interest. So it knows the videos I've been consuming. So it had different categories of interest, like back to school, because, Hey, I'm a mama of two kids that just went back to school last week. So clearly I've been consuming that content, um, midlife humor, uh, fitness, all these things. And so it was just really interesting to see how it was organized. And Jerry, I'm happy to report that Instagram stories are on my TV. Okay. And it was really actually a cool way to consume the story.

3:58Michael Stelzner: I didn't think I would like it because I'm so used to consuming Instagram on my phone, but it was pretty cool to consume it in that way. So super easy to set up and use.

4:09Elizabeth Marberry: So just to verify from a user standpoint, I assume you downloaded the app and then I'm sure it had you point your phone at a QR code and then it synced with your Instagram account. So this is not hard. Like users are probably going to do this if they know about it.

4:23Michael Stelzner: I was shocked at how quick it was. It was literally 30 seconds. Jerry, we have had Leron on the show to talk about what's going on with YouTube and TV. I don't know. I'm just curious, Jerry, from your perspective, because I know you cover YouTube. Do you think this is basically Instagram and hopefully TikTok coming soon? And we're going to start to see like this consumption on the big screen is like a move that's being spurred by YouTube?

4:49Elizabeth Marberry: Well, it was interesting, you know, about four or five years ago when TikTok was really blowing up and vertical video was really blowing up. I remember a couple of people and maybe they were just trying to get clicks, but they were like, no, you watch in five years. We're going to be hanging our TVs vertically because we're going to be watching vertical TV around the house. And it was a really great attention getting statement at the time. So I don't think we're quite there yet. But again, I try not to assume that everybody is like me. The first time I saw one of my kids watching shorts on TV, just sit in the middle of the screen, I just thought, what a waste you could be watching something full screen.

5:27Elizabeth Marberry: But when I'm at my friend's houses, their kids are doing the same as well. And so I do think it's very normal, and I assume especially for younger generations. And it sounds like the way that Elizabeth is describing it, where it was like, hey, here's a bunch of stuff. We know everything about you. Here's a bunch of stuff you're interested in. I can see it becoming pretty addictive. So Elizabeth, again, as a consumer, do you see yourself sitting down and opening that instead of Netflix sometimes now that you have it?

5:53Michael Stelzner: Well, I can't totally answer that question yet because I just, you know, downloaded it today. But what I can say is in regards to YouTube, I know that my husband and I have watched full comedy specials. I know that YouTube has fully disrupted the TV industry because, for example, a comedian that couldn't get funding or get Netflix to buy into their show, they're like, you know what? I'm going to go create it myself and I'm going to fund it myself. I'm going to put a full length comedy special on YouTube. And my husband and I have sat through a full hour of comedy on YouTube. There's also that show on YouTube called Hot Ones where they're like all these celebrities are coming on and they're tasting the different levels of spice.

6:38Michael Stelzner: And so I think YouTube has been disrupting the TV industry for a long time. And what I found super interesting with Instagram, because what I have learned in studying Instagram over the last six years extensively, is that, you know, Adam Ozzeri, the CEO of Instagram, is always studying these other platforms and seeing what is working. And of course, they're seeing that YouTube has this market share of, wow, people are getting used to streaming YouTube on their TVs. How can we get a piece of that? And I do think what was most shocking to me when I looked at that Instagram app on my TV today is there was a watch on widescreen option.

7:17Michael Stelzner: And I was like, wait, what? Because people like me who are Instagram coaches, marketers, mentors are telling you forever, focus on vertical video. And I still would tell you that for Instagram, quite frankly. But what I noticed is that the viral videos in the watch on widescreen were like widescreen horizontal videos that had been posted on Instagram that happened to pop off, go viral. And now I can watch them on a full screen TV experience similar to YouTube. So it's the Wild West over here in terms of how things are moving over to TV.

7:51Elizabeth Marberry: Well, and Mike, to go back to what you were saying, I mean, I think it's brilliant on Meta's part. I think the genie's out of the bottle. I don't think they're going to abandon this in six to 12 months like Meta does a lot of their things. Like, you know, YouTube has already laid the framework, as you said, and they said, yeah, we're going to start encouraging people to make landscape or, you know, horizontal widescreen content because that was my hesitation. Like Instagram is all vertical. What, you know, it's going to be a terrible experience on there. They're talking about categorizing and things like that.

