You S.O.B.s (small owned businesses) have asked us if we think Meta Verified is worth the money, so we tested it out!
We paid for one month of Meta Verified and had quite the experience. Learn why we absolutely do NOT believe in Meta Verified, why it's a waste of your money, and which other marketing initiatives are worth your time over this.
If you have another marketing initiative you want us to test out - let us know! Leave it in the comments, send us a DM on social media, or email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com. We want to answer YOUR marketing questions.
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave a Review
02:28 Exploring Meta Verified: The Initial Decision
07:17 Features of Meta Verified Business Plus
11:50 Customer Experience with Meta Verified Support
30:00 Meta Verified Basic Promises, Visibility, and Search Optimization
42:14 Marketing Initiative Alternatives
44:57 TLDL: Summary of the Meta Verified Experience & Final Thoughts
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*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: Welcome back to another episode of the SOB, Small Owned Business Marketing Podcast, you guys. I'm here with my beautiful baby sister, Chelsea. Hey, so as a friendly reminder, before we hop into the juicy topic that we're bringing you today, just want to remind you that if you have not already left us a review, please go and do that immediately right now. Drop everything that you're doing and just leave us a review.
That helps to get our podcast in front of other small owned businesses that need to hear this type of information. And you guys know we're on a mission to help small businesses stay in business. All right. Which means they need to do marketing to promote their business, and that is what we're sharing.
Lastly, don't forget if you are in a hurry right now, we have a TLDL section, too long didn't listen. Now, of course, we're always going to recommend that you come back and listen to the full length episode because you're going to get all the details in there. But go ahead and skip to that section if you're in a hurry and Chelsea will break it down for you and tell you exactly what we covered in this episode. All right, so Chelsea, what are we talking about today?
Chelsea: Vivian, today we are talking about our drama, the beef, the beef that we have with Meta right now. We are talking about Meta Verified and our entire experience. The reason that we're talking about this is for one, a lot of you have asked us, hey, Vivian, Chelsea, is Meta Verified even worth it? And we want to give you the answer. So we decided to try it out ourselves. And this is the inside scoop on Meta Verified.
Vivian: Yeah, so let's start from the very beginning. If you are a small business owner and you're not aware, you remember those blue check marks that everybody used to pine over? Like, oh, I can't wait for the day for my business profile to have a blue check mark because that's going to mean that my profile is legit.
All right, well, now you can pay and get those. All right, so they don't exactly have the same weight and it stands to, it makes sense. All right, so if you guys want the beginning discussion of this where this was back now that we've celebrated a hundred episodes, which is so hard to believe. Chelsea, one of our very first episodes was around this conversation. And at that point in time, Meta was not rolling this out to businesses. They were playing around with the idea of allowing people to be able to pay to get that blue check mark. They rolled it out and then I want to say six months later, then they started allowing businesses to do this for their profiles. So very beginning, just some basic information.
You can pay to get that blue check mark on both Facebook and on Instagram. Those are two separate charges. All right, you can bundle them and get them on both and then they give you a small discount, but they promise you a whole bunch of stuff. I don't want you to think that Chelsea and I got bamboozled because we went into this with the right mindset. For one, we were like, we're going to experiment, right? Second of all, so we weren't committing to it for like a year, right? We said, hey, we're going to try it out for a month or two. Let's see how it goes, and if we find value in it, we'll continue. We hope that we could be good examples for US small business owners as well in experimenting and trying new things with marketing, because that's what it's all about. Okay. You never know until you try.
Then the other part of it is, if Meta was offering to us, as small business owners who are leveraging Facebook and Instagram so much as part of our marketing plan, if they were saying, Hey, you know what? We'll throw in some increased visibility. You'll get access to features that you wouldn't get normally. All of this other stuff. Then we were like, okay, sign us up. Like let's try it for a couple of months. So this discussion, Chelsea, is going to be about that drama, saga, experience.
