Big news: Facebook is changing its name?! 

This week is Instagram's very first “Product Week,” where they are dropping new features every. single. day. 🤯 I wanted to send you a quick email to recap all of the new features:

Let’s jump into everything you need to know!

 

 

Facebook is changing its name, which isn’t surprising considering just how much bad press they get, and how “un-trustworthy” their brand has become.  The name will be announced at Facebook’s annual Connect conference next week, but supposedly they could reveal the name sooner. 

 

According to The Verge: “The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.”

 

This is similar to when Google re-branded the parent company to Alphabet...and I can’t wait to see what the name is (and the internet’s reaction) 👀

 

Instagram is launching a pretty sick new feature called Collabs! This has been available in the UK for some time, but is rolling out globally in a limited capacity right now (I hope I get access soon!!). 

The concept is simple: you and one other person can team up to create a “Collab,” where you basically “host” an Instagram post on both of your profiles. The post is shared with both of your audiences, shown on both of your profiles, and you share likes and comments.

 

So, that super cute selfie of you and your bestie? You don’t have to fight over who gets to post it first now. You can just share the post with each other (and probably get more engagement at the same time since you’re utilizing all of your followers).

Let's look at how my married friends Jeff & Kelly Mindell used Collabs to announce that they bought a new house, which is the perfect use case:

 

 

First, they led with a feed post on Kelly's account (@studioDIY). You'll notice at the top that it says the post is by @jeffmindell and @studioDIY, but where the caption lives it only says @studioDIY, because she initiated the post. 

 

Now this is what I love about the strategy - a few hours later, Jeff posted a Reel on his account and added Kelly to the collab. Here we see both of their names at the top again, but this time Jeff's is the account that shows near the caption (which to me is more noticeable). 

 

I love this strategy! Post two pieces of content, one from each account, but share all the engagement. 

 

You'll also notice that the posts live on both of their profiles too:

 

 

I cannot underscore how major this feature is!!! It’s the first Instagram feature that’s basically designed for growth. 

 

 

In the UK, this feature has mostly been used within influencer marketing: instead of a brand re-posting a creator’s sponsored post, they can “share” the post together and make it even more impactful. 

 

This is a feature I would have loved to utilize when promoting the Girlboss Radio podcast on social: when we had guests on the pod, we could have just requested a “collab” post, instead of sending so many assets to the guest and hoping they would just post. Win win for everyone! 

But this will also be huge for creators, because you can get strategic about who you collab with! AKA team up with someone with a similar demographic to share followers, or team up with someone with a larger following to get more exposure/followers. And I’m sure larger creators will start charging for collabs from smaller creators too. 

Collaborating on content isn’t a foreign concept: creators on Youtube and TikTok have been doing this for years by appearing in videos together, helping all of them grow by utilizing both of their audiences for views and follows. 

 

Now, Instagram just made it an official growth hack (and it’s perfect for Reels). 

 

 

Starting tomorrow, October 21st, you’ll be able to post to Instagram from your desktop! (Videos are limited to 1 minute in length).

 

 

Tomorrow, two new effects are coming to Reels! Not much is known about them yet, but here’s what Instagram had to say:

Superbeat: “will intelligently apply special effects to music to the beat of the user’s song”

 

Dynamic Lyrics: “will display 3D lyrics that will flow with the song’s ‘groove’”

 

Stay tuned, once these features roll out you *know* I’ll be on it! Make sure you’re following my new Instagram account @reelstips where we share alllllll the tutorials, tips, and trending Reels audios! 

 

 

Today, Instagram is testing a new way to make fundraisers easier.  

“With the new update, users can start a fundraiser from the “+” creation button in the top right corner where nonprofits can be selected to be added to a feed post.”

This isn't a huge deal - it's basically just a UX change to make it easier to create a fundraiser from the profile tab. Which will probably come in handy with Giving Tuesday coming up! 

 

 

Okay, so no one is talking about this new feature, but it's actually SO valuable: Instagram has rolled out some new data points for their native analytics! Now, instead of getting data on who is actually following you, you can also get data on all the accounts you reached, and all the accounts you engaged. 

Why the change?

Your Instagram content isn’t limited to only the people that follow you. For example, when you post Reels, they are shown to a much wider audience which includes people that follow you, and people who don’t follow you. Instagram’s Reels algorithm pushes out your content to other people it thinks would be interested in your content. 

Or let’s say you post a meme that gets shared to a lot of people’s stories. When you have a post getting a lot of shares, you’re bringing a lot of new eyeballs over to your page. 

 

So now, just in time for the holiday season, you’re able to get insight into *all* the different people who are seeing, engaging, and following your content. 

 

Let’s take my own insights as an example! 

I now have a breakdown of accounts reached, engaged, and total followers: 

 

You can see that they are all very different numbers, meaning very different things. You can get demo breakdown for city, country, age, and gender for each of these, but for examples sake I will just show the gender as it's quite different each time:

 

(Note: IG uses an archaic gender binary and only gives data on Women vs. Men, when not everyone identifies as such). 

 

This is the gender breakdown of people who currently follow me: 

 

Now, let's click into the data for “Accounts Reached" - here you can see that I reached 10k accounts that weren't following me, and the gender demo skews higher towards women: 

 

Now, let's jump over to “Accounts Engaged," which are people that liked, commented, saved, or shared my content:

So a quick takeaway from this is that while women make up 85% of my audience, they actually make up 92% of the people who will engage with my content. 

Just as an example, using this learning, I could either lean in to the fact that I want to attract a female audience, or I could try to make my content more “gender-neutral” in an attempt to engage more of my overall audience. 

 

 

If generating leads isn’t a goal of yours, congrats, you can officially ditch webinars! Now you can schedule upcoming Instagram Lives (up to 90 days in advance) and get people to sign up via a feed post. It’s like signing up for a webinar, but on Instagram. 

Here's how my friend Natasha used it recently: 

 

You know what else is cool…if someone missed the live, they can click the scheduled button and it will direct them to the live video that they missed! 

🎥 Watch: How to Schedule a Live

 

You can also promote your Lives with a new Stories sticker specifically for Scheduled Lives, and practice your live beforehand without actually going live (which is a HUGE help to avoid technical difficulties). 

 

Get more details on how to use this feature in Later’s blog post here. 

 

 

Well that’s it for this round of Instagram news! I’ll be in your inboxes again soon...next time with a big update on The Reels Course!