8:18Elizabeth Marberry: So if we switch to, you know, we're guessing what will happen on the consumer side, but if we switch to our marketer side, Is it time to panic, Elizabeth? Or like, what should we be thinking about if you're a busy CMO or a social media manager for a company or your own company? Like what do we need to be thinking about right now in the next 90 days, if anything?

8:38Michael Stelzner: Absolutely no need to panic. Let's take a deep breath. Instagram is always keeping us on our toes. And honestly, if I try to change my strategy every time there was a new update or announcement, I would not be here. I would be losing my mind. So part of my job is to help you, our beloved listener, like understand what is actually relevant to you and your marketing strategy. So Jerry, thank you for this question. It's so important. I would not call this like a pivot. It's not a pivot. It's more of like a watch. Let's watch and see what's happening. And I want you to pay attention, but I don't see any need for you to rebuild your strategy around this.

9:18Michael Stelzner: What I do want you to focus on is your messaging, your content, your profile, your customer journey. If that is not working on Instagram right now, that's what you need to focus on as a marketer. These new features are not going to be a fix for weak marketing. Yeah, and I have a couple of quick thoughts here. Surprisingly, both TikTok and Instagram are not available on Apple TV, but they are available almost everywhere else. So you can get them on the Amazon Fire Stick. You can get them on the Google TV, but they're not yet on Apple. And there's a huge amount of Apple users out there that have Apple TV devices and do not use our smart TV as a smart TV.

9:54Michael Stelzner: They use it as a dumb TV, right? So once it becomes available on the Apple TV, I think that's going to be the signal that, okay, finally, maybe we should pay attention to it. But for whatever reason, neither one of these apps are available on Apple TV yet.

10:08Elizabeth Marberry: That is interesting.

10:09Michael Stelzner: Yeah. And in terms of paying attention, it's like what we can control is the quality of our content. Is it positioned to attract our ideal client or customer? Are we hooking them within those first few seconds? All of that is going to be equally relevant when we move over to TV, right? Obviously, that might switch if there's more of a focus on that horizontal, long-form content, if Instagram goes that way. But I think in terms of the short term, focusing on how we can improve our content is going to pay off in dividends.

10:43Elizabeth Marberry: So if I'm a brand and I'm already making widescreen content, landscape content, would you suggest uploading some to Instagram now and just seeing what happens? I mean, because the potential is there, right? Like here is a device all of a sudden where they're trying to, you know, it's in front of more people, assuming that people know about it. and we know whenever they're trying to fill a new content format, like when Reels first came out, there was an opportunity there. Do you think that's the same thing for like landscape video?

11:14Michael Stelzner: I'm really curious about that. And I would always say, why not test and experiment? You could use trial Reels to test that out. You know, it breaks my heart a little bit because I've been telling brands and businesses for years, please take up the full real estate of the screen. Please stop posting horizontal video. please post that vertical video. And, but with that being said, you're right. As an early adopter, you know, I was in, in researching for this episode, I found a videographer, right? Cause I was thinking about like, not everybody is set up or well positioned to use horizontal long form video effectively in their brand.

11:55Michael Stelzner: Like I was trying to think, okay, who would really be able to leverage this? And what came up when I looked at my Instagram on my TV as a viral video that was posted just a couple days ago was a videographer, right? Because when you think about professional video and storytelling, it's typically filmed in that horizontal format and it's longer, right? And so I would say it depends on your niche, your focus, your industry, but why not test this person who's a videographer posted this a couple days ago, got over 40 ,000 likes on this video. I mean, clearly it's working in some formats, but I would say it all depends on your business, your audience, the kind of content that's going to resonate with your audience.

12:39Elizabeth Marberry: Okay. And I remember when Instagram said all videos are reels now, so you can put up a 30 minute video, even though they say reels can't be 30 minutes, it still shows up like a reel. So if you upload a widescreen video, how does it come up in the reels feed? Does it come up in the middle with blocks and then you turn your screen to watch it? Is that how it shows right now?

12:57Michael Stelzner: Uh, you can't turn your screen to watch it. It's just, you watch it vertically and there's that black box up top and on the bottom. It's really not well designed for that horizontal format, which is why I always tell people don't do that. I want you to capture the attention of, you know, like take advantage of the full real estate. The only times I've been able to leverage like the horizontal videos with a black box on top and on the bottom effectively in my brand when I let's say I'm remixing someone's content or a videographer gave me content for my wedding business for example is I would add text hooks on top like of the black or a text and like an engagement question at the bottom so I'm again I'm taking up that full real estate of the screen but yeah it doesn't work that way in Instagram where you can like it does in YouTube where you turn your phone and then it's perfectly optimized, at least as far as I know, not at this point.

