Travel hacks, Instagram secrets, and even a little Miami tourism pitch sneak their way into this Bathroom Break episode with Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray. Between Jay’s “carry-on only and lie about parties” conference survival guide and Daniel’s Instagram growth tricks, this one’s packed with fast, practical tips you’ll actually want to try.

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Follow Daniel on LinkedIn and check out The Marketing Millennials podcast for sharp, no-fluff marketing insights. Subscribe to Ari Murray’s newsletter at gotomillions.co for sharp, actionable marketing insights.

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Best Moments:

(01:04) Jay reveals why he hates travel now and the sneaky way he skips event invites

(02:21) Daniel shares the story reply trick that gets 4–5x more engagement than link clicks

(04:20) The frustrating new Instagram banner format and why you should still test it

(05:30) Jay points out you can now pin your own comments to posts for extra visibility

(06:30) Daniel explains why captions matter for SEO and why hashtags are basically dead

(08:28) Daniel defends Miami summers and why the Florida heat is overhated

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Check out Jay’s YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelson

Check out Jay’s TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@schwedelson

Check Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/

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Daniel Murray: Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break, that extra 10 Minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both, but I

Jay Schwedelson: don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schon from the Do This Not That podcast@subjectline.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna go over quick tips about different marketing topics, and if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

Daniel Murray: We are back with the bathroom break. I am here with bestselling author Jay Swen and I am Daniel Murray and we're excited to chat today.

Daniel Murray: And I wanted to open up this episode because Jay is going on a world tour and I wanna, I, I wanna know how. Do you handle a heavy conference schedule? Like, what do you do?

Jay Schwedelson: So it's, it's, it's a good, good, good question. So, I, uh, I despise travel. When I was younger, I used to love travel, like, oh my God, you wanna go out to a dinner?

Jay Schwedelson: You wanna do this work thing? Great, great, great. Now I'm older, I just wanna stay home and watch kitchen nightmares. That's all I want to do. And so I hate it. So, number one, I only will pack a carry on. That's a standard. There's no checking of a bag. I don't care if I have to wear the same thing seven times.

Jay Schwedelson: And then the other thing is I lie to everybody I interact with at these conferences. I'm like, oh my God, we have this event tonight. Can you go? I'm like, oh no, I can't. I got this other event when in reality I don't have another event. I just am pretending I do because I just wanna sit in my room. So there's a lot of, um, lying.

Jay Schwedelson: That goes on when I go to these events

Daniel Murray: lying at a lot of now people know your secret, but Yeah, hopefully, hopefully they don't call you out on it at a conference. I don't care.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, but all right, let's jump in. Today we're talking about some changes to Instagram. And by the way, for you, B2B marketers out there, you non-profit marketers out there, whatever you are, the consumer ones get it, but everybody else, you better be thinking about Instagram marketing 'cause this is.

Jay Schwedelson: You know that they have 3 billion monthly active users. Now, your ICP is there, stop being a clown. So let's talk about some changes that are going on to Daniel. What are you seeing and what's going on?

Daniel Murray: Yeah, so I'll just, I'll just say one tactic that is just, that has been working for a long time and that is.

Daniel Murray: Stories and engaging in stories. Um, and what, what I've been doing is if you post a story and get people to reply, it gets more and more views because most, the head of Instagram has said 80% of the activity in Instagram happens in stories in dm. So if you can get people to DM your post or reply to your stories, you'll get more and more views.

Daniel Murray: And that's one tactic I use if you're trying to get. More registrations to an event or stuff. I'll say, Hey, I'm having this event if you want me to, if you want me to send you the link, uh, reply to this story instead of putting register here link. I do that and I haven't done the math on this, but I swear I get 4 0 5 x more replies than I do click.

Daniel Murray: So, and, and four or five x views on that story. So for example. Instead of getting a thousand views on that story, I'll be, I'll probably get like 30,000 views. So it's actually like a. Uh, 300 x. Um, it's crazy how much more you can get. Um, I've never done that.

Jay Schwedelson: So, so lemme just say it back to you. So on your stories, a little circle thing at the top of your Instagram feed, uh, you're posting there, instead of using a link saying, here's a link to register, a link to get the discount, a link to whatever you're just saying, basically leave a comment or a reply, uh, and I'll, I'll DM you the whatever, and you're seeing an exponential increase because.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, because it's showing people

Daniel Murray: are like interested in that story. Right? It's just like anything, like if you start getting activity in that story. Yeah. Um, link clicks. They don't want link clicks. They don't want you to click out of Instagram, so Right. So they do things that want keep them in and you'll get way more dms and it's way more pain, but it, you get way more, um, registrations or leads or whatever you're trying to get.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. So I need your take on, I think everyone at this point is seeing the new Instagram format, that kind of what I call the four sixty eight by 60 banner. It is that what looks like an a a a banner ad from 20 years ago and it's that long. Horizontal format that Instagram has rolled out. What is your take on that new post format?