Chelsea: Well, let's start the discussion with what exactly we were supposed to get and what the price was. So from my understanding, Vivian, we paid, I say we, it was you because you're the one who takes care of The Seasoned Marketer finances, $72 a month. That's correct?
Vivian: Yep, $71.99.
Chelsea: Okay. Well, I went online recently, February 10th. Okay. We're recording this the 12th. This will come out later than that, but as of February 10th, it says it's $45 for each. So that would be $90 for both Facebook and Instagram.
Vivian: The only thing I could think is because whenever, I forget what they told me the pricing was per and then they do give you like a $7 discount if you bundle them.
Chelsea: Okay, but that would be $83 instead of $72.
Vivian: No, yeah. So they did increase the price as it sounds like. Weird that it would change like that from one month to the next, but I also don't pretend to know what Meta does anymore, especially after this experience.
Chelsea: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we paid for the Meta Verified business plus, correct?
Vivian: Yes, so there are four different levels and there was one below this. The reason we chose this one is because they did have a couple of, like one or two specific added features that we wanted.
Chelsea: Okay, so we were supposed to get with Meta Verified Business Plus: a verified badge, impersonation protection, Meta Verified support with priority on our specific issues, an enhanced profile, which enhanced means you could add images to your links and feature three other business profiles or pages, add links to Reels, which you could add two a month. So you could use this feature twice. And you would be a featured account, which means you might be featured in the feed to a new audience.
Did we get those features Vivian?
Vivian: We got the check mark. We did get the impersonation protection, but let me tell you what the impersonation protection was. It was basically them sending me an email saying, hey, set up your two-step authentication thing on the account, which I did immediately. And there you go. Apparently that is going to help me from being impersonated. I thought maybe there'd be more to it, but there wasn't on that end. Let's see, what else?
Chelsea: Meta-verified support with priority. I can say that is true, but there's like an asterisk with that and we'll get to that part.
Vivian: Yes. We did not get the links in Reels, so we were not able to access that function. The other one was we also did not get the enhanced profile because we were not ever able to upload pictures to, and what we're talking about here is, you know, on your Instagram account, when you go up to the top, and you're able to share up to five links now. They're telling you it's going to be an enhanced profile because it's going to make those links stand out more because now you can upload an image beside it. So an image will pop up. We never had access to it. So we weren't able to quote unquote enhance our profile. Yeah.
So I would say overall, I mean, Chelsea, what else am I missing that we didn't get?
Chelsea: I mean, can you, can you prove that you're a featured account?
Vivian: So no, and we could get into this here in a little while. After we talk about the customer experience that we had. I, I kind of could verify, but not, and I'll share with you guys how I kind of went through and tested that. Then also the increased visibility. I've got some stuff to share on that as well, because that was also something that was a little lacking.
There's probably a better word for that, but we'll just say lacking, disappointing, all that good stuff. So, Chelsea, let's start with, also just want to say this to anyone that's listening, the parameters of when we were experimenting with this or when we tried it, we did only try it for 30 days, but we have the luxury of, I think Meta knows that there's something wrong with, or that lots of people are not getting the stuff that they're promising because when I went to go and unsubscribe, cancel the subscription. They actually offered us a free month. So I was like great because now it's extending that $71.99 investment into two months, right? After Chelsea finishes telling you her experience with this whole customer service stuff. I was like, if they can miraculously come back and recoup and give us some of the features and the stuff that they didn't give us when we signed up for it, then we'll kind of change our tune a little bit. But being that it's mid February, we're halfway through that free month. Chels, why don't you go ahead and tell them your drama, your beef with the Meta team.
Chelsea: Okay, so here's the thing. Vivian paid for Meta Verified and she told me, hey. Do you have access to adding images or access to adding links to our reels, and I was like, no I don't.
We have different phones, like she has an Android, I have an iPhone. So it's not a phone issue. It was a, we don't have access to this. There's something wrong from Meta. So she was like, Hey, can you reach out to them and figure out what's going on? So this is the saga.
