Instagram Updates for 2025: What Marketers Need to Know

They have a reveal sticker. And this reveal sticker, it basically blurs out your Instagram story. So think about this. If you have a new product or a new launch, or maybe a new course or something that you want to tease out to people, it could even be for like a giveaway or maybe a new lead magnet. So what happens is it blurs it out and there's a little sticker that shows up on your story, and you can put a little message, like you could have a little teaser in there that's like, you know, click to

reveal or message me this word if you want X, Y, and Z Today, I am very excited to be joined by Chelsea Pipes. If you don't know who Chelsea is, she is, she helps service industry professionals leverage social media to build powerful personal brands that generate quality leads. She's also author of What to Post. Chelsea is also a regular guest on social media examiners, social media marketing talk show. Chelsea, welcome back to the podcast. How you doing today? I'm amazing. So excited to be back, of course, one of my favorite podcasts to be on. Sweet.

Well, today Chelsea and I are gonna explore some of the newer Instagram features and what they mean for marketers. Um, so before we go there, there are plenty of marketers that are listening that might not be as focused on Instagram. Maybe they're all in on another platform like LinkedIn or Facebook or something else, and maybe they're just kind of ignoring Instagram for whatever reasons, kind of like I personally am to be very honest with you. So why should marketers, um, focus on Instagram, those that are not maybe all in on Instagram? Absolutely Instagram. I love

Instagram. Of course, I'm biased. I spend the majority of my time there. But I love talking to somebody like you who's like, okay, give me the inside scoop. What is it about this platform? And what's interesting about Instagram is that 90% of the accounts follow at least one business account. And above and beyond that, there's 70% of the users that are typically going to discover a new product. And oftentimes when they see even an Instagram ad, I think the status, something like 50% of people actually go and visit that website. And or if you're me,

actually purchased directly through Instagram right from the ad. So it's got a lot of bells and whistles. It's got product shops and it has the ability to reach new, uh, new eyeballs because the algorithm is focused on discovery and recommendation. And any user of Instagram knows that at least 50% of the content in your home feed is now being suggested. So I think it's a really great opportunity for marketers and brands to actually get your content out in front of new eyeballs and potentially generate some, some leads and some brand awareness. Very cool. All right.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna break down the different kind of mediums that you can use on LinkedIn. And we're gonna start with Instagram stories and we're gonna just kind of talk about some of the features that not everybody may be familiar with. So what is the latest and greatest on Instagram stories? Well, we're never at a loss for updates happening at all times in Instagram. And stories is definitely a place that they're focusing on because the Instagram head of, um, their CEO Instagram's head, Adam Moi, has recently said, listen, we know that

people are spending more time sharing content privately, either in the direct messages or in stories and having those conversations and lessen the feed. So they're really focusing on ways to elevate engagement opportunities inside of these particular areas. And one of them is a brand new option called Comments on stories. And it can be a little bit confusing. So I wanna explain a little bit what they look like and how they work. So just like a regular comment on a feed post, we know how to do that. What we're used to seeing inside of an Instagram

story is a private message, a message box where we can send that directly to somebody and they get it in a direct message and nobody else can see it. Whereas now you'll also see a little comment bubble icon right next to that message icon. And you can actually create almost like a post-it note, a little sticky note that a bubble that goes onto that story that other people can also engage with and see. So it's kind of like just the comments in a feed post, but now they're going to live in stories. Now the idea

behind this is, of course, great for marketers who wanna get immediate feedback on something. You can test out your ideas, you can even show products, and now you can have sort of a community coming together around that topic to give you immediate feedback and have them have conversations. So it could be really great for marketers who are trying to get some instant feedback or engage their audience in a more, um, in a more engagement in those stories versus just the dms or going through manually and looking at every single DM that's coming in to try

to get feedback from their audience. Now they disappear with the story unless you post them to your Instagram highlight on your profile. So keep in mind if there's something there, it's gonna show on that highlight forever. And yes, you can also turn them off if you would not like to have comments on your Instagram stories. I know some marketers are thinking this, that's just another thread I have to manage, right? So, um, everyone sees all the comments are all public and you can respond to them. Is it very similar to kind of what Reels has?

