Jay Schwedelson: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, NOT That! podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life, and we still have our other episodes the rest of the week. So what is going on? Well, Instagram is doing it. They're doing the thing they said they would never do.

Jay Schwedelson: This just came out in the last 48 hours, but Instagram is now testing, allowing links to be in post. Captions. So when you have your post and then you have the captions and you would have a link in the captions, they've never ever allowed this. Right now it's, they're only allowing it for a small number of people that are Meta Verified.

Jay Schwedelson: So the people with the blue check mark that are paying to be basically Instagram verified or. Meta Verified. They're paying that monthly, whatever it is, 10 bucks, 20 bucks a month, whatever it is. They're giving a small number of Meta Verified users, the ability to put links in the captions. Now, if they roll this out, and it sounds like they're going to be rolling it out, uh, to all me meta, Meta Verified subscribers, people that are doing that, okay, paying for that blue check mark that they could put links in their Post captions, way more people are gonna have blue check marks because the value behind having links in in your captions is wild. They said they would never do it, but here they are. They are doing it. What else is changing in the world of social media this week is LinkedIn. LinkedIn themselves announced that they did a massive algorithm change.

Jay Schwedelson: So if you're seeing funky stuff, this just came out. If you're seeing funky stuff on your. Feed and in your account. Don't be surprised. As a matter of fact, matter of fact, for me, this weekend, the weirdest thing happened. Uh, out of nowhere I got 300 new followers. I had not posted and uh, uh, and I had no increase in profile views.

Jay Schwedelson: I just, outta nowhere. I got 300 additional follows. And I was like, that's really weird. I couldn't figure out why. And then the next day when I woke up, uh, they were all gone. And what they're doing with the algorithm that they're saying they're doing is they're moving to more of an AI driven interest base thing as opposed to just the people in your network.

Jay Schwedelson: So get ready to start seeing a lot more. Different stuff and get ready for the engagement on your posts to start changing a lot 'cause they just rolled out the new algorithm just in the last few days. So a lot of other random little things going on in the month of April. So Worldata Research released some interesting stuff that you're probably sleeping on.

Jay Schwedelson: Number one for my business to business marketer friends out there right now is a great time to put the word, not word, it's the letter. Letter. Yeah, letter and number Q2, like quarter two. If you put Q2 in your subject line, uh, leading into the first week of April, starting right now into the first week of April, it actually is lifting email open rates if you put that in the subject line by over 20% because we're done.

Jay Schwedelson: With Q1, Q1 ends on March 31st, right? So just by talking about what are the big trends in Q2, what's gonna happen in Q2, our Q2 launches, whatever, now is the time to stick that in your subject line. It is helping boost open rates a lot and on the consumer side, but also on the business side, a little known email.

Jay Schwedelson: Fact, April is the biggest emoji performance month. For subject lines, for email subject lines, after November and December, November and December, crush it. 'cause of the holiday season. Everything crushes in the holiday season. But because of spring sales and travel promotions and everyone getting ready for the summer and all the different holidays, this is the time you wanna be thinking about using those emojis in your subject line.

Jay Schwedelson: This is when performance is the highest, is the month of April. So that's kind of interesting a little bit at least. Did you see what happened? With the dude. Uh, so there's this, uh, uh, uh, health bar called David. It's it, David is the name of the, of the health brand bar. You, you know, the, one of these like, you know, kinda like a KIND bar or whatever, and it's called David and it's really popular protein bar.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, now they're fa facing a class action lawsuit because, uh, apparently the bars contain a lot more calories than were disclosed. But the best thing that happened, the ultimate thing that happened with this David bar controversy, which was on like the nightly news, it was all over the place. The founder of this thing is called, uh, his name is Peter Rahal.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay? He goes out on X and this is the post that he writes, which makes him a legend. He writes, no one is getting Regina Georged The confusion comes from how calories are being measured when food is burned and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he starts out his a post by saying, no one is getting Regina Georged When you reference Mean Girls about the bars that Regina George ate in Mean Girls, and they, they made her get fatter than she wanted to be. You are a legend. Now, if he is actually fooling everybody doing something bad, no bueno, that's very, very bad. But at least he put out a really good, uh, social media post.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, before I get into the ridiculous portion of what's going on in the world, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored. By CallRail. Listen, if you are running ads, if you're doing any kind of marketing and you're not totally sure what's actually driving your leads, you need to check out CallRail.

