Instagram Updates for Marketers
Instagram’s latest feature, Reels, now joins a whole host of sharing options. Alongside posts, Stories, Lives, IGTV, stickers, etc. But for brands and creators planning their 2021 sharing strategy, it can feel a little overwhelming.
Recently, Instagram’s Product Marketing Lead, Alexander De Leon confirmed that users who use all of Instagram’s features stand a better chance of engaging with audiences and building strong followers. Alexander De Leon told us: “Instagram has found that the most successful creators on the platform are those who use all of the different features available. This includes in-feed posts, Stories, IGTV’s, Lives and in some markets, Reels.”
So we know sharing content across multiple features helps our performance. But what should you be posting where?
Learning which content thrives across the different features will help you master them. Each can be used to show a different side of your personality, or your brand’s personality. They also all have something slightly different to offer in terms of outcome and analytics.
Professional Dashboard
At the beginning of 2021, Instagram launched a new tab called Professional Dashboard. Think of it as your main dashboard within the app. Inside this latest Instagram feature, are Instagram’s main tools and resources
Overall account performance
Instagram Insights
Promotions
Branded Content Approvals
Instagram Shopping
Saved Replies
Instagram is Hiding Likes
Instagram will no longer publicly display the number of likes generated by posts. This means that the exact number of likes given to any individual photo or video will only be known to the user who posted it. This update has been gradually introduced since 2019, and by now, there’s a big chance you’ve already experienced it as well.
Suggested Posts
Once you’re done scrolling through the most recent posts of the accounts that you follow, you’ll start seeing suggested posts (based on what you like and who you follow). These posts, from accounts you don’t follow, will show up after you’ve reached the end of your feed and give you the option to keep scrolling with Instagram’s suggestions. Up until now, the feed has been entirely determined by users’ preferences and the people they follow. For the past couple of years, Instagram has shown users a message when they reach the end of their feeds, meaning they’ve seen every post over the past two days from people they follow. With suggested posts, they’ll have the option to keep scrolling past that marker for more content. (That message will still be there along with the option to revisit old posts.)
The suggested posts won’t be the same ones that show up in Explore. “They’ll be related to the content that people already follow, whereas Explore aims to point people toward adjacent content”, says Julian Gutman, head of product at Instagram Home. He used “space content”, which he follows and engages with on his feed regularly, as an example. A suggested post might be a new space photo from someone he doesn’t follow, whereas his Explore page might contain posts related to physics more broadly.
New Instagram Story Features – Interactive stickers
In the last few months, Instagram has added quite a few brand-new Story stickers that can make for a better interactive user experience.
Donation sticker
You select a nonprofit organization for people to donate to. All nonprofits receive 100% of the money raised.
Challenge sticker
Since so many people started 2020 by being stuck at home, Internet challenges have become more popular. The Challenge Story sticker allows you to join challenges which are named with a hashtag to make it more recognizable and to increase their reach, and then nominate other users.
DM Me sticker
Instagram introduced the new DM Me sticker to prompt messaging interaction. From a brand perspective, this sticker can help you showcase your product with a CTA to ‘Get more info’ or something along those lines. That in turn would help drive more direct engagement.
Food Orders sticker
When you add a Food Orders sticker to your Instagram story, people can tap the sticker to order food from your partner’s website.
Gift cards sticker
Similar to the Food Order feature, when you add a Gift Cards sticker to your Instagram story, people can tap on the sticker to buy gift cards from your partner’s website.
Support Small Business sticker
It’s no secret that the global pandemic has had a big negative impact on businesses, especially small ones. In order to support small businesses, Instagram came up with a “Support small business” sticker. You can tag any business on Instagram using this particular sticker, your Story ring will also change, and you’ll be shown first in the Story feed.
An interesting use case of this sticker comes from Alohas, a clothing brand from Spain. Alohas ran a giveaway contest and gave participants 3 conditions, one of them was to add a “Support small business” sticker to their Stories, and the other was to follow Alohas on Instagram. Two weeks into the promotion, Alohas had gained over 11 thousand followers.
Facebook Shops
Facebook has further increased its eCommerce footprint by introducing Facebook Shops that are accessible through both Facebook and Instagram. Basically, businesses can now create customizable catalog of their products that users can browse, save, share, and purchase from. You choose the products you want to showcase, add a cover image and pick a color theme to add a unique look and feel to your online store. Users can receive customer support within the app and Facebook is rolling out more and more features to make this user experience even richer and more complete. Users can access Facebook Shops through Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts or even through Stories and ads. It’s now possible to purchase a product without leaving the app, if the business has enabled checkout.