Yes, it is similar to that. If people who are using or familiar with Instagram, they might also say, this kind of reminds me of Instagram notes and they're very similar. It's a little circle bubble and you'll see it pop up and yes. So it's a, it's another way to say, we know y'all are spending a lot of time in the dms and the stories, but how can we get more engagement and not just one-to-one, but a community talking about the same topic. And yes, everybody can see those comments. Got it. Okay. And I'm assuming that

the comment rules that are set up on Instagram can apply. 'cause I think can't you set certain words that don't show up and all that kind of stuff? Mm-Hmm. So people don't have to deal with the, the crazy people commenting. Yes. And if you have a really big brand account, you know, you have a lot of followers, that might be something that you're like, yeah, let me just go turn that off in the settings. Uh, because it could be overwhelming if you do get a lot of people that are commenting on there. Um, so also

if you wanna just sort of avoid the overload of all of that, right? But I found it a little bit confusing and the people that I talked to said, what exactly is this thing? Why am I seeing this? And where they were also seeing my comment on their end, they were like, but wait, I saw you comment somewhere, but I don't know where it went. So I think they have a little bit of, uh, ironing out Yeah, working out to do on the user experience. But I think it could be cool for, for marketers who

wanna get more immediate feedback from people and have sort of a community vibe. Okay, so we've got this comments sticker. Uh, what else? On the stories front, There's lots of stickers and there's lots of new fonts. Personally, I'm a big fan of the new fonts because I think it gives you a, a way to be a little bit more creative and, and interesting visually. There's lots of stickers that have to do with the add yours, and that's been around for a while. And that's, that's another engagement technique. Hey, how can we get people to participate

here and add yours was really, Hey, add your picture to this. Like, you know, the first thing in your camera roll or what are you seeing at the conference today to get people engaged and share their, uh, their content into sort of like a shared album, if you will. Now they have an add yours music, which you can pick your song that you're listening to. And what happens is anybody who adds to it, you'll be able to see all of those different songs that they might be listening to. Um, I don't think that's gonna be

as big of a, of a marketer play as some of these other ones that I'm kind of excited about. Um, I think that's really cool. They have a reveal sticker and this reveal sticker, it basically blurs out your Instagram story. So think about this. If you have a new product or a new launch or maybe a new course or something that you want to tease out to people, it could even be for like a giveaway or maybe a new lead magnet. So what happens is it blurs it out and there's a little sticker that shows

up on your story and you can put a little message, like you could have a little teaser in there that's like, you know, click to reveal or message me this word if you want X, Y, and Z. And then what happens is they have to direct message to actually have it reveal. Now, if you're using ManyChat, that could be really cool too, because then you have can have that those flows set up where people are messaging you a certain word. So that's kind of a cool thing. And again, Oh wait, just to clarify, so this

click to review isn't just quite literally a click, or can it be, can it be just a click? Or does it have to be like a dm? A dm, you have to, mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Alright. Which is why the ManyChat thing could be cool because if you've got people messaging a certain word, um, you can have that set up there, there as well. But it's kind of like a fun little way to maybe have like a reveal. Um, what you're kind of referencing is what they call frames. Okay. And this in it looks like a Polaroid

picture and they call it Frame, and it looks exactly like a little Polaroid, and you can place it on your story. So you can have an image in the back and you can put this little like Polaroid frame on there, and that's blurred out. And then people can actually tap on it. I believe you can shake your phone too, but honestly, I've never tried that. Uh, so it's kind of a fun way to have the reveal tap to the reveal. And that could be cool because that could be for like a discount code, you know,

tap to reveal this or, uh, the frame could actually have that discount code in, in it as well. But the whole point here is easy engagement. How do we increase it and can we get more people in DM conversations with us? Very cool. All right. Let's talk about good old fashioned, uh, feed posts because there's been some updates. Updates, those are Still Relevant. Yes, there's been some updates there. Old Fashioned feed post, um, lots has changed in the feed post, and this is probably the one thing I am most excited about. Um, they've changed carousel

posts. And carousel posts are multiple images or videos. So those are the ones that you swipe through. And for years, I think since 2017, they've capped that at 10, which is a lot. Okay, I'll already tell you 10 slides is a lot, but now they've doubled it. So for those, uh, marketers who have maybe products or something coming out for the fall or like a holiday sale, you're going to be able to showcase many more products or many more aspects of those products. Also better storytelling. Even if you're in an industry like real estate, you

could show more of the house and the property just because we can use 20, I don't recommend always using 20, because another thing to keep in mind is that the algorithm is tracking. Are we going through to the very end? So you're going to be able to add way more. Now, here's the cool thing for marketers. This could be really helpful if you have collaborators. If you've got multiple people, not just you, then you can have a little bit more than the 10, or you can go all the way up to the 20, which would

be a nice way to incorporate somebody else's perspective. Very cool. Yeah, and I, I love the idea of the real estate agent, like mm-Hmm. Almost like a photo album, right? Because yeah, and I would imagine even if you're putting on events, this could be kind of cool. You could have a whole bunch of pictures, right? Of the experience, or if you're a restaurant or any kind of, any kind of a space where there's lots of things that lend themselves to visuals. I could see a nice, um, array of photographs. I think conference is is a

