Instagram Updates: Early Access Reels, Personalized Algorithms, Edits App, and More

On today's show, we're gonna explore some Instagram updates that you're gonna need as a marketer, including a new way to get more reach on Instagram Stories, which is not something we hear very often. Also, Reels have always been good for reaching new people, now a new feature that could actually help turn them into followers faster. And a feature that's helping marketers reach new markets is now expanding, one of the coolest uses of AI that I've seen. We'll talk about all that and more right now. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a Social Media Examiner production where we break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. Today, I'm joined by Chelsea Pites. Chelsea teaches sales professionals how to leverage social media and technology to build a powerful personal brand. and develop content that generates real leads her most recent book is called what to post chelsea welcome to the show good to be here thanks for having me can't wait to talk about instagram yeah so instagram stories is one of those things where it's gotten dwindling reach it feels like over the years and until recently you've only been able to share a story if you were tagged in it but now all that is changing so tell us about what's happening with that Yeah, this is a really interesting one because stories historically has always been just for the community that follows you. In fact, that's why a lot of us love it because it feels very casual, very stress-free because you know that mainly only your followers are going to see it. Now, the downside of that, of course, is that you're not going to get any new followers or any reach from it. And before, I had to tag you in a story for you to actually be able to share it. And so now any publicly shared story will be able to share without being tagged which is pretty cool for products or brands that are wanting to collaborate with people from like their ugc and be able to share more of their stories you also are able to turn it off for any of those people who are like whoa whoa wait a minute i don't want my story shared i actually saw the pop-up it came up when i open my stories to make one and you can actually navigate through and turn it off or leave it on if you want. So yes, your stories that are publicly shared are now going to be shareable by anyone if they've seen that story, whether you tag them or not. Okay. And so did you leave yours turned on or did you turn it off? I think I left mine turned on, but I know that a lot of people love to keep it that sort of sacred space for their community. And if you're feeling a little stressed about it and you love having just the followers see it, I would recommend turning it off. Okay, because we've known each other for years, and I've watched your stories for years, and you've absolutely shared things and stories where I'm like, I would share this. I would absolutely share this. That's what I was curious about. Do we know it all? Because my conspiracy theory brain is going, well, first, we should all be saying, hey, feel free to share this if it was helpful or interesting or whatever it might be. And then the other part of me is going, but as soon as we say the word share, that it will kill our reach on that story. What do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, who knows, right? I'm with you. Like they really should have people, not two people that both believe in the conspiracies on the same show, because yes, I think that probably could be very possible. Plus I'm so used to not sharing that it doesn't even come to my mind to share it. So I think we're probably going to see some pop-ups or some sort of like little helpers. They're going to get us used to it for a while because I don't even think about it. Well, and this is one of those things where the platforms can introduce the feature all they want. If the consumers don't adopt it, then it's kind of pointless anyway. But I would think if there was an opportunity to encourage people to share and not be penalized for it, like right now, like right now is the time. potentially do that, I think. Yeah, agreed. So we'll see. All right. There's some interesting updates with Reels that we'll talk about in just a second. But if you've ever feel like you're the only marketer who doesn't have it all figured out, truth is you're not behind. You're not lost. You're just missing your people. Rebecca Good worked remotely for fifteen years and then came to Social Media Marketing World and she said, This was the first time I've been in a room full of like-minded individuals who share a passion for social media. It was mind-blowing. This is what happens when you find your community. You stop second guessing every decision, you gain real confidence, and you build a network that supports you long after the conference end. So the marketers that succeed, they're not necessarily the smartest or most experienced are the ones who found their people. So come join us. Find your people at Social Media Marketing World in Anaheim. Go to socialmediamarketing. world to grab your all access ticket today. Again, socialmediamarketing. world. All right. Another interesting, somewhat controversial reels feature, Chelsea, where they're calling them early access reels. So explain to us exactly how this works and your thoughts on this. Yeah, this is kind of related to those lockable reels that you might have covered on another show where you actually have to be subscribed to be able to unlock it or get like a code to unlock it. This is early access reels. And it will only go to your follower. So it's like the opposite of a trial reel. So you've got course, the idea from Instagram is, hey