13:54Elizabeth Marberry: Okay. I bet they fixed that because like on TikTok, I know it'll start that way. And sometimes it'll even have a little pop-up. It's like, turn your phone and go there.

14:02Michael Stelzner: I was just doing a little research while you guys were talking and based on what the AI answers are giving me, right now a reel has a cap of 20 minutes if you want it to be in the reel feed. A regular post can be up to 60 minutes. So I think if you were to experiment, I would stick with something under 20 minutes because presumably you want to show up in the reels, whatever they call it, feed, right? So if you post something longer than 20 minutes, according to what I'm seeing here is it'll show up as a post, not as a reel. Maybe that is like the newer information. What I know after, typically my videos are shorter, but I've done ones that were like just over three minutes.

14:41Michael Stelzner: So typically your reel had to be three minutes is that they would say, you can push this out, but it's not going to be shown to like non-followers at that time. So maybe they changed it. You know, they're always changing these things, but just be mindful. The cool part is Instagram will notify you, right? Like I try to publish this and they're like, you can publish this, but this is how it's going to impact your reach on this video. So maybe because of this pivot into TV, they decided, okay, no, we're going to switch that. But usually Instagram is pretty good about giving us notifications because all of us are just trying to keep up with these constant changes.

15:18Elizabeth Marberry: Well, and to your point, Mike, about length, you know, another update they announced is the Edits app, which is Instagram's free app for making videos. They are now extending the ability to export longer videos from there. And so, and a desktop version. So I could definitely see them moving beyond vertical mobile video. Like there are all these signals going that way. So one more thing with this, Elizabeth, you know, kind of, you know, you know well how the content gets categorized on Instagram. And they've talked about these interest-based channels, which it sounds like you just kind of saw when you opened it.

15:52Elizabeth Marberry: And when I envision a person like myself sitting down to watch something on the couch, like you said, I might go, I want to watch comedy or I want to watch DIY or home renovations or backyard makeovers. And so I can see that working really well on TV. Should marketers and business owners be thinking about how to fit their content into a category or, and, or should we be thinking about series and, you know, things like that?

16:20Michael Stelzner: Yeah. So I don't think that you should try to force your brand into a category. That's not a good fit. Right. So some, right. Cause you know, just cause, Oh, I saw this category pop up on my Instagram TV. So now I have to try to go, you know, that's not what I would recommend. What I do suggest though, is an effective Instagram marketing strategy is you have to be really, really crystal clear on what you want to become known for. And especially as Instagram is this like interest driven platform, right? They're trying to show us more of the content that we're consuming. So we're going to hang out on their app and download their TV app and watch, watch on TV.

17:02Michael Stelzner: It becomes even more important that both the platform, the algorithm, the AI that's crawling Instagram, and a human who's like quickly looking at your content can understand who your account is for. That is the most important thing. And when I was looking at my categories, again, totally customized to me and what I've been consuming, I found it interesting that one of the interest-based categories presented to me was inclusive fitness. So it wasn't fitness or fitness for women over 40. It was inclusive fitness because I like to consume that kind of content, right? So I wouldn't, I also wouldn't make any assumptions around like what the, the, the categories are, right?

17:49Michael Stelzner: So it's more important that you are clear on your focus, like who your account is for and that all of your content is backing that up. If your content strategy is super scattered, and let's say, you know, Mike is doing these direct to hammer videos. And one day he's talking about the date he went on with his wife and his favorite places to go in Texas. And the other day he's talking about AI. And then now he's giving social media tips. And then he's giving tips about how to plan a conference. We would be like, why would we follow Mike? Like what is Mike all about? Right? So that's just great Instagram marketing strategy is what do you want to become known for?

18:28Michael Stelzner: And then the algorithm, all of this will essentially kind of put you in these categories. But I would not stress about like, oh my gosh, what category are they going to put me into? It starts with you as the creator, the business, the brand, what do you want to become known for? And then strategically positioning all of your content to tell that story, that brand story. So it's really clear within those first few seconds of me discovering your video or your carousel. Oh my gosh, I love Jerry. He teaches YouTube. I'm obsessed. I don't understand YouTube. I got to follow Jerry. Hi, my name is Mandy Hedrick and I'm here at Social Media Marketing World.