On January 8th, I contacted Meta Verified and I got in contact with Jim. We emailed back and forth. I sent screenshots and a video of the problem, all the issues. Same day, I was then contacted by Joywin. Okay, so completely new, completely different person. I will say real quick before I keep going on, Jim reached out to me fairly quickly, and that's to do with being Business Plus and them. prioritizing our issue. So I will say they did kind of prioritize the issue because they responded to me very quickly.
However, so then I was contacted by someone else, someone named Joywin. She asked me the exact same questions that Jim did. And I just went through the entire process again. I sent her the same screenshots and the videos. She asked to call me.
During the call, Vivian, do you think she asked me new questions?
Vivian: Same exact questions.
Chelsea: It was the same exact conversation. I was like, what is going on? Anyways, then she said, she told me, "we're going to send this to a specialized team and you should get a response within 24, 48 hours. Just don't delete the chat. Like don't end the chat. You can click out of it. Just don't actually press the button that says end chat". So was like, okay. She told me that they'll email me when they have something. So not going to look at this chat again. So I'm not looking at the chat.
A person named Helena then joined the chat that I'm not looking at and asked me the same questions again. I didn't respond because I was told that I would get emailed. And so she left the chat.
Then someone else joined the chat. Kim joined the chat. She asked the same questions again and for my phone number. Again, I'm not looking at this chat. I'm expecting an email. Because I didn't respond, she closed the chat. The thing that I was specifically not supposed to do, she ended it.
Vivian: So, this is what's kind of weird for me is they set up the expectation and the expectation was you were going to get an email in your inbox, not that you were going to be contacted again through the chat mechanism.
Chelsea: Yes. I'm not checking the chat. You told me to expect an email. So she closed the chat, which then "completed the issue". So they just dropped the entire thing. So then I had to open a new ticket.
Vivian: How far into our one month subscription are we at this point? Two months, or two weeks, three weeks?
Chelsea: So that would be, they closed the chat January 10th.
Vivian: Okay, so we're not quite to half a month, but a lot of time has past.
Chelsea: Yeah. So January 13th, because I'm like, I haven't received an email. It's been a couple of days. Let me open the chat. I saw that all of this had happened. So I had to open a new ticket. I opened a new chat. That was January 13th. I was contacted by Andrea. Vivian? What questions do you think she asked me?
Vivian: Your name, your phone number, what features you couldn't access.
Chelsea: All the same questions. It was all the same question. She even - the conversation was, oh I see your old ticket...answer all the questions again, which is fine. I understand, fine. I answered all the same questions. I emailed the screenshot and the video. She called me again to verify the problem with the same questions.
But I will say, something that was new. She asked me if I had tried specific troubleshooting. Like did I delete the app and re-upload it? Have I tried on an Android and an iPhone? Yes, I've done all those things. Okay. So she told me she was going to pass it to a special team and they'll get back to me as soon as they can.
The 16th, a new person reached out to me, Irham. He reached out to me and he told me that the issues we're having are not verified, meta-verified related issues. So it's not their problem. So they're going to close the ticket. I replied to the email, wait a second. It is a Meta Verified problem because it's specifically that we don't have access to the enhanced profile. We can't add the pictures to the links and we can't add links to our reels. That is specifically Meta Verified.
Vivian: First of all, how does he come out swinging like that? For me to work as a customer support tech in any company, and then when I see a ticket come through, just reply back to that person and be like, that's actually not an issue with us. Like, you need to, even though - why do you think this came to your department? Like what?
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. I responded to his email and a little later on, Andrea emailed me back. So it wasn't a new person this time. It was someone that I had spoken with, but she emailed me back saying, you know, the issue was harder than they originally thought and it was going to take longer. OK, this is on the 16th. On the 17th Andrea emailed me again and she asked me if the problems were still there. I'm like, yes, nothing has changed. She then asked what level of Meta Verified we were, which I was like, why can you not see that? Why would you not know?
Vivian: Yeah, That's a little weird.
Chelsea: For one, why would you not know that? And two, okay, let's say you don't know that. Why are you just asking me this now?
