Vacation Rental Ninjas: A Marketing Podcast

Reeling in the Likes: Mastering This Season’s Social Media Updates 🥴😉

InterCoastal Net Designs Season 2 Episode 4

The Vacation Rental Ninja’s discuss the big news from Meta - Meta Verified expanding its testing to US users. Both Anna and Diamond have requested access for their personal accounts to be blue-check verified. While Anna's account has been invited, Diamond is still waiting to be asked.  Will Diamond ever get off all the wait lists she is on?  
The Ninja’s share their thoughts on how and when Meta verified will soon come to business accounts giving their vacation rental manager listeners a heads up. 

Lots of other Meta updates have popped up this Spring.
From Instagram-

  • Two new ad options are coming for Instagram ad placements: Reminder Ads and Ads in Search Results.
  • Tests are underway to watch a full 60 seconds of Reels in Stories.
  • Shared Reel List - this update allows users to view a list of thumbnails with the most recent Reels that they shared. This is exciting news for marketing teams and clients to collaborate on trends and share inspiration. Anna & Diamond share how these Instagram updates can be utilized in the vacation rental industry. 

From Facebook-

  • Facebook Reels are regaining popularity, and Meta is extending the video length, adding trending templates, and ways to integrate Facebook memories into content.

Anna & Diamond lay out a few more updates across various social platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, & Meta Business Suite explaining why & how they picked these ones to highlight and most importantly how VRM's can leverage them.  

The duo tackles the controversial topic of hashtag reach and why it is down on Instagram. You’ll want to hear what they have to say about this one. 

Diamond & Anna reflect on previous predictions they have made like the Notes Feature on Instagram. 

They also make some new predictions for the future. Let’s see how many of these new predictions come to light.  🔮 Anna & Diamond are not mind readers but they have their thumbs on the pulse of the ever changing social media landscape and are happy to share their experiences with these updates both professionally & personally. 

Finally, to wrap up this episode the hosts express their excitement about the potential rollout of Instagram's Birthday Effect, share their favorite emoji (see below) and answer listener questions. 

Show Mentions:

The Emoji Keyboard - https://emojikeyboard.org/

🥴- woozy face

😉- winky face

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Hi. Hey, good morning, Anna. Good morning, Diamond. How are you? Very good. Good. After Easter time the weather is warming up. Yes, it is. Spring is finally here. Birds are chirping, the sun's coming up a little bit early. Oh, I love that. We're getting a lot more daylight. I love this time of year. Yes. Very fun. Lots of nice weather is happening around our area. People are getting like that warm weather itch. Right. Lots of spring cleaning happening and spring updates that we Oh, I like. You already jumped right into it. Spring update. Right. Well, welcome to the show. This is the Vacation Rental Ninjas presented by InterCoastal Net Designs. If you're new here, welcome. We're happy to have you. I am Diamond Frandsen ICND's brand manager and my friend here. Hi, I'm Anna Low and I am the social media manager for ICND. So with out of the way again, welcome to our new listeners and welcome back to all of our long time listeners. And again, if you have just been tuning in, you'll notice that there are two new voices of the podcast for this year. So, yeah, send us your notes, send us your feedback. Please send us your questions Anna & I am open to learning more about who our audience is and what burning questions they may have. So, yes, we love the feedback. Yes. Now that I've gotten through the preempt and just jump back into your updates. Yes. So the big news I think everybody's kind of excited about is Meta is expanding its testing to US users.  It's still in the testing phase but has opened up the opportunity for a bunch of individual accounts, not business profiles, but individual - personal accounts to get verified and get more access to various features. So by individual accounts,  we're talking about creator accounts, creator accounts, personal accounts, anything that's not a professional or business account. So I know both of us have requested access for our personal accounts to be blue checked, verified. What's your status? I just got a notification the other day that my request was accepted and I'm now eligible to  be grouped into the blue check mark verified program for the $11.99 or $14.99 monthly fee that they like to throw in there with that.  What about you? What's your status? I'm still waiting. OK. But I have an update from last time we spoke, I have been accepted to the Microsoft image generator. I had said last time we met that I was on that wait list. So I've been accepted into that. Yeah. So maybe one day we'll get off all these wait lists and we'll all have access to the same features, the same platforms. So just real quick, you know, this is, I want to point out this blue check verification is for the personal accounts. We've kind of defined personal creator accounts. So business are not included at the time.  I'm sure it will be coming because we're seeing the same type of thing over at Google is doing with their PPC accounts. They're asking clients and users to get verified over there. They don't give you a check mark, but they do say that you are who you are, you are verified. So I think that the idea of, you know, getting verified on various platforms is their way of, you know, preventing bots and you know, accounts created in people's names who they aren't those people or fraud accounts. So I think we're kind of seeing this  move around the industry as the next thing that people, you know, that we need to be aware of.  I'm sure business accounts will come up soon. Yeah, I'm sure I predicted that happening. Yeah. OK, let's put our predictions down.  It will happen soon because I feel like we have talked about some things and they've already come true or we've seen some essence of things coming true. So let's mark down our prediction here for that.  But I do want to mention that even though business pages cannot get the blue check at this time, just make sure that your account is, you know, set up as a business page, and make sure that your industry category is correct.  You know, and we've talked about it from time and time again, Facebook and Instagram and all these different social platforms act as your social proof that you are who you say you are and it gives guests and people searching for your information  that reassurance that you are, you know who you are and you are delivering a good experience or a great  content. Yes, most definitely. All right. So spring is here, lots of updates coming down the pipeline. We're gonna, there's, there's even more than what we're going to talk about this morning to cut it down because there were so many. So we might do part two soon, but we decided these were the ones that were the most important for our audience, correct at this time, right? So with meta  and this one is specifically for Instagram they have two new ad options.  You know, there are some already rolling out and some are coming soon, but there's this really cool one I like called reminder ads. And these ads enable users to opt into alerts ahead of time as  you know, and ads are in the search results. So it helps to better connect users in the discovery mindset. So this is a quote from Instagram about this new reminder ad is reminder, ads are rolling out to all advertisers as an option in feed. They help advertisers build awareness, anticipation and consideration for upcoming moments. Nice. Yeah, that's going to be a game changer. I think I've already started to see this too. On the organic side. When I'm creating reels, there's an option to add a reminder  to get reminded or a notification or even a message to  come back and complete a task or fill out a form. Or let me ask you a question. You're seeing this  as a button to push to remind somebody to come back. Do you, do you see users using it in a way where they're scrolling through their, , they're looking at reels, they're getting excited about locations and then they're hitting that reminder to like come back and look at it again or look, look at it longer if they have when they have more time. Yes. And I also predict and kind of have started to see that, you know, if somebody puts out like a special or a last minute cancellation, that's where the reminder is really, I guess hitting home. I like that. So that's where I see those working best. The reminder ads are going to be a game changer. Like I said  for the ad space, you know, the last minute cancellation, special  specials you have going on anything to basically remind me to come back and book. Bye. Yeah, I like that. So this is the way you're talking about it. These just remind me to come back and look at this post or look in this real, but then there's reminder ads themselves specifically for events. And when I think of events, I think of concerts like big concerts, you know, we have the CCMB, the CCMF. Yeah, the CCMF in our area.  