Ringing in the Changes at Instagram
The app that many of us know and love was founded in 2010 and has over 800 million active users. Throughout the last seven years, Instagram has shared over 40 billion photos, and most recently the app has seen 95 million photos uploaded daily.
So, should your business join Instagram?
With over 200 million users visiting the profile of a business every day, the photos and content you share can be widely viewed; and it’s not just photos as videos receive twice as much engagement. 59% of users are between 18 – 29 years old, and 17% of teens say that Instagram is the most important social media site.
The site features aspirational and highly visual content that delivers strong engagement as users like and comment on posts and with the introduction of Instagram Stories there are even more ways to interact with your audience and gain conversions.
What changed in 2017?
2017 was the year of Instagram Stories, with added features including stickers, text overlay and even voting polls; so it wasn’t a surprise when December’s updates saw yet more enhancements.
Now, you don’t have to say goodbye to your favourite Instastory moments; you can create an ‘Instagram Story Highlights’ album which sits underneath your bio. Name each one, choose a cover picture and enjoy them again and again.
Forgot to add it to your highlight before it expired after 24 hours?
Don’t stress, Instagram now backs them up in your archive so you can reminisce and repost whenever you like.
Going live on Instagram? Many influencers use this platform to host or promote Q&As but now, thanks to live requests, your audience can request to join and appear on your live stream to ask their question. Meaning there’s no racing to catch the comments that are gone quicker than you can read them, leaving you more time to spend engaging directly with your audience. Be careful with this one though as once you’re live, you’re LIVE!
So what more can we hope for in 2018?
Instagram is FINALLY testing out a Regram button! This long overdue feature will remove the need for exporting photos into third party apps just to repost them back onto your feed.
This addition is a huge deal for businesses online as user-generated content is essential for online marketing, but is also great news for those wanting to share their friend’s photos and enter repost competitions.
The big question will be how to legally and easily gain permission to repost other peoples’ content.
To avoid a PR disaster, we will be keeping an eye on the best practices coming into play in 2018 and we’ve been impressed with AirBnB which has a pretty solid system in place: commenting on the photo they wish to share to ask for permission and directing the generator to their Terms of Use for user-generated content. Should they accept the T&Cs, the generator should simply reply to the comment with #airbnbphoto and the requested URL to grant permission.
You can now follow Black Vanilla on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Find us, follow us and tell us what you think.
Was this blog helpful?