Vivian: Plus, could we also have just been like, hey, we're actually like the plus plus plus plus? Like we're the top tier?
Chelsea: I mean, maybe? Yeah. So fine.
Vivian: Missed opportunity for us to be hooligans. Like we totally could have just like...
Chelsea: Whatever, I told her our Meta Verified level. She told me they were still working on the issue and they would reach out when it was fixed. That was the 17th.
On the 19th, Tia, you haven't heard that name yet. Yeah, this is a new person. Tia asked me for a screen recording, which at this point I have sent three different times so that they could see the issue. Okay, fine. So I re-sent the screen recording.
On the 20th, Andrea emailed me saying that they're still investigating. That was the last time I heard from anybody. So then on February, it's the 20th, right? So I'm like, Vivian, just get rid of this. We're not even doing this anymore. Forget it, beause it was so close to the end of the month. But then Vivian told me, they gave us a free month. So I'm like, okay, well, let me try to get this straightened then since we have time again.
So on February 10th, I reached out again. I reached out originally in the chat because they made a big deal about not closing the chat. I was told that I had to send an email. So I sent out an email. A new person emailed me back. This person said they would like to look into the issues, which...What do mean you'd like to look into the issues? This is something that should be being, like someone should be looking into the issues already. But they were like, no, I'll look into the issue. Can you tell me what they are? Can you send me video evidence of the problem? I'm like, this is now the fourth time that I've had to send a video to someone.
So he specifically asked for the video recording of from the moment I opened the app all the way through the entire process I go through with the problem. He said, ust attach that to the email. I can't attach that large of a file to an email. So should I do something else? That was February 10th. I did not hear back until the day we're recording this, which is February 12th. He told me to cut up the video into smaller bite-sized files so that I can send it in the email.
Which I haven't tried to do.
Vivian: You could possibly do a zip file.
Chelsea: Yeah. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I'll do that later on today to see what happens. I want to point out that technically they are giving us priority support because they are answering us quickly. Someone's reaching out to me same day and all that stuff. The problem is none of them know what's going on. They're not communicating with each other. So they're asking me the same questions again. And I don't actually know if there is a special team working on this problem because no one seems to know.
Vivian: Well, what it seems like to me is that they're not documenting. They don't have a system that allows them to document in a chart or in a case, right? And then they all go back and refer to the same case because you're having to, for one, reiterate all of the basic stuff about what the actual problem is, what your identifying information is, all this stuff. To ask you what level we're at, I would think that would be the first question you ask because that directly correlates with the quote unquote features that they claim to be giving people.
Chelsea: Andrea was the first one to ask me that. She's like the fourth person I talked to.
Vivian: Yeah, and so total now you're up to eight people that you've talked to. Yeah, and so here we are. I was excited because we were getting a free month because I thought, great, they're trying to rectify what they got wrong, right? We paid for a full month. We didn't get any of the features, the two features that they promised us, we didn't get. If you guys are wondering why that's such a big deal from like, let's say a business owner, why we were excited to even try the Meta Verified. The feature, even if it's just two times a month where you can embed a link in your actual reel, when we're going out there creating a reel that sells our SOB monthly community, right? We say like, hey, click the link in this reel, right? That's a call to action that makes it super easy. We're not asking them to then, go to the caption and scroll down or we're not asking them to comment a word. Instead, it's just very easy. You want more information on this, the reel. So we thought, great, we'll see if that actually works. If that increases interest, if that increases clicks on the stuff, because this is all stuff we're monitoring on the back end. We can see how many times people are clicking on these links that we have.
The other thing too is, we never got to try that. That's what makes me angry is I wanted to try it because I wanted to see if that actually made a difference. So then we could bring it to you guys who are listening to this podcast and we can say, hey, this is a great benefit or don't waste your time. As of right now, I could tell you don't waste your time simply because I never got to try it and I paid to try it and I never got it. All right.
Chelsea: Can I also say, January 20th was the last time I heard from somebody. The only reason I've heard from somebody now is because I reached back out.vI reached back out, what, like 10 days later?
