Meaningful Instagram Updates for Businesses
Whether you post daily on Instagram for your business or a few times a week, if you want to get the most out of one of the fastest growing platforms to reach your target audience, keeping up with the ever-changing nuisances is a must!
We know that staying attuned to all the social media technologies can get overwhelming given the fast-paced nature of updates. This is why we put together a brief and essential summary, based on Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference. You do know that Facebook owns Instagram, right?
Use this as a guidepost to what is current and coming soon within the Instagram environment to help you market your products or services in the most compelling way for your business.
Instagram Business Statistics To Know:
Instagram is a proven marketing powerhouse for both B2B and B2C businesses and is consistently becoming more useful for businesses.
- 60% of Instagram users
- 47% of US adults
- Instagram has grown in time spent on the platform
- 8 out of 10 accounts follow businesses
- 200 million Instagrammers
- 130 million Instagrammers
With this in mind, we thought you should know about the most recent Instagram updates shaping the future of the app.
Instant Shopping On Instagram:
While shopping on Instagram has been available for a few years now, Adam Mossieri, Instagram’s CEO, recently announced that there will soon be a, “fully native checkout experience” on Instagram. Meaning shoppers won’t have to leave the app to select products and pay. This will be available for brands as well as for certain creators.
Currently, there are a number of businesses and creators beta testing the new checkout and reporting back on efficiencies before a wider roll out. Look how seamless it will be:
This change will be especially impactful for direct to consumer (D2C) brands. Many experts agree that in-app checkout could improve and accelerate the customer journey, allowing for higher conversion rates. In addition, this change may allow companies who use influencers to more accurately track the effectiveness and ROI from influencer brand campaigns.
Private Like Count:
Speaking of brand campaigns, Instagram seems to be on a mission to rebrand itself as having a less competitive, less stressful atmosphere. To accomplish this, the app is testing the ‘hide like counter’ feature and making follower counts less prominent. The hope is that by making like counts private the focus will be more on meaningful content, engagement, and inspiration without the judgment of how many likes a brand may have.
This may sound strange to you, especially if you currently gauge the success of your brand’s influencers partially on like counts for their posts. Instagram knows this and seems to be focusing on how to convey creator value to audiences in new, organic ways.
In our opinion, it’s great to know that Instagram, an already proven marketing platform, is prioritizing meaningful, uninfluenced content, so the Instagram user can truly be a judge of the content’s value.
If you’d like to improve your Instagram presence or if you just got inspired to expand your business reach on the IG platform, let’s talk!
Instagram Stories:
What struck us after pouring through the reports from Facebook’s F8 Conference were the new, attractive ways for users to quickly create content in Instagram Stories.
Instagram Stories is a very strong way to get noticed on Instagram. As of January 2019, there are 500 million daily active users. But sheer numbers aren’t the most important thing to know about stories today. Stories’ ease of use should be a reason for everyone to boost engagement through the feature.
Recently announced at the F8 Conference were additional camera features such as the Create Mode, seen below. Create mode makes it easy for anyone to utilize bold colors, polls, questions, and countdowns, giving followers improved ways to interact with a brand.
If you aren’t already using Instagram Stories to share updates and inspiration with your followers, now is the time to easily create them with the swipe of your finger!
While stories are fun, light and easy, if you truly want to professionally support and grow your brand, consider hiring design and branding professionals for the best possible outcomes.
Coming up with beautiful and valuable content on a daily basis can be very time consuming for brands. Which is why at ParkerWhite, we have a team that executes engaging content for our clients. As you strategize the future growth of your brand, make sure to keep in mind how it will include Instagram’s audience. At ParkerWhite, we are constantly keeping a pulse on the latest updates on all social media platforms and would love to answer any questions you may have about Instagram for business – or just nerd-out on new updates!
