Social media marketing can be difficult to stay on top of, especially due to the constant changes and updates across platforms.
This week on the S.O.B. (Small Owned Business) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are sharing recent social media updates across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. These updates are as of April 2026.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction (Please Leave us a Review)
05:22 Marketing HOT TAKE - Your Small Business NEEDS to be on social media
08:17 Meta’s Creator Marketplace
11:17 Facebook Updates
22:56 Instagram Updates
34:29 TikTok Updates
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Meta Verified: Is It Worth It For Your Small Business? https://youtu.be/R0-Lskcj60Q
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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*
Chelsea: Vivian, have a confession to make.
Vivian: I was about to say first you have to say four Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.
Chelsea: I don't think I know...
Vivian: Even though Chelsea you guys, confession time, what did you confess to me just last week?
Chelsea: I confessed to you and our mother so that was fun. When I did my Holy Communion I didn't actually learn any of the prayers. The only one I know is Our Father, but I didn't learn any of the prayers so I just stood up there with everyone else during our confirmation. I just kind of mouthed my lips around.
Vivian: She's a fraud.
Chelsea: I just moved my lips.
Vivian: I want all Catholics out there to hear it. She is a fraud.
Chelsea: That's true.
Vivian: Okay, what were you going to ask me?
Chelsea: My original confession. Vivian, I have been very MIA on social media recently.
Vivian: You and I both, girlfriend. I've needed a little purge, I'm not going to lie. Time to disconnect.
Chelsea: Yes. The only thing going on, on my social media right now is band reels and heated rivalry memes. Ain't nothing else. I haven't been on our business social media, on The Seasoned Marketer, on SOB Marketing Podcast. I have been very MIA and it's time for us to get back on this wagon.
Vivian: Yeah. It may be a topic for a future episode. I'm just going to throw this out there. How to manage doing social media while still living a life. Not letting it consume you. I mean this from a small business perspective because obviously we always talk about how social media is a tool for us to be able to promote our small businesses, but I understand it can feel heavy sometimes and I'll just be honest. My brain, I don't know if it's because I'm over 40, but at this point I want to be very particular about the habits that I am doing every day and those short dopamine hits I get from that short form content, I know it's just not good for me. I have a whole life I need to go live you guys, okay, besides consuming social media.
So maybe for a future topic we do some practices that can help align with that.
Chelsea: Absolutely, I love that idea. But today, we're not talking about that today unfortunately. Today we are giving-
Vivian: And this is not a confessional for Chelsea.
Chelsea: No, this is not my confessional. I didn't even do my- what comes after the confirmation?
Or no, after the communion is confirmation. I didn't do that. Anyways, today what we're doing is we're going to be listing some recent social media updates that we think are relevant for small business owners. Full disclosure, these are mostly topics and conversations we've already had Vivian, in our SOB community. Yes, if you guys did not know, we actually get together once a week with our community members. We share updates, we share just marketing discussions. We open up the floor, answer any questions, do research on their behalf. If they have questions about platforms, we do all that for you. So if you're looking for a community to join, that is the only community you will need. I promise you. Okay. We talk about your business, your marketing needs, and we toss out ideas, talk about them.
Chelsea: Yeah. So these are all things that we've touched base already with our community, but we felt like it was good information to bring to everybody, because we don't date keep around here. We just update you guys a little bit later.
Vivian: We allow breathing room for the updates. These updates, so let's tell them. We're going to cover Facebook updates, Instagram updates and TikTok updates because those are the three that likely if you guys are looking for LinkedIn updates, don't come here with that mess because we don't like LinkedIn, I'm joking.
There have been a of changes on a lot of these platforms but we wanted to stick to these three, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, because we know those are the ones that are the most popular and the ones that small business owners use the most.
Chelsea: Exactly, and I do have a meta update too which is both Facebook and Instagram. So, Vivian, are we ready? I have a hot take, technically. I do have a hot take. Do you want to hear it?
Vivian: Yeah, let's hear it.
Chelsea: *Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew* My marketing hot take. This is actually going to be a hot take y'all, because I don't know how Vivian's going to respond.
Vivian: Oh no, I get so scared whenever you say this.