Vivian: Yeah. The other part of it that makes me angry is we also paid for the feature of getting the photos attached to the links at the top of our profile. Do I think it's a great idea? Yes. Do I think it makes these profiles stand out or these links stand out a little bit? Yes. I would have loved to be able to try that and then to be able to come back and just update you guys about what our experience was, but we never got that either.
To be honest at this point, my recommendation, if you were to ask me, should I spend any money to get that blue checkmark? I would say heck to the no. No, no, no, no. Don't do it.
Chelsea: No, because we can't even tell you if these features are helpful because we never got access to them and we're paying for it. As a paying customer not to get access to what you're paying for.
Vivian: Yeah. The other thing that doesn't really match up or stack up for me personally with this whole like support issue that you've had Chelsea, what was the name of the last person that you talked to once we got the free month?
Chelsea: Raven.
Vivian: Raven is asking you what the issue is. For one, I filled out, the reason they gave me a free month was because when I clicked to go unsubscribe, it was like, wait, take advantage of our free month. Attached to it was a survey and the survey had options. Clearly they know they're having issues and the issues they're having, they're putting as a survey option, okay? Like why are you wanting to leave? Then you tell them, and then at the bottom, it has a box that you can type in what your, you know, it's free text. You could type anything in there. So I typed in there exactly what our problems were. So what this tells me is you guys are asking for feedback and you're doing absolutely nothing with it because you did not somehow tie it to my account, to our, The Seasoned Marketer profile.
So now when Chelsea's reaching out, there's nothing attached to our profile that shows them, hey, we paid, we didn't get what we needed. We took advantage of the free month because now we're hoping to rectify this issue in particular. They don't have any of that. It's just, to me, it blows my mind that you could, I don't know about you guys, but a $71.99 subscription to something on a monthly basis is not exactly cheap for a small business owner. All right? Even at that price range, they don't care about delivering on the stuff that they promised you. It's very sad and it's very disappointing.
*S.O.B. Community Commercial*
Vivian: You know what we keep hearing from you fellow S.O.B.s?
Chelsea: Small Owned Businesses.
Vivian: Yes, small owned businesses. You guys are so overwhelmed with your marketing.
Chelsea: And we totally get that! You didn't start your bakery, or your boutique store, or your jewelry business to become full time marketers or content creators, or ad designers.
And marketing can feel really overwhelming.
Vivian: Oh yeah. Then you S.O.B.s try to go figure it out, because that's what you do. You Google stuff, watch videos, and end up spending hours trying to figure it out, only to sometimes end up more confused.
Chelsea: This is my full time job and trust me, the way marketing is talked about on the world wide web can be really misleading.
Vivian: Let's not even talk about trying to hire an agency for help. It's daunting, they don't know your small business like you do, and so they are not as effective. And let's not even talk about the cost.
Chelsea: We understand why a lot of you S.O.B.s feel ready to give up. That's why we even bothered to create The Seasoned Marketer.
Vivian: That's also why we started the S.O.B. Community. We wanted to create something practical and affordable for people who can't, or simply don't want to, outsource their marketing.
Chelsea: Right. So for $50 a month members can get free downloads and templates, step-by-step tutorial videos, a weekly live Q&A call with both of us marketing professionals and other S.O.B.s. You also become part of a supportive community to bounce ideas off of.
Vivian: It's like having a boardroom of like-minded individuals and marketing professionals where you can talk through all your marketing questions.
Chelsea: Without having to pay boardroom marketing agency prices!
Vivian: So if you're tired of wasting time trying to figure it all out on your own...
Chelsea: Or spending money on things that don't work, join us over at the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian: We'll help you turn your marketing stress into marketing success. And hey, it's just $50 a month.
Chelsea: So click the link in the description to join, and we can't wait to see you in the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian & Chelsea: Now back to the episode.
*End of Commercial*
Chelsea: Can we also talk about Vivian, just the basics that they sold us that we would get more visibility, you know, for what's their lower tier level? Do you know, is it just business, meta-verified business?
