Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Instagram's Top Tips Shared During My Call with Them

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 374

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Curious about optimizing your Instagram game?

You'll love the insights I gained straight from an Instagram representative on maximizing growth and engagement. Learn the power of consistently posting Reels, engaging through carousels, and using the new "notify me" sticker on Stories to keep your followers hooked. I'll share tips on strategic hashtag use, crafting compelling three-second hooks, and innovatively transforming photos into Reels for better visibility. Plus, get creative with Instagram's voiceovers, text-to-speech, and sound collections to elevate your content.

Don't miss out on these actionable tips to elevate your Instagram game and grow your brand.

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Speaker 1:

Instagram advice straight from someone who actually works at Instagram. Stay tuned for the deets on this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, Because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schafer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schafer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 374 of this podcast. Well, I am back from a week in London, a glorious week, and my summer travels are now done. I can hunker down and get back to work and before I give you my personal update, I wanted to give you a quick update on what I am covering in the news and what you should know. So I think one of the well, a few interesting things have happened in the news since I've been gone and since our last episode, google was ruled a monopoly by a federal judge. Now, if you know the way that the court system works, it's going to take a while before well, we see actually what happens because of this. But it is a sign that if Google is ruled a monopoly although with chat, gpt and with the emergence of generative AI and people using AI search engines like perplexity, I wonder if it really still is a monopoly today compared to a few years ago. But it just means that, well, at some point there might be somewhat of a change in the way that search engines operate or if Google has to give up some functionality. So obviously I don't recommend you do anything immediately Yet with the emergence of generative AI and AI search, it really is important that you take a very, very holistic perspective on SEO and of your digital footprint in everything that you do online, and this is really what my upcoming book, digital Threads, covers in great detail, but definitely something to keep an eye out for to see what changes might be on the horizon. All these articles that I'm covering are all part of my weekly newsletter, so if you haven't subscribed, make sure to go over to neilschafercom slash newsletter, where you'll be the first to receive notifications of these, as well as other information and updates from my blog.

Speaker 1:

Openai is always in the news recently, but they had a plan to come out with a watermarking system, so it would be very easy to see if someone was using text that was generated using chat GPT, but now they have scrapped those plans. I know that there are a lot of AI detection tools out there and I think as we use chat, gpt and other AI tools, we begin to understand what looks like and what doesn't look like AI generated content, but there are still a number of issues regarding AI and content authenticity, so it'll be really interesting to see how this evolves. But no OpenAI chat GPT watermark plans in the near future. Once again, we'll keep an eye on how that goes, because I really question the AI content detection tools out there, and I just think that AI-generated content has become so persuasive and ubiquitous it just becomes harder and harder to distinguish. Unless it was 100% AI-generated, then I think it becomes a little bit easier to distinguish. I just don't know how many reputable companies are using 100% generated AI content. As is Another interesting little update for you is that Google, basically in Google Search Console, now has a personalized SEO recommendation tool called Content Ideas.

Speaker 1:

So if you haven't dug around in Google Search Console recently, you might want to check that out and see what it has to offer. Now it is described as an experimental tool that will be rolling out gradually. I have still not seen this pop up in my search console dashboard. I would love to tell you where it is, but I'm assuming if you look on the left-hand side there are a number of menu items overview, url inspection, search results, discover Google News. I assume at some point that this content ideas is going to come out there, and I think it's really. You know, a lot has been said about Google, but they also provide you so much information with Google Analytics and Google Search Console and I think they really want you to succeed in many ways in weird ways. So, using generative AI and using all this data to be able to give you these ideas based on what content is doing well on Google, I think makes a lot of sense for Google to provide and I think it makes a lot of sense, obviously, for us to take advantage of once we have that data. So check into your Google Search Console, if you haven't recently, and see if you can see that. I'd love to hear from you if you could see that. So in the newsletter, there's also some other interesting articles. I published an article recently about AI for SEO 17 actionable tips to leverage AI to help you rank higher in search engines. Also, how to use AI in email marketing without losing the human touch. And LinkedIn SEO nine tips to boost your visibility and attracting leads, as well as a great article on why AI content isn't working and what to do for your blog instead. So make sure you go to neilschafercom slash newsletter.