Chelsea: As a small business owner, do you need to be on ALL social media platforms? Absolutely not. You know, that's not necessary. However, I think at this point in time, you have to be on at least one social media platform.
Vivian: *long pause* Yes. I don't like the word you have to or the phrase "you have to".
Chelsea: See, that's where I knew I'd lose her.
Vivian: If you's a grown adult, you ain't gotta do nothing. You ain't have to do nothing, okay?
Chelsea: Except for your taxes.
Vivian: Except for your taxes. You better do that because we don't want you going to jail.
Chelsea: Yes.
Vivian: Even though we do like outlaws.
Chelsea: I thought you were going to say we do like jail around here.
Vivian: No. I cannot vouch for jail. I don't want to know. Area I am fine not knowing about.
The thing is, is it going to benefit your business? Yes. What I would say the best practice or the recommendation from a marketing perspective would be, pick a social media platform that your target audience is on. If you're targeting more of the professional crowd, if you're more B2B, business to business, then LinkedIn is probably going to be the place where you're to find the most leads and you can tap into that type of audience. If you're looking for a place where you could go on and sell your products, right? Maybe you want to do some live shopping, experimenting. TikTok would be the place to be. So I would do it that way. I would try to find, instead of just kind of like we did old school when these social media platforms were still kind of up and coming for businesses, for business use. Instead of just being like, you gotta be on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. No, think about it, where are the people that my product or service best suit? Where do they hang out the most? Are they on YouTube? Are they on TikTok? Then go there.
Chelsea: Yeah. Okay. That's fine. I mean, that's kind of what I said.
Vivian: I mean, what was your hot take?
Chelsea: That you have to be on some form of social media platform-
Vivian: And you said that's not true.
Chelsea: No, I said that is true. You have to be on at least one.
Vivian: Okay, so you are... Okay. Yes. It's the big sister urge to just...
Chelsea: To just say I'm wrong. Okay.
Vivian: As long as we both know what's going on, it's fine.
Chelsea: It's fine, it's fine. Vivian, do want me to go ahead and start? I do have one meta update, so I want to start there.
Vivian: Will you remind people, let's not assume they know what Meta is comprised of?
Chelsea: So Meta is the parent company for both Facebook and Instagram and also Threads. Threads is still growing, it's still up and coming, so we don't have any Threads updates. We're sticking again to the big three, Facebook, Instagram, and...
I almost said Twitter, not Twitter, TikTok.
Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram. So that's what we're talking about right now, it's both Facebook and Instagram.
Chelsea: Which, just a little side note, the reason, you know, we're telling the truth is because whenever you guys go to schedule a post in Facebook, you use what? Meta Business Suite.
Chelsea: So Meta is currently adding more discovery tools to their creator marketplace. They're adding more tools so it will help advertisers find more relevant creators to partner with for promotion. So Vivian, let's start with what is the creator marketplace?
Vivian: Yeah, what is that? Tell me.
Chelsea: The creator marketplace is a marketplace full of creators. Meta created a website where brands can browse through different creators and find relevant creators to partner with. So what they did recently is they just updated their discovery tools. They're trying to make it as simple and as easy as possible for brands to find the correct creators.
Vivian: Right, the best fit.
Chelsea: The best fit, yeah.
Vivian: Is this something that is accessible to small business owners?
Chelsea: Technically it is. There's going to be a lot of creators in there that probably aren't accessible.
Vivian: Oh, because out of price range, at a...
Chelsea: Yes, price range and stuff like that. It's for all brands, so you can try to use it and you can hopefully find a creator that will fit within your price range and all of your other characteristics you're looking for in a creator. Hopefully now with these updates it will be easier to find them but it is going to take some searching.
Vivian: All right, so let's say I am a small business owner potentially interested in this. How do I actually find the creator place? Or marketplace. I just made that up.
Chelsea: The creator marketplace. You should be able to access it through your Meta business suite. You should be able to find it there.
Vivian: Log in there, look on the left hand side. It'll be an option there and they'll give you all the details. All right, so that was your big Meta.
Chelsea: Yes, that was the meta one, yes.
Vivian: Let's move on to Facebook. What kind of updates have we seen in Facebook this year?
