What’s New on Instagram in 2023: New Features and Updates
In the current times, different markets have different social media networks where they are dominant or platforms that suit their businesses the most. Surprisingly, when Instagram recently surpassed its 2 billion monthly users it was then we were sure that whether it be startups or small businesses – everyone is online and is making the most of the Instagram features.
Table of Content: Instagram Features for Marketers
- What Is New at Instagram?
- 7 Best Instagram Features for Marketers
- Reels – At The Top
- Videos – The Evergreen Format
- Stories and Stickers – The Most Interactive
- Instagram Shops
- Live Sessions
- Carousels
- Stories Highlights
- Automate to Make the Most of Instagram Features as a Marketer
- All in All
- Frequently Asked Questions
The platform was initially used to showcase pretty pictures and get good Instagram engagement on their posts and is now used by various businesses to market their products and services online. Due to an increased competitive pressure created by TikTok, a Chinese video-focused social networking service, Instagram worked on various of its features and introduced new ones to retain its users.
It is safe to say that Instagram is now more focused to help you grow online. Either you are a new business in the market, or you want to strengthen your community, create brand awareness, or even make sales, there’s an Instagram feature to help you achieve your goals.
What Is New at Instagram?
In order to keep its user constantly interested, the app is evolving and experimenting with new Instagram features often now. New features are always on a roll to observe what is in demand, what works out for the users, and what does not. The Instagram algorithm is just not a single algorithm but it is a multi-step process that works to bring the most trending and juiciest content to us. With every new feature launch, these algorithms are affected to keep the newest one on top.
Here are a few Instagram features that rolled out in 2022 so far:
Stories Likes
The latest feature rollout will now change how someone reacts to or likes your stories. Private Story Likes, as the name says, will allow you to heart react to someone’s story; meanwhile, it will not result in sending them a Direct Message automatically. Instead, now there will be a heart icon within the stories window which when tapped, will send a “like” notification to the creator.
Stories Likes will not be public and can only be seen by the story creator.
Your Activity Center
For improved content management within the app, new Instagram features roll out this year including, Your Activity display – here a user will have full liberty to control their content on display. Your Activity center is a feature-full window where you can track the amount of time you have spent on the app, the accounts you have recently interacted with, searches, and the bulk delete option for live images.
The Delete option will enable you to select and delete multiple images at the same time. Or you can archive images you wish to keep but also want them to be removed from the Instagram display for all.
Schedule Instagram Live
After a continuous struggle of reminding people via Instagram stories and feed posts that you will be going live, the Instagram Story feature came up with a display reminder for the upcoming live stream on the creator’s account.
This reminder will have the Live Stream’s basic information on display which will include the topic, the day, date, and time. On tapping the preview, it will open in a pop-up with further information about the event. According to Instagram’s chief, you can add several display reminders on your profile and users can scroll through them.
To keep yourself reminded of an upcoming live session, you can also avail yourself the option of ‘Remind Me’ within the prompt pop-up message.
Instagram Photos Collaboration
There are several secret Instagram tips that can bring exceptional growth to your accounts but this feature is new in the market with a guaranteed boost. Photo collaboration is one of the recently rolled out Instagram features, which allows two accounts to have a joint post.
Initially, the Instagram collaborations were only seen when a post used to be a paid partnership. Now a post created by one user can be seen on the account/feed of the tagged or invited second account too at the same time. Simply click ‘tag person’ and then go for ‘invite a collaborator’ to have them on your post in collaboration.
1.Stories Highlights
This is recent among other Instagram features and highly liked by many including me. We all know that stories disappear in 24 hours but the highlights do not!
Instagram Stories Highlights allow brands to have their most potential story updates to stay longer on the Instagram profile for anyone visiting the business. Instagram saves your Story Highlights at the top of your profile page for followers to have a look and make the most of it. Marketers utilize this feature for highlighting special events covered, for customer reviews to be compiled in one place, quotes or tips compilation, and much more.
Automate to Make the Most of Instagram Features as a Marketer
How many of us plan on starting working on a new task in the next 10 minutes once we are done posting on Instagram and next we know, we are 20 minutes past our target time?