19:04Michael Stelzner: My first time attending Social Media Marketing World and I had won my ticket. And so I attended online and the impact it had in what I could do for my business immediately. It was my goal as a business owner to be able to earmark the dollars. This is my second time in person. So I just love being in a room full of people that are like-minded. It's a big investment, but I'm not just investing in myself, but I'm also investing in my clients. And I will be coming back every single year. I'm already ready to buy my next ticket and book my hotel room. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.

19:41Elizabeth Marberry: By the way, if nobody's following Mike on the socials, he's been doing Mike's thoughts from the porch. And I love the variety. I mean, there's a theme to all of it. Yeah. Stelzner on Instagram. Thank you.

19:51Michael Stelzner: And TikTok. Mike's on TikTok. At Mike Stelzner. I'm new to TikTok. Yes, I confessed it.

19:56Elizabeth Marberry: Yeah, yeah, definitely check it out. So I'm excited to see. I think what we're going to see now in the coming weeks and months is more people testing. You know, is this an opportunity to repurpose YouTube content and reach new people, you know, using what you're already creating? And obviously, as time strap business owners and marketers that we're always very excited about that. So new ways to stand out. And speaking of that, on the Instagram stories side, which Elizabeth just confirmed, you can watch stories on TV already now. They've introduced more than 30 new AI-powered stories effects that can basically transform your pictures by understanding scene elements, such as lighting, compositions, and subjects.

20:33Elizabeth Marberry: You can also create custom AI effects by basically putting in your own prompt directly within the stories composer. So, Elizabeth, have you played with these yet? And, you know, what's your feeling on this so far?

20:44Michael Stelzner: I've played with them a little bit. Again, I am, I think I'm an old school marketer in that there's so many shiny objects when it comes to these updates. And not every update is worth my time as a small business owner and marketer, right? Like I'm not a full-time content creator. So yes, I've played with it. Do I think it's worth spending a lot of time on? I don't, But these are really fun effects and it is a tool like these. These are fun ways to kind of stand out in your Instagram stories. I was playing with there's one option called clone and you essentially put in a picture of yourself. And then you if you want to activate one of these AI powered effects on stories, what you'll see is on the right hand side.

21:35Michael Stelzner: there's you know the option to add text music all of that but then for me I see three little stars and when you click on the three little stars that's when you're going to start to see all these AI options come up at the bottom of the feed and they are really cool like it's it's fun it's playful I think some of them can definitely help to capture attention and this clone option when you add your photo it creates like multiple versions of you in different poses which I thought That was really funny. So there's lots of different effects that you can play with. In terms of using it from a marketing business, driving leads and sales, capturing attention standpoint, because that's always how I'm viewing these things as, are they worth my time?

22:19Michael Stelzner: I think it would be a cool way to leverage attention. Let's say I am launching something and I want to do a pattern interrupt. Maybe people are used to seeing me chat in my story or take a quick selfie and I'm going to pick one of these to kind of pop on the feed a little bit and like pattern disrupt, things like that. But ultimately, the effect, like that AI effect isn't what is going to just make your story pop off. What works is the strategy behind why you're doing what you're doing. So the hooks, any like text on the screen, the story, the call to action, like those matter still if we're tying this all back into marketing, which I would imagine talking the two of you marketing experts, that's what we want.

23:07Michael Stelzner: But I do think they're a really fun way to kind of like spice it up and capture some attention. Just a couple of thoughts on this. This kind of reminds me of Snapchat a little bit in the early days. And I don't know if you all remember, but Facebook used to allow you to have these effects. Like you could go live, you know, I mean, Instagram did, right? You can go live and you could be wearing a helmet and all this stuff. But according to what I'm looking at here, it'll apply to audio and video. I mean, video and still images. So it is interesting because on the AI side of things, we've seen a lot of innovation specifically happening mostly with ChatGPT and with Gemini, where you can basically transform an existing video into something really cool.

23:48Michael Stelzner: Like for example, you can take a video and you can say, recompose this underwater. And that's the kind of stuff that you have not been able to do from meta, but we do know behind the scenes that Zuckerberg has been investing a lot of money in developing AI functionality. So I think we're starting to see some of this functionality come to the stories, which is kind of an intriguing place because you can experiment it with on the stories platform and it'll be gone. The examples they show is a woman walking down a street and then they show a version where it's her at night. And then there's another version where she's like in a shrink wrapped container or something like that.