Jay Schwedelson: CallRail shows you exactly which campaigns are driving the results and make can prove what's working. And here's the thing, just for listeners of this podcast. They're offering a 14 day trial with no credit card required. You just go and try this thing out. Just go to callrail.com/dothis callrail.com D O T H I S Do this and you get the 14 day free trial with no credit card needed. You gotta check this out. Alright, let's get back to the absolute nonsense that's going on. Alright, so I'm having a problem because my problem in the universe. Is that I've been trying, when I go out to restaurants now, I'm like trying not to eat.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, these, the bread, they always bring you bread when they go out to dinner. So I've noticed, and this just happened to me this weekend, it seems like tides are shifting a little bit, but I'm still getting screwed. So I go out to dinner, out to dinner, and now the waiter comes over and they don't just bring you the bread.

Jay Schwedelson: They said, would you like the bread? And my problem is, is that I have no ability to say no. Um, so I say yes I would, and then I eat the bread. 'cause I'm a disgusting animal. So I know they're trying to solve for this by saying, do you want the bread? And I'm just supposed to say, no, we don't want the bread.

Jay Schwedelson: But I'm weak minded. And I say, yes, I do want the bread. So like maybe we just need to, uh, do the reverse. And, and, and, and, and. If you don't say, where's my bread? They don't bring the bread, why are we talking about this? I don't know what else weirdness is going on. So I saw that, um, disclosure day's coming out.

Jay Schwedelson: This is the new Steven Spielberg movie that is about, uh, whether or not aliens are here on earth and are real. And Steven Spielberg was at South by Southwest and he was on a panel. They asked Steven Spielberg, 'cause you know he's made like other alien movies, like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: He said, Steven Spielberg, do you believe that there are aliens? He's like, oh yeah, I definitely think they're aliens. I think they're all around us. And then I think there are definitely aliens out there. So then I was like, I don't know why I've never really thought about it. I'm like, do I think they're aliens?

Jay Schwedelson: And I've come to the conclusion. I don't know that I think there are aliens on earth, but I think that there are aliens out there. I do, and I don't know what that means. I don't know how much I care. I don't know if you think there are aliens. Some people I meet I think are very weird. They possibly are aliens, but that's a whole different thing.Jay Schwedelson: I also think we're always negative about aliens. We think aliens are gonna come over here and like blow up the earth, but maybe they'll be super cool, right? Maybe they, I don't know. Maybe they have like another version of TikTok that we could all get addicted to and lose our minds over. I don't know.

Jay Schwedelson: Other things I'm excited about. I'm gonna start watching Scarpetta on Prime when Nicole Kidman. This just came out very excited about that. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. New season is now out. Excited about that. Not excited about what's coming out. I should be, but I'm not. This weekend. Sunday is the premier of um, uh, the Bachelorette.

Jay Schwedelson: You'd think I'd be excited 'cause I'm a big batch Bach Nation person. But the, the, the person who is the new bachelorette is actually the star, one of the stars, uh, uh, Taylor Frankie Paul from the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, they've jumped the shark. They're getting a celebrity to do it. This is gonna be the beginning of the end.

Jay Schwedelson: So that's what I have to say about that. What have we talked about? I don't know. Listen, go to JaySchwedelson.com We could work together. You could hire my agency. I could do brand deals with you. All this stuff, and leave this thing a review. It helps circulate the show. You'd be my best friend. Please leave a review.

Jay Schwedelson: You're awesome. Later.