To remain competitive and relevant, brands must continually adapt to meet the changing needs of their target audiences.
This article delves into the newest Instagram features and how you can utilise them to expand your business’s reach.
The Instagram for Enterprise Updates
Expert Control Panel
The launch of the creative and business dashboard in November 2020 will provide a central location from which data can be analysed and from which tools and resources can be accessed.
From your profile’s navigation bar, you may quickly reach the dashboard. Insights for posts, articles, reels, and live videos, as well as metrics for the last 90 days, are now available to brands via the calendar function.
Online Chats
Instagram now permits artists to invite up to three more guests (for a total of four) to join them during a Live session.
Live Rooms provide companies with the means to arrange webinars with panels of experts, Q&A sessions with prominent figures in the industry, and even chat shows with influencers.
Biography Game
Instagram profiles don’t have to be boring. You may spice things up by becoming creative and adding practical, interactive aspects.
Instagram bios may now include links, emoticons, hashtags, mentions of other accounts, and even a website for all account types.
Money Cards
Adding gift card stickers to Instagram stories and profiles is a great way for brands to gain support from their audience and increase sales. Fans have the option of reposting these gift certificates on their own accounts to help spread the news.
Instagram business or artist accounts are required for use of the Gift Card function. You may customise your profile with a sticker for your narrative or a button.
Ordering Food
Food companies may use Instagram’s Food Order function, which is similar to gift cards in that it allows customers to place orders for your business’ food straight through the app.
After you’ve set up your meal delivery partner, you’ll see this sticker in the list of narrative stickers. You may customise your profile by including an Order Food button.
Sticky Responses
Insta enables you to “pinned” specific feedback to ensure they permanently show at the highest level of the feedback section for an individual post. Only three comments per article can be pinned.
This is a great moderating tool for companies since it highlights the most helpful comments, such as those that initiate discussions or provide insightful analysis.
Desktop-based image and video sharing
Instagram now allows users to share both photos and videos via the desktop app.
Videos published to Instagram must be under one minute in length, and the functionality is not currently accessible for Stories or Reels.
Collabs
Users may now collaborate on posts with their Instagram friends using the brand new Collabs feature. This ensures that when two users create a collaborative post or reel, it will appear on both accounts with the same amount of likes and comments.
There are several possibilities for businesses to reach wider audiences in this way. It is also an effective medium for communicating with subsidiaries and making bold statements. However, for the material to have the most impact, both authors must make sure that it is consistent with the brand voice of their respective profiles.
Updated promotional material
Instagram has added numerous new branded content capabilities to encourage brand-influencer partnerships. Among these is the Brand Collabs Manager, a platform for fostering collaborations between businesses and influential individuals.
Paid partnerships in Reels are another example of sponsored content features, and a dedicated Partnership messaging folder makes it easier for artists to navigate through messages from sponsors offering collaboration possibilities.
Integrated Instagram Shop Functions
Companies may now add product tags within Stories. Showing off your product(s) in action or through user-generated material (like the @ mentions we mentioned) is a terrific method to attract new customers. Just picture how genuine it would be to include a customer’s story in your own narrative by attaching it to your goods as a tag.
Examining Instagram
Customers may now shop and make purchases without ever leaving the Instagram app.
Before making a purchase, app users may select a preferred size and color, and they need to enter their billing information once.
Buying directly from artists
By tapping on the labelled goods in the creators’ posts, Instagram users may purchase their favourite influencers’ outfits without leaving the app.
Only a small number of creators may access this at the moment. Brands now have much more incentive to form strategic alliances with influential individuals in their market. The data from these collaborative shopping posts will be available to both brands and creators for more thorough analysis of performance.
Inter-application chat
Now, businesses can message their Instagram followers using Facebook Messenger. Simply updating both applications and adjusting their respective privacy settings will do the trick.
Instagram now has a “vanish mode,” more refined restrictions, enhanced reporting, and blocking mechanisms to help keep abusive users and spam at bay within its messaging system.
Guides
Instagram Guides are collections of content such as posts, locations, and goods, with the opportunity to include further explanations for each.
Since guides are comparable to blog articles in some respects, they are an excellent method for businesses to reuse material already present on the platform. Using already-published materials, companies may produce guides covering topics such as travel, food, trends, seasonal gifts, jewelry, and more.
Use Instagram’s tools to your advantage to make interesting posts.
Marketers in today’s fast-paced social media environment must be vigilant about staying abreast of all the latest developments. Learn how to use the many features Instagram provides in order to make content that stands out and attracts a large audience.
If Instagram is an important element of your social media marketing plan, research the top social media management platforms and read up on how Sprout’s integration can help you get the most out of Instagram and beat the competition.