Chelsea: Well, I wanted to start this conversation by dispelling the rumors. There's always these rumors that Facebook is no longer relevant. In a recent study, Facebook's engagement rate increased, now it increased slightly, but it still increased in 2025 versus 2024.
Vivian: So it is not dead yet.
Chelsea: It's not dead.
Vivian: It is very well alive. Lots of people are still using Facebook, which means those are people you potentially could tap into.
Chelsea: Exactly. Facebook's big update that happened recently is that they updated their ad metrics so that they align better with other platforms. This is a pretty big deal if you are running digital ads because you want everything to align and makes sense. Meta had a more liberal reporting of link clicks that kind of inflated the click metrics in comparison to other platforms.
So for example, in the past, if someone on Facebook liked an ad, that would count, that would show up as a link attribution in the same way as a user who actually tapped through to the website. So if I liked an ad and you clicked on the ad to actually go to the website, in the past Meta would count both of those as a link click. That's not the same thing.
Vivian: That's like an engagement.
Chelsea: Yeah, that's more of an engagement.
Vivian: Yeah, there was an action done.
Chelsea: Yeah, there was an action done, but that wasn't a link click. Because a link click is important when it comes to metrics because that means someone actually followed through to your website.
Vivian: Absolutely.
Chelsea: So this was a problem. So Meta has fixed it. So now a click-through rate will only be, will only include link clicks. So when it says click-through rate, it only means clicking on the link. You know it's them clicking on the link and following through to the website. That's the update.
Likes, comments, shares, and saves on ads will be attributed to an engaged-view rate.
Vivian: Which makes more sense because that is engagement, a type of engagement.
Chelsea: Exactly, and you still want to know those numbers. You still want to know if people are engaging with your ads. So it's still important information to share. We just want to make sure that we're not counting it as a link, in the click through rate. Also, impressions are going to be view-through rate. So you're going to get your view through rate and that's going to be the impressions or the eyeballs on your ad.
So to recap, view-through rate, engage-through rate, and then click-through rate.
Vivian: So what it sounds like is you're saying one of the big updates on Facebook is that the reporting the analytic side of it is actually going to be better for people who are using it to promote their small business because now the terminology is actually going to reflect the actual action the person is taking on that ad.
Chelsea: This is really important, as I said, if you're creating digital ads, because when you're comparing, let's say, a Facebook ad to a Google ad, and your Facebook ads click-through rate is so high. In the past that didn't mean people are actually going to your website, it could have meant anything.
Vivian: I think this is probably one of the things that or the reason that lot of small business owners felt like they were being more effective with Facebook. Hopefully there was another layer to that component where it was like, "okay, yes, it's showing me that I get a lot more views on on my reel ad", but hopefully the small business owner was also kind of pulling up to see how many people purchased, right? So hopefully they were, they were connecting those dots, but now it seems like it's a lot easier to connect that because you're saying, oh, I can see here that engage-view rate actually reflects X, Y, and Z.
Chelsea: Exactly, and my click-through rate actually reflects people following through to the website. But that is, I'm glad you brought up Vivian, following through with this data. Click-through rate is important. You still need to see if people are actually making a purchase.
Vivian: Right. So that just means that they clicked on it, they navigated to wherever you're sending them from the ad. Now you need to go to the website and figure out how many of those converted over to sales. This is something where I think a Facebook, a Meta pixel could be very helpful, which is an entirely different conversation that we can have in a future episode. But I think that's, the tracking is what we want. The reporting, the being able to say, because of X, Y, and Z, this happened, that was effective.
Chelsea: Yes, exactly. So this is a big update. Important. This next one, I don't know how I feel about it Vivian and I want to hear your opinion. On Facebook, ads will be now labeled "ad" instead of "sponsored".
Vivian: I love. Love love love.
Chelsea: You love love love?