Speaker 1:

So on to my personal news. Well, today was the day after my Kickstarter campaign for digital threads ended. I want to personally thank each and every one of you. I know that many of my podcast listeners also participated in this campaign, so I can't thank you enough for making it a success. We doubled the funding goal of $500, ended up getting over $1,000. I had no idea how successful or how much of a failure this would be, being my first Kickstarter and knowing that most of you probably have never backed a Kickstarter campaign In fact, many of you asked me, Neil, what exactly is Kickstarter, kickstarter? So I really appreciate those, especially for backing my campaign as a first campaign. I really appreciate it, and now I am in fulfillment mode. So I think the big thing is recording the audio book, which I plan to be doing over the next few weeks and hopefully, after everything is submitted and all of my backers get first dibs on all the content, well then it will become available for public consumption on Amazon and all the other places that you buy books. So I set a target date of October 1st. I'm still working through some kinks on my hardcover print and on the companion workbook print, as well as the recording of the audio book, but assuming those all get handled and I receive all the information I need from my backers in order to send them their goods. Look for a tentative October 1st date for the release of digital threads available to the general public. Really cannot wait for that, all right.

Speaker 1:

So today I want to talk about Instagram and really not just Instagram, although the teaser was specifically about Instagram and I did talk to someone at Instagram. But I want to talk in general about short form video, because if you talk about Instagram, you have to be talking about Instagram reels. It is the only way to make sure that your content gets seen by as many people as possible. Now, if you already have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, then you may not need to lean so heavily on the Reels although I recommend you should. But if you want your content to be exposed to new people in addition to your followers, then obviously you know that you need to use Reels. We also know, with TikTok, we need to use short-form video, and with YouTube we have YouTube Shorts, which is short-form video we need to use short form video, and with YouTube, we have YouTube Shorts, which is short form video. So I have been experimenting with short form video over the last several weeks, 27 videos published on TikTok, at three a week. So this is now nine weeks worth of data that I have to work with to report back to you before I talk about Instagram, because I want you to sort of understand this holistically.

Speaker 1:

So the whole idea is that, with short form video, I began with a combination of repurposing solo YouTube videos, as well as videos from conversations in my digital first group coaching community, as well as podcasting interviews. I used a combination of social B. Social B is the social media dashboard that I use. Go to neilschafercom slash social B S-O-C-I-A-L-B-E -E to make sure you get the best deal, and they also have what's called a concierge service. So I actually use their concierge service to help create short form videos for me. In addition, I created them myself using a tool called Opus Clip. You can go to neilschafercom slash Opus O-P-U-S to get the best deal on that as well, and it's really quite simple actually, and if you are curious, you know, opus is this amazing tool which basically, you upload video to and it uses AI to predict which sections of that video For instance, I have a one hour podcast interview it's going to predict what sections are going to be the most engaging, and I can go in and edit things out, edit out blanks, edit out words, add verbiage before or after the video that are preselected.

Speaker 1:

I can also add captions, obviously, and add AI emojis as well as AI B-roll, which I have used in a lot of these videos. So it takes a little bit of time, but you can really create a lot of videos. I mean, for a one-hour podcast interview, I'd actually recommend 30 videos that I could use, so I ended up using 10 or so. I'm looking now to get this to the next level by having human-cur curated timestamps and then using that to guide instead of just leveraging generative AI, because I don't think it's 100% there yet. But if you just want a quick and dirty way to get videos up, to start getting some visibility and to build a fan base, this is definitely the way to go.

Speaker 1:

So what's really interesting is the way that these networks have performed, and then I'm going to get into the Instagram advice, because I think it'll give you a better idea. So every one of these platforms, they want you to create short form video for them, right? It's an absolute no brainer. So when you first start doing it, you are going to begin seeing pretty good you know views, right. So to give you an idea, I'm just going back into my videos here.