this is a great way for you to build your reach and get new followers because somehow they must be pushing it out to non-followers. But remember, they're not going to be able to see it. So they're going to have that teaser that's like, hey, you want to follow Jerry Potter if you want to see this reel. so i'm looking at it as how exciting to guarantee that your content is now getting placed in front of the people who actually said i'm interested in it and i'm following you because i know that a lot of people have been complaining that their content feels like it's not getting out to their community so i'm actually excited from it from that perspective and i also think it would be really interesting to post one as an early access, let the timer run out. And then what would happen if you posted it just as a trial reel? And so I feel like you could really get like, but I'm like, does Instagram know this? Because this, this may be what they had in mind, but it's kind of like a double dip, if you will. Yeah. But then you would lose all the engagement you got on the first one, right? If you were just posting the same one again, a day later. Well, I don't think so because they're like, they could be two separate reels. So you could post it. One is a trial and one I'm guessing, I don't know. Oh, two separate reels. Okay. I thought you meant uploading the same video two different times. Okay. Yeah. I'm wondering if skills will allow us to do that though. It'd be interesting to see if you just upload the same one again and put it as a trial just to see what would happen because then you're getting out to guaranteed non-followers, but you also got out to followers. I don't know. I feel like somebody over at Instagram is probably going to be like, no, no. Come on, Adam. Let's hear your thoughts. So how much have you used the trial reels yourself? You know what? I've honestly never used the trial reels. And the reason I've never done it is because I've asked so many of my friends and they're like, you know, I see all these people like, oh my gosh, I loved trial reels. They were great. And I use them. And a lot of the people that I actually know said they did not love it. But they've tried it every now and then. But I think it's really, really good for those of us who are testing. I'm not a tester. I just make what I want to make and I put it out to the world. But if I was in a role where I had to test things, I wanted to A, B test it, and I really wanted to get into the metrics, I could see that it would be super, super helpful to test those different reels and trial it, especially if you're also changing your content drastically. But I haven't personally used them, but I actually am going to use the early access because I want to see how that goes. Yeah, I was gonna say, this one feels like it would be worth testing for a couple of reasons. One of the old tricks on Facebook and then later on Instagram is where you put out something that gets a ton of engagement from your followers and then you turn it into an ad. So when the ad goes live, it's already got all of this social proof, right? Right. So I see it kind of like that, but then also this whole thing where it's like, oh, there's a little countdown timer, right? Give people a little FOMO anxiety and then it's like, oh, if you follow, you can watch this right now. As a psychology geek, I always talk about this in marketing where it's like, you know what the best way to market something is? Tell somebody about something they can't have yet. That's why we have to pre-launch things and tell people about things before they're coming. Obviously, Hollywood does this great. Apple does an amazing job at this. And so it's almost like a little bit of that Apple marketing magic that you can bring to your reels. What I don't fully understand, and I don't know if you've seen this, but obviously if somebody went to your profile, it sounds like they would see the early access reel with the countdown, but they couldn't watch it. But they're not going to put early access reels in people's reels feed, are they? Yeah, here's what I'm wondering is, how are those reels going to be seen? Because it was very clear to me, they didn't talk about that in detail, but it was clear to me that they were saying that if someone sees this, they will be able to have that prompt. So how else would they see it? I guess if somebody shared it in their story or if they go to your profile, but I'm wondering, does that mean they're going to slip a few in? i don't know into the real speed but yeah um that's going to be very interesting it did not give details on that and i'm personally very curious about that okay all right we'll keep an eye on that part then and then are we going to see twenty minute reels soon some updates to the instagram reels camera including longer videos that you can record so tell us about these updates here Well, I don't have this update yet, up to twenty minutes. So no surprise. You know, everybody's kind of going longer and then it'll go back to shorter. But up to twenty minutes, you'll be able to create. I have a friend of mine who has that also the undo button. Now, I have had the undo button for well over a year. And essentially it's like the little like, you know, sort of curvy arrow. So if you make a mistake or you split something and you're like, oh, no, I didn't want to split that. All you can do is undo. So I don't know if that's new for some people, but I've had that for a long time, but that was listed as new. There's a new touch up feature, which is a little bit more customizable. I am excited, however, for this next bullet point, which is green screen performance, because I know you have tried the green screen. Like I haven't always, there's like a weird thing. All of a sudden it goes out and blurs out right here. And then you see like my bookshelf behind me. So hopefully some good improvements to the green screen, because I do love using that.