genius idea. And I, of course, I'm thinking of social media marketing world because I would swipe through all of those photos. I wanna see the speakers, I wanna see the behind the scenes. So something like that where, you know, people are going to wanna swipe through all of those in some cases. I'm really excited to have more of that storytelling ability. So I totally agree with you. I think more in-depth storytelling, um, more comprehensive event recaps, and of course step-by-step in how to tutorials that might have taken, uh, you might have had to like kind

of shrink them down before. So if it is something a little bit more complex, I could see that being useful too. Anything else on the, on the feed front? Yes. Another really big exciting announcement for carousel posts or really posts of any kind. And I'm thrilled about this because I've been using often like many of the marketers here, third party tools to create graphics or layer text over graphics. Um, and I'm so excited because now you don't have to use anything but Instagram. So talk about easy. Uh, I can actually upload images or graphics or

videos and now I can add text, I can add font directly over those images. So I can essentially make my text-based carousel posts right inside of Instagram and I can also schedule them. It has made my life so much easier. And also I think that it looks very native to Instagram because it's the same fonts that you're getting in the stories and the reels. And so I personally am so excited that I can now add text to my carousel post. And you can also add stickers. So if you do wanna jazz it up a little

bit, or if you wanted to use say a cutout sticker that your company logo, or if you're a local business, uh, maybe you have somebody that's sort of the face of your business or even a mascot, you can include that in your content. And so it's a smart move on Instagram's behalf because we're all using a lot of these third party tools and some of the really popular third party tools are getting pretty pricey because I just saw my prices go up. So I love this idea. So does this mean it's almost like a Canva,

if you will, competitor? Is that really what you're talking about? And do they have templates? 'cause I remember, uh, with stories there were basic templates you could, you know, use with colored backdrops and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. And on Facebook, obviously we have something very similar. Is it something along those lines, or is it even more sophisticated than that? It's Pretty basic. Uh, it's definitely not going, I wouldn't say it's a competitor to Canva. It's definitely like, wanna get the job done and I wanna create something, but maybe I don't have time or the desire

to go into another app. It's great if you want to just make it look like it's created right inside of Instagram. I still use Canva even though I create these carousels inside of Instagram right now as well, because I have my specific fonts and styles and templates that I've made. So I would be excited to see if they come up with more templates so that there is a library that we can pick from. But right now it is pretty basic. Bare minimum, add your text, you get to select from the 14 fonts that are available.

Um, and then the, just the basic colors that you have in there and whatever stickers are in the menu. Anything else on the, uh, feed front? Yes, I'd say the last thing that, um, is kind of a cool update for marketers especially is, uh, you can add product details to your post now, which is pretty amazing. So people can actually start shopping from your posts and you can also, uh, tag your broadcast channels. And I know we're gonna talk about that in the live section. That's gonna be helping people to get more into your community.

Um, and lastly, again, we're looking at engagement. And the reason I think we're looking at engagement is because the engagement has changed on a lot of these social platforms, they're actually consuming silently now because we're watching a lot of video content. So again, more things to encourage engagement. And one of those things that you can now add to your posts, your feed posts are polls and prompts, and those are ways for people to easily see that there is a poll there that they can participate in, and how much easier it is to click than stop

and maybe make a comment. So other ways that Instagram is saying, Hey, try these things, we wanna try to get you some more engagement, and it's a little bit easier and faster. So I would encourage people to try the polls. The prompts are going to be maybe for a little call to action that you sort of wanna have pins sort of at the top so people don't miss it. And the cool thing about both of them is that you get a little visual icon on the actual post so it's not buried and you have to

tap and open the caption, which is helpful so people know, oh, there's a thing here that I can participate in. Okay. So just to clarify, the polls and the prompts are not the main thing you see in the feed. There are something that's in the caption Mm-Hmm. But there is some sort of a little signal that it's in there so people know to open it up. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Mm-Hmm. Yes. At the very bottom corner you'll see in, in little white font, it will say like, poll, uh, and it might also

tell you how many people have voted. Oh, I see different things. So I'm assuming they're testing, but I use it and it's great. Um, and people do participate and it's just like the Instagram stories where you can see what the percentage of, and then you can of course see the final information. So it's just an another way to create easier engagement for people that are scrolling through that feed. And hopefully we'll stop the scroll a little bit more for you. Earlier you said you can add product details to posts. Mm-Hmm. I don't know if everybody

understands what that means. Maybe you could describe that. Yes. So this will add almost like a little button to your post, a visual button, um, that will let the community see your info, say about a product. Uh, let's say you make sweatshirts or hats or clothing of any kind. And so you are posting about your product and maybe now you're using those 20 slides. Um, it'll add a button to it and it will say, uh, it'll send you an order request to your direct message. So they're helping small businesses out, especially that are selling products.