Speaker 1:

So I'm looking first of all and this is really interesting so I'm in my YouTube shorts analytics and immediately I look at the first three videos that I did, and I pretty much did these videos in the same order on every platform. The first three videos that I got got 14 views, 43 views, 36 views. Now Instagram got 553 views, 646 views and 457 views. And TikTok got an amazing 1,568 views, 657 views and 588 views. But before you get too excited about TikTok, just after publishing five videos, the sixth video went down to 263 views, the next one went down to 18. Now, for the next 11 or so, I was ranging between 300 and 800 views, but for my last nine videos, I have averaged between three and 22 views.

Speaker 1:

So clearly there is something in the algorithm that says they give you a try and at some point they're like you know what, maybe maybe there really isn't a viewer base, maybe we we experimented with showing your videos to others and there just is not that much interest in your content, right? So you know, with TikTok and I do believe that once I show you the numbers, or tell you the numbers from Instagram and YouTube Shorts recently. It's a different beast right, and some of the advice I got from Instagram that I'm going to go through shortly I can definitely use on TikTok as well. But maybe TikTok just requires a different approach. So when you get here you can look back at those outliers. I mean there were some that got into the 700s. I can go back to my very first one. They got 1,568 views and we can try to see analytically if there are some topics or maybe the style of video that resonated more or less. The other thing I can do, obviously, is to decrease my frequency. I'm currently posting three times a week on all these networks. Maybe go back to two times a week, but really I need to bring it to the next level. If I wanna get more visibility on TikTok. Clearly I need to really shake up the way I do things Now.

Speaker 1:

Instagram very, very interesting. I mentioned. The first three videos were in the four, five and six hundreds. My views really have not gone down that much. My most recent four videos have between 211 and 369. And I'll take that because one video view, one reel, is getting more visibility than 10 TikTok videos at this point. So clearly things are working better on Instagram and maybe it's because it's an older audience than TikTok and I do tend to talk about, you know, digital marketing that is more relevant to millennials and boomers than it is to Gen Z. That's definitely a possibility.

Speaker 1:

But the other really interesting thing is I mentioned that YouTube shorts started really really low levels of views, you know, like 14, 43, 35. But at some point I noticed that some videos I had a video that got 608 views, 622 views, and if I look at my five most recent videos, they're actually performing better than Instagram. I'm getting between 370 and 491 views. Now, instagram I'm getting between 370 and 491 views. Now, there's still a lot of okay, people see the short-form video. What do they do after that? Are they clicking on the link in bio? There's a whole other aspect of analyzing the actual activity from the video views that I'm getting, and that's a whole other layer of analysis that I've yet to do, because really right now, I'm focused on brand awareness and more importantly and this is a chapter that I have in Digital Threads I'm focusing on platform authentic content. I'm focusing on creating content for the platform that it will serve to more people, so that I can get more brand awareness and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, incite, spark, user-generated content, spark word-of-mouth marketing, right, and I do see that.

Speaker 1:

I had someone on Instagram contact me recently. Hey, you did an interview with Joe Polizzi. I'd like to remix that on my Instagram account and absolutely go for it. Right, just make sure you tag us. But these are some things you need to consider. But clearly, youtube and Instagram are winning, tiktok is losing and there's still more than I need to do on Instagram. So the call I have with Instagram I have an Instagram creator account and I still have maintained about a 15,000 follower base. So every once in a while, instagram creators, I get like a DM hey, would you like help for Meta Fill out this form, and it's a form I filled out several months ago that I finally got a call back from someone at Meta from. So you know to go through the conversation.