And beyond that, there's a handful of, like an enhanced timer and countdown, which I've seen as well. So there's more options for the countdown. I also noticed a new option for the voiceover countdown and some toolbars that they've updated. The headline I first saw about this update was about, you know, twenty minute reels are coming to Instagram. And I'm like, I don't think that's quite what it is. You can record up to twenty minutes and then of course you can edit it down in the editor, which is what they want you to do. So I don't even know what the limit was before. Have you ever recorded so long that it cut you off in the reels camera? I think mine currently goes up to ten minutes, but I've never posted anything longer than two minutes and thirty seconds, something like that. Yeah. OK. All right. That makes sense. And the feature that consumers have been asking for since the beginning of Instagram, practically, please let us personalize our algorithm. So it's not all of the algorithm, but the real algorithm now is Instagram says now we're going to give you a little more control over this. So how does this work? Yeah, as soon as this came out, I jumped on it to test it out. So essentially, when you go to your Reels feed, up at the very top, when you first open it up, there's a little icon. It looks like two lines, and then it has hearts on the lines. And if you tap that, it brings up a new screen. And the first thing that it shows you is an AI summary that says, Jerry, here's what we think your algorithm is right now. Lately, you've been enjoying superhero movies and horror holiday baking recipes and whatever you've been looking at, right? So it's already been in play, right? And then it will give you these like categories and you can edit them. So for me, it had small business, content creation, things of that nature. And you can go in and change them. I don't know if there's a limit because I added a bunch of them. I also deleted some. And I tried to do some that were fairly specific. And when I got too specific, they said, nope, sorry, that doesn't exist. But what I will say is that it worked right away. And I kind of am not even sure if I like it because I feel like it worked a little too well. And now only the only things I see are literally cycling fast. From those topics. So it could be interesting to just delete everything if you want to see what happens and start over. I don't know if that will refresh it. But I can tell you it works really well. But I don't know if I love it because I feel like I'm only seeing that stuff. From a marketer's perspective, I always see these kind of updates and it's like, ah, I could see with certain companies and their audience telling people, hey, if you want to see more of our feed, you can show them this feature, go in and request this. But of course, it could also bring up more of your competitors. But I think it's always good to be aware of this stuff as marketers, because if you do see a big uptick all of a sudden in your content in the next few weeks or you know, it goes downhill, this could be the reason why. But I do think that if this gets adopted, this is where the more aligned your content is with a single topic, the more likely you are to have people coming back over and over again. Because I think if you are, yeah, if you're an account where you make stuff about holiday baking, superhero movies, horseback riding, you know, now for the people watching on YouTube, I'm looking at Chelsea's background, all the stuff on her shelf, looking for topics. But, you know, rainbows, if you had all these different things, it's much harder to categorize at that point. so it'll be interesting to see i will say i have found a lot of new creators i've never seen before and that's pretty cool well and just from a like a selfish standpoint i just want to kind of go in and like right after we're done today and go i wonder what it thinks i like i wonder what it's showing me right now i will say in the other half of meta on facebook whenever it says do you want to see more or less content about like this i get a little bit of a panic attack because i'm like well i don't know do you mean more from this person about this topic do you mean more videos do you mean like there's so many maybe that's because i'm a content creator there's so many like aspects of it if it said do you want to see more seattle seahawks content then i would say yes or no but when it just says do you want to see more stuff like this i'm like well which part i know I never, ever answer it. And that's probably why I'll never go in and try and customize my algorithm, just because it's easier. Just let it be. All right. Some people have been having some early luck with the Reels translation feature that I've been playing with the same technology, but off of Instagram. But this is essentially where it will transcribe or it'll translate what you say in your video, but then it will also change your voice to speak the other language. And then it also... changes the way your mouth moves to match up. So if you imagine old dubbed movies, like those are going to be a thing of the past. And now this is expanding even further. Have you seen much about this or have you talked to anybody that's been using it? I haven't talked to anyone that's been using it.