Vivian: Yes. You want to know why? Because I never, the sponsored content thing always got under my skin. As someone who has taken full advantage of this, okay, I get it. The thing is, for example, this is what bothers me. Local newspaper. You can actually buy a media plan that includes sponsored content. So basically what that means is you get to work with a writer on their staff for a story on a topic that you choose that they also agree would be engaging and informational and good for their viewers or readers. You guys can work on an article together that spotlights your business. Now the full purpose of this, they call it sponsored content. It's an ad, you guys. It's an ad disguised as, it's like an infomercial, okay? That's basically what it is. The end of the day, what you're trying to do is promote the business.
When Facebook would label ads as sponsored content, it always felt the same to me, which felt kind of like you're being a little deceptive in what this is. This isn't sponsored content where basically, I as the platform am dictating what the content is and you're maybe just sponsoring my research, you know what I'm saying. This is an ad. You're basically telling us what to put on here. You are providing the information to put on here.
Chelsea: I think that's really interesting because you and I have different opinions on this.
Vivian: Oh, okay, tell me.
Chelsea: I don't care. I know sponsored means ad. So I think just coming from...
I grew up in the digital age. I have grown up with social media. Everyone knows what sponsored means. But you know what, maybe that's presumptuous of me.
Vivian: Drop it in the comments you guys, tell us. Are you okay with them marking ads as sponsored or would you prefer they actually do what they're doing now, which is they're going to mark them as "ad" or do you not care? Are you with Chelsea here?
Chelsea: I know what an ad is.
Vivian: Okay, but here's the thing. I do think that is an important conversation because for the reason you just brought up. You grew up, generationally, in a very different time and place where you, I don't want to say were skeptical of what the media was telling you, but you grew up in an environment where you kind of knew the onus was on you to filter out what was an ad and what wasn't an ad. For me, I think the difference is, and the reason it rubs me the wrong way is, for so long I grew up watching like NBC Nightly News. I grew up in a time where newspapers, if it was an article, if it was something that a writer wrote, was in essence supposed to be researched and not-
Chelsea: Opinionated.
Vivian: Opinionated. That's what a column, an opinion column was. The thing is, I think in my head, I've had to rewire into your point when all this digital stuff started happening, I did start to change my opinion as far as just understanding that there sometimes would be content in front of me that may be labeled a certain way, but I knew was paid for and was essentially not.
Chelsea: Maybe this is just the conspiracy theorist of me. Maybe this is just the punk rocker in me that's like I've never trusted anything.
Vivian: Listen, I do love anarchy and I do love being-
Chelsea: So that could be it.
Vivian: Which is kind of funny because I feel like I'm more of a conspiracy theorist than you.
Chelsea: No, yes, definitely. But I also just don't trust anything. That's what I think I'm trying to say is. Content creators, when they're promoting anything. Product. A service, anything like that. I'm like, you got paid for that. I know that for a fact. So I think I'm just... I grew up in a digital age where everything has been bought. So I don't really trust specific posts or opinions anymore.
Vivian: Yeah, we would love to hear your opinion on this, but the big update here, just to kind of go back to what you said, the big update was what?
Chelsea: That Facebook is now labeling their ads as ad instead of sponsored.
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Vivian: All right, so now let's move on to Instagram, which basically changes-
Chelsea: Why was it a ghost? Why are we being haunted by Instagram? Actually.
Vivian: Because it's spooky. It's spooky. You want to know why? Because they change every other day. I cannot. I'm like, Instagram, can you maybe take a chill pill? I feel like you need to take a, you guys, I don't know any of the pharmaceuticals. What's the drug that can keeps you chill, Valium? Does that keep you chill?
Chelsea: I have no idea either. We're the wrong people to be talking about this.
Vivian: Maybe take a CBD gummy.
Chelsea: How about you say take a chill pill? That's what most people say.
Vivian: I think I said chill pill.
Chelsea: Okay. Well then you're trying to add stuff. Don't try to add stuff. I think it is a Valium. Vicodin?
Vivian: Take a Vicodin, take a chill pill, take a...All at once, all at once.
Chelsea: No, okay, y'all, we can't even name the drugs correctly. Please don't listen to anything we're saying.
Vivian: I'm not telling our audience to take it, I'm telling Instagram to take it because they are always changing stuff.
Chelsea: Yes. Okay, where do we want to start with Instagram?
Vivian: Let's talk about one of the most recent ones that I saw, which is now you can actually rearrange the photos or the graphics on your carousel post. All right. So what that means is, you know how sometimes if you'd be uploading things, it uploads things in the wrong order. Let's say you have a carousel post that you're sharing and it's one of those that you slide over, flip through, you're sharing three ideas on something, and you got the numbers mixed up, right? You got the three and the two inverted. Now, don't fret. You don't have to start all over. If it uploaded it incorrectly, you could just go in and rearrange the graphics.
Chelsea: Important to note, you can rearrange the existing photos, you still can't add new photos to an already posted carousel.
Vivian: Okay, so be sure that you get all the photos up there.
Chelsea: Yeah, at least get all the photos at once. If it's in the wrong order, you can rearrange it, but you can't be adding photos.
Vivian: I love this because actually Facebook, you've been able to do that for a while. In Facebook you can go in and add photos, the rearranging of the photos once you've posted it has always been available. Somewhat recently.
Chelsea: I did not know that. I did not. I learn something new every day. I want to talk about, Vivian. Now, after you've posted content, you can actually change the preview, the thumbnail. Well, you can't change the image. It's going to be the image that you posted, but you can like zoom in, zoom out. You can edit it.
Vivian: Okay, and so we weren't able to do that before.
Chelsea: No, we weren't able to do that before. So I don't know about you, but for me, when I post things, I'd always preview what the thumbnail is going to look like. Cause I was like, well, once this posts, this is it. So I want to make sure that the thumbnail looks the way I want it. Well, now you can go in and kind of move it around.
Vivian: I love it. It feels like Instagram has finally caught up with the ages, 2026. Which, okay, the next thing I want to share is Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has actually finally come out and said. He kind of debunked something. So this isn't an update, but I guess it's an update if you haven't heard this before. You know, a lot of people have often said, "I try to stay on top of my content. I try to get ahead of the game. I'm busy during the day and so I schedule my post. But I feel like my scheduled posts don't get as much reach". He literally just came out last week and said not true and actually-
Chelsea: He said your posts are just bad. No, I'm sorry.
Vivian: He said you guys just suck. Keep guessing what we want.
Chelsea: I mean, honestly. No, I'm sorry.
Vivian: Post 50, 50 posts every day to get our algorithm to favor you.
Chelsea: Jesus Christ.
Vivian: No, I'm joking you guys. That's not, okay, so basically what he said is that's not true. It's not going to affect your reach if you schedule, and he actually made the point that if you are one of those people that is taking full advantage, which is ding ding another update, if you're taking full advantage of the ability to translate your reels to another language. So if you did not know, when you upload a reel, you can now have them translate that reel to a language of your choosing. They have a whole list that you could change. I think it's like nine languages now. You could choose from.
Chelsea: Like Spanish, Chinese... *awkward pause*
Okay, I wanted to make the joke and say, is it Klingon? What is that from?
Vivian: Yes. It's from Star Trek.
Chelsea: It's from Star Trek or Star Wars?
Vivian: Star Trek.
Chelsea: Star Trek. Well, here's the thing. I haven't watched either Star Trek or Star Wars, so I was like, I don't actually know what language that is. So I couldn't fall through with a joke.
VivianL Listen, go ahead and I'll tee it up, I'll finish it off. So Star Trek, Klingon.
Chelsea: Klingon, okay, go ahead.
Vivian: Oh wait, no, wait, no!
All right, so anyway.
Chelsea: Forget it.
Vivian: You can translate your reels into these languages and you guys, I've tried it. It uses like an AI thing. I've tried it because Chelsea and I do speak Spanish, but sometimes my Spanish is questionable if I've not been practicing. I tried it on a reel that I uploaded, loved it. It actually did really good. The Spanish on it was good. It seemed, you know...
Chelsea: It seemed correct.
Vivian: It was correct. Anyways, you can do that now. The reason for doing that, if you're wondering why the heck would I want to translate my reels into Spanish, tapping into a new audience.
He says if you schedule your post ahead of time, it will not only not affect your reach, but it will give that translation time to actually happen and occur. Therefore it could benefit your reels, posting those reels ahead of time a little bit. Cause it just gives it more time to do the translation.