Social media is not only captivating but may take a lot of your time, efficiency, and energy while posting and engaging online, every day. In today’s time creating a social media content calendar for at least up to 3 months to 6 months is an ideal approach to manage social media effortlessly.
But how do stay on time every day with online postings, especially for different time zones?
Social media automation here plays a vital role in aligning everything to maintain content consistency, save time, and connect with potential users. Management tools could be quite pricey at times but a free scheduling tool with a feature-full dashboard can be very handy, like Social Champ.
I bring you the top 4 Instagram features for marketers that can be used effortlessly with a social media automation tool:
1.Schedule to Never Miss Out
A well-equipped publishing dashboard with all handy integrations is not what the Instagram app offers, but with Social Champ, you can make the most of creating Feed Posts, Stories, or Carousels.
Instagram features can make the most bye searching and uploading trending images from the desktop, stock images, or image hosting services (Imgur & Flickr), adding up to 30 hashtags in one go using the Hashtag Manager, viewing a preview of the entire post, analyzing sentiments on the go, and much more.
Schedule content ahead of time individually or in bulk on the best time to post on Instagram and get higher reach, impressions, and engagement without the hassle of being online or setting up reminders.
2.Drive Traffic by Monitoring Insights In-Depth
Insight feature is great when it comes to providing analytical details about each Post, Story, or Reel posted online on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Analytical metrics allow us to keep a track of what content is working for the brand and which ones need to be taken down and replaced for good.
Social media campaigns if not monitored from time to time can result in online trash on display. A comparative analysis of Instagram features is the need of time which can be super handy for businesses to produce better and trending content. Social Champ, unlike Instagram, provides in-depth monitoring of analytics per day, per week, or per month with 365 days or on custom dates for metrics undefined by Instagram itself.
An automation tool will provide not only the tracking capability of Instagram metrics but will enable the ability to download presentable, custom reports in PDF and CSV formats with beautiful graphs.
3.Better Visibility with Instagram First Comment
Social media managers simply love one specific feature out of all Instagram features when it comes to creating clean and presentable yet trending posts – Instagram First Comment.
The habit of adding a bunch of hashtags within the captions along with content looks messy, overdone, and distracting. When the platform’s algorithm was understood better, it was realized that trending hashtags if added within caption or in comments may drive similar content reach and impressions. The concept of Instagram’s first comment initiated here and then followed by many marketers online to trend and catch as many eyes as possible.
But this is a manual process that now can be automated with Social Champ. Create individual posts or in bulk (for up to 3 years) with an Instagram First Comment on the run and schedule it, to find the images posted along with the first comment automatically. Tadaa!
4.Organize and Streamline Content
As we initially discussed, the importance of creating a content calendar ahead of time can be super helpful to have the right flow of content online. Instagram itself does not support a business feature to support scheduling or have an in-app organizer.
Instagram scheduling can be done from meta’s Creator Studio but neither does it support first comments nor have an organizer with a calendar view front. Champs meanwhile can make the most with a visually aesthetic all-in-one social media calendar to streamline all their scheduled and posted content. Social Champ’s Calendar feature allows a person to create, edit, schedule, view or delete a post from a single space in a grid view filtered on the basis of day, date, and time.
All in All
Most of the marketing is now done online, while a boost in eCommerce stores can also be seen with the changing times. To drive sales, to create brand story and awareness, and to steadfast the market competition it is important to jump on the social media bandwagon.
Instagram being the second most downloaded social media app in 2021 is a hub for marketers from top global brands to a vast majority of small businesses. It was an initial step to cater to the masses with a feature-rich professional account that now has new Instagram features rolling out every now and then. All the features mentioned in this article individually have great potential for business and marketing purposes, but using them in combination and making them work together can produce the best results for your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What Are The Main Features of Instagram?
A. There are various new features rolled out by Instagram over the years to help marketers generate sales online but the main highlights would definitely be: Instagram Shops, Stories Stickers, Instagram Reels, and Live Sessions.
Q. How to use Instagram Reels?
A. The process is very simple:
Tap on the plus sign and record a video or upload a pre-recorded video.
Choose trending music for it or use your original audio.
Add text and effects to the video.
Set the speed for your video.
Preview the Reel and add captions.
Add trending hashtags.