Vivian: I think it's business standard.
Chelsea: Business standard. Okay. So for that one, you don't get the enhanced features. You don't get the links, but you were still told that you're going to get you know, featured on the feed, feature on the explore page, that you're going to get more visibility. We didn't notice any difference.
Vivian: Yeah, so this is the way...I'm glad you brought that back around because I did promise that we were going to talk about this. What they're saying is basically and I want to get this verbiage right.
One of the things that they promise you is search optimization. In their quote, they say, "appear at or near the top of search results". Meaning, what they're saying is as a business profile, our thing is, and this is the way I checked it, there are three things we want to rank for or show up in the results when people are searching. Small business marketing, marketing, and marketing for small business.
All right, so for each one of those, I actually went through and I looked. So I went into my personal Instagram account and I just did this on Instagram, I didn't do it on Facebook. I went into my personal Instagram account and I searched for those terms. Two out of those terms, we did rank for it in different places. One of them we ranked number three, so we're the third one down.
The other one, we were the bottom one, so you could see us, but we weren't listed at the top. Then for one of them, we just didn't appear at all. Now, this was bad on me because what I should have done is prior to us actually activating the subscription, I should have taken a screenshot of where we were ranking for all three of those phrases and then compared it to where we were ranking 30 days in. I didn't do that. So I will say, mean...at least on my end it was showing.
Chelsea: Here's the problem I have with that.
We on our personal accounts, like all businesses do, we interact with our business account. So it's already, Instagram's algorithm is already going to prioritize our content on these other accounts because we've already.
Vivian: Supposedly. Yeah.
Chelsea: Exactly. So what we needed to do is find someone who has never interacted with our account and see where we rank at the beginning and then see where we rank now. We didn't do that. That's on us. We're bad marketers. No, I'm kidding.
Vivian: Yes, and that's on us. If anything, use that as an example to, the data or the information that you get out of a marketing initiative is only going to be as good as what you prep for. Had we taken the time to sit down and say, Hey, we're about to launch, we're going to give it a try. We're investing a little bit of marketing dollars into trying this. Great. What are our parameters going to be? Okay, well, here are the features that they promise us. How can we gauge right now where we are with these features? Visibility, where are we at right now? How can we 30 days out, 60 days out, compare and see whether or not it's working and whether they're delivering on their promises?
So to your point, Chelsea, we were bad marketers, we were bad scientists. Our experiment would have blown up. We would have lost the cabin with the experiment. I think for us, had we just thought a little further ahead, it would have been good. So set yourself up for success when you guys are doing this stuff. Whenever you're wanting to try something, understand that unless you have this data part of it laid out ahead of time of what key metrics you're going to track, and how often you're going to track it, you're going to be flying blind. All right. Kind of like what we just did with this where I'm like, well, the best thing I could do is I did X, Y, and Z and this is where we showed up and Chelsea's like, yeah, but that doesn't really make sense because you're already following the account. So it should have been from a third party perspective that wasn't following us and where we appeared on it before and after.
Chelsea: The other thing I will say, we're not terrible marketers because we did think, okay, we can look at our analytics. Here's the thing with our analytics. We have specific steady growth that we have recognized is our trend. We didn't see any difference besides that consistent change.
Vivian: So consistent change. I want to detail that what Chelsea is basically telling you is we didn't get a ton of new followers. This didn't turn into, you know it didn't convert to new followers. Now let's talk the analytics side of it, Chels, because I did go in and I was able to pull the analytics. So what I did is I pulled the last 90 days and then I pulled when we started the thing, the subscription.
So last 90 days, one of those months, the tail end month was the month that we started the subscription, we were doing the subscription. Mind you, we didn't have all the features y'all, okay? So this is whatever, take it for what it is. But in there, their pitch to small businesses is pay for it because you'll get increased visibility.
