What a time, what a time! Instagram rolled out three new features we are pretty thrilled about. Here's the skinny on these latest updates and how we're seeing them serve our clients.
1. You now have a choice of whether you see other accounts’ like and view count. You may also now hide your own like/view numbers from the public view.
Motivated to protect mental health and increase focus on genuine engagement, Instagram has been testing this feature for two years.
The company stated it originally started testing this idea to reduce the anxiety and embarrassment that surrounds posting content on the social network. That is, people would stress over whether their post would receive enough likes to be deemed “popular”.
This problem was particularly difficult among Instagram’s younger users who care much more about what their peers think to the point that they would take down posts that didn’t receive “enough” likes.
During the testing phase Instagram disabled the feature completely on some accounts, but now the new option allows users to decide what works best for them.
Facebook has since confirmed that it will begin testing this on their platform as well.
A overarching benefit and one we're seeing across our clients' social media accounts is that hiding like/view counts reduces the sort of ‘herd mentality’ that drives people to like things that are considered popular vs. judging the content for themselves.
2. Reels Analytics & IG Live Analytics
This is a popular one for our fellow marketing experts, social media managers and Instagram-savvy business owners.
In a press release, Instagram stated that this major upgrade would ensure “creators and businesses can understand how their content is performing.”
IG Reels Analytics: users can now see metrics including Plays, Accounts Reached, Likes Comments, Saves and Shares. These are available in both the Insights tab and for individual Reels.
IG Live Analytics: users will now be able to see the number of Accounts Reached, Peak Concurrent Viewers, Comments & Shares.
“We have been inspired by the ways our community has embraced these content formats and want to make sure creators and businesses can understand how their content is performing.”
From Front & Center's vantage point, more data-driven insight always makes for a clearer understanding of what's working and what isn't across our clients.
3. A link sticker is in the works to replace the swipe up links.
This was first mentioned weeks ago on Twitter from hackers who used reverse engineering to see what these platforms were testing. Word on the street, Instagram has already started testing this feature out on some accounts.
Previously, a tiny arrow and text prompt would appear at the bottom of a Story and users would have to perform an upwards swiping motion in order to open the link. The new link sticker would be more visible and can be added anywhere on the story.
The new link sticker shows viewers the first part of the destination link - giving more transparency.
In order to add link stickers to your Instagram Stories, you need to meet the following eligibility requirements: Be a Business or Creator account and have more than 10K followers.
For out clients, we're mainly on the lookout for this new feature hitting select accounts along with helping others close to those eligibility requirements meet the mark.
Although we are currently at capacity for full social media management, Front & Center is still here to help you and your business be a social butterfly! Ask us about our social media strategy consults and Canva template creation packages today.