Speaker 1:

You know the thing about Reels is it is the way to connect with new people. I think you already know that that Reels help you grow your community by making your content discoverable to a wider audience. Another thing that the representative and I'll keep his name confidential for NDA purposes. It's also about being part of cultural moments on Instagram. Now this is where TikTok really shines is really taking advantage of memes, of trending topics, what have you? And there is some of that going on in Instagram. I don't really take part in that, but that is something else that you should definitely be considering if that is how your business is leveraging Instagram and social media.

Speaker 1:

So a few things that he mentioned. First of all, consistency, and he said three times a week is great. Three to four reels per week. He calls it a good start to maximize your growth. So consistently post original and high-quality reels. Now he also said once in a while, and specifically one to two times per week, you also want to engage with your followers in feed photos and carousels. Okay, so he really said carousels more than anything. If you could do three reels a week and one carousel a week, that is the ultimate frequency to get started. Obviously, if you can do more, then that's great. But, as he said, feed photos and carousels are a great way to increase engagement and a way to stay consistent with posts. They'll bring more audiences to grow your account, because not everyone is engaging with reels all the time.

Speaker 1:

Now, another thing that he mentioned which I thought was really interesting, and it's a very, very new feature. He's like hey, have you tried the notify feature on stories? I'm like, what's that? And apparently a few months ago, instagram added a notify me sticker. It is literally if you look at your stickers. It is called notify and it says followers can turn on notifications for your posts if they press that button. So I was told hey, if you haven't done it before, just put out a story and you can only do it through a story and you add the notify button. You just add a message saying hey, if you want to make sure you get all of my updates, please make sure that you hit the notify button. And I think that's a really, really cool feature that who knows of my 15,000 followers, how many will click it. But if only one or two people click it, it's one or two people that are getting notifications more than I had before. So that was another little interesting tidbit of information that I thought you should all know.

Speaker 1:

He also talked a little bit about hashtags and he said don't go overboard with hashtags. Use three to five, but use very, very broad ones to make sure that the audience you're targeting is included, right? So I think sometimes we go overboard. Oh, we need 30 hashtags, we need all these like real niche hashtags, and he's like just keep them very, very broad and just make sure that your target audience is covered. The other piece of advice he offered and once again this is now how do we get to the next level is the hook right. Like the first three seconds is going to be really critical as to whether people stay watching and end up engaging and consuming more of your content and following you versus not engaging with you. And this is the problem with the way of creating short form video of repurposing podcast episodes is it's not really about a hook, it's about like a 15 to 60 second snippet of a conversation that's interesting, but there's no first three second hooks.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be experimenting really at some point having a video editor take from you know, the video clip from Opus Clip, but also adding maybe some B-roll of me, maybe creating just like a three-second hook for every single video. That would just change things up. The meta representative was saying it could just be. You know, it could be like a completely different picture view. It could be in fast motion, slow motion, just something very, very different that gets people's attention. And I think, if you think about the videos that you tend to consume on social media. I think we all agree that the hook really is critical, so that's something that I want to play around with more.

Speaker 1:

Also, he said look, getting back to how to generate more reels, you can turn a photo into a reel, right. You can create a reel and import a photo and you can create like a five second reel out of the photo. And in fact, he said this is really a best practice. Like you, really, outside of carousels, you should not be posting photos. You should make them all reels, right, and just through the act of doing that, you're going to get more visibility for what you do. So I thought that was a really, really great piece of advice and I think it sort of dumbs down the creation of how to create Reels.

Speaker 1:

So obviously, there's some other things, like there's audio tools in Instagram that you can use. You can add commentary with voiceover, convert text to speech, add time text on screen, include captions to your reels, use their sound collection to avoid trouble, monetizing, if that's your thing, a lot of edits that you can do within the Instagram app. Obviously, every social network wants you to use their app to actually create your video. So if you really want to focus on Instagram, I would highly recommend using their features. You can go even further and use Meta Business Suite to sort of schedule all this in advance. Meta Business Suite also includes news on trends, if that is something important to your business. And just to recap the best tips that he gave and I'll just give these to you really, really quickly Create relatable, unique content. That's a duh. I think we all understand that.