That's a big event that people come into town, you know, they stay for a long period of time and they go to that event. Yeah, I see.  Or I know that the Outer Banks has a soft shell crab festival coming up. So that could be a great way to use this feature.  And these ads to remind users to, hey, you know, this event is coming up, let's, you know, you got to get your place, your stay a space to stay while you're up there. So in running these ads, you know, when are we gonna get reminded? Like, how does this work? So once the user opts in  via the call to action, they're gonna receive three notifications for that event. The first one is going to come a day before the 2nd 1, 15 minutes before the start time and then a final alert as the event is beginning. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So it's going to notify you. It's gonna, it's gonna remind you. And if you're, I'm just thinking in my head, I'm like, if you're not down at that country music festival when it's starting, that alert is not helping you. Like they've got to be there ahead of time. All right. So another ad type that Instagram is launching is there's going to be new ads in the search results helping to connect with users based on content, actual keywords. So quote from Instagram again, when they released, this was, ads will show up in the feed that people can scroll when they tap into a post from search results. We plan to launch this placement globally in the next coming month. So this new placement is more specific with the ads showing up when users tap into a specific post.  This is what they're calling their next level of discovery in the app. And then search ads, like I said, are slowly rolling out to select accounts. So have you seen this in any accounts as of now? Not any accounts that I'm connected to.  But I had a prediction that Instagram and meta as a whole would kind of switch to more of the keyword search results  and kind of move away from the interest that they  have always kind of been known for. , so using those keywords in your ads and even when you're searching from an organic standpoint, that's only going to help clarify your search results. OK. So we're kind of getting more areas to run ads in because people are just, we're kind of, they're dialing in where people are spending most of their time on the platform and they're going to be able to put ads there. All right. So we learned some interesting information during this month about Facebook reels.  The videos themselves are getting longer, the length is getting longer. You are now going to have the ability to tap into trending templates and use a memory integration. And I know this is something that you're really excited to talk about. You've been experiencing this a little bit in some of the accounts. So let's break this one down. There's a lot here. Yes. So Facebook reels are regaining their popularity fast.  And these updates are only going to fuel that. So with the longer video links, the trending templates and memory integrations that you know, we see across Instagram and Facebook. Currently, those coming into the reels are only going to help fuel that reach and engagement that everyone's looking for. So let's not forget that Facebook and Instagram are two completely different platforms. Facebook, I will stand by this. I feel like that's a little bit for the older demographic, whereas Instagram's flashy quick for the younger demographic looking for that instant gratification. So these longer video links, these trending templates and memory integrations are great for getting users to keep watching your content and giving them more ways to connect with you on a personal level. So I like the idea of Facebook reels getting longer because I struggle with the quick clips and how quick they go and I have to watch it five times or more to understand what's going on. Yeah, I hear that a lot too. I've got clients that I do reels for and they're like, can you just make it a little bit longer? Like, can you try and do 45 seconds to a minute? And I'm like, I can, I just, you know, I think that's going to do a little bit better on Facebook than it would on Instagram. Yes. So, yeah, and I'm, I'm that person. I'm like, could it just go maybe a little slower or a little longer? Because I want to kind of, I think it's like a short movie. I want to see it from the beginning to the end. , but so I like the idea that Facebook Real is getting longer. Definitely. And since Facebook is pushing this, you, no, because they're pushing it, they're going to cater to people that are using the full length,right. Any time a change is made, whatever it is that platform kind of prioritizes that change. So if you're coming up with 60sec Facebook reels, I would kind of say that that's going to be giving a little more  height than the other ones that are maybe 15 seconds or 30 seconds because they want to push that initiative if they're like this is it, it's new. Yeah. Oh yeah. So always adopt, right. Always adopt what the platform is saying because they're going to give that a little more heart. And I know you and I have talked about changes and how kind of jumping on the bandwagon of changes  because the platform will push it a little bit more. I did see a memory integration the other day and I was very confused. Yeah, those memory integrations are going to be a little bit different.  I've definitely seen them pop up on my Facebook.  