Shownotes
In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson dives into the latest developments in the TikTok ban situation, Instagram’s video length policy updates, and why growing email lists is crucial for marketers. Jay also shares insights on food industry changes and a personal anecdote about his love for The Bachelor franchise.
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Best Moments:
(00:55) Update on the TikTok ban situation and its current status
(01:49) Meta’s response to the TikTok ban, including changes to Instagram Reels
(04:46) The importance of growing email lists for marketers
(05:23) List-related content performance in January and February
(06:38) FDA's ban on red food dye 3 and its impact on food brands
(08:26) Personal anecdote about time spent watching The Bachelor franchise
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Transcripts
Foreign welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.
You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.
We are back for what's up this week from the do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold, is our short episode where we break down what's going on this week in business and marketing and life. And then we still have our Ask Us Anything later in the week and our big tips episode at the end of the week. So what's going on this week?
Well, unfortunately we have to talk about the nonsense which was and is the tick tock ban.
I never thought TikTok was actually gonna fully get banned because there's just too many governments and companies and people and things that want to keep it going for so many different reasons. Everyone has their reason, so it's not going anywhere.
But there are some things that we should be doing as marketers and as business people related to all this tick tock nonsense. But before we get to that, what's the current status of it all? Well, TikTok is not banned, but it's also not in the app stores. Right.
And no updates as of right now, meaning like security patches and things like that, are going to be pushed to your TikTok app.
So the clock is actually ticking on something to get done because the app is going to start to run into some serious issues over the coming weeks if something doesn't get done. Now Perplexity has put in an official bid, according to CNBC, to partner with TikTok, not to fully buy it.
Now, if you don't know Perplexity, it's one of my favorite free AI tools. It's incredible. It's like ChatGPT, but with a lot better ability to share the sources of their data.
So you should check out Perplexity AI just for AI purposes.
But Perplexity submitted a proposal to TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, where they want to basically partner with and take some portion ownership of TikTok. I don't think Perplexity is going to be the one that winds up doing it.
I still believe it's going to be Oracle because they have the money, they have the resources and it's, it's a decent alignment because they already partner on stuff.
But what else is going on related to all the TikTok nonsense is that all the other platforms are jumping through hoops right now trying to gain the mind share of people that were nervous about TikTok going away. And the number one company doing that, of course, is Meta, right? So Meta owns Facebook, they own WhatsApp, and they own Instagram.
So immediately on the same day that TikTok gets banned, what does Metta announce?
They announced that on Instagram reels, they're now allowing people, when they post for their reels, instead of it being capped at 90 seconds, which is what it has been forever, right, that you can't post any Instagram reel longer than 90 seconds, they're now allowing you to post Instagram reels that are as long as three minutes long. This is actually a big deal. And this is what Instagram said themselves.
They said starting today, you can upload reels to instagram up to three minutes long. Now, historically it's only been 90 seconds. And that's because we want to focus Instagram on short video, not long form video.
But we've heard a lot of feedback from a lot of you creators out there, and 90 seconds is just far too short. So what's interesting about this, two things.
Number one, I think there's going to cause a rush of business to business marketers to start posting more on Instagram because the three minute reels allow you to really get across some formation of intelligent thought. So I think you're gonna see more business to business reels on Instagram.
The funniest part though, and this is why you can't believe anything any platform ever says about anything.
Literally just in the last second, 60 days, okay, Instagram came out and they said videos that are longer than 90 seconds are bad for their algorithm and for performance. That is literally what they said. Okay, why? Because they were trying to say, no, we're different, Instagram's different. We do short form video.
But now, just a few months later, like, you know what long form videos, where it's at, that is where you need to be. So. So, I mean, nobody cares. Everyone just says whatever they want to say. Nothing matters. It's all totally ridiculous.
And really what marketers need to be thinking about as it relates to the TikTok ban is one very simple thing. You need to grow your email list. I'm not just saying that because I like email.
It's the difference, as we all know, between this idea of rented land, which is all the social media platforms, at any moment, they change the algorithm they get banned, things happen, all your followers are gone. That's not cool. You don't own those engagements, you don't own those followers, but your email list is something you own.
