New Instagram Tactics to Use | Bathroom Break #75

0:01Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and SubjectLine.com. Each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back with The Bathroom Break.

0:37I am here with best-selling author Jay Swettelson, and I am Daniel Murray, and we're excited to chat today. And I wanted to open up this episode because Jay is going on a world tour, and I want to know how do you handle a heavy conference schedule? What do you do? Good question. I despise travel. When I was younger, I used to love travel. Like, oh my God, you want to go out to a dinner? You want to do this work thing? Great, great, great. Now that I'm older, I just want to stay home and watch Kitchen Nightmares. That's all I want to do. And so I hate it. So number one, I only will pack a carry-on.

1:21That's a standard. There's no checking of a bag. I don't care if I have to wear the same thing seven times. And then the other thing is I lie to everybody I interact with at these conferences. I'm like, oh, my God, we have this event tonight. Can you go? I'm like, oh, no, I can't. I got this other event. When in reality, I don't have another event. I just am pretending I do because I just want to sit in my room. So there's a lot of lying that goes on when I go to these events. A lot of lying. Now people know your secret, but hopefully they don't call you out on it at a conference. But all right, let's jump in today.

1:57We're talking about some changes to Instagram. And by the way, for you B2B marketers out there, you nonprofit marketers out there, whatever you are, the consumer ones get it. But everybody else, you better be thinking about Instagram marketing because this is – you know that they have 3 billion monthly active users now? Your ICP is there. Stop being a clown. So let's talk about some changes that are going on. So Daniel, what are you seeing and what's going on? Yeah, so I'll just say one tactic that has been working for a long time, and that is stories and engaging in stories. And what I've been doing is if you post a story and get people to reply, it gets more and more views.

2:40because most the head of Instagram has said 80 % of the activity in Instagram happens in stories and DM. So if you can get people to DM your post or reply to your stories, you'll get more and more views. And that's one tactic I use. If you're trying to get more registrations to an event or stuff, I'll say, Hey, I'm having this event. If you want me to, if you want me to send you the link, reply to this story instead of putting register here link i do that and i haven't done the math on this but i swear i get four or five x more replies than i do click so and and four or five x views on that story so for example instead of getting a thousand views on that story i'll be i probably get like 30 000 so it's actually like a 300x um it's crazy how much more you can get but i've never done that so let me just say it back to you so on your stories a little circle things at the top of your instagram feed uh you're posting there instead of using a link saying here's a link to register a link to get the discount a link to whatever you're just saying basically leave a comment or a reply uh and i'll dm you the whatever and you're seeing an exponential increase because yeah because it's showing people are like interested in that story it's just like anything If you start getting activity in that story, link clicks, they don't want link clicks.

4:07They don't want you to click out of Instagram. So they do things that keep them in. And you'll get way more DMs and it's way more pain. But you get way more registrations or leads or whatever you're trying to get. All right. So I need your take on, I think everyone at this point has seen the new Instagram format, that kind of what I call the 468 by 60 banner. It is that what looks like a banner ad from 20 years ago. And it's that long horizontal format that Instagram has rolled out. What is your take on that new post format? I mean, I hate the format. And I think social media managers hate the format.

4:45But I do think that if someone's testing a format, just jump on that format for the time being. because I've said this in previous podcasts when they launch a new feature always test the new feature come up with a way to do something in the new feature I know it's a pain because it's another thing on a social media manager's plate it's another thing on a creator's plate but it's a way that's getting attention and your goal on social media is to get attention so you're saying we have to do it because they're pushing it aggressively it's a good way for you to get eyeballs but uh you also think it's a horrendous format it's horrendous like you can't even see the video.

5:22I know. Every time I see one, I'm like, what is that? It's weird. I'll tell you another change that I think people are sleeping on. So when you do a regular post on Instagram forever, you can pin a comment. Meaning if somebody like put an interesting comment on your post, you can, if you hold down the comment, it will then say, do you want to pin it? And you could pin it. But some odd reason up until two weeks ago, you couldn't pin a comment you made on your own post, but now you can. So let's say you want to like say something that's really important. You can comment on your own post and then you hold down that comment and then you could pin it, which is a really good way to get some like, you know, a second level of thinking that you want to get out there, some sort of important thing out there.

6:05So that's a cool little, um, yeah. And also the reason people do it too, is if you have like a long post and you want to do part two, part three, you could do part two in the, say you followed in the comments for part two and you pin the comment. Another thing that I think you're sleeping on is TikTok had this and now Instagram is you need to start crafting your captions as searchability and SEO because things are happening beyond Instagram's walls now. So to be found for posts, they could be found

6:44in chatbots that can be found on Google. So when you're crafting your posts, think of SEO. Think about if someone was going to search this content, what would I put in that caption? What are some keywords that I want to relate? So in whatever field you are, think about that when crafting posts. But don't care about hashtags. Is that right? Oh, yeah. that's another thing that the head of instagram said hashtags are dead on instagram they're not dead in the sense of they have a purpose and the purpose is basically having your content in a certain niche but it has no effect on how many views you get anymore getting becoming more viral so if using hashtags use it for categorization don't use it as a way to get um more attention on the platform.

7:41Yeah. And listen, as always, these platforms are always changing. So you might think, oh, these little things don't matter, but they do. And that's why some accounts take off and other ones don't take off. So Daniel, you're raised to the end of the year. Are you just grounded because you have a newborn kid or are you starting the traveling tour with your kid yet? Are you going to go around the country and be like, here's our baby. I want to show it to everybody nope no traveling tour uh we we might we might go somewhere in december early december but no travel no traveling tour with a kid uh no and it's also it's also miami and florida is the perfect weather at the end of the year so it's like why am i gonna leave the perfect what do you think about living in florida you've been in florida for how long now six months no it's almost 10 months now no way yeah i love it i think i also i also think that people over index on the summer here like they say like it's so bad but i i experienced my first miami summer and i think people there's air conditioning it's there's mornings and nights It's, it's, there's, there's a lot of places to go that are air conditioned.

8:55So it's when people hate on that. And there's also a lot of places where being outside in the middle of day at 85 degrees is still hot. So you're still going inside and your other places. So stop hating. I'm going to get you caught up. I'm going to get you connected with like a tourism bureau. That was incredible. We're going to get you out there. Wow. Who knew? All right. Well, another amazing episode of the bathroom break. Go ahead and follow the marketing millennials. Follow Do This, Not That. Or I don't know, follow Daniel. Move to Miami. He loves seeing people just knock on his door. So thanks for being here.

9:30Daniel, come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast, Do This, Not That, for marketers. Each week, we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing. And I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millie podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world.

10:04We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.