How I learned to stop worrying and love Broadcast Channels

Welcome to Make It Go Viral, the weekly newsletter from Pennant Digital social media director Anna Fogel. If this edition cured your Instagram broadcast channel cowardice, please share it with someone you love.

For the past few months I have been receiving notifications asking me to subscribe to an account’s broadcast channel on Instagram, and for the past few months I have been casually ignoring those and pretending they don’t exist. Curiosity finally got the best of me last week – it turns out snubbing new developments doesn’t mean they’ll go away – and I dove in headfirst, joining a healthy amount of different channels to see what the hype was all about.?

And I regret to inform you, I get it now. I understand the appeal, I appreciate the application, and I recognize the potential these channels hold for accounts that use them effectively. To back up for a second, broadcast channels are “a public, one-to-many messaging tool for creators to invite all of their followers into and engage with their most interested fans,” according to Meta.?

In other words, Broadcast Channels give you a direct pipeline into your most loyal fans' Instagram inboxes.

As more and more users are shifting to the DMs, Meta is helping brands and creators join in on the private messaging fun, giving them a direct means to communicate with their most loyal fans. For a brand like Saturday Night Live , this means sharing BTS cast photos, links to standby tickets, and general announcements. For Bon Appetit , this means soliciting questions, dropping links to website articles, and sharing fun videos of prominent chefs trying Taco Bell for the first time ever (not a regular series, but it should be). For the Philadelphia Phillies this means sharing reel/grid posts, text reactions to real-time moments from games, and reposts from relevant accounts like ESPN and the Phillie Phanatic.?

Because this is an opt-in feature, the content reaches followers who are asking for more and wanting more. It’s a great way to share photos/videos that might not necessarily fit in the grid or story but are still deserving of someplace to live where they’ll be appreciated. And even though the messaging is mostly one-sided, it’s another place to foster a sense of community. There are plenty more upsides to creating a broadcast channel, but let’s discuss the main hurdles to consider before doing so:

• Bandwidth: Are you a one-man band who is already stretched incredibly thin and the thought of adding one more item to your plate makes you want to scream? Yeah, go ahead and skip ahead. This is not simply sharing content you are already posting, but it’s a much more thoughtful undertaking that requires its own strategy, scheduling, content creation, and moderating.?

• Resources: The closely related cousin of bandwidth. This will occasionally require photo/design/video resources and if that doesn’t fit within the team’s current workload, this might not be the right time to launch a channel. These require regular posting (at least once or twice a week) and the channel should feel like an entertaining and educational extension of the Instagram account. What they should not feel like is a burden for the manager to keep up with.?

• Content: If it already feels like you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to post to the grid and stories a few times a week, it’s probably not the right time for a broadcast channel. The most successful broadcast channels are intentionally creating and using content specifically for this feature – not simply dumping leftover assets and hoping for the best.?

All that to say, very sorry for ignoring you for so long, Broadcast Channels. I get you now.?

ICYMI:

• How do you do, fellow kids: Meta is coming for Gen Z with a Facebook redesign that will include a new ‘Local’ tab, an ‘Explore’ tab with personalized recommendations, and Events and Groups will also be getting a facelift as well.?
• Short-ish: YouTube recently announced a number of updates. Most notably, starting October 15th, Shorts uploads are expanding to three minutes. This won’t affect any videos uploaded before 10/15.
• Typo? What typo? Adam Mosseri announced Threads users will now have 15 minutes to edit posts after hitting publish.
• As spotted in Lia Haberman 's ICYMI newsletter , Instagram is exploring a ‘For You’ and ‘Most Recent’ filter for comments .

LIKE//RETWEET//SHARE//ETC

Is this an excuse for me to talk about ’Nobody Wants This’ — the greatest rom-com Netflix series, possibly ever — in a public forum? Yes, yes, it is. But I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out the streaming platform for leaning into the collective cultural freakout that is happening because Seth Cohen is all grown up. Let’s talk about why everybody wants this content gold right now:

• A+ social listening right here. This post is a direct reaction to not only a key moment that resonated with fans of the show, but this scene (and specifically the writing of the scene) was something that Adam Brody and Kristen Bell brought up in interviews while on their press tour.?
• This post allowed Netflix to take back some ownership of a moment that was going viral already with a strong visual.?
• It also opens the door for Netflix to share more nuggets from scripts or other behind-the-scenes tidbits of specific moments from shows when fans are especially hungry for that content.?
• It could be used on multiple platforms. Netflix took this asset and included it at the end of a video carousel on Instagram , which served as a fun, little, behind-the-scenes reward for users who swiped all the way to the end.?

Make it work for you: This is a great example of not just joining an existing conversation, but adding to it. Topics and trends move lightning fast on the Internet, but if you have something unique to include that can extend the chatter, it’s never too late to hop on it.

On a scale of Adam Brody to Ultimate Fighting Championship , my personal algorithm leans pretty heavily in the direction of The OC. But one UFC post did pop up in my feed over the weekend that was pretty undeniable. During Saturday night’s fight, the social team selected a fan (“The Chosen One”), borrowed his phone, and recorded exclusive ringside footage before returning the fan’s phone. Let’s break down why this post racked up over 675,000 likes and counting:?

• Sports social is largely for the fans at home. This is a post for fans at home and at the live event. Not that this person wasn’t already a fan for life, but this gives him an incredible story to tell and an even more incredible video to share everywhere. Plus, now fans at every event will go in with some extra excitement that they could be the lucky one.?
• Simple concepts are the best concepts. This is content the UFC team would likely film anyway, but they took an idea and elevated it to a whole new level that resulted in higher engagement, shares, and views.?
• It’s easily repeatable. They can do this at every event, picking a new fan every time and the content they film could be different at every event too. Maybe it’s in the middle of a fight or maybe it’s when the fighters make their entrances. There are lots of spin-off possibilities while staying true to the main idea.?
• It feels like a format that other sports/leagues will try to adopt, and guess what, they’ll probably be just as successful.?

Make it work for you: Is there content you’re already creating that could be workshopped or shaken up in some way? Take a look at what you’re already doing and see if there’s an opportunity to breathe new life into it.?

Post of the Week:

Peace, love, and Pinterest.?