I'm not sure what it's going to look like as like, you know, a finished product, but I definitely see those being helpful and you know, I saw one and I was the reason why I was confused because it looked like a real post, like an actual in real, like in real time post. And I was like, no, I know that that did not happen yesterday. And then I looked at it much closer and I was like, oh it's like from the past, but it got kind of rebranded as a now thing and it confused me but hey, watch out for those in there. Oh, yeah. Anyway, that you can share that authentic authenticity, authenticity, authenticity with your guest is only going to help, right. So you and I have tackled this subject before.  You know, we've talked about hashtags before and how to find those lower volume hashtags in both previous podcasts and on our Tech-Talk-Tuesday episodes. So why are, why is the hashtag reached down on Instagram at the moment? So that's a great question and it's very valid. And I think a lot of users are also questioning why that's down. But it's 2023 the IG algorithm is all about favoring content that users are interested in. So that goes by viewing time and the way users are engaging with it rather than favoring hashtags like it always has in the past. OK. So I like what you're saying here. It's favoring content that users are interested in their viewing and their viewing time, not so much how they're searching for it, correct? Because when we're searching for it, we're going to get an ad now. Yeah. So basically, like if you were to sit on a photo of a hamburger or something, you know that the algorithm is going to pick that up and it's going to start reserving you hamburgers and things similar to that post that you were stuck on for a little bit.  And it's only going to test and see, hey, you know, you're interested in this burger. What about these other food options or? What about these restaurants over here? Something like that. It's going to favor and suggest content related to what you've been viewing and how long you've been viewing it for? All right. So people, you know, we've talked about it, I've talked about it on other webinars that people were, were and are still using hashtags as their search their way to search.  Do you think that we are still going to be using hashtags to search or are we moving away from people using hashtags to search? I think we're kind of moving away from that. So not yet, but maybe slowly kind of moving away from that.  You can kind of tell by the accounts that are using hashtags they're trying to grow and the algorithm can tell and can in turn limit your reach that way.  So I do have a little bit of a pro tip if you are set on using hashtags, try using around 3 to 5 that are low volume and actually about your content. So anything like a branded hashtag or a location based hashtag is always preferred.  refrain from using anything spammy or super high vole like beach, ocean vacation, beach vibes. Yeah, beach vibes. Anything like that really focuses on the intent behind your content and actually connecting with users who could be potential guests. So you and I talk a lot about the actual content itself and how we're, how we're writing, copy and content to accompany photos that we're posting. So we put a lot of time into the scripting of the content itself. And then with your suggestion of using 3 to 5 hashtags, it's kind of like taking out maybe the key points or the keywords that we used inside that content and make them a hashtag as well. So it's just like doubling down. Yes, exactly the, you know, the keywords or the purpose of the content. And I think you're right, like the algorithm knows if you're, if you're putting up 30 hashtags  and they're all just very generic, you know, high vole, constantly reused.  And a bunch of your posts, the algorithm is going to pick up on that and it's kind of like it's just going to X all those out. So they're not doing you any service but then only give you a green check on the ones that are specific for that post or for your account. Correct? OK. So I feel like that's an always changing topic. It is, especially in the last year, that people are experimenting with it. The algorithms have changed, of course everywhere.  So that's something that could be a controversial topic. But you, you have to experiment, right? We always say with anything that we do, we always try to experiment with it, whether you know an A version A B version AC version, we see how people respond.  And we do the best from, you know, with the results that we're seeing and how people engage with those posts or the content that we're producing. Yes. Test, test test. Oh My goodness test test test. Right now, we're going to break for a commercial. We're less than three months away from July. You know what that means right aside for picnics, carnivals and beach day. Yes, but no universal analytics is Sunsetting and Google's new Analytics platform. GA4 is taking over. Are you prepared and ready? Make sure you don't lose your analytics. Convert to GA4. Need help. Let's connect. All right back from our commercial break.  I love that reminder about G4. Yes, it's coming up soon. It's coming up soon. I know I've been heard around the office saying that come July two, I'm going to go on a longer vacation. Here we go. I'm just teasing, I'll be here.  Yeah, so GA4 is definitely coming July one. That is a whole other topic in itself every day. Things are changing with that.  The way we can do things. One thing I do really want to point out though is, you know, come July one, you will not your current Universal analytics will no longer have data flowing into it. There is some talk that six months later you will no longer have access to it. And something I really want to point out with that is the new GA4 will not backfill your old historical data from you. So I know we're going to talk about this more in the future. But that is  a question that I kind of get all the time is Diamond. When is my data from Universal? It's going to backfill itself into GA4. Well, I'm sorry, but it is not so more more to come down the definitely down the pipe on that as we're learning new things every day. All right. So back to the episode here is co  we have more spring updates that were recently announced on Instagram and Ann and I are breaking them down for you. So new update is collaborative collections. Yeah. So that's a, that's a new one and it's not to be confused with group messages  on Instagram or group DM. So Instagram recently launched a new option that helps users save posts with friends. So if you've saved posts on your own  to like refer back to or to save for inspiration later down the line,  You are now able to share those with friends  with this new collaborative collection feature. So any member of the chat can add or remove posts from the collection, the saved collection  And it's just a new way to focus engagement around post as opposed to sharing to a single person or just copying a link.  