You have Instagram shop, which is great. And then they're also gonna be able to make it more easier or easier to just click with a button and get those product details and then go shopping, which anybody who has a shop, we, we love an easy user experience to check right out. In fact, I think it's a little bit too easy because I seem to be buying more on Instagram. It auto fills my information and then, and then it just shows up at my door. So this product details to post only is for products that are

in Instagram shops, or is it? Yeah. Okay. You do have to put your products in Instagram shops so that it is the first step and it might have something like the product price and the product name. And so we're gonna see more coming in the future for people that are selling actual products and just making it more streamlined and easier for them to sell those products and for the consumers and the users to actually find out more information about how to get them. All right. We have a whole bunch more to talk about folks. Um,

so let's talk about live video. Um, what has changed when it comes to live video? Live video, by and large, is still fairly what we're used to, but the big change, I think that not a lot of people are talking about is that you can now go live inside of your broadcast channel. And for those who aren't quite sure what a broadcast channel is, this is something that professional accounts with 10,000 or more followers are able to set up. And the idea is to create a, a stream of one way broadcast. That's originally how it

started. So let's say it's the, the people who are who've bought tickets to go to Social Media Marketing World, or maybe the people who are attending, you could create a broadcast channel and you could give updates to the people who are in that channel who have said, yes, I would like to subscribe to this channel, and you can send information about your event to one place so that everybody in that group, let's say there's 200 people that joined, all 200 people will get that notification. What I love about it is there's no algorithm. You don't

have to fight for visibility. This is a way to get your information that somebody wrote, raised their hand and said, yep, I wanna follow this channel to get this information. And it really had been one to many that's changing a little bit, which I think is awesome because now you are able to go live into your broadcast channel. So think in terms of you have maybe like a VIP client group or a coaching group or an event group, you can now provide even more value and more community just to those people. And now they're also

rolling out the ability for the people inside of that broadcast channel to have some level of communication. And they're calling it replies, and it's a little confusing someone to do my best to explain it. It's not turning the whole thing into like a group chat where everybody's just talking. They really wanna keep the broadcast channel as one thread, as one home feed with the person who created that channel. Being able to post these messages out to the people who've said, I wanna be in this channel. But when you click on one specific message, you're going

to then be able to see comments that people have left regarding that message. So all of those little replies and messages aren't gonna be in between all of the broadcasters' information. So it sounds a little bit confusing, but what we see here is that you're going to be able to pour into your community even more. You're gonna have these private areas where you can go live and you can, you know, share product reveals launches, get feedback, and now get to have a little bit more interaction. So I think this is a big one that people

haven't really tried yet or heard much about. So just to be clear, I'm definitely a rookie when it comes to, to this, and I'm sure a lot of people are like, oh, I don't even know what this is. So, um, a broadcast channel sounds like a Facebook group, but it's just one to many really is what I'm hearing you say, right? Mm-Hmm. It's kind of like a email newsletter for lack of better words, right? That's probably the best way to think about it. Exactly. Um, but you can post only live video into it or you

can post anything into it. Yes. You can post a variety of things into this. You were originally only able to post like, text-based updates or some videos. You know, how whatever you would post like pictures, videos or text, you'd also have links in there. And, um, again, it would be something like, I was in one for an event and it was helpful because the event coordinator was sending information, sending out the marketing pieces and telling people, Hey, look at this. You know, let us know. You could put polls in so people could give feedback, but

it was very, It's kind of like, it's kind of like their answer of Facebook groups, isn't it? But it's, but, but, but without, but, but without allowing, um, the, the members to really interact with each other. Right. And I think you hit the nail on the head. I, I think that's probably where they're going because there, there has been a lack, there is no group right. Environment where people can be a group in Instagram. So I think that this is probably their trial into getting into that and allowing people to have more replies now, uh,

more than just a poll where they were able to click on something. I definitely think that it's leaning that way, but I think this could be great for somebody with subscription, like, kind of like a subscription model. Hey, go to the broadcast channel at this time and we're gonna have like a, you know, a live class, Like a members only kind of thing, or a customer. Exactly. That's where it's like managing it like seems to be a nightmare. I mean, I don't even know how you would manage that, right? I mean, um, how do you

get people in and out of it and stuff like that. I mean, we're not gonna go down that path, but it does sound interesting, um, and fascinating. Is this a what's your take on this? Is this something that's experiment or do you think this is gonna stick? I think it should be sticking. I wasn't sure, I didn't set one up because I was asking myself the same exact thing. Is this really gonna stick around? And then as they started adding, going live in it and, and the replies, I think that this, this probably will stick

around for a while. They've also just added an option, uh, in your, uh, posting section. If you're, if you're making a post, uh, to the feed, like let's say the carousel, we talked about, uh, I don't have this 'cause I don't have a broadcast channel set up, but if you do, you might see this where now you can tag a broadcast channel. So they're really opening up a lot of ways to let people know, one, you have one that they can get involved in it, because for the longest time it just sort of lived on

your profile and you were the one that had to get the word out that you had one. So I think this is gonna, this is gonna stick around for a while. Okay. Crazy question. I don't know if you've, you're part of one, but what about on the notification front? Does it show up in the feed? Does it show up under the notifications thing? Does it show up in the dms? Yeah, That's what I was worried about. I was like, Ugh, great. I don't wanna join a bunch of these things and then get all these notifications.

