Since its inception in 2010, Instagram has become much more than an app used simply for uploading, editing, and sharing visually engaging photos and videos. It has evolved, frequently adding new features and updates to enhance user experience.
Today, Instagram offers a lot more when it comes to supporting businesses and helping them expand their presence online. As a business owner or marketing professional, it’s critical to stay up to date on the latest features and updates as they come available so you can capitalize on them for your business or organization.
Within the past few months alone, Instagram has rolled out three new notable features you should know about. Read on to learn about them.
1. “Support Small Business” Instagram Story Sticker
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic decline, small businesses nationwide took an especially hard hit. As a way to help combat this and make it easier for users to support local businesses, Instagram launched the “Support Small Business” sticker in May.
When posting a story, people can easily add the sticker and tag the small business’ Instagram account. In turn, businesses can reshare the stories they’ve been tagged in to help extend their reach and exposure online. Additionally, when the sticker is used, the story is automatically added to a shared story where others can view the small businesses other users support.
2. Pinned Comments
No one likes a negative comment/review. However, along with lots of good, positive feedback, businesses can virtually always expect to receive some neutral or negative feedback too.
In order to promote more positive interactions, Instagram launched a pinned comments function. This new feature enables businesses to better control the tone/voice of their accounts and brands, as well as engage more with their audience by choosing a select number of comments to appear at the top of their comments thread. This way, the chosen comments will be among the first other users see when viewing a post (instead of that one negative review that you already took care of in a DM and wish the public didn’t have to see).
3. Instagram Reels
Most recently, on August 5, Instagram announced the launch of Instagram Reels. According to Instagram’s official blog, Reels “are a new way to create and discover short, entertaining videos.”
Reels can be accessed at the bottom of the Instagram camera and are created by recording 15-second multi-clip videos then editing with audio, effects, and other new creative tools. They can be shared like other posts via your Instagram feed or public accounts can also share their Reels with a broader audience through a new section in Explore (the “search” section of Instagram). This new feature offers a user-friendly option for creating fun, short videos and reaching new audiences across the app.
What do you think about these new features? Leave us a comment below!
Social media platforms are continually changing and making updates. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep up but we’re here to help you stay in the know.
Want to improve your own Instagram account, or need help managing other forms of social media and digital marketing? Contact us to see how we can best partner with you.