Chelsea: Okay. Love that. Vivian, our last Instagram update I have beef with, and I think you will have beef with it too, specifically because of Adam Mosseri. Okay. Let's start with the update. Instagram is currently testing putting links in post captions. However, it is only going to be for paid meta-verified professional creators. Basically for content creators that pay to be meta-verified, they're the ones that will have access to this, they will be able to share up to 10 links a month. They're currently testing it with a select group of Meta Verified creators.
Vivian: If you're wondering, just to cover our bases, Meta Verified, if you did not know, you can actually pay on a monthly basis to get quote unquote benefits on Instagram and Facebook when you're posting.
Chelsea: Already have opinions on Meta Verified. You can watch that episode.
Vivian: Yes, we have a whole episode on it because Chelsea and I did it for a couple months and in that episode we talked about the level or lack thereof customer service that we got and also just the benefits were not there. The stuff we paid for we never had access to. So we just want you to go hear that episode
Chelsea: Yeah, go listen to that.
Vivian: Okay, but if you are someone who does pay for it or you believe it could potentially provide value for your business account or your creator account, then you will have access to this particular update that they are testing. It's not launched yet, they're testing.
Chelsea: They're testing it. Also, it's a professional creator account. That's different than a business account. So go look at what kind of account you have.
Vivian: What you're saying in essence, this update will be, if they choose to launch it and go through with it, is that if I post a reel, I can then in the reel include a link.
Chelsea: Not in the reel, in the caption.
Vivian: In the caption, okay.
Chelsea: In the caption, you'll be able to share a link. So it doesn't have to be a reel, it can be just a regular post or it can be a carousel.
Vivian: Perfect.
Chelsea: It's going to be in the caption. You get 10 a month. Here's my beef with this. Vivian, I know you have beef with this too. Instagram has always said that they were about being a social media platform and being present in the platform. So they were strongly against adding links. So what's with this update?
Vivian: Okay. I, yes, I agree with you. At first I was very like, this is kind of weird, especially let me tell you why. I had just heard in February, I had watched a podcast with the guest, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, and the guest was actually point blank asking them, explain to me why you guys don't allow external links. I think that's kind of dumb that you don't allow people to like link out because it makes, they were a podcast and they're like, it makes our lives more difficult because we can't just post the link to the actual podcast episode. He was saying at that time, which was just a couple months ago, he said exactly what you said, which is, there's a reason for it because we don't want it to be a place where people are just like promoting all this stuff. We want to keep them in the platform and because that helps the experience, right? So now they're contradicting, they're going against that. That's weird. However, I do kind of wonder though, if we're already doing it, you guys. We are already posting link in bio, we're posting that at the top of the profile. So I wonder if that's just like them saying, hey, there's nothing we can really control about this. So let's just go ahead and monetize off of it. Let's make a little money for the people that want to do it. That way it's a way of like minimizing it and making sure that it doesn't just turn into a place where you're going from Instagram to all these different websites all the time. So it's kind of controlled. It's for a higher tier of people that pay and I don't know. Maybe it'll be fine.
Chelsea: Maybe it'll be fine.
Vivian: Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
Chelsea: I mean we'll see. Again like you said they're currently testing this so they might drop it.
Vivian: Maybe they choose not to launch it.
Chelsea: Vivian, are we ready to talk about TikTok?
Vivian: I believe so.
Chelsea: Okay. The one that I'm least familiar with. Let's talk about it. I want to start this conversation by saying, or by bringing up a recent study for haters like me who aren't on TikTok. Recently Adobe found in a study that 49% of consumers have used TikTok as a search engine. That number has jumped nearly 20% in just two years.
Vivian: Say it again for the people in the back. People are using TikTok as a search engine. You want a recipe for a lemon pie or homemade biscuits, they go into TikTok y'all. Okay?
Chelsea: Sure. Y'all do that, if you want to do that that's fine. You know I find it interesting, I do this with Reddit. Well, I do this very specifically with Reddit. If I am going to be in a town that I am not familiar with, in a city I'm not familiar with, I go to Reddit to find places to eat.
Vivian: Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought this up because this is another thing that is...