So inside of your inbox there's different tabs. So it's all the same messaging inbox, but they have thankfully organized it into tabs and channels is one of the tabs. Mm-Hmm. So when I go into my inbox, what's nice is that I'm not, I don't have a barrage of stuff floating into my feed or notifications, but I know that all of the channel notifications live within my inbox in that specific tab, and I can just tab over from my personal messages over to my broadcast channels, go into my requests. And so I feel like it's, it's

a much better system than I was expecting when they talk, talked about rolling this out. So I am not inundated or overwhelmed with them. I have a, a dedicated tab. I can go right to and go through all of the ones that have updates. Back to the live video, um, I think you might have briefly mentioned that you can go live from the desktop, um, ex or did you not mention that yet? I don't, I don't think I mentioned that, but yes. Okay. You are able to go live from your desktop, which has been a

major challenge, you know, over the years. And people said, why can't we go live from the desktop because we wanna use other tools. Uh, so yes, you, you've been able to go live from the desktop with Instagram for a bit now. Um, and you still are able to do that as well. So if you didn't know that, yay, you can go live using your desktop as well. But the key is you have to have a third party app, right? Yes. So you do have to have a a Well, actually it was Instagram studio and I

haven't actually used anything live except Instagram. Oh, okay. Um, but it's called Instagram studio. I, I can't remember if it's called Instagram Live studio, but it's something Instagram studio and you can set it up and yes, a lot of people are using their desktop and, and are using third parties. Like you are here to stream to multiple places. Very cool. Okay. Uh, we haven't touched on reels yet, so let's touch on reels. 'cause I know there's a lot to talk about there. There's always a lot to talk about on reels. That definitely is still one

of their, if not the major focus for Instagram. And I, as somebody who creates a lot of reels, I'm really excited that they have continued to upgrade the editing features. One of the things that drove me nuts about this, uh, was that I would create an edit inside, just like using any kind of video editing. I would be trimming something or maybe I would delete something or move something around and rearrange the order of my video clips, and then I made a mistake and it was the wrong one and I couldn't undo it. So I

know this seems like a small thing to a lot of people, but I think it's a huge thing for us who are using the editing features. There's now an undo button and a redo button, which is hugely helpful. Cool. Um, there's also the ability to create duplicates, or if you have a reel that is created in your drafts now you can create a duplicate of that, which, um, could be really helpful if you are testing something and you don't wanna go back and edit the other one and lose all of what you had before, so

you can just duplicate it. Or if you have like a template that your company is using or that you have a standardized style, you can go ahead and make other duplicates and, um, not have to recreate the whole thing and upload everything. Um, also, what else is, Wait, real quick. Why would, why would somebody duplicate, like, help everybody understand why they would duplicate a reel? Because it sounds like you're just copying it and republishing it, but that's not really what we're talking about, or is it, It's not really what I'm talking about. It's, um, for

me, what I use it for is sometimes I wanna try different editing. Uh, I might be wanna try a different order. I might wanna try just, you know, something different altogether, but I don't wanna start over and upload all 30 of my video clips and try to trim it all up. Mm-Hmm. So I know that maybe I just wanna move a few things around. So for me, it's helpful as I'm testing things out to duplicate it, and then I can edit that one and see, you know, oh yeah, I like that. I'm gonna go with

this one. Also, if you're somebody who generally has, um, I wouldn't say a template, if you will, but I mean, a template in the sense of this is generally like we do this theme of the, of the week. It's this day and we do this style every single time. It could be helpful to at least just already have that, you know, editing template ready for you, and then you can swap out or replace content. So for me, it's an easier way that saves me time where I can test different things out. Um, and then I

can say, okay, I actually like this one. I'm gonna go with this one. And sometimes I don't like it and say, you know what, I'm, I'm gonna stick with this one. I'm glad I practiced over here, and then this is the one I'm gonna go with. So it was really hard because you had to remake everything if you wanted to test something. So we're not duplicating something we've already published, we're only duplicating a draft. Correct. So do you recommend that people always keep a draft of, of what they did, if they think they're ever gonna

reuse it? Because once you publish it, you lose all that editing capability, right? Yes. Which I'll tell you about another really cool update for that. Um, yeah. You know, I've had so many challenges with glitches happening and losing content that I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit nervous and I, I kind of save everything. I always have a duplicate of a draft because I've had many things where I've lost it. So you probably don't need to do that, and that's because of, maybe I have a, a little bit of stress from that happening in