Daniel Murray: I mean, I hate the format and I think, I think social media managers hate the format, but I, I do think that if someone's testing a format, just jump on that format for the time being, because I've said this in. They launch a new feature, always test the new feature, come up with a way to do something in the new feature.

Daniel Murray: I know it's a pain because it's another thing on a social media manager's plate. It's another thing on a creator's plate, but it's a way that's getting attention. And your goal on social media is to get attention.

Jay Schwedelson: So you're saying we have to do it because they're pushing it aggressively. It's a good way for you to get eyeballs, but uh, you also think it's a horrendous format.

Daniel Murray: It's horrendous. Like you can't even see the video. You have to, I know.

Jay Schwedelson: Every time I see one I'm like, what is that? Um, it's weird. Um, I'll tell you another change that I think people are sleeping on. So when you do a regular post on Instagram forever, you can pin a comment, meaning if somebody like put a interesting comment on your post, you can, if you hold down the comment, it'll then say, do you want to pin it?

Jay Schwedelson: And you could pin it. But some odd reason up until, uh, two weeks ago, you couldn't pin. A comment you made on your own post, but now you can. So let's say you wanna like, say something that's really important. You can comment, uh, on your own post, and then you hold down that comment and then you could pin it, which is a really good way to get some, like, you know, a second level of, of thinking that you wanna get out there.

Jay Schwedelson: Some sort of important thing out there. So that's a cool little, um, change. Yeah. Yeah. And

Daniel Murray: also the reason people do it too is if you have like a long. Post and you wanna do part two, part three, you could do part two. Yeah. And then say you follow in the comments for part two and you pin, pin the pin the comment.

Daniel Murray: Another thing that I think you, you're sleeping on is TikTok had this, and now Instagram is you need to start crafting your captions as searchability and SEO because things are happening beyond Instagram's walls now. So. You to be found for posts. They could be found in on in chat bots. They could be found on Google.

Daniel Murray: Mm-hmm. So when you crafting your posts. Think of SEO. Think about how, what if someone was gonna search this content, uh, what would I put in that caption? What are some key words that I, I want to relay? So if you're in whatever field you are, think about that when crafting posts,

Jay Schwedelson: but don't care about

Daniel Murray: hashtags.

Daniel Murray: Is that right? Oh, yeah. That's another thing. The, the head of Instagram said hashtags are dead on Instagram. They're not dead in the sense of. They'd have a purpose. And the purpose is basically having your content in a certain niche, but it has no effect on how many views you get anymore getting, becoming more viral.

Daniel Murray: So if using hashtags, use it for categorization. Don't use it as a way to get, um. More attention on the platform.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, and listen, as always, these platforms are always changing. So you might think, oh, these little things don't matter, but they do. And that's why some accounts, you know, take off on other ones.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, don't take off. So, so Daniel, your race to the end of the year, are you just grounded? 'cause you have a, a newborn kid or are you starting the traveling tour with your kid yet? Are you gonna go around the country, be like, here's our baby, I wanna show it to everybody.

Daniel Murray: Nope. No traveling tour. Uh, we, we might, we might go somewhere in December, early December, but no travel, no traveling tour with a kid.

Daniel Murray: Uh, no. Not to be the first one. And it's also, it's also MI Miami. And Florida is the perfect weather at the end of the year, so it's like, why am I gonna leave the

Jay Schwedelson: perfect weather? What do you think about living in Florida? You've been in Florida for how long now? Six months.

Daniel Murray: No, it's almost 10 months now. No way.

Daniel Murray: Yeah. Uh, I love it. I think it, I also, I also think that people over index on the summer here, like they say, like, it's so bad, but I, I experienced my first Miami Summer and I think people. There's air conditioning. It's, there's mornings and nights. It's, there's, there's a lot of places to go that are air conditioned, so it is when people hate on that.

Daniel Murray: And there's also a lot of places where being outside in the middle of the day at 85 degrees is still hot, so you're still going inside in your other places.

Jay Schwedelson: So stop hating it, dude. I'm gonna get you caught up. I'm gonna get you connected with like a tourism bureau. That was incredible. We gotta get you out there.

Jay Schwedelson: That's huge. Wow, who knew? Alright, well another amazing episode of the bathroom break. Go ahead and follow the marking. Millennials follow to this, not that or uh, I dunno. Follow Daniel, move to Miami. He loves seeing people just knock on his door. So, uh, thanks for being here, Daniel. Come on man. I gotta get back to work.

Jay Schwedelson: Get out of there. Alright, while he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast. Do this, not that for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from

Daniel Murray: my bathroom break. This is Daniel.

Daniel Murray: Go follow the Marking Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out, and it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear.

Daniel Murray: Peace out later.