3 New Instagram Features That Business Owners Should Know About
Over the last few months, Instagram has been rolling out a bunch of new features on their platform.
You may have noticed some changes happening on your own accounts, although it often happens randomly and it’s not always clear why some people get certain features before others. If you ensure your Instagram app is up to date, you should now have access to the features I’m talking about in this post.
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1. Instagram reels
What is Instagram reels?
Instagram Reels is essentially Instagram’s answer to TikTok, which has been starting to rival Instagram for short-form, entertainment-focused video content over the last year or so. Instagram Reels are 15 second videos that are created via the Instagram Stories area on the app, and can be made up of multiple short clips stitched together (either filmed directly within Reels or uploaded).
The main draw of this feature is its editing abilities, which allow you to add backing music, speed up or slow down clips, add effects, as well as add text, gifs and stickers in ‘post-production’ too.
Instagram Reels are showing up in the Instagram Explore page now, and when searching using hashtags, and when you tap on them you can then swipe up and down to scroll through a feed of Reels that Instagram thinks you’ll be interested in based on the algorithm.
If you create your first Reel, a new ‘Reels’ section will appear on your profile, next to your grid, that allows people to swipe through and see the Reels you’ve created.
Read this 👉🏼 5 Tips for Using Instagram Reels
Why Should business owners care?
Because Reels are searchable and you can add hashtags to the caption to help your video get found (and because Instagram could serve your Reel up to people as they scroll through if they think it’s relevant), Reels offer the opportunity to have your content found and seen by more people, increasing the overall reach of your account.
This type of short-form video is perfect for sharing valuable, engaging content - either by providing entertainment by injecting your business’ personality into the content or showing some behind-the-scenes insights, or by sharing educational content with highly actionable takeaways.
2. Pinned comments
What are pinned comments?
You now have the ability to pin a comment on your post (as long as it’s a comment from someone else and not you) to appear at the top of the comments, above everyone else regardless of what time other comments have been posted.
Instagram has brought in this feature as a way to help brands to create recognition for their fans and followers who are providing value and additional information in the comments section, and to reward engagement.
Why Should business owners care?
You can come at this feature from two perspectives:
Encourage your followers to leave engaging, high value comments on your posts by rewarding them with a ‘pin’ in their comment, which will bump their comment up to the top and get it seen by more people. You can also deliberately ‘pin’ a comment that has a large discussion thread underneath it, so that more of your followers see the discussion and want to get involved. This will help your overall account engagement.
When large accounts and leaders in your industry (or accounts that your target audience interact with) share a new post, go and leave a really high value comment on that post. If it’s adding to a discussion or adding helpful information, the account owner might ‘pin’ the comment and then your account will get seen by more people who may hopefully go and follow you.
Read more 👉🏼4 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Reach
3. New Instagram Stories fonts
What are the new instagram Stories fonts?
You may have noticed when you go to create your Instagram Stories that you have some new fonts and styles available when adding text! Over the past few months, Instagram has slowly been rolling out these new fonts to our accounts and now we have a new selection to choose from.
You can also select a font and choose to use it’s ‘alternative version’ too by tapping the ‘A’ icon at the top of the screen, which gives you further design options as well.
Why Should business owners care?
It may not seem like much of a big deal, but having more styling options within the Instagram Stories app itself means that as brands we have more opportunity to personalise our Stories and make them fit in more with the rest of our brand touchpoints.
I know that some people prefer to create Stories templates in Canva or Photoshop first and then upload them, but I personally prefer a less curated look and prioritise making it easy for myself to create content spontaneously and on the fly. Therefore, having more font options within Instagram means I can make my Stories look even better but without having to spend the extra time using a template.
Read More 👉🏼 Why use Instagram Stories for your business?
