Tis the season for social media updates! They’ve been very busy over at Instagram to roll out numerous exciting, user-friendly changes to the platform. Here’s the scoop:
Feed
We’re all quite used to the Feed organization habits enforced by Instagram’s algorithm, which is generally a combination of sorting by most recent (from those you follow) and by data priority (recommended posts). Now, however, you can choose two ways for your Feed to refresh: by Favorites and Following. Choosing “Following” keeps your home feed as is. The new Favorites feature allows you to select your favorite accounts (like your business, your best friends, your favorite influencers), and their newest posts will sort higher. For the full rundown on this feature, check out Instagram’s update here.
Stories
Have you ever lamented that you have to Reply to user’s Stories instead of simply “heart-ing” it like a post? Well, Instagram heard you! You can how Like people’s Stories with simple new button next to the Reply field. Social media managers, remember to update your analytics reports with this new engagement metric!
Messages
Several ways to send messages more seamlessly have been added. You now don’t have to be in the Messenger inbox to reply when a new DM comes in, so you can keep scrolling without tapping back and forth. Also, you can swipe to send a post if you don’t want to bother with a multi-tap process (very reminiscent of the swipe-to-reblog feature on Tumblr’s mobile app). Finally, you can now also see who’s online to chat in a new section at the top of your inbox.
But that’s not all! There are several new features just for group chats, too: poll creation, new themes, music app integrations, and even a “quiet mode” where you can add @silent to your message so that it sends without a notification alert. Check out all the details about fresh Message updates here.
To learn how to take advantage of this knowledge for your Instagram marketing strategies, please feel free to contact us!