This new feature makes it a little bit easier to kick off a chat around a turning post or for friends to add posts into the mix, feeding into DM engagement. So that's a lot going on. Yes.  This is just like I have a saved folder of things that I like. And now I'm thinking, yes, I just want to share this with you. Yeah, let's just throw a hypothetical out here. Let's say we're planning a vacation to, to loom or somewhere. So if I see or if I start making or saving posts,  I can then share with you these posts and you can start adding into them and we can kind of start a little saved post folder or collection  to build inspiration off of our true to loom. And then if we invite a friend, we can share all the work we've already done. Exactly. Instead of just links back and forth to each other. So if you see something cool, you want to do, you can save it to that collection. And everybody who's connected to that collection can also see it too. This really drives home the point to me that there's a lot of conversations going on in DM Yes, between, you know, friends on Instagram. You know, like I know you and I do DM back and forth, you know, things oh, hey, check this out or hey, check this out like, you know, see what I just saw. Like, how can we use this or, you know, who, who could be interested in this? But now we can have a whole folder of our history of content that we've shared with each other. Yeah. So you're not scrolling back through numbers and you're not, you know, doom scrolling in messages trying to find that post that she shared. You know, three weeks ago, it's all in one folder. I feel like that comes from a real place, Anna, you're like Diamond sends me all these links and I have to scroll back for months. You don't have to go digging for it. It's already there in a folder that you guys are both connected to. My goodness. Air your differences and Diamond makes me doom scroll. No. OK. All right. All right. So talk about collaboration. Instagram is also testing out a new feature that lets you view a list of thumbnails. I like this. I will tell you I like this right off the gate.  It will show you a short list of thumbnails of the most recent reels that you shared with someone. I can't get over this one. This is the one I like the most because this hits, this hits right from you and I right.  If I share a reel with you and then I share a different reel with my husband. But those two, those two reels will appear in this little thumbnail list. I get a visual of it. I don't have to kind of remember it. So it's visually easier for me to see it all in one place. And then if I say, oh that what I shared you know, with Robbie, I wanted to share with Anna, I could just go right to that thumbnail list and reha them out. Oh Yeah, I see this  or I see something similar on tiktok. So I'm excited that this is moving over to Instagram too.  It's just going to be another great way to share content amongst friends and keep that reach growing. Yeah, like that is just the I OK, I'm just sold on this one and I can't wait for it to really, really come out to all of us because visually that little thumbnail of what it was helps me so much. What was this about? And there's many times where I'm on there and I'm like, oh I forgot about that Reel like let me just, oh I meant to reshare that earlier or I'm so glad somebody said that to me. I want to also share it with them. So it's a great way to just keep passing this content, passing it around. OK? So Anna, you and I talked about a feature several months ago now, I mean, we talked about it in the IG live series, Tech Talk Tuesday. And if you have not gone over to our Instagram and looked at our Tech Talk Tuesdays, now's the time to write yourself a note and say I need to go over there and look at those because we have a very long series, quick series, you know, quick episodes of hot topics that were happening at that time that are still coming true today and were still usable content to learn. So let's talk about this because we have talked about it. Instagram Notes is now rolling out. Yes. So we spoke about that last fall, late last summer predicting that it would come out,it was slowly rolling out. So I am proud to say that it's finally rolled out to my account. I haven't checked, I need to check and I've, it's kind of like posting a 24 hour status  or caption that shows to your mutual followers. So anybody that I follow that follows me back can see these little snippets or captions  that are shown in your DM'S. So, oh, it's in your DM. Yes. So it's a little bar above all of your messages with little icons with  your profile picture and then right above your profile picture is your little caption. So it's not your public facing. So all your mutuals inside of your DM'S can see them. This kind of takes me back to my little status update, but I like it. It's for 24 hours. You can change it. Do you get a reminder to change it? No, it just disappears forever and then you're like somebody send me ad n So this is like a great feature that you can  utilize for like specials or like a little reminder, like, hey, you know, our special ends tomorrow or something or how about this? Is the phone number to the office, to the reservation office if you have a question about this newly available property. Exactly. Right. Yeah, and they can even be used for reminders, you know, hey, like, you know, if you got any questions reach out or hey, this is your reminder to book or a reminder that our spring special ends next week or something like, or here's your reminder diamonds on vacation out of office, out of office. Ok. So lots of different applications that we can use and I like it. It's cute. It's, yeah, it's, it's another way to, you know, show authentic authenticity and connect with your guests. Oh, nice. Ok.  