the past. But yes, if you know that you can easily recreate, let's say a b roll video that you've done in the past, and you just need to make a few changes, yeah, absolutely. Save that draft, make a duplicate of it, and that way you can save yourself some time. Um, I also was one of the people who was like, oh, this is great. I just posted a reel and I made a spelling error, or I accidentally posted the wrong one. And what we used to happen is you'd have to delete it and then start

all the way over. And now you don't have to do that. You can go after you've posted something, say, oh no, and this just happened to me last week. I was like, oh no, I just, there's five spelling errors. So I, I went back to it, I tapped the three dots, and now you can move it, instead of just deleting it, you can move it back to drafts. Oh, do you have a limited amount of time in which you can do that? Not, not that I know of. And here's the cool part, again, I thought,

okay, well that's better than nothing I can That, oh, that means you can move anything back to drafts and make a copy of it, right? Um, I haven't tried it with my older ones. Okay. So sometimes they do updates where it only like allows you to do your new ones. But yes, I mean, theoretically, I, I was thinking of that too, that you can go back now and you can edit. You can also, uh, edit your frames and your, your cover photo, which is gonna be so helpful if you forget to do that. Like, I

have a million times. But, um, I wanna tell, uh, people that have experienced a lot of glitches like me, when they saved things, I thought, okay, well this is better than having to redo the whole thing. But certainly it didn't save the captions. It probably didn't save all the stickers I added and all the edits I did, it did. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so great. So yes, you're going to be able to go retroactively back to your reels that you've already posted and start being able to edit them more, which is

going to be so helpful. And yes, hopefully you'll be able to go back, make a duplicate, put it back in drafts, make a duplicate if you wanna, or so it's just so much better. So these little things are going to make your life as a marketer so much easier. Is the desktop version of Instagram have all these same features, or do you have to use the mobile app to get all this stuff? I use the mobile app to do everything, and I would say, you know, the majority of the features, uh, are usually on both

if you're on, you know, Instagram, uh, dot com or on the app. But I would say reels is probably going to be, I a really a phone app where you're editing directly onto it, unless you're using a third party app like, uh, Adobe Premier and you're using like a desktop app to do the editing. Mm-Hmm. Uh, you're still probably just posting it, you know, either through your scheduler or through the phone, and you can schedule directly inside of, of Instagram if you're not using a third party scheduler as well. But I just do everything directly

on the actual app. I don't know why. I just find it easier and more simplified. I don't, I only go on instagram.com for commenting because I like a keyboard versus actually typing in with my thumbs. Um, I don't know if you talked about splits yet, um, but I know this is something we talked about when we were prepping. Talk to me about what that can do on the editing side. Yes. So what's nice about going into the editing features now is that it's getting much better. It's not anywhere near some of our, you know, favorite

third party apps. Like, let's say cap cut that has so many features in it, it's almost overwhelming. But what's really nice now is that if you're not much of an editor, but you need to make a few changes, or maybe you said, um, in the middle of a sentence or you just screwed up and you just need to start over again, there's, in the editing features, you can, in addition to trimming off the beginning and the end, you can also split clips, which means you can split it right in wherever you tell it. This is

the exact area I want you to split and make two clips, and then you can also rearrange and reorder those clips. Um, another uh, update that they did was replace. So the hard part was you were like, okay, I, I switched this, I moved it around, but I, I have something else I wanna swap out for this video. And you would have to upload the new one and then reorder it, delete the other one. Now you can just click replace and it'll go right to your camera roll, and it will remove the, the one that

you've designated as the replacement one. And it will say, we we're gonna swap this right in there. So they're getting much better. It's not anywhere near like a cap cut level yet, but of course the goal is, hey, we want you to make the stuff inside of Instagram. That's exactly what they're doing with the carousel posts where you can now add text. Hey, you don't have to go to Canva to make a carousel post. You can just do it right here. Hey, you don't have to go to cap cut to do your editing. You can

edit right here. But I still think they have a long way to go to get to some of those favorite third party tools that we're using. Isn't it true that you can also download your final product and use it in other platforms? Is that true? Absolutely. And that's what I do. Even sometimes while I'm making something, save it, you know, even if I'm like, oh, maybe this isn't quite ready yet, I'll save everything to my camera roll before I post it, because that way, yes, you can use it on other platforms, but I also think

it's a good fallback because glitches happen all the time. And with the amount of updates that Instagram is doing at how often they're doing it, there usually always seems to be glitches that happen during those updates. And so as a, as a fallback, I always save my reels. Um, now remember, you can't save your reels with the music. So if you have trending music or an audio track that you've used inside of your reel, it's going to just download the silent video. So that may not be a big deal at all. All if you're not

