If you are a brand or an aspiring influencer, then you are probably already thinking of Instagram to market and grow your brand.
Great choice. But, now what?
Did you know that Instagram has been rolling out new updates at a fast pace for the past few years?
Such robust algorithm changes and the inclusion of new features ask for an even faster adoption if you want to stay relevant, as a business, in your niche.
This blog will cover the recent Instagram updates and new features introduced by the app and will look at how they can affect the marketing on the platform.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Dynamic Avatar profile picture
You can now use your 3D avatar as your Instagram profile picture. When someone visits your profile, it will flip.
This is the first time when Instagram is introducing animated characters to the platform.
You can tap on your profile, then on the “Edit profile” option to make your 3D avatar your profile photo.
Quiet mode
This feature enables users to stay away from the app and do other things they want to do. You can set up a period telling Instagram that you don’t want to use the app during this time.
During this time, you will not receive any notifications of messages, mentions, comments, etc.
Also, other users trying to reach you will know that you are in quiet mode.
You will be able to see every activity, that took place in your absence when you return.
Hidden words
Direct messenger already has this feature. Adding hidden words to your Instagram profile will hide content containing those words.
Instagram will not show images and videos to your Recommendations section containing the hidden words you have added.
Marketers hate seeing a bunch of spam comments from fake accounts impersonating them and luring other users to attractive offers and slipping away with their money.
I know it’s a tedious task to go through the comments section of every video and manually delete those spammy comments or delete accounts.
You can save a lot of time with the ‘hidden words’ feature. You can add common spam phrases like DM me, send me a message, and Send me a message on WhatsApp, to this list and Instagram will automatically remove these comments.
It will encourage real users and true fans to leave original comments and share their experiences.
Multi-select
This feature is a promising tool to clean up your Explore feed from unwanted content.
Long tap on an image or video and select ‘Not interested’ to tell Instagram you want to see such content in your feed.
You can select multiple images and videos at once hence the name. This will enhance the overall user experience of the app.
As marketers, it is handy to clean up useless Reels and posts that are not relevant to your niche or brand goals to laser focus on what you should see in your account to get inspiration and brilliant ideas for your next content piece.
At the same time, creating content for the sake of it would push your audience away and they might decide “I am not interested”.
This could dramatically reduce reach and engagement rates for your content, impacting negatively your brand and marketing goals.
App navigation update
Instagram has publicly announced that its mission in 2023 is to make the app more user-friendly and bring people together around the things they love.
It has announced to make some changes in the main navigation expected to be implemented in February 2023. The shop menu will be removed, a shortcut to creating content will be in the middle, and the Reels creation button will shift to the right.
Shopping features will still be available in Stories, ads, Reels, and feeds.
Instagram’s Focus in 2023
In 2022, Instagram expressed their preference for creating more creator-friendly features that will allow them to make a living with their content.
For 2023, they have a bit different vision while helping the creators’ community, of course.
They are looking to bring people closer around things they share a love for by:
- Inspiring people to be creative
- Helping them discover things they love
- Sparking connections between people
Everyone is excited to see how the platform will evolve over the next 12 months or so following these strategies.
How to make the most of these new changes?
Grow your clout and influence with buy Instagram followers and prepare yourself for bigger and better growth prospects in 2023 and beyond.
Group profiles
Instagram has released a very interesting feature ‘Group Profiles’ to share and connect with your friends and family.
These are private profiles where group members can share stories, posts, and pictures. Only group members will be able to see them and no one outside that profile will get notifications or see the posts.
You can create your Group Profile or can join an existing one.
Whenever a post is shared, you will only get notifications in your Group Profile and not in your Instagram profile.
Brands can create Profiles consisting of their existing customers, for example. This is a great way to nurture them, provide them with useful insights, and make them your greatest advocates.
Candid stories
Social users always cherish the opportunities to share their memorable moments and daily life stories with their friends and family.
Candid Stories is a feature that allows them to share what they are up to with their close friends who have also shared theirs too. These are private stories users can capture and share with their closest friends.
Mute Option
You may experience skipping the posts from a profile but you don’t want to unfollow them either. Plus, you don’t want them to know that you are not getting their posts in your feed.
Enters ‘Mute’ feature. You can choose to stop receiving content from a profile without them knowing while continuing to follow their profile.
Here are simple steps to Mute an account;
For Stories;
- Long press on a Story,
- On the popup window, select ‘Mute’,
- Choose to mute Stories or posts or both
For profile;
- Visit their profile and tap Following,
- Choose Mute,
- Choose to mute their posts or Stories or both
You can reverse the action and can unmute them by tapping the Following and choosing to unmute.
As marketers, we don’t want to be kicked out of the feed of our audience. Consistently providing worthy content, actionable tips, and inspiring positive changes in their lives is a sure way to hit their feed every time and get them to engage with your content.
Final words
While Instagram has a reputation for unrolling new features and updates pretty quickly compared to other social platforms, it does offer challenges to marketers and brands to stay in the game.
With over 2 billion monthly users, Instagram continues to build engaging features for users as well as creators to make the most of the app.
Learning about the new features and updates can help you win at your Instagram marketing goals by crafting an appropriate and effective content marketing strategy and pivoting as needed.
This blog has covered some of the most important updates and features that the app has introduced recently.
We hope adapting to these changes quickly can help you grow even further and attract more followers for your account.