24:23Michael Stelzner: I'm just curious, Elizabeth, because the stories are actually not seen until you click on them. If they were to offer this on reels, it would be really fascinating because I think this would be an effect that could stop the scroll potentially. What are your thoughts on that? So they do have AI powered effects on reels. That one that you just described, I've done a video like that where I tested it, where I looked like I was underwater and essentially what you do, it's wild. You put up like this, this particular one that I'm describing, it wasn't a video of me. It was actually a still image. And then the AI took that still image and then it made it look like I was underwater.

25:02Michael Stelzner: And then I was able to add text. So there is AI effects that you can leverage in your reels.

25:10Elizabeth Marberry: Oh, cool. So the thing that shocks me about this is not that the tech is there, because as you said, you know, meta is all in on AI everything, but it's the placement of it. Because to me, you know, stories are the last raw, authentic place that we hang out, you know, like stories were originally on Snapchat and I used to, sometimes I would give talks and, and, you know, back then it was everybody's perfect Facebook life. And so it would be this amazing, you know, like one of the best photos I've ever taken. It's like, here's my life on Facebook. And then a terrible still from a video where, you know, I looked completely goofy and it's like, here's your life on Snapchat or here's your life in stories.

25:48Elizabeth Marberry: And I like that. I miss that. I mean, is this, is this going to ruin that part of Instagram if it gets wildly adopted? And especially again, from a brand standpoint, some of the brands that I do engage with on Instagram, I'm engaging with them because they are doing that raw behind the scenes, you know, talking to the camera.

26:06Michael Stelzner: I love this, Jerry, because I completely agree with you. Stories work because they feel like the least polished part of Instagram, right? The most raw, real, authentic. And your Instagram story is where your hottest prospects are hanging out for your company. So I always tell people, your Instagram stories are such a great opportunity to drive sales and even just foster community discussions and use polls and show the highs and lows of the brand and all those things, right? And that's what people expect. I will tell you that in all of the stories that I consume, that I put out, that my clients put out, I don't see it.

26:48Michael Stelzner: I see a lot of people using these AI effects kind of in a fun, playful way. I personally, and of course, it's just my opinion, I can't see the future. I can't imagine a world where it's just all these AI effects and the human of the brand is like no longer something that people are interested in. If anything, I would say it's going to be the opposite where people are going to be so refreshed at, you know, you popping in your story. And, you know, I did a story the other day where I said, I'm working from the library today. So I just shared like a really weird fact, like I'm working from a library study room.

27:23Michael Stelzner: I'm hiding from my children because they're home from summer and I need time to work. And I had so many people message me and be like, girl, I love the library or I forgot about library study rooms. Thank you for hooking me up, you know? And I don't see that changing. Like at the end of the day, humans are humans. We want to connect human to human. So I agree, like, let's keep the stories in that hangout mode. And yeah, I don't foresee these AI change. I think it'll enhance some stories, but I don't see it replacing that human connection.

27:58Elizabeth Marberry: So it sounds like you're saying, like, if you like playing with these things, you got time, sure, go ahead. but otherwise stick with what you're doing on stories already.

28:05Michael Stelzner: Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

28:07Elizabeth Marberry: And strategy question, you know, like where we are right now and the way that stories work, like the more engagement you get, the more you move up the line at the top of the screen, right? So is somebody better off creating like two or three higher quality, you know, well thought out stories or six or seven on the fly in a day?

28:27Michael Stelzner: I love this question, Jerry, because obviously, first of all, the caveat is there's more than one way to grow on Instagram always. So I always go back to if I was mentoring you or the business owner or the marketing team, I would say what feels most easeful and sustainable for you. Okay. So that's step one, because I find so many people just struggle even to show up. But what I would say is that stories, personally, for me and my strategy, I would much rather do five to six just raw off the cuff stories. Because when I can reduce my friction to creating content, I create more content, I show up with more consistency.

29:09Michael Stelzner: And there's a sense of like authenticity. Again, it's not overly polished or overly curated. I might throw in some filler words or stumble over a sentence or have to say something again and kind of roll my eyes. And it's those human aspects are what people will, you know, really deepen that trust with you. You know, we all know that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And so I would vote for the camp of let's do five or six stories off the cuff, then being super hyper curated and focused about these two stories. In fact, I find that what has been a key to my Instagram success and for a lot of my small business owners is being less precious about every individual piece of content.