Increased visibility comes with the ranking that we just talked about, which we weren't really able to gauge, and also how many views your profile is going to get. All right, the last month was that month we were doing it. The previous two months that I compared to, we had about, let's say 5 views. I was about. Then that middle month, the second month we had 5 views. And then that last month when we actually were doing Meta Verified, we had 7 views. Increase, that's a 2 view increase. So I was like, maybe there was an increase. Then like any good scientist or marketer, you're going to start looking at the timeframe and you're like, well, what did I do in that timeframe though that could have also contributed to more eyeballs being on here? I think this is important for people to hear.
Chelsea and I have started doing this thing on Fridays where, as consistently as we can, we try, we missed this last one. We try really hard to on Fridays give a shout out to a small business owner that we see that is doing some type of marketing campaign or initiative that is rocking and doing really well. The reason we want to be about that is because we think that it's important to tell people when they're doing a really great job and knocking it out of the park and also to recognize them for marketing initiatives that no one else is going to recognize them for because when's the last time someone's like, great job on sending three consistent emails, right? It doesn't happen.
So that Friday before we canceled, I was canceling the subscription on Sunday. The Friday before Chelsea and I did a shout out on stories to two small businesses that had pretty large accounts.
So one of them was for a local donut shop and I'm going to, just a little free promotion for them, Donut Connection GC. On Instagram, they have 3 followers. Then the other one that we did was Rob over at the vinyl shop, vinyl store. So Black Circle Records SC, that's his handle on Instagram. He has over 35 followers now.
So when we shouted those out, they shared the stories on their page. I'm more inclined because then when I took it one step further, I was not going to make the assumption that that's what it was. I took it one step further and I actually narrowed down the timeline of the analytics so that I could just see it for one day. Show me what my analytics, what my views were for that one day. And that's where most of those views came from. Like that delta of like 2000 extra views, I think over a thousand of them came from or close to 700 of them came from the story.
Chelsea: I also want to go back and say you said, you know, three months, let's say the first one was 5, you said the second one was also 5. I am talking about consistent growth. We're consistently working at building our social media. I would say it was more like the first month was 5, the second month was like 6 maybe? Maybe 5? Something like that, and then we saw that spike.
Vivian: Yes, and I apologize. I misspoke. So to Chelsea's point, she is correct. From November to December, we were sitting at right above 5 views. Then December to January, we actually jumped to 5 over that. So to your point, Chels, it's already increasing, right? Month by month. You know, could we, most of that could probably be contributed to a couple different things. Contributed to the fact that the consistency that we're starting to, you know, we're trying to show up on social media more and our profile was already kind of, the views were trending upward. Okay, so that's one for that jump in January.
The other one would have been the stuff we're doing on stories and whenever someone's like resharing our stuff, I think that helps too. Then, you know, I don't want to say Meta Verified had anything to do with this.
Chelsea: Well, that's the point that we can't really, there's no clear Meta Verified boosted our account.
Vivian: So with all of the experience, Chelsea, with everything that we talked to, you know, here, the expectations we had going into it, what we actually got, what we didn't get, the quote unquote, what do you call it? Preferred tech support that you got. Right? Would you recommend this to anybody? To any small business owner out there?
Chelsea: No, no, it's expensive. It wasn't cost effective. It wasn't, you didn't get any of the things you paid for. It would honestly be easier just to create like a digital ad for your profile. In my opinion.
Vivian: Yeah, I do think that if you're looking, and I agree with you, my recommendation, if somebody asked me tomorrow whether it was worth doing Meta Verified or if they should consider it for their business, I would say no. My big thing is not because of any other reason, then I don't know that you're going to get anything in return for what you're paying for. If it would have been different, had they actually resolved the issue two weeks in. I would have given them that, okay? Then at least I could say like, hey, at least they were prompt, they resolved the issue and we got to try things. But I can't even guarantee you that. You're better off just gambling your money at a casino, y'all, okay? At least then you might walk home with something, but with Meta Verified, I'd say no.
