EPISODE 96 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: HOW TO TACKLE THE NEW INSTAGRAM CHANGES

Sonya:
We've been hearing whispers for a while now about new changes coming to Instagram, and it's finally happened. You may not have the new update yet, but it is coming. I'm going to take you through all the changes and how small businesses can keep up without having spent hours editing Reels and videos.

Sonya:
Welcome to the Boom Your Biz Podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate and power and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Sonya:
I don't know about you, but I've kind of missed the early days of doing business on Instagram. The color grad and feeds and having a good old chat on stories before it timed out four slides. These days though, it feels like the bar has been well and truly lifted to a point where for some small business owners, it may feel too overwhelming to keep up. Here are a few examples of questions we've been getting from our clients. We're lawyers and our work is pretty serious, do we have to dance and point to be seen in Reels? If videos where it's at, do we just not post photos anymore? If we haven't done any video up until now, do we have to post Reels every day to catch up?

Sonya:
Thankfully the answer to all these questions is a resounding no. If you're anything like me, the sort of Reels you see on the explore page make you want to not do Reels. In fact, I've been resisting doing Reels myself because I was scared of looking Like an idiot. Hello, my name is Sonya McIntyre-Reid and I'm a digital marketer who is scared of looking foolish on the internet. Luckily for me, with the recent growth of my team, we've brought on Jenna and Amy who are absolute guns at finding trends and translating them into content that's relevant to what we do. And even more lucky is the fact they're generous here in Aubrey and can keep me accountable. And Amy is in Melbourne and can force my business partner Nams into doing Reels for the agency side of the business.

Sonya:
If you have a team, you probably have one or two people who aren't shy about getting in front of the camera. Or who have great ideas for the type of content you could be creating. Reels are the one type of content where you don't have to be original. Download trend talk to see what's trending in terms of audio, or simply jump on the explore page and check out what types of audio and styles come up most often.

Sonya:
It's not all about Reels, though. This is my understanding of how the new Instagram format is going to work. Instagram in 2022 is going to focus on four distinct areas, video, creators, messaging, and shopping. And yep, I put video at the top of that list because love it or hate it, video is the content format most likely to get eyeballs on your feed. There are a couple of reasons for this. Video is entertaining and we have attention spans. Customers want to get to know who they're buying from, especially if you're a small business or a sole trader. We're a generation of viewers rather than readers. I'm not saying that's good or bad, that's just how it is. And for eCommerce clients, video is a fantastic way to position yourself exactly where you want to be, whether that's up with the premium brands or more along the lines of cheap and cheerful. Video allows you to really showcase your brand and your products.

Sonya:
Here's the thing with video, it doesn't have to be you speaking directly to the camera doing a sales pitch. You don't even have to show your face if you don't want to. Some of my favorite econ videos that I've seen lately have been created with an iPhone using the voice record feature. Another idea I love is using what we call B roll. This is the type of filler footage you would see in a longer form ad or even a movie when they're trying to set the scene by panning across the countryside or cityscape.

Sonya:
I love when I see the ads that have nice music, a mixture of photos and video, maybe a little text pop up where appropriate and then a tile at the end with the business logo and either a website or phone number displayed clearly. It's simple and it doesn't take too long to create. In fact, once you've done a few videos like this, it gets really easy. You'll probably still need to develop your editing skills within the app of your choice, though. And yes, I've done up a freebie list of my team's favorite apps for creating videos and you can get that in the show notes for this episode.

Sonya:
The second area Instagram is going to focus on is creators. If you thought the era of the influencer was over, think again, they just look a little different these days. Take recipe bloggers for example. Where you could once post an edited image of your completed recipe and write a caption that said something along the lines of, "Simple 12 ingredient salad that will knock your socks off. Visit my website for the recipe." Now to get more eyes on your content, you'd need to film yourself preparing the ingredients, cooking the dish, the finished product, and don't forget the cheesy footage tucking into the meal as well. Then you might want to create a teaser promo for your new recipe coming soon. And maybe even a countdown on your stories to generate interest. And that's really the bare minimum if you want to be successful.

Sonya:
There's a reason that eCommerce brands like active wear giant Gymshark continue to rely heavily on influencers to create content for them. It basically comes down to this, gifting an influencer $200 to $300 worth of clothing is a small price to pay to then be able to grab any content that goes viral and use it on their platforms. Here's the thing, you don't know what's going to go viral. So for brands like Gymshark, being generous with their product means they're going to get loads of potentially usable content without having to go to the trouble and expense of hiring or outsourcing a video production team. The content they get in return for offering free clothes and an affiliate code to their influencers is worth far more than the cost of price of the items they're giving away.

Sonya:
The third area Instagram is going to be focusing on is messaging. Now with the rise of scammers and fake accounts, I'm not sure how this is going to go as Instagram users have become less trusting of old direct messages. But there's definitely a place for automated messaging, particularly if you have a number of offers available. I'm thinking beauty salons who do brows, facials and tanning. Sending new users an automated message, welcoming them and asking them to select what service they're most interested in can give you valuable data about the people who are coming to your account. Plus you can send them a booking link for that particular service or a special followers only offer. Again, just be aware that Instagram users, particularly those who went to competitions, have become wary of receiving messages from brand accounts. So you may not receive the same level of positive response you would have 12 months ago.