29:52Michael Stelzner: Because when you're holding onto it and you're clutching your pearls so tightly over every single piece of content, it's exhausting. And then you're looking at the analytics before you even have a mountain of data to give you real information, right? You're like, oh my gosh, this one didn't do well. So I play the game of what's going to be most easy and aligned for me so I can keep showing up and serving my people.

30:16Elizabeth Marberry: All right, there's another Instagram update. I'm really curious about this one because I'm curious if there's a way to get more reach with it, basically. But they recently announced the option to swap out the audio on an already published post or carousel. Instagram comes a long way. Like it used to be you couldn't edit anything, right? So now if you have a post that's done well, a feed post or a carousel, you can swap out the music and it keeps all the existing engagement, likes, comments, shares, all that. You don't have to delete it and reupload it, which is good if you're going to do it. run into this situation.

30:47Elizabeth Marberry: Now, the most obvious use case here, I assume, is if the audio got removed for some reason or if the singer became troublesome in the press or something like that. But are there other reasons that a brand would want to consider swapping out audio on a post or carousel, strategic or otherwise?

31:03Michael Stelzner: Yeah. Well, you just highlighted two of the more obvious reasons that I just want to emphasize, which is that there's been many times where I've had videos pop off. And then six months later, I get a notification that this video is no longer, no longer has sound. Right. And usually that's because Instagram is paying for the rights to use this music, right. It's licensing. And sometimes those contracts expire. And so now the music is taken down. So the idea that I can now replace the audio and not have to take down the video or, you know, oftentimes, sometimes I would just let it, let it fly. Even I've had videos continue to grow even with no audio.

31:42Michael Stelzner: But the second piece is, yes, if an artist suddenly becomes associated with a major controversy and you don't want that music attached to your brand anymore, that could be a way that you would pivot it. And then that final piece, which I know is really what you're curious about, is the testing about, okay, what if I post this carousel with this audio. And we all know that audio, whether you're adding it to a carousel or a reel, the music, the audio that you use sets a vibe and a tone and an energy behind your content, right? Like let's say I did an educational carousel, but I put a 90s hip hop song behind it versus I pick a song that's more like spa music, right?

32:28Michael Stelzner: Even if it's the same information, it's going to have, It's going to land differently with different people, all those things. So I would be curious to test and I haven't done this yet, full transparency, but test, you know, after I post a piece of content, it's up there for two or three days. And let's say it's not performing well. If I switched out the audio, is that going to boost the engagement? I don't know, but it might be worth testing. Real quick question for those people that don't even realize that they can add audio to their posts and carousels. and that's really where this news is focusing on the posts and carousels.

33:04Michael Stelzner: Why would they do something like that? Just out of curiosity, like what's the advantage and where do you suggest we actually use something like this? Oh my gosh, such a huge advantage, Mike. Here's why. This past year, Instagram announced that when you add music to a carousel, it will now be shown on the Reels tab. Oh. Yeah. So that, my friend, is why you want to do it, right? It will expand the reach of your carousel. It will show up on the Reels feed. It has potential to reach way more people, whereas in the past carousels, we were always taught that it's a great vehicle to nurture that relationship with your existing followership, but not necessarily to grow, grow a following, right, and reach people.

33:53Michael Stelzner: Reels, the stats tell us Reels are still the number one surface to grow your visibility and discoverability on the platform and reach new people. But a short second behind that is carousels. And then, of course, them showing up on the Reels tab is like a game changer. So I always coach my clients no matter what, even if it's a single image post, put music behind it. And the second reason why you want to do it is what I just said earlier, Mike, which is that not everybody listens to Instagram with the sound on, right? There's a lot of people who don't consume Instagram with the sound on. And that's why I always tell people when you're speaking to the camera, make sure you're adding closed captions, not only because most people listen, you know, there's those people who are at work hiding in the bathroom, scrolling, they don't have the sound on, they don't want to get caught, right?

34:43Michael Stelzner: But so if you don't have closed captions on, you've lost them in your awesome porch videos, right? You gotta, you gotta have that on. Um, but the other thing is that for the people who do consume your content with sound on music sets a vibe, like think about any Netflix show you watch, any movie you watch music, audio is a whole player. It's a whole element of describing your brand, your brand, your, your vibe, who you're calling in. So you can actually be very strategic about what music you want to connect to your brand story. I'm pretty sure that not every account can get access to all the music.