Chelsea: I brought this up because... I'm sorry, real quick. I brought this up because one time Vivian and I went to Tampon...Tampon? Tampa!
Vivian: We did not go to Tampon.
Chelsea: Vivian and I went to Tampa and we were looking at places to eat and I went to Reddit and she went to TikTok and I was like, what are you doing?
Vivian: Yes, no, but this is exactly, exactly the point.
I love going to TikTok. If I'm going to be in a new place, I want like coffee shops. I love getting me an iced coffee somewhere, you know, cutesy. I will go to TikTok to find that because I literally can scroll through video content that shows me the environment. Gives me their reviews and when it comes to restaurants, the same thing. I want to see the views of the restaurant before I commit to it, right? So it has turned into a good search for local places too. That's what I wanted to bring up. One of the bigger updates that maybe if you've been off of TikTok for some time that you may not recognize is that they have actually gotten really, really good about geographically pushing out content. So if you're in the Charleston area, you get a lot of Charleston TikTok content. All right, so I don't know if that's something that you guys have seen, but they've gotten really, really great at being able to push out content locally. So if you're a restaurant, if you're a coffee shop, if you're a bookstore, if you're anything that's looking for that foot traffic locally, this is a great thing you could tap into.
Chelsea: Okay, love that.
So TikTok recently announced a new range of ad options for brands. Now, not all of them are going to be relevant to small business owners because some of them are more like high end offers, but I do want to talk about them. First we have the logo takeover. I thought this was interesting. So now brands can co-brand with TikTok when users open the app.
So kind of like, you know how Netflix has the, it pulls up Netflix and it goes, dun dun, that thing? Okay, so it's kind of like that.
Vivian: Or Tubi.
Chelsea: Sure.
Vivian: I watch Tubi, I like Tubi.
Chelsea: Okay, no that's fine. I don't watch anything.
Vivian: It's got all the old movies I like.
Chelsea: I've watched the same series since college.
Vivian: Tubi has like die hard, deep impact.
Chelsea: I don't know. Well I know Die Hard, I don't know Deep Impact.
Vivian: It's got all the chaos, world destruction, all the stuff I'm into.
Chelsea: You're into? Okay, that's fine.
Vivian: Double Jeopardy.
Chelsea: I watch Bob's Burgers. It's the only thing I watch. My point was when you open the TikTok app, it says TikTok. Now brands can also like co-brand, so it'll say Coca-Cola or something like that.
Vivian: That's gotta be expensive.
Chelsea: Well that's the high end one. That's one that if you as a small business owner...
Vivian: Only if you're a big brand maybe.
Chelsea: Yeah, I thought that was still a cool one though and I wanted to bring it up.
Vivian: If you get a sugar daddy anytime that wants to drop millions on your business and you want to co-brand with TikTok.
Chelsea: Okay, Vivian. Next we have primetime, which can I just say TikTok and labeling, naming all of their ad opportunities, love and hilarious. So we have primetime. So tick tack. Tick Tack?
I just can't talk today. TikTok Tic-tac and tampon. That's crazy. I think I just can't say my T's.
So TikTok advertisers can show a series of ads within a limited time frame. So an example they gave was during a live event, you can share up to three different ads, like three ads back to back to the same user within a designated 15 minute window.
Vivian: This means I, you're doing a live event, I'm watching, I log off. I'm like, ehh.
Chelsea: You leave the live event, you don't log off.
Vivian: Okay. I'm leaving this live event because she's, she can't say her T's correctly.
Chelsea: She keeps saying tampon.
Vivian: She keeps saying titty. I'm out of here.
Alright, so I leave and then I will then get three ads or you have the ability to reach me through three ads within a 15 minute period to kind of lure me back into the live event.
Chelsea: Or let's say you were never even in the live event but I have the live event going on. These ads can appear to you three different times while you're scrolling through TikTok to get you into the live event. So maybe it's someone who really likes the fact that I can't pronounce my T's. They're like, we want to count how many times she's going to say a T word wrong. So that's prime time.
We also have top reach, which combines top view and top feed into one offering. So what's top view and top feed?
Top view is the first ad spot users see when they open the app. So the very first ad you see. Top feed is the first in feed ad spot that appears in your for you page. So this new offering top reach combines the two.