talking in it, you can just, you know, upload it again in the future and put some music on. It'd be way faster than recreating the whole thing. Uh, but if you are talking and doing, talk to camera style reels, educational content, just know that you're gonna have to take the music out before you save it to your camera roll. And that's what I do. I'll take the music out, save it to my camera, roll, that way I have it, and then I can go back and, and add that music if I want. Oh, so if

you're talking and there's music, you won't have any audio on the download is what you're saying? Correct. Wow. Okay. Mm-Hmm. All right. You mentioned music a little bit. Talk to me about that. Yeah. And whatever else, whatever else is new to reels. Yes. So I don't know that you would need or want to add up to 20 different audio tracks to one reel, but you can do that. So it used to be one audio track, that's all you could upload. So if you really wanna get into that cinematic storytelling, maybe you wanna have like music

that helps the story along or has different beats. Yes. You can add multiple audio tracks now to one reel, which I think is pretty cool. I haven't actually added more than one audio track. Um, I usually just have one audio track that I might be having in the background, but for those people who want to add more of that cinematic storytelling, you can add up to 20, which is a lot of audio tracks. Well, and I would imagine if you've ever done any video editing, I mean, you could drop in sound effects or whatever, right?

Like yes, especially, I don't know if they even have audio tracks that have special, like I know they have ones with certain people just sing a couple words and stuff, but mm-Hmm. Can you layer 'em on top of each other too, you think? Or No? You Can. Yes, you can. And I really wish that they would up their game on the sound effects, because I love using sound effects in my video editing. I usually use a third party for that. I used to have sound effects, but I no longer have access to it. It used

to be actually a designated button. Uh, so it's, maybe it's just my account. Um, but it had, you know, some basic sound effects. But yes, you can actually search inside of the audio library. You could put the word sound effects, uh, but it's, the search isn't really, really great. So sometimes it's a hit or miss. Um, and then if you do hear a sound effect in the, in the menu that you like, there's a little bookmark, so you can save it in the future. Uh, but hopefully they're gonna just make it easy and have a

sound effects library that's gonna be a button and we can, we can add. But yes, you could do sound effects. You could do like people clapping or, you know, the whoosh or the ding. And those sound effects usually do have enough impact on attention because our brain, you know, when they see movement and hears those sound effects can also add to like a word coming onto the screen with that as well too. So yeah, lots of, lots of ways to enhance the watchability and watch time and, and hopefully retain some attention using music and sound

effects. Okay. Uh, I want to get to ai, but I wanna make sure we haven't skipped anything on reels. Do, have we covered everything on reels? And if we have, we can talk about ai. Yeah, I think that one last thing that we should talk about is you can add multiple collaborators to reels. It used to just be one person. Now you can add up to five, which is kind of nice if you're gonna be collaborating with multiple people and you weren't able to invite them to be collaborators once you posted the reel. And now

they've made it available so that, oh wait, we forgot to invite that person. If you posted the reel, you can go back and you can add somebody and invite them as a collaborator. So I think that's a really helpful tool for marketers. Real quick, explain what the application there for people who may not understand it. So a collaboration post is a little bit different from just tagging someone in the post. A collaboration post means that you are going to invite, it says invite collaborator, there's a button when you're posting. And let's say I wanted to

invite you, uh, to be a collaborator on my post. So I would invite, you know, Michael Stelzner, uh, to be a collaborator on this post. Then you'll get a message like a DM notification says, Chelsea's asking you if you'd like to be a, a collaborator on this post. You don't have to be, you can, you know, do nothing. Or you can say, yes, I'm gonna click on this and I'm gonna accept this invitation. And then what happens is, once you accept a collaborator invitation, that post that I made not only goes to my profile, it

also goes to your profile, which is a great way to cross pollinate audiences to get more reach and more visibility. And let's say you and I are collaborating for an event, uh, and maybe you don't wanna have that on your profile forever. Maybe six weeks after we've collaborated and posted in the event is over, if you wanted to, you can actually, um, remove the collaboration from your side so it doesn't show on your profile any longer. So collaboration posts means the post goes to both people's profiles and both people's audiences. Very cool. All right. So,

um, little tease here. Um, we're gonna talk about AI and um, mark Zuckerberg has made some pretty substantial investments in an open source, large language model called Llama, and you don't need to really understand what the heck that means, but they've also integrated into what they call meta.ai. So talk to us a little bit about the AI integration into some of the cool stuff going on in Instagram. Yeah, there's been a lot of trials on different types of AI from AI stickers in Instagram stories or creating, um, ai, uh, versions of celebrities that you can