35:27Michael Stelzner: Is that correct? Or is that not correct? Because wasn't there like creator accounts and then business accounts? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah. So whether you have a creator account or a business account, this is a hot tip, y 'all. I recommend that in Instagram, you change your category to either a digital creator and entrepreneur. Those two options. Here's why. When you do that, it will unlock the full music library of Instagram. So, you know, I've had people who are, let's say they are a wedding venue or something and they have wedding venue as their category. I'm like, let's change it to digital creator.

36:02Michael Stelzner: It's not going to do anything in terms of, oh, now the algorithm doesn't know I'm a wedding venue. It doesn't work that way because there's so many other pieces of positioning, like your handle, your name field, the search engine optimized, your bio, all of your content, right? It's crawling all of that. But if you change up your category, you go into your profile, hit edit profile. You'll see you scroll down, there's category. You can change your category and then also hide your category. So, so it's not visible on the feed, but if you do digital creator or entrepreneur, it's going to unlock so many of those sounds and trending audios.

36:37Michael Stelzner: Okay, Jerry, one more question. Sorry. On the edits app, because we were talking about the edits app, right? The edits app by Instagram allows you to add music. So if you are editing with the edits app, I'm assuming it must know what kind of account you have access to and it opens up the music library. Is that generally how that works? Yeah. Yeah. So if you're in Instagram and let's say you're saving some audios, like what I do is when I'm not creating content, but I'm essentially just planning for my day when I do actually edit my content, I'll scroll with intention and I'll listen for those trending sounds or songs that I like that resonate with me and my brand.

37:12Michael Stelzner: I'll save those into an audio folder in Instagram. And then when I go over to my edits app that you can click on saved and all of your save audios are there. But yes, your accounts are integrated seamlessly. And so if you have access to it over here, you should be able to access it over on edits. I'm sure there's exceptions where it's glitching or it's not working or, but typically, yes, everything should just cross over seamlessly. Okay. One more question. When you use the edits app and you export to other platforms, can you get in trouble with the music? Do you understand where I'm going? Oh, I a hundred percent understand.

37:48Michael Stelzner: Cause I post over to Tik TOK. I repurpose a lot of my content over to Tik TOK. So what I recommend, so when I export a video out of edits and I save it to my camera roll, it does save it with the music. Okay. So what my workflow is, is I go to Tik TOK, I upload that video to Tik TOK, and then I turn off the original audio on that video because because I want to find the music. I look and see if I can find the same music on TikTok and I want it to be native to that platform. So I would do the same thing on YouTube. That is really important in terms of using whatever is integrated into the platform.

38:26Elizabeth Marberry: Great. So, okay. So we've made our carousel Bon Jovi living on a prayer. Three days in, it's not doing as well as we think it should be. And so you're saying then maybe swap it out, try it with a different song, see if maybe it does better. like how long on average, I know there are outliers, but like how long would you continue to do that? Like, like before it just dies.

38:47Michael Stelzner: So Jerry, I haven't tested this particular strategy myself. So I can't really advise on that. But what I can advise on is that a lot of times people have a misconception about Instagram that if it doesn't pop off within 24 to 48 hours, it's dead. And while that can be true and it often is true, I will tell you that I've had lots of pieces of content that ended up popping off right away or even weeks later. And I've had clients have this same experience where they're messaging me and they're like, Elizabeth, that video that popped off and resonated two months ago, I'm still getting followers. I'm still getting comments.

39:27Michael Stelzner: I'm still getting likes. So when you do end up having a home run, your content can keep living on for actually quite a while on Instagram and keep working for your business. In terms of when do you pivot?

39:40Elizabeth Marberry: He said living on, right? Living on a prayer. You see living on a prayer. There you go. That's my actually, that's my Instagram strategy. I love it.

39:47Michael Stelzner: Oh, Bon Jovi. I love Bon Jovi. Yeah. In terms of when to pivot your strategy, Jerry, I find that a lot of marketers or business owners kind of overthink this in the sense of, It kind of goes back to that idea of like being too precious about the content that you're putting out there. My philosophy, and I understand it's not everyone's, is I want to be in motion. I want to focus on what I can control. And then do I look at data and do I look and see, okay, wow, I'm doing an analysis of the last three months. Wow, these carousel posts really perform well. I want to get curious about that. But what I find is that it gets a little bit sticky if you're micromanaging your content where you're like, It's been 24 hours.

40:32Michael Stelzner: I wonder if I should change something. And it's like, dude, you don't have enough data yet. And also the data needs to kind of add up to really be meaningful. Does that make sense?

