Instagram is a huge part of our marketing strategy as experts looking to scale our brand and businesses. The platform is home to over one billion active users including creators, influencers, and marketers, with strategic updates and features that help improve user experience and expand creativity.

Due to the social media market’s competitive nature, Instagram has seen many upgrades in the past decade. These updates are designed to keep the platform easy to use, fun, and profitable, for the most part of it.

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For over a decade, the social media giant has been working consistently to offer value to its users, regardless of how they intend to utilize it. Many Instagram users boost Instagram posts and incorporate various marketing strategies to get their audience’s attention and grow their following.  But since Instagram is ever-evolving, to stay relevant, you need to get familiar with its tools and features. However, keeping up with these updates can be quite burdensome, especially as a marketer new to the platform and willing to incorporate Instagram into your social media marketing strategy.

To help you catch up with the recent trends and up your Instagram marketing strategy, we’ll be discussing 10 resourceful features every marketing expert should know.

1.   Interactive Bios

You can now get creative when constructing your bio on Instagram. The platform allows all users to include functional and interactive elements that are both attractive and relatable to their target audience: both existing and potential ones.

Instagram allows you to add a clickable link to your official website or other social platforms, a hashtag that exposes your page to a community of interested audiences, and account mentions of users on the same platform.

With Instagram’s interactive bio, you can give your audience a good first impression, provide key information about your brand, and eventually convert visitors to followers, and followers to customers.

2.   Live Rooms

Potential customers love to see and interact with the face behind the brand. It builds a certain level of credibility. With Instagram Live Rooms, you can communicate with your existing and potential customers.

As a marketer, you can use it to announce a rebranding, new product, or sales that’ll pique the interest of your target audience. Instagram also allows you to invite up to three other users to your live session. So, you can invite other experts or influencers to host webinars and Q&A sessions.

3.   Partnership and Collaboration Features

Instagram now has a couple of partnership and collaboration features that make it easy for brands to connect with influencers and other brands alike. First, it features a sub-folder called Partnership messages, you can find it in the Direct Messages tab. With this feature, brands and influencers can prioritize important messages and manage branded content partnerships more easily.

You will also find other tools like the Brand Collabs Manager and paid partnership in Reels, which help improve how brands and influencers build profitable relationships.

4.   Filters

Give your brand a consistent tone and style that suits its image and is aesthetically pleasing to visitors and customers with Insta filters. These filters help you tell your story and represent what your brand stands for.

Instagram has also introduced AR story filters (Augmented Reality) that allow you to add fun, custom filters to your story. These AR filters can be used to create awareness for your brand or a product launch.

5.   Story Highlights & Pinned Posts

Instagram has recently made an upgrade with story highlights and pinned posts. Stories used to last 24 hours and brands were only allