You may have heard the recent announcements from Facebook’s parent company Meta about new features; Broadcast Channels & Meta Verified for Facebook & Instagram.
How do you know if these new features will be relevant for your small business? In this video, I answer this question & share my opinion!
Here’s some information about these 2 interesting NEW features from Meta…
✨ 1/ Broadcast Channels ~ A public, one to many messaging tool using Instagram direct messages, & eventually for Messenger & Facebook! This could be a nice compliment to email marketing.
➡️ Read the announcement: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/02/instagram-broadcast-channels-creators-deepen-connections-with-followers/
➡️ Request early access (waitlist): https://www.instagram.com/broadcast_channel/waitlist/ (you will need to be logged into your Instagram account on desktop)
✨ 2/ Meta Verified ~ Monthly subscription service $12-$15 US/month – This new offering combines credibility, security, increased reach/advertising, & customer service! (finally!) It’s available for people (not businesses) in Australia & New Zealand to start – hopefully they will offer it to businesses in future.
➡️ Read the announcement & join the waitlist (people only): https://about.meta.com/technologies/meta-verified
➡️ About Meta Verified on Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/738055111270671
What do you think? Would you use either of these features? 😀 CLICK HERE to comment on my Facebook post on this topic.
Video transcript:
Facebook’s parent company Meta has introduced two very interesting new features. One I’m super excited about, the other one, well, not so much – at least not yet. The first feature they announced (on February 16th, 2023), the one I’m most excited about is Instagram broadcast channels. This is a public, one to many messaging tool, kind of like text messaging except done in Instagram’s private message or DMs (direct messages). You can invite people to follow your updates, and it’s a more direct way to communicate with them versus just having them follow your posts on Instagram, when they may see your posts in their feed or they may not. Most people check their private messages on Instagram. This video from Meta shows what their new broadcast channels will look like [watch video above to view].
You can send updates to your audience in the form of text, short videos, voice notes, or even polls. And the audience can react to the updates that you send them, but they cannot reply to you. Only you as the creator or the business owner sends the message out to the audience. While you should still prioritize your email marketing because that’s a list that you own versus being a guest on Instagram, I think this is gonna be an amazing compliment to email marketing because the fact is, not everyone wants to receive your email newsletter in their inbox. So signing up to receive your broadcast channel messages or updates, I think is gonna be an awesome way to stay in touch with your audience. Especially if you have something like a weekly show, you could send people a message and say, “Hey, we’re going live in 15 minutes”, or, “Hey, we’ve got something special happening”, etc., because they have opted in to hear from you.
This is permission based, and as far as I understand this feature is going to be free for businesses to start, but I would imagine at some point this would be… they’re gonna charge for this because it’s a pretty cool opportunity. And they are potentially bringing this feature to Facebook as well, so potentially in Messenger and Facebook. So that’s where I’m even more excited at the possibility because so many people have audiences on Facebook and it’s just such a challenge to reach them with our actual Facebook page posts. So this could be a real game changer on the Facebook platform in terms of a way for businesses to reach our audiences. WhatsApp has had this feature for a while – they call it broadcast lists. And I did see a webinar from Facebook about Facebook groups a while back, and they talked about having this feature for groups and they called it ‘View Only Chat’.
So I think as long as it’s permission based, as long as the members or the audience is ‘opting in’ to hear from you, this way and they have agreed to it, I think it’s going to be an awesome new feature. Broadcast channels are currently testing with a handful of creators in the US, and they’ll begin rolling it out to more people soon. In the meantime, you can check out Mark Zuckerberg’s broadcast channel on Instagram (you can only see it on mobile). [https://www.instagram.com/zuck/] In his channel you’ll even find a link if you want to request early access to this feature. Alternately, if you wanna request early access on desktop, you can visit instagram.com/broadcast_channel/waitlist.
The second interesting new feature they recently announced (February 19th, 2023) was a new paid subscription service called Meta Verified. It’s going to be in the range of $12 – $15 US approximately, and the reason I’m not excited about it, at least not yet, is that it will not be available for business owners.
This will be a service primarily for people and more specifically for creators. Facebook, Instagram, Meta wants to make the platform more friendly for creators. Why are they trying to attract creators? Because creators create the video content that will keep us engaged on their platforms. So what do you get for your monthly fee? Well, you will have to provide a government ID that matches the name on your Facebook profile or Instagram account. You will get a blue check mark to show that you’re verified. You will also get increased visibility and reach on the platform. So in a way you could look at it as potentially as an ad product. You’ll get improved protection against impersonation attacks. They may be monitoring for new accounts that are set up with your name, and potentially have them shut down more quickly.
And finally, and I think the very BEST feature of this paid subscription is ACCESS to CUSTOMER SERVICE. They have said that folks that are having common account challenges will get access to a real human person to get help with their account. So how good that customer service is, we don’t know yet. Fingers crossed. I hope it all goes well. I think it’s a great step in the right direction. So when the time comes that they make this available to say a Facebook business page or an Instagram business account, then there will be real value in this subscription service. They’re rolling it out in Australia and New Zealand to start, and other countries will follow.