Are you using it right now with anyone or I plan to, I used it the other day. I put like a quick little blurb up about beach days or here or something like that. And, but again, it's not a set it and forget it. You have to do it correctly every day because after 24 hours it's gone. So, if you're, if you're interested in using this update, you have to have a plan in place to do it and a reminder to change it out because it does disappear after 24 hours. Ok. I like that one. , all right. We talk a lot about predictions. We talk a lot about maybe we talk a lot about, we hear rumors of things happening and then we kind of say, oh yeah, we, we did, we wanted that to come true or not. Here's one of these that fit into that category of the maybe it will roll out is her Instagram is the birthday effect. This is the one that I'm actually kind of really excited to see roll out. I know I'm a long time user of Facebook's birthday alerts. Let me know when my friend's birthdays are.  So I think if we had a birthday feature on Instagram, it would be really helpful and I'm waiting to hear if this may also roll out for company pages as well, like if they are not a birthday but an anniversary or a  you know, a start of date or something. I'm curious if it rolls out on the business side as well. But anyway,the birthday effect obviously happens on your birthday if you have it filled out in your profile. OK. So Instagram will alert you to take a selfie of yourself on your birthday and then it will add a birthday effect to it. I don't know what it's going to be though. I'm curious to see what it's going to be. Yeah, this is interesting and then kind of like the other kind of like the good note feature. It's only available for 24 hours on your birthday. And I heard a little bit of extra on this was that if you say you take this birthday of yourself, this selfie of yourself on your birthday and it adds this birthday effect and you don't like it, you can remove it earlier. Ok? So you don't have to wait for the 24 hours to expire. You can just swap it out to your old profile image or something else that you might like. but I'm excited for this one. Yeah, this is exciting because Facebook's got the birthday alerts, you know, on the side. Snapchats even got birthday alerts. I'm sure tiktok has got something similar.  So yeah, I'm excited that this might be rolling out to Instagram. Yeah, we're all over on Instagram doing things. I need to know when people's birthdays are exactly more time spent over there. Might as well roll out a birthday, I think. Yeah, and like I said, I am curious, I would like it. I'll put it out there into the ether that I would like it to be rolled over for company pages as well because I think, you know, like next year ICND has a larger anniversary coming up. I don't want to give too much away, but we do have a larger anniversary coming up as a company. So I think it would be cool that we could celebrate that or have a special effect or something. On company pages too, yeah, I think a lot of people would really benefit from that, you know, not just birthdays but anniversary anniversaries, induction dates, things like that. All right, like it. All right. Another we got to tackle this controversial topic here of an update that has just happened. So Facebook has removed hashtag hashtag topic ta for group posts as of April 3rd. So they are now gone in groups. What this means is that admins won't be able to add hashtags to other people's posts or manage the list of group hashtags; however, anyone can still add a hashtag to their own post that they put inside the group. Selecting the hashtag will show other Facebook posts that use the same. Hashtag So this is more of an organizational type update, not so much individual posts, but for admins of groups,this does affect the way that they organize information inside of groups. So why is this important to the VR world, Anna? So this feature was really helpful for grouping content like location based rentals, specials. Last minute cancellations. That was a huge one, but it wasn't widely used. So Metas opted to discontinue it, I think the consensus was it gave more work to the admins to be able to manage the group. So it was just like a, you know, underutilized feature gave admins more work. So they just, they're like no one else tried, it didn't really work out like we expected. So they're going to discontinue. OK? So this is a good example of an update that came in. It was tested, it was used, it really wasn't living up to its potential and then came in and said, OK, we don't need it any longer in these Facebook groups. But  you know, again, reemphasize that these, you can still put a hashtag in your piece inside of a group. And if you're posting something, it just won't be  used by the admins to group the content together, correct? All right. And now for our next commercial break. All right, back from break. And now to the last part of the episode today,  let's go into audience questions. Well, hold on. I don't want to move too fast. Those are all the updates that we want to talk about today for meta itself. OK? So that's all, we said there was a lot. Yes, there was. All right. So we had audience questions come in.  And we get this question a lot. Oh, my goodness. Can I schedule my company linkedin posts in advance? So the answer has kind of always been yes, but through a third party scheduling tool, but now the answer is yes, but natively inside of linkedin.  So when you compose a post on the web inside of linkedin itself, you'll be able to select a date and time that you want it to go live and you can schedule it up to three months in advance. Now will be able to follow other pages in the app and basically provide another means to stay on top of relevant industry trends. All right. So, the question was, can I schedule my company linkedin posts in advance? Yes, we've always kind of been able to do it with a third party tool.  