Things that we think you could do. Chelsea said, and it's very smart, instead of spending $71.99 to try to get increased visibility on these platforms for content that you're creating, why don't you just create an ad, okay? That way you know you're going to get visibility because of the way that you set up the ad, the target audiences you pick and all of that, you're messaging. You're in complete control of that. Okay, you can control your messaging and call to action, all of that good stuff. You're going to get further ahead, I think spending $70 there than you would just doing the Meta Verified program.
The other thing, Chelsea touched on the fact that we are seeing month over month increased view growth on our Instagram, and that's because of the work we're putting into it. Short form content right now is just where it's at. You guys, I hate to tell you, reels all that kind of stuff. If you're not already taking advantage of it, you're missing out on opportunity. If you're only showing up twice a month, you're missing out on opportunity. So consistency and creating content that is going to attract your target audience. Something else that you can do.
Then the other thing we know works is building out an email list. Okay, I know you guys hate to hear that again, yet again, but using social media platforms as a mechanism to get people off of the platform and into your stratosphere and let that be your email list or let an email list be a part of that. The reason I say that is because, you know, I get the feeling that maybe you on the other end of this podcast are feeling a little bit the way Chelsea and I are feeling, especially after this experience, where it's just kind of like we're a little fed up with Facebook and Instagram right now, right? It's a lot of work to put content together. So if you are putting content together and you're getting people to follow you on your Instagram and your Facebook page, wonderful. Take it one step further and get them to join your email list. Get them off of the platform so that way then you have access to them when you need it despite what these platforms are doing. And if you just want to tap out and say, I don't want to do this for, you know, for a next month or something.
Chelsea: Yes, I'm so glad you gave those examples of what you could do that doesn't involve Meta Verified. So can I go ahead do the TLDL?
Vivian: Do the TLDL. Do the dang thing.
Chelsea: Okay, so this is the TLDL, too long didn't listen. So if you skipped ahead to this section, thank you for listening to the summary. Later on when you have more time, go listen to the entire conversation because it's full of spite on my end.
Vivian: A lot of spite.
Chelsea: So long story short, we tried out Meta Verified Business Plus. Basically, we got that blue check mark. We talk about in this episode all the features we were promised, whether or not we actually got those features. We talk about the whole Meta support saga that we went through.
We discuss analytics, actually tracking to see if we got any of the things that were promised to us. We do not recommend Meta Verified for your small business. If you want to better understand why, listen to the entire episode seriously. You want to hear the saga. But no, we don't recommend it. Instead, try doing email marketing or digital ads, something that is more cost effective because we just didn't get any bang for our buck.
So that was our, you know what Vivian, I'm surprised I wasn't very spicy in this episode.
Vivian: What? I feel like you were super spicy.
Chelsea: I feel like I could have been spicier. I feel like I was being very calm for this episode, okay. Meta, do you hear me right now?
Vivian: I will say, can I toss this out there for any listener that is wanting us to try something else? Please send us, like put it in the comments down below if there is another marketing initiative that you would love for us to try and just kind of see if you've been curious about something within reason, but send it to us and we'll decide if it's within reason or not.
Chelsea: Yeah, we're not doing next year's Super Bowl, okay? We're not getting an ad for that.
Vivian: I mean, maybe.
Chelsea: No, I'm vetoing that, no.
Vivian: Because I do think it's helpful when someone kind of tries it, shares their experience, and then you can take what you want from it. You're like, am I willing to take that risk? At least you are armed with even more data and information. One of the things Chelsea and I did this last year for the...we always encourage people to do community events.
There was a local community event in our area during Christmas time. We took out a, we sponsored a booth and then we were able to put up, we built a little Barbie box and stuff. But things like that we like doing so that way we can share how it goes and whether it was worth the investment and how we were able to kind of track the analytics. I really do hope that you'll take Chelsea's recommendation to listen to this whole episode today because it's, I think it can really give you some good information on Meta Verified in general.
Chelsea: So go listen unless you already listened, then you're fine. Thank you for listening. Or listen again. Yes, absolutely. And go be the best SOB you can be
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