Speaker 1:

Engage with your audience with comments, and one of the other feedback I had for me was really in the caption and ideally in the video of try to get comments from viewers right. Ask questions. Ask a question in the caption, ask a question in your video, right. And now this is going to be something that's going to be very difficult to do with a simple AI generator repurpose and it's going to require me to almost create separate intro and outro videos, just like I have an intro and outro for this podcast. Create the intro hook and then create the outro question and hopefully gets people commenting, because that obviously is a very, very important social signal that the algorithms look at.

Speaker 1:

Make the very start of your reel interesting. Like signal that the algorithms look at Make the very start of your reel. Interesting. Like I talked about, avoid watermarks and logos from other apps. Duh Shoot in a vertical 9 to 16 format. Duh. Interesting enough, he also said the sweet spot for reels. Now this might be different with TikTok, but the sweet spot for Instagram reels is between 30 to 90 seconds. My reels are pretty much at 60, 45 to 60 seconds, so he thought that was really really good. Ensure you're posting in the top resolution. Duh.

Speaker 1:

Use audio available on Instagram or purely original audio only. Like be wary of using free stock audio was really his message and then follow all the community standards. I think that we all understand those things as well. And his final bit of advice was make sure that you follow creators on Instagram at Mark Creators, and also follow at Mark Mossery, who is the founder and CEO of Instagram, who I've seen pop up in my feed with reels discussing the latest trends, tips and tricks and news features. He had a great video discussing the new notes feature and I saw another one of him recently talking about how Instagram now allows you to actually put 20 photos into a carousel for a double your size photo dump of images.

Speaker 1:

So I hope that you take away some action items from this communication that I had with Meta, but also just the feedback that I gave you on the TikTok and YouTube shorts. It's almost like the TikTok and YouTube are in reverse, because at the beginning my YouTube shorts were just doing so bad I wondered why I was even bothering with YouTube shorts. And then all of a sudden I'm starting to get more visibility and you know, with TikTok, at the beginning, wow, this is amazing. And then over time that sort of went away as well. So I feel like I'm just getting started. There's still a lot more to do and you have to remember that the true content creators are creating these videos from scratch. They're not repurposing content. They're creating with intent. They're using, you know, capcut and other video editing tools. They're creating, you know, for a 30 second video, maybe 10 to 15 different shots that they're stitching together and it is just at a completely different high level.

Speaker 1:

I cannot invest the time and to me that's not as strategic for me as providing you with information in other formats. You know, I still blog, I still podcast, obviously. So I've not gotten to the extent where I'm able to do that with short form video, but certainly, if you are able to do that and you have resources and or you have staff to do that, I highly recommend that you take that approach, but obviously at some point you need to see the ROI of doing this. It's one reason why I am no longer using that social be concierge service, because it did cost quite a bit of money per video, and you know what is the ROI of all this? What is the ROI of video views? It's something that we always need to ask ourselves. The ROI of all this? What is the ROI of video views? That's something that we always need to ask ourselves. So I'm trying to find a more balanced approach.

Speaker 1:

But similar to how I pay for a blog every month and I pay for podcasting every month, I think now paying for video every month is just part of a modern digital marketing infrastructure, the infrastructure that I talk about in Digital Threads.

Speaker 1:

If you missed the Kickstarter for digital threads, make sure you go to neilschafercom slash digital threads dash preview and you can grab a free preview copy of digital threads. Basically, the first few chapters table contents really give you a feel for what digital threads is all about, so make sure you go there. I will make sure that I put that in the show notes as well, and next week I'll be back at you with a great interview I had with my friend, nicholas Bruno, who just wrote his own book and talks about leveraging digital marketing for public relations and corporate communication. So if that includes you, if you are his people, you're really, really going to enjoy that conversation. So make sure that you stay subscribed, or, if you haven't, you hit that subscribe button. I'm at you with solo episodes and interviews every other week and until next time, this is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.