And you know, like using third party tools are great, we use them, you know, for other different things with posting and scheduling. But it, I feel like if you can do it inside of the platform, it's, it's set up to receive the information specifically how they want it. There's nothing lost in translation when you're moving the post or the image from a third party and pushing it into the platform. Yeah. And you don't have as many hiccups as you can have with a third party. I know sometimes when I'm scheduling things in hubspot, some things won't, will be pending for 30-45 minutes and sometimes won't even be scheduled. So having it scheduled inside the app itself or the site, is only going to ensure that your post is most likely going to go out when you want it to. And you just kind of mentioned scheduling in hubs because that was a third party service that we were using specifically for linkedin because we couldn't schedule it in advance. So that, you know, hey, a little extra bonus tip there.  All right, you, you quickly mentioned company pages will now be able to follow other pages in the app.  I think that's cool. You know, like for the longest time it was individual following companies, but now companies can follow companies back and forth.  Let's put that on the stew list for Shay. We got to go, yes, follow a bunch of companies.  No, all teasing aside. I think it's a great way to stay on top of industry trends. Like, you know, if I know we're following this group of companies which, you know, if you're listening and you're a company, please follow us on our linkedin and we will follow you back,of course, but if some, if we're following this small group of companies and they're writing about a topic, we're now going to get alerted to what, you know, what they're talking about into their post because we now have the ability to kind of go back and forth and follow them. Yeah, and Linkedin already does a really good job about recommending posts or content that you've engaged with via notification too. So I've seen a lot of that on our end, which is always great. Yeah. So this is a great way to keep track of trending conversations, easily engage in industry discussions. Yes, that's a big one, especially for our industry.  with as much as things change in the short term rental industry and how many regulations are coming out, especially for each state.  They can vary. So staying on top of it and seeing how other people are  jumping and moving with these new regulations that are popping up or industry trends. So yeah, you can definitely get like,  you can curate by following other businesses back. You can curate your fee to view dedicated content to what you're most interested in from the pages that you may follow or the pages that follow you. All right.  We have, this is like our P S A moment, right? So, YouTube has announced last month in the last few weeks that they've made improvements to podcast features. So I want to be really clear here that this is for podcasts who also take video of their episode recording. We do not fit into that category. No. But we have podcast friends out in the industry that do record their podcast. So if you are one of those listeners.  This is what we have to remind you about this update. The update was pretty straightforward.  And it was created to reach a wider podcast audience.  If you have a podcast playlist on your page on your youtube channel,  you just go to content playlists and studio select as a podcast and ensure and this really ensures that your content is categorized as a podcast. You know, because if people were doing recorded episodes of their recordings, they were just on there as videos in a playlist. Now you can kind of take all those episodes, put them together into a playlist and then categorize that playlist as the podcast or, you know, that way, it kind of gives it an extra tag on it that this is podcasts and now you can optimize for podcast, then you can go into your analytics  and track your podcast performance. You can see how people are finding you. I think that's a big deal too. It's like who's who, how are they finding me?  And then also, it'll let you, these analysts will let the data guide you on  your content strategy. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.  So again, this is just really for podcasts that are video recording their episodes.  And you already have it on your channel or you have these videos that you've been holding on to and you want to upload them and make a dedicated channel or dedicated playlist inside your current channel. That's awesome. It's definitely gonna be helpful. Moving. Yeah, I can name a couple off the top of my head that I would think this update would benefit. Exactly. Same here. All right. Awesome. All right. So one of our favorite things here is the tool of the day. Our tool of the day is going to be the emoji keyboard. Yes. This one I use on the daily. It's an easy way to quickly find emojis that we can copy and paste in the text docents on the post. I'm going to jump in here because you introduced me to this tool.  And now I have the Chrome extension for it and I find that if I'm writing an email and I need a certain emoji, I don't always have all the emojis available that I would like in the preset kind of gmail emoji tab there. So if I want something unique, I can go into this copy, paste keyboard and put it into my email. Yes, they've got a ton of different emojis that you've probably seen on your, if you have IOS or Android.  