Vivian: It includes both. So it's like, you want to be top of mind. You want to be the first person they see here. Here's the, what is it called? Top view.
Chelsea: It's top reach.
Vivian: Top reach.
Chelsea: Yeah, top view is one of them. Too many tops, but okay. The new version is top reach.
TikTok has also expanded their TikTok Pulse Suite. I'm learning a lot about TikTok today, y'all. So their Pulse Suite is designed to guarantee ad adjacency next to trending, brand safe and relevant content from the top 4% of performers on any given day based on views and engagement.
Let me explain again. So Pulse Suite is designed basically to make sure that your content shows up next to the top performers, the top 4% of performers on the app on any given day, as long as it's trending, brand safe and relevant content. So you're not partnering with these creators, you're just making sure that your ad shows up in the feed at a good time.
Vivian: So it's kind of like you're piggybacking off of their trending stuff. I'm guessing that the reason they named it the TikTok Pulse Suite is because it's kind of keeping a pulse on what's relevant for that particular timeframe.
Chelsea: Exactly, the changes that they've added to the Pulse suite is they have created or they've added Pulse mentions and Pulse tastemakers. Again with these names.
So Pulse mentions will place promotions adjacent to moments when people are already talking about the brand or brand category.
Vivian: So if I'm a coffee shop, someone's on there, they're sharing the review of my coffee shop they're talking about.
Chelsea: Yeah, then you can show, you can place an ad so you'll show up right after they scroll past that video.
Vivian: That sounds smart, y'all.
Chelsea: Now, it can also just be category, brand category. So let's say, it wasn't about your coffee shop. Let's say a popular content creator is like blasting a coffee shop because it sucked. Then you scroll and then your ad for a different coffee shop, you are a different coffee shop, not the one getting blasted, can be right there.
Vivian: Okay, interesting.
Chelsea: We also have pulse tastemakers, which will enable brands to align ads with custom selection, with a custom selection of eligible creators. Basically you get to pick the creators that you want your ads to appear next to.
Vivian: Interesting.
Chelsea: I'm going to be honest, I'm surprised that wasn't already an option.
Vivian: Yeah, I... I don't know how, because even with Facebook ads, that wasn't something that they necessarily were like, hey, I want to be sure that I appear in this segment of audience. Their audience targeting was pretty relaxed. It wasn't, it was specific, but it was specific to some of the demographic information, right? Do you want to reach families that have households that have a bachelor's degree? Do you want to reach families that have a household income in the top, you know, 1%? Blah, blah, blah. So I can imagine that TikTok had done the same. They probably had these demographic options, but maybe weren't aligned specific to creators.
Chelsea: Yeah. Well, those are great new ad options from TikTok. I think those can do wonders for your small business.
Vivian: Yeah, key takeaways here. We hope that you guys remember social media platforms are consistently evolving because they have to evolve with their consumers, with the people that are using the platform. Just so you know, as AI kind of gets a little more integrated into everything they're doing, just know that these platforms are incorporating it in not only in the way that they're putting ads in front of people, but also in the way that you as a small business owner can take advantage of that. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that as far as you're going to be able to do a lot more of the hyper targeting and just some of the options are going to change because they're going to have more capabilities.
Chelsea: Vivian, I think this was a really great conversation. If you want these updates sooner, as soon as they come out, then make sure you join our SOB community.
I'm not going to do a TLDL today just because I was updating you guys on new things with social media. I think you just need to listen to this episode. I'm not going to list every single update again.
So make sure you're following. Maybe check out BuyMeACoffee.com/sobmarketing. Vivian, anything else you want to say?
Vivian: Subscribe! If you want to stay up to date with marketing information, if you like hearing these discussions, I think if you haven't noticed, we're a little more relaxed in our conversation for marketing. We don't think that there's a right way or wrong way to do anything. We think that there is a way for you. There is a way for you. You just have to pick your approach and we want to be able to provide you information on what best practices are here and now and how they evolve and change. So hit that subscribe button or hit that follow button so you get notified every time we drop a new episode.
Chelsea: Yes. Join the SOB community and go be the best SOB you can be.