Instagram Updates: September 2019

Recently, our favorite social media platform made some significant updates. In this week’s blog, we’ll shed some light and de-mystify what exactly these updates mean for you and your business.

Extra features in Stories

Digital marketers have seen for quite some time now the importance that Instagram is putting on content like Stories and IGTV. This content provides a way for brands to be more transparent with their audiences. And, therefore, it makes sense that these types of content are getting more algorithmic importance placed on them. At the core of its purpose, Instagram has publicly said that it strives to cultivate genuine communities and facilitate organic engagement.

With this in mind, a few new features have been added to Story content. For one, Instagram has added a “chat” feature that allows brands and businesses to create group chats around a specific topic. This feature is aimed mostly at brands that have a large following and are looking to engage with their larger audiences in a more meaningful way than just DMs. Wildly Creative Tip: when creating Instagram content, ask yourself if this is creating a genuine relationship with your followers. This should be your guiding principle for your content creation strategy.

Another key feature that was recently added is the ability to “swipe up” for influencers with a smaller following. Before this update, only accounts with 10k followers or more could link to a website in their stories. This allowed brands to sponsor IG content including Story posts and get direct website traffic from it. However, as influencer marketing grows, accounts with less than 10k followers have also become desirable for brands. These influences, dubbed “micro-influencers” can now link directly to websites. This gives brands the ability to collaborate with micro-influencers for more affordable influencer marketing campaigns that can still be measurable and deliver ROI.

More E-commerce Functionality

In the past few years, Instagram has not only become a destination for marketing and building a brand, but it has become a destination for online brands. Not only do brick and mortar brands have Instagram profiles that are shop-able, but there is also a rise of digitally native brands who are taking advantage of e-commerce functionalities as well. Some of the new e-commerce features include shop-able ads and transforming the Instagram platform into a shopping destination.

Instagram is slowly transitioning the shop-able features on IG profiles into one-stop-shops for consumers. Although this feature is limited for now, bigger brands like Nike have been given the ability to let consumers shop, add to their wishlist, and even purchase right in the app. Without leaving the app, IG can become a destination instead of a third-party when it comes to consumer conversions. This is crucial for brands who are trying to optimize their IG accounts, and keeping your Facebook shop has become even more important than before.

Fake Followers: Zero Tolerance Policy

Recently, Instagram has also become more strict about brands and businesses to “buy” followers and likes. As the algorithm becomes more and more sophisticated, IG has less tolerance for communities that are not genuine. While there are a million services out there that promise to grow your following overnight for money, don’t be fooled. Even if a software can buy you followers now, in each round of updates it becomes easier to detect this kind of behavior. Instead of taking the “easy way out”, work with us to grow your following in an organic way that will serve your business.