you've probably seen them on your phone, but they also kind of have a few more that you can use for other placements. I know I see a lot in hubspot that aren't there that the Emoji keyboard can kind of, you know what I like about it, the definitions. I like to, I mean, like, it's silly but I like to read what the definitions are. Like, I want to know what this image is. Yeah. Like is that Emoji, is it praying hands or is it a high five? Yeah. And so, yeah, we know every year, like every June they release all the new Emojis, the Emoji Consortium, you know, approves the new Emojis that are coming out and sometimes I, I don't quite understand all of them. So I like the fact that I can go into this Emoji keyboard and it will tell me what it is. Yes. Yeah. That's always, that's how I've heard. And then when I learn new emojis, I just overuse it. Another quick question while we're on this. What's your favorite emoji? Oh, I really like the sparkles. You like the sparkles? Yeah. The sparkles or the cherry blossom flower. You have to show me what that is. I don't know what that one is. Yeah. The sparkles. I know what that one is. The pink cherry blossom flower. Oh. Oh, just the flower. Oh, I got it. How about you? What's your favorite? Oh, it's the wink. And I have a reason why I can't wink in real life. Really? Yeah. In real life I cannot wink. So when emojis came out and I saw that there was a wink. Emoji. I was like, this is my way of now. Winking. Nice. Yeah, I like it. I also like the woozy face. Like the mm, like looking face, the real face, not the melty face. The one that's like, mm, like you, it's like it says woozy on it. Like I got to go back and read my definition. All right. That could have been a random question, but all right, the official random question of today is of all the new or upcoming meta improvements, which is the one that you are most excited for or part two. Is there another update that you would like to see roll out that has not been talked about yet? So I think I'm more excited for the IG like features to come over to Facebook reels, Facebook reels, in my opinion, have been very underutilized. But I have noticed there's another feature inside of the meta business suite that we haven't touched on today.  But it's a feature that reminds you to invite users who have recently liked your post to like your page. And I think this feature is great for growing your following and it even reminds you to, hey, you know, like last week you had 13, 15 people, like your post that don't like your page, send them an invite. So, ok. Is this similar to an admin of a page? I can go in and invite all my friends to like the page that I'm an admin in, it's similar but not the same. It's similar because if you're managing or an admin of a page, you can go into each individual post and open up who's liked it.  Based on any reaction and invite anybody who doesn't already like your page to like your page from that post itself. But this is now a reminder inside of the Meta Business Suite that reminds you, hey, you know, you didn't do this. Hey, send these invites to the people that liked your post last week. Yeah, I like that. So that one I've seen pop up and I am all over. I like that. Do you get a reminder a day before now? 15 minutes before the time? I wish I'm just trying to loop it into the previous update. But now that's fun. I like that one a lot. What about you? What would you say? All right. So we, this is one that we kind of brushed on, but I'm going to take it to the next level. So I would like meta if meta, if you're out there listening, these, these are Anne and I's requests for today, right?  But I would like meta to roll out an update that allows me to pre-schedule a birthday message to my friend's list and we talked about birthdays and anniversaries, right? So I want it all. You know, I go into my Facebook and I see the list of all my friends birthdays. And I'm like, ok, it's Anna's birthday at the end of the month. It's, you know, Linda's birthday next week, it's, you know, next month it's, you know, whoever but I feel like I, at that point I want an option to be like, oh yeah, I got to, you know, send my girlfriend Linda a birthday message but I'm going to pre-schedule it. So I got there on time. I am horrible at birthday messages or we'll just say anniversary messages too like  I'm horrible at that. So I'm always sending belated messages out to people. Yeah, and I, I see that too because I'll get like, I'll get a post or a something served to me on Facebook where all of my friends have written on one of my friend's walls saying happy birthday, but it was like two days ago and now it's like, oh, I have to say belated. So I definitely love that. Do you put that weepy face on it? No. Ok. I'm just like, oh happy belated, right? So if I go in and kind of go through it because I often go in and see my friends list and when their birthdays are just to kind of remind myself  you know, when things are coming up. But if at that moment, if I could just schedule a quick post, I would utilize that to schedule a post to their wall. That would be really nice. Yeah, I mean, I'm always an advocate. I would like to pre-schedule on my personal page. Definitely. Just like we can for business, but if we could just start with birthdays, that would be, yeah, that would make me a better friend. I'd love that. That would be really nice too, that'd be nice. I like yours too. I love it. I love it as well. All right. Well, Anna, this kind of wraps up our episode here.  If you have any questions, please send them in to podcast@Icoastalnet.com. The beers and ideas team will be out in Truckee California as well as San Diego and Palm Springs during the month of May. So if you're in those markets and you want to talk about hot topics and website design and marketing, you know, all the beers and ideas, partners will be there. So if you want to sign up, please go over to beersandideas.com and you can sign up for one of those three events. Like I said, Truckee California, Palm Springs and San Diego, looks like a great time. One last plug of upcoming events, we have Sam Bell going out to the VRMA connect California in Los Angeles also the first week of May. So if you're planning to attend that VRMA connect in L.A.  make sure you hit up Sam at our booth there and you know, lots of people have lots of questions for Sam. They want to know how to get things done and new tools,  What, what she has to offer to optimize and you know, your websites and new functions and features. So she has a lot to share definitely from her side of the support team. So if you're in the L.A. area on May 4th and going to that VRMA Connect, hit Sam up and you know, talk her ear off. They love when we say to go talk their ears off because  I don't know if they really love it, but no, they love it. I know they do. All right, Anna, thank you so much for coming in early this morning to the. Thank you. Yes, for the ICND International headquarters in Ocean Isle Beach. We're signing off for today. Have a great day.



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