40:41Elizabeth Marberry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I was just following your example of, you know, maybe after three days you swap it out. So, but I love that Instagram's letting us edit more things. Another thing they're letting us add now that we got to talk about is when you do put up these carousels, you don't have to rely on one caption, which I think makes much more, which means you can do storytelling, product catalogs, and things like that to be much more effective. So have you done this or have you consumed these multi-caption carousels? I mean, what's your reaction to it?

41:11Michael Stelzner: Yeah, I have consumed them. My primary focus in my brand is definitely more reels. I do leverage carousels and they're definitely still very hot on Instagram. I've had a lot of success with them. But I have, I remember when Adam Moseri, when he announced this just a few weeks ago with, okay, now you can add multiple captions. And he, the way he used it, which I thought was really simple and creative was kind of a photo dump of, so imagine if you're listening to this and at the end of this month, you're like, okay, I want to do an August photo dump of either my personal brand or, you know, our company, like our team or behind the scenes of the product or what we've been working on.

41:54Michael Stelzner: I find that to be a little bit more intuitive where you were, let's say I did a photo dump of August. I could say, you know, a picture of me just last week, I was speaking at a conference in Dallas. So I could show that picture. And then underneath that, I could talk about that conference. And then on the next one, oh my gosh, I got to be interviewed by Michael Stelzner and Jerry Potter on the social media market. Right. So you can kind of see how that opportunity would be great for photo dumps. Or I do think, you know, deeper storytelling, you know, because on a carousel, we only have so much text on the screen per slide, of course.

42:30Michael Stelzner: But I do want to say again, just because Instagram gives you another box to fill in doesn't mean you have to fill it in. Yeah, that's what I was curious about. Like, do people actually even read? Like if you're on a carousel, like what's the likelihood they're going to see the caption? I I mean, it's like, they only show a couple of words, right? At the bottom? Yeah, it's very similar to a reel in that you have to be strategic about how all of it works together, right? So the carousel is doing its own job and then the caption is essentially deepening it and then having a killer call to action.

43:03Michael Stelzner: Understanding that, yeah, a lot of people are not going to read your full caption, but I would argue your hottest prospects will. And if you give them an invite into a call to action, Even if that's just, does this resonate with you? Or, you know, I've done carousels where I told a personal story, I tied it into my brand and I said, hey, have you ever experienced this? And the comments were blowing up, right? In terms of do people read, I always say it's all about that top line of your caption. That is going to really determine if people are wanting to continue reading the rest of it. and along those lines, if we have multiple captions, now you have to have essentially hooks like over and over.

43:45Michael Stelzner: So I do feel like it's more work.

43:47Elizabeth Marberry: And carousels are already a lot of work. You know, I think personally, I'm opposed to any Instagram feature that requires me to type even more on my phone, which I just hate doing. Now, Elizabeth, this has been a really helpful conversation. Thank you for joining us today. If people want to explore working with you, where do you want to send them? Where's the best place to connect with you?

44:07Michael Stelzner: Well, thank you so much for being here. I just love hanging out with you guys. So number one, I would love if you would listen to my podcast every Monday, I drop a new episode as to what's working, what's not on Instagram. So that's strutted bold visibility through Instagram marketing. I would love to connect with you on Instagram. So make sure you follow me over there at Elizabeth Marbury, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y. And I do have lots of free resources and things like that. So check me out. And my website is just my name, elizabethmarberry.com. I would love to support you and just making Instagram feel less complicated and more aligned with you, your energetics and your business goals.

44:47Michael Stelzner: Elizabeth, tell us the name of that podcast again. Strutt It, Bold Visibility Through Instagram Marketing. Because remember, Mike, I used to dance professionally. So the Strutt It. There you go. That's part of the band. I just want to make sure everybody got the name of that. Elizabeth and Jerry, thank you so much for being on the show today. Hey, folks, if you missed anything, because we did talk about a lot, you can check out the notes over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 732. If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, we would love a review on whatever platform you're listening on.

45:15Michael Stelzner: Do check out my other show, the AI Explored podcast. This brings us to the end of the social media marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and I was joined today by my co-host, Jerry Potter. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. Catch you next time.

45:31Elizabeth Marberry: The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

45:42Michael Stelzner: Hey, before you go, we just announced our first speakers for Social Media Marketing World 2027. Two dozen practitioners, every single one personally recruited, every session pitch free. Go see the lineup and grab your discounted tickets right now at socialmediamarketingworld.info.