chat with to, um, what I think is probably the most commonly used one is meta ai. And this is very similar, if not exactly the same as like A GPT or a chat GPT. And now what you'll see when you're on your app, whether you're in Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram, when you go to the explore page, which is the little icon that looks like a magnifying glass up at the top, it's going to say meta ai. And you can type in there and search something like you're normally used to searching. You can search for

a username, you can search for a word or a hashtag, but you can also tap on the little like icon for, for the AI and have a conversation just like you would with chatt PT. So here's how a marketer might use this. You might say, um, you know, meta, can you give me maybe the top 10, uh, hashtags that are relevant to this particular industry that are being used right now on Instagram? And then it's going to go through just like chat GPT, and it's gonna share that information. And then from there you can continue

to drill down and ask good questions about whether it's content or Instagram related ideas. So it's, it's very similar to any other kind of GPT that you might be used to working with. And they have a desktop version too, so if you kind of like more of a desktop version. Um, but I, I do everything on my phone pretty much. So I've used it on my phone. I just wish that what I'm about to say is possible, but I'm, I'm guessing it's not. I would love it if you could say, Hey, meta, uh, tell me

my top Instagram posts or what's getting the most reach or interaction. I mean, I'm guessing it's not there yet, right? Let's, Let's, I mean, we could try it. I'm in, I'm in it right now. Uh, Like ask, ask it what your top performing, um, post is from the last week, and let's just see if it's smart enough to tap into your actual data. My gut tells me it's probably not doing that, but that would be so helpful. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm with you. I don't think, let's see what happens. So I type it in. Yep.

It's, it's thinking like nothing's happening. Oh wait, I'm unable to directly access your social accounts. Yeah, but like, don't you think that's probably coming? Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean like, but What it does say is how to go and check it. Oh, okay. So it does say, here's how to go find your top performing posts and you go to your insight or you can use third party tools. So it's, uh, it's unable to directly that access that, but you, I would be, I'm with you. I think that's gonna be able to do that. I

also put in here, can you provide some ways a marketer could use you? So if you're not even sure you can put that in there, right? Oh, and it spits out, you know, a versatile AI assistant and it talks about content creation, research, analysis and like underneath it what it can do. So, um, all you have to do is go to your explore page and you'll see in the search bar it says ask meta AI or search. So you just tap, it's like a little ring, it's like a purple and blue ring and you just

tap on that little icon and it's gonna open up the chat. Yeah. My assessment. And for those that don't know, I have another show called Explore, uh, AI explored my assessment is this is just Facebook and Instagram, you know, the company meta integrating their AI across the board. And my instinct says it's the exact same thing on Facebook and Messenger and WhatsApp and Instagram. I don't think it's contextually yet focused on just the stuff on the platform that you're on. I think it's just their way of getting people to use this for free, right. As

an alternative to chat GPT. Would you agree with that? Agreed. And I think it's definitely, you know, and it's learning phase, you're the expert of course on ai, but they're gathering information and seeing how people are using it. Um, there's one other thing that I saw that is coming out, and I don't know if this will stick because they tried a few other things with AI and they're already gone. Uh, but they were, uh, they rolled out the ability for certain accounts, not all accounts that are testing it for you to create your own ai,

almost like a little chat bot version Of yourself. Yeah, like a custom GPT. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Create a custom AI and it would say, you know, to engage with people, let's say you have a celebrity account or a really large brand account and you can set up some, you know, only answer these basic questions. So it would be very clearly labeled, you know, this is Mike's ai. It's not gonna be a stand in of course for you. I have not used it. I've seen other people that have gotten access to it. But you can, you

know, chat privately, you can make the AI public for anyone to discover. Um, and then it will have the whole AI studio policy. So again, my assumption is, since I haven't personally used it, is if you do wanna create one of these things, you'll have to go into their AI studio and set that up. Um, it kind of reminds me, if you remember Mike, the, the Facebook, uh, page, they had sort of like a little, like you could set up the questions and it could kind of respond back and forth if somebody DMed a specific

thing. Uh, but yeah, it's gonna be the ability to create an AI version of yourself for certain accounts. Now they're testing it. Dunno if that's gonna actually be launched and loaded. Chelsea, outside of people coming to meet you in person at Social Media Marketing World, which I know you'll be there, um, where's the best social platform for them to connect with you? I'm assuming it's Instagram, uh, and tell 'em how to find you and then if they want connect with your business, where do you wanna send them? Yeah, that's, Instagram is the best place to

find me and you can find me by my name. It's Chelsea dot PTs and it's P-E-I-T-Z. And my website is also chelsea pts.com. So you'll be able to find me in both places just by my name. And I'd love to hear from you. I love everybody saying, Hey, I heard you on the show, or I listened to the podcast. I'd love to say hello. Thank you so much Chelsea, for sharing all your insights with us today. Thank you so much for having me.