Doug's Rant #8: Instagram Music Mess, “Becoming A Digital Marketer”
I haven’t ranted for a while. It’s a good thing simply because I’ve been too busy to rant since we acquired a second company - Detroit Jerky. It’s the best damn vegan and gluten-free jerky in the game - you should buy some. But I digress…
Yes it’s been a minute, but it’s time.
Doug’s Rant #8
Instagram Music Mess
Instagram is a mess much like Facebook - bloated beyond recognition with conflicting tools, tons of spam and a confusing user experience. And yes it’s a monster. Only its big sibling Facebook along with YouTube, and WhatsApp (its other sibling) have more users in the world. But one of my beefs with the platform is that there is zero daylight between how people use the app for brands on a personal account and on a business account. It’s not as obvious if you incorrectly use a personal profile for a business on Insta like it is on Facebook. The Instagram profile looks exactly the same for both. Other than the fact that at the moment the @detroit_jerky profile has a current story and only 2 highlights while the @dougcohen10 doesn’t have a current story and 4 highlights, the layout and the terminology is exactly the same. There’s no way to know if one is a business profile and one is a personal. The differences are mostly in the tools and analytics available to you only for your brand when using a business profile. I can’t imagine setting up a brand on Instagram and NOT using the business option because of those tools.
Take a look at business vs. personal on Instagram - exactly the same:
Now let’s look at Facebook. It’s a clear difference right away from the terminology. You look silly if you’re a BRAND with FRIENDS. It’s obvious immediately and it makes sense. A business has LIKES and FOLLOWERS.
Now, with Instagram anyone can create a profile and use copyrighted music for their business provided by the app. You can just hit the little 🎵and pick whatever song you want from Spotify to add to your post for example. You want to use Prince’s Purple Rain to promote a new purple colored product? Hey go right ahead… The moment you change your brand over to a business profile on the app to get a few more features and insights, that goes away. You can only pick royalty free music that no one knows.
How does this make any sense?
Now whether I agree with being able to use that music in your content or not (I don’t) isn’t the main point. The point is there is no rhyme or reason to this policy. The result, which is chopped up pieces of songs that weren’t intended by the artists to be part of your DIY commercials for your business FLOODING the feeds and the stories, is a crap experience. It’s the wild west of being bombarded with songs you likely wouldn’t listen to (at least I wouldn’t - see Doug’s Music Snobbery) and certainly not in the way they are being streamed into your feed.
I don’t have data to back this up but if I were a betting man I would say 87% of small business owners and solopreneurs do NOT have an Instagram business profile. So the amateurs (no offense) get to overexpose and ruin the music at no cost, while the pros who are intentional about what content they create and the businesses they build don’t get to touch it.
Got it….
Quick Hitters:
Threads is (still) a bust.
Bluesky is a bust (I guarantee at least half of the people reading this just said “What’s Bluesky?”).
Becoming a DIGITAL MARKETER
Okay this is a half rant. More of a discussion really because I see two sides of this one. This came up in my Facebook feed the other day:
GVSU is a great school with a beautiful campus. This isn’t about Grand Valley and I don’t want my Laker friends to get upset. It’s about the idea of a BECOMING A DIGITAL MARKETER in 10 weeks in an adult learning course. Grand Valley didn’t invent this concept - it was their post that just happened to show up in my feed. You can see just from the reactions that some people gave it some love and some laughed at it. Can you become a digital marketer in 10 weeks? Can you become a chef in 10 weeks? The description for the digital marketing course says up to 10 hours a week for this program. So 100 hours max. The average requirement to become a cosmetologist is 1500 hours. 2000 to be a plumber. Construction apprenticeships typically last 2-5 years and combine classroom with on-the-job training.
100 hours and boom - you’re a digital marketer?
No chance. And there are people who will take the course and run right out and market themselves as a digital marketer. It takes years of experience to actually become a legit digital marketer which makes this claim gigantically stupid.
Now….. here’s the other side.
Is it a good idea to put some structure around how to approach the basic tools of digital marketing? YES. I myself have taught 2 hour classes to people to give them the very basics of how it works for themselves or their own brand just with very simple tips, and yes those sessions were helpful to people. So with 100 hours you can indeed impart a lot of knowledge in a social media world that anyone can otherwise play in just by logging in. You can’t dabble in surgery or auto building on your own, but you can have a Facebook account and start posting to your heart’s content from minute one. So yes, a course like this can be valuable. And would I hire someone to help work some of my digital marketing clients just on the tactical piece who took this course? Yes. Heck, even as a digital marketer I know quite little about Google Ads so a graduate of this course could be quite valuable.
Just don’t come out of this course and call yourself a DIGITAL MARKETER.
What do YOU think? Comment below!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com!