That is your owned land, not your rented land. And the thing that you need to be thinking about right now is that in January and February specifically, these are the top months.
This is the top 60 day period for list related content. That is content. That is a list of some kind. We see list related content.
According to World Data Research, the download rate for business and consumer marketers that promote list related content is 25% higher in January and February than any other 60 day period of the year.
And this is the perfect content that you want to be aggressively promoting on social media, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer, to get people off social and onto your list. Things like let's say you're a health marketer, you know the five morning rituals to boost your energy all day.
The top seven health hacks, you'll wish you knew sooner. Or maybe you have a CRM platform and it's the top eight CRM secrets that will transform your business.
Or the seven game changing tricks to automate your customer follow ups. It doesn't matter. You want to take these lists, these very simple lists that you can create.
You already have the content, you already have the information. You make them super easy, super digestible. It's a one page, let's say PDF format, whatever it is.
You put those social posts out there, go here to download it. DM me. I'll send you the link to download it. Get people onto your lists.
Enough of this social media getting banned, you losing all your followers nonsense. All right, let's talk about stupid stuff because you know, I love stupid stuff. Well, this isn't really stupid, but I thought it was kind of gross.
I saw that a host of food brands were told by the U.S.
food and Drug Administration this week that they need to reformulate their products because a decision was announced to ban the artificial food dye red 3. Red 3 is the food dye that makes everything red. And these food brands have like I think a two year window.
We have to reformulate their products to get rid of the food dye because I guess the food dye is found to cause you all sorts of health issues and whatever. So I saw a list of the foods that need to be reformulated. Now some of them make sense, right?
Like I saw Yahoo, Yoohoo, which I haven't drank in a long time. Yoo, whose strawberry drink needs to be Reformulated. Okay, that's fine. That didn't feel like the most natural thing to drink anyway. That makes sense.
Toll House's Funfetti cookie dough was told they need to reformulate their thing because they use red 3 dye. Again, anything named Funfetti I didn't think was falling off a tree. Right? So that makes sense.
But the thing that kind of grossed me out was first that Del Monte, okay, they have to reformulate their fruit cups. What? Their fruit cups? Why are we using Red Dye 3 or whatever in our fruit crop cups? That's gross.
And the one that totally grossed me out, like, what are we talking about? Is that a spokesperson from Dunkin Donuts confirmed that some of its vegetarian bacon products contain the dye. So wait a minute.
Dunkin Donuts is selling vegetarian bacon and they're using food dye to make it look like bacon? Straight up. Gross. Not eating that. Now, in the most useless news of all time on Monday, okay, this coming Monday, season 29 of the Bachelor comes out.
Fired up for this. Okay, I am not kidding. This show is my jam. So I went on ChatGPT and I found something very, very depressing, which I have to share.
So I asked ChatGPT this question because it's 100% true.
I said to ChatGPT, Hey, I've watched every season of the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, the Bachelor in Paradise, Golden Bachelor, and the Golden Bachelorette. Approximately how many minutes of my life have I spent watching this series if I've never missed any of it?
And by the way, I've never missed any of it. So I wanted to know, how big of a loser am I? And it told me this, which is super Sad.
You've spent approximately 75, 840 minutes, or the equivalent of 52.7 full days, watching the Bachelor franchise. Wow. That is both amazing, horrifying. I. You want to know my real emotion is hearing that I'm proud. What? I don't know why, but that's.
I get a sense of pride when I know that 53 days of my life have been spent watching the Bachelor because I know I've spent 53 days doing stuff I really don't like doing. So at least I did something I like doing anyway. Wow, we've really talked about some very important things. You all are awesome.
Check out certifiedguru.com it is our free email certification program. Our wait list finally opens up on January 28, and then it shuts again a few days later.
If you want to get certified in email marketing, certifiedguru.com, 100% free. Check it out. Thanks for being here. And leave this thing a review. Come on. It helps me out a lot. Do me a solid. All right, later. You did it.
You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.
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