Sonya:
And the fourth area Instagram is focusing on, which is probably the most relevant for many of my listeners, shopping. Online shopping has become our new normal and it's not going anywhere, even though the world has opened up again. I don't know about you, but if I have a choice between going to a crowded shopping center on a weekend or to shop from the comfort of my couch, the couch wins every time. Especially with many online retailers making returns really easy these days. Hello, The Iconic. [inaudible 00:07:15] has come out publicly saying that the photos are still an important part of Instagram, but with viewers spending upwards of 20% of their time on Instagram viewing the Reels feed. So coming more and more important to embrace Reels and video content in general.

Sonya:
Now, the reason that I'm focusing on this video content so much is because as the new update rolls out, basically when you're scrolling through your Instagram, you are going to see that the content is being displayed, basically the full length and width of your phone. And the caption, you're only going to see a couple of words before it cuts off. So basically it means it's going to be far less focused on the captions and much more on that full screen content. And I'm already seeing a lot of my favorite social media people doing things like creating a video background and then having a quote over the top. And then their caption is really, really short. So people are getting the majority of the information they need from that post from the actual creative itself. So it's just a little side note.

Sonya:
All right, back to shopping and eCommerce. If you do have an eCommerce business, of course you're going to want to keep posting static images with shopping tags. However, there's also the option to tag video with shopping tags now, which is definitely something to look into if you want to stand out. One of my favorite fashion influencers has found a way to consistently create a Reel each week using the exact same style and audio every week. And she has literally thousands of followers. She has selected audio that simply lists the days of the week from Monday through Friday. And as each day is listed, she pops up with a new outfit. There's usually a theme for the week, which allows her to do brand collaborations and/or receive affiliate income. If that's not the definition of work smarter, not harder. I don't know what is.

Sonya:
So now if you have the four areas, Instagram that you'll be focusing on. And by focusing on, I mean, Instagram will be rewarding those people who embrace these areas by sending them more engagement. How do you choose which is best for you? And how do you actually create that sort of content that Instagram likes right now? Now, as I just mentioned previously on my little tangent, the sizing on Instagram is going to change. So if you've been working in Canva on 1080 by 1080 square, you're going to want to increase those dimensions to 1080 by 1350, or even 1080 by 1920. And to make things a little more tricky, towards the bottom of your image, it's going to fade to a darkish gray color with the first line of your caption placed over the top.

Sonya:
So basically if you have TikTok, take a note of how, when you have a look at that app, the image and the captions are placed. It is over the top and it's a full screen experience. Instagram's basically going for the same thing. So this means no more putting your phone number or website at the bottom of your images. And you have even less caption space to grab attention. I'd recommend taking a look at Facebook and Instagram ads for examples of attention grabbing captions. They're usually pretty spot on.

Sonya:
If the idea of creating video seems daunting, I'm here to tell you that it really doesn't have to be. If you've been using Canva and the idea of learning yet another app makes you want to throw your phone across the room. I'm giving you permission to keep using Canva, just learn how to use the animate feature for transitions between images, pick some animated effects. And above all, remember to save your content in MP4 format. It doesn't have to be hard. Where you used to post a carousel, take those five or six slides and save them as video. Just make sure you don't make each slide too long or too short, depending on the amount of text on your slides. Between two and five seconds should be plenty.

Sonya:
Apps like Mojo are great if you want to find one or two templates and duplicate them. ECommerce clients, I'm talking to you. You could easily have one template for new arrivals, another for sales, another one you want to showcase a theme or collection. You can create Reel stories or just good old feed videos fairly quickly. You can even upload your logo. Highly, highly recommend it for beginners.

Sonya:
At the end of the day, though, and this is something I tell our clients all the time, you can have the prettiest feed in the world and jump on all the latest trends. But if you don't have a sales funnel that converts, it's like swimming upstream. All you'll find yourself doing is expanding far more energy than you need to. If your website doesn't convert, you can do everything else right and still not see the sales you want. If you're missing simple things like an abandoned cart sequence, you're missing out on even more potential sales. Digital marketing is really a holistic thing, it's not just about Instagram and it's algorithm or just Facebook ads.

Sonya:
It's a fairly delicate ecosystem with a number of moving parts, some of which aren't even in the digital realm. What I'm trying to say is this. If your business is going to be severely impacted by semi-regular changes to how a platform works, you may want to think about how precarious it is to rely on a social media platform for the success of your business. This is something I'll be covering in my eCommerce basics course, which will be coming out soon. If you're an eCommerce business owner, I'd love to hear what you think we should be including in the course. Head over to the Boom Your Biz Facebook group, and request to join to have your say. And to access the show notes for my episode, which contains links to the various apps and programs my team uses to create video and Reels content, head to KissMarketing.com.au/podcast.