I saw the video directly from Adam Mosseri. And yeah, I mean, I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Is this AI? It is AI. And it's really interesting because I do have people that I've worked with that are like, I would love to be able to translate my videos. I know that they have the subtitles and captions that you can do different languages, but this certainly opens it up. and into many other different languages. And it is more than just the words coming out. You're right, I was really surprised. I did not think it was gonna look as seamless as it did in the example that Adam was using. They're gonna have automatic translation of text and also caption stickers, which will be really interesting as well. And then I did see something pop up recently that said I had access to it. I haven't tried it yet, but I recently just got it and saw the little notification come up. Because if your business is already set up to serve people in other languages or it doesn't matter. I was at a conference this year and there was a guy who had just been exploding on YouTube. And he said that he always tries to make videos that don't have any speaking in them if he can. This was about YouTube Shorts. But he said, because then you can reach anybody in the world. And he had one that got like, twelve million views or I don't know, something just insane. And so this, but what I love about this and the way that Meta is thinking about this is like you mentioned, it'll also translate the sticker. It'll translate the onscreen text. So literally your entire thing could be customized for any language that they offer. So. Exactly. Yeah. Very cool. Really, really impressive. So they are now expanding this out to where you can use Hindi and Portuguese in addition to English and Spanish. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. Now, of course, on the back end, if you can't serve those customers, then you got to question whether it's worth the time or not. All right. So let's talk about Instagram Advanced, which is what I call the Instagram Edits Now app, because they keep adding more features to make it almost like the regular Instagram editor. But I know you've used this some, at least, and they just keep adding new things to try and make it easier to make reels primarily, but make videos and edit them in the Edits app. So what are these updates that we've got? Yeah, I do use edits exclusively now. Oh, okay. I'm always excited when they come up with new updates. I don't have these yet. So again, I'm hopeful that I will get them soon. They're rolling out templates. I looked for them yesterday. I wanted to make something with a template and they didn't have it. But, you know, think of the other... Third-party apps that are out there that have all those different templates where all you have to do is throw in your videos or your photos. It makes it a lot easier. So I think that's going to be really, really helpful. I would like to see that in my own. There's going to also be a bulk editor for the captions. I actually have that one. so much better than what we were using before because it would make you go line by line. And now you open up or at least I can open up and I can see every single caption and just go down the entire document and make any changes which has been really helpful. Now I personally haven't seen the lip sync feature, but it's animating a photo with facial features using voice recording. So that should be interesting. I'm not exactly sure what to expect there, but that could be interesting. And then finally, the ability to reverse our videos. I feel like that would have been like a basic, you know. Now, do I reverse my videos often? No. Maybe I have once a year, but still like that's a pretty cool feature. So if you want to go like rewind it, if you will, that's there. And then I had to ask you about this because you are the expert, but volume ducking. Explain to them what that is. And it's a helpful little tool. yeah i mean this is a i used to work in radio and when we did audio production but basically you know volume ducking when it's done automatically like this means it'll take the music that you put in the background and it'll lower it when you're speaking depend i haven't used this version of it but it'll lower it when you're speaking and then it'll raise it back up when you're done speaking and so that way you don't have to go through and do a lot more elaborate editing around that which is helpful Although I will say that I have tried it and I do think that at least for me, the music level, it usually brings it. I haven't noticed anything lower than twenty out of a scale of zero to one hundred. I've only noticed that it brings it down to twenty. And I feel like that's still really loud if I'm talking and like teaching in a reel. I do like to bring that volume lower, but interesting nonetheless. And it was very easy. All I had to do was push a button and it took care of everything. Yeah, I will say when I talk to people about this and, you know, in radio, I did audio mixing for years, but I also say I have terrible ears for stuff. Like, you know, our engineers would be like, do you hear the signal? Do you hear what I did? I added this process and I'm like, nope, it all sounds the same to me. You know, like I can tell the difference between a one dollar speaker and a, you know, and a five hundred dollar speaker. But other than that, I have no ears for this. So my rule of thumb is basically keep

lowering it until it seems low enough and then maybe go down another ten percent. Because people are listening on so many different devices. And so if they're listening in wireless AirPods, it sounds one way. If they're in the car on a loud highway, it's different. And like you said, if they can't hear you, you might as well delete the piece of content. So yeah. And then one other update to the edits app, which is really high tech involving smart effects on objects and people. So tell me what you've seen about this. And this is rolling out. I don't think almost barely anybody has it yet, but it's- Yeah, it's just a really quick little barely teaser video. So we don't even have any real details other than the few seconds we were able to see in the video that they shared. But basically, imagine if I'm, you know, I think the graphic they showed was somebody playing with like a soccer ball. And you can kind of... highlight that soccer ball even as it's bouncing and moving and put like different things around it like a like an aura glow or sparkle if anybody wants to do something sparkles um what i thought was really cool is this sort of reveal or blur feature so if i'm holding up something like you know something that i'm going to be announcing let's say it's a new book and i hold up my book but i can blur out just the book or whatever the product is or the item for the reveal so i think that would be really cool for product-based businesses. And interesting because then you don't have to rely on another third-party app to do it. And they're just continuing to make it a little bit more easier to do everything all in edits, which I appreciate. Yeah, well, and not just for blurring something as a teaser, but for privacy. Maybe you were filming somewhere where you're in front of your house, and you don't want your address number showing or those kind of things. So yeah, because normally, even if you have a blur option, if it's a moving object or the shot changes, then you're like, oh, let me move it over here. And it's just such a hassle. All right, quick reminder, learn about an all-access ticket to Social Media Marketing World today. Go to socialmediamarketing. world. Again, socialmediamarketing. world. And Chelsea, where's the best place to discover more about you? No surprise. You can find me on Instagram under my name. It's chelsea. pites, P-E-I-T-Z. All right, and if you want to add another podcast to your listening lineup, check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, may you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks, everyone.