The social media world is moving at a faster pace, early adopters of new technologies can survive in this competitive world and stay ahead of the pack. For many brands, it may feel a little bit difficult to integrate every new feature and technology into your social media efforts. Instagram, the most popular and fastest growing social media channel, is releasing the latest features at a rapid speed. Sometimes it can be daunting to stay up to date with all the latest features, as they are releasing almost every day.
Here are some most important new Instagram features that your digital marketing agency should stay aware of and take advantage of to gain maximum visibility and engagement.
Have a look at them.
Music with Question Stickers
Instagram has already launched music stickers that let users add theme songs and background music to your stories during the summer of 2018. Now Instagram allows its users to add a soundtrack to their Stories and use music along with questions stickers. With the music sticker in Stories feature, you can add a song to a video or image in your Instagram Story directly within the app. The feature lets you choose music from Instagram’s built-in music library. To use this new feature, simply create a question sticker into your Story and allow your followers to respond to questions with a song pulled from Instagram’s built-in music library.
An Updated Explore Section
In the updated version of Instagram, you will find some noticeable changes in the Explore page. This section works best for influencers and marketers and is a great way to create brand awareness and reach out to a wider audience. The new explore page is designed to help users see what they are really interested in. You will find Topic Channels and a personalized For You channel that contains content you have browsed before. You will find a list of hashtags that helps users find the post that meets their needs. To make your brand visible, it is important to put more efforts into creating an effective hashtag strategy that works well for the updated Explore page and get your content appeared in the users’ feed.
Question Sticker
Instagram is striving hard to provide users with more personalized experiences and wants them to stay engaged. The latest Question Sticker feature allows followers to ask questions and you can answer the IG stories. Whether you are a web design agency, digital marketing company, real estate business, food business or a fashion blog, you can make the most of Question Sticker feature and interact with your customers by conducting Q/A sessions. You can find which product or service your customers like most and in which areas you need improvement. Brands that are looking to engage with their audience and collect the valuable feedback of their audience, start using the Question Sticker feature of the Instagram.
Automatically Scheduled Instagram Posts
Another great feature of Instagram that many businesses can get the most out of it is the automatically scheduled posts. If you are running a business profile, it allows you to schedule image-based posts without any push notifications. All you have to do is to schedule your post and Instagram will make it live.
Ad Targeting Analytical Tool
Instagram has recently introduced Instagram Bookmarks feature that helps users save the post they like most in their private collections. This feature works best to research and find some inspirational ideas. For business point of view, this feature allows followers to save your photo ads, video ads and get in front of the people. Now Instagram is planning to come up with an analytical tool that informs brands which of their products users are bookmarking. The tool helps brands to create retargeting campaigns based on the bookmarked posts. This way, brands can retarget the users who expressed their interest in the product but didn’t take the buying decision. This provides businesses with a great opportunity to target users and increase their sales potential.
Buy Tickets, Make Appointments and Reservations
Instagram’s Action Buttons are a great opportunity for brands that make it easier for users to perform the intended action. With this new feature, now users can make an appointment, book a reservation or even buy tickets directly from the app. These Action Buttons serve as a huge opportunity for businesses that attract new customers and encourage them to complete purchases.
NewCards User Interface
Instagram will be soon introducing the new cards UI which will replace the traditional UI in which users are bound to scroll vertically to view posts. The new card style layout will let users scroll horizontally to view posts similar to Stories where you swipe through items in the feed. In this new card style user interface, the Profile and Direct tabs will be inverted.
Over to You
Though it is a bit trickier to stay up-to-date with every latest update of Instagram, the more you know about the platform and the sooner you adopt the changes, the easier it is to reach your target audience and create a strong online presence. Don’t let your brand get left behind and start improving your marketing strategy to connect with your ideal customers.