Posting to Multiple Accounts
This one can be quite the time saver if you’re planning on posting the same type of content to different Instagram accounts. Basically, you create a post using one account, and then just tick some boxes to post it on others
New Instagram Story Features – Notifications
Reposting Stories in which someone tagged you is getting more and more popular. So, Instagram has made it easier for us to notice whether we’ve been tagged in a Story or not. Not so long ago, we had to go to our inbox, and if we’ve been tagged by someone who we don’t follow, it would end up as a message request. Now we just access our likes page, and at the very top of it we’ll see mentions. It’s much easier to find these mentions and navigate between them, so the whole process of reposting is much easier..
Create Story template
With the new Create mode, Instagram users can play around with Story posts even more. The main purpose of this feature is to combine interactive stickers, text, and drawings without having to include a photo or video in the background. To access the Create mode, click on the camera icon in the top-left corner and then swipe right at the very bottom of the screen.
IGTV Preview
IGTV videos, which are 60 seconds or longer have been getting much more traction recently. In an effort to make IGTV posts more visible to other users and increase their organic reach, Instagram is now treating them as if they were regular Instagram posts. This means that your newly published IGTV video will be seen in your followers’ news feed as well as your profile feed. There’s only one difference. It’s going to play as a 60-second preview that will try to navigate users towards the full video.You can also leverage these previews in your Story posts. When you share your IGTV post to your Instagram Story, it will automatically play a 15-second preview.
Instagram Dark Mode
Dark mode has become quite popular for many applications and is now available on Instagram too. How do you turn on Instagram dark mode? It turns out that you can’t turn the dark mode on from within the Instagram app. You need to go to your phone settings.
On an iOS device:
Make sure you have iOS 13 or a later version of the software installed.
Go to your phone’s Settings -> Display & Brightness.
Turn the Dark Mode on, or set it to switch on and off automatically; either to match current daylight hours or to your own schedule. Start up Instagram and save that battery life!
On Android:
Make sure you’re running Android 10 or higher.
Go into Settings -> Display and tap Advanced Select Dark from the Device theme menu
Go to Instagram and enjoy the darkness!
New Instagram inbox organization
Instagram has recently divided the inbox into Primary, General, and Requests tabs. Primary is where messages from the people you follow will land. The rest will appear as a Request, that you will be able to move either to Primary or General. Think of Primary as an inbox for issues that need to be addressed quickly, whereas General contains the messages that you can come back to later.
Suggested Unfollow
You may be wondering why you’re losing followers recently? Or maybe you’re looking to unfollow the accounts that you least interact with. Whatever the case, Instagram introduced a new feature that suggests which people you should unfollow. If you access the list of the accounts that you follow, you’ll see these Categories: The “least interacted with” are your suggested unfollows. If you feel like your feed is getting a little bit too crowded, you may try using it.
Remove Followers
Instagram is gravitating towards ‘softer’ types of blocks. You used to have to block an account and then unblock it to remove it as your follower. Now the process is way simpler and more low-key. Simply access your followers list and then you’ll see the Remove button:
Instagram Alt text
Instagram introduced a new option of adding alt text to images. Primary stated reason was to help people with visual impairments enjoy the social platform more. But maybe there’s more to it? Adding alt texts to website images helps for better SEO ranking for websites. Maybe this could also be the case for Instagram? Maybe by adding these extra descriptions to your photos, you’ll be able to rank better in specific hashtags. It’s not something that Instagram has officially stated, but still, it’s worth giving a try. How to add:
When posting your photo, click on “Advanced Settings” at the very bottom
Under Accessibility you’ll see “Write Alt Text”
Restrict accounts
This feature was introduced to fight online bullying without actually having to block an account. If you restrict someone, they won’t be able to comment under your posts. How to:
Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Restricted accounts
Type in the username you wish to restrict
You can also go to a specific profile you’d like to restrict, click on the three dots in the top-right corner, and click on Restrict.
Age Limit
As more and more underage users browse Instagram, it may be appropriate for certain brands to “hide” their entire profiles from youngsters. How to:
Go to Settings -> Business -> Minimum Age
You can set a minimum age restriction for users everywhere, or/and set different limits by specific countries.
Wrap Up
We hope these updates help you to better utilize Instagram for your marketing purposes and especially for your video marketing. VideoFresh are experts at producing video content for social media including Instagram that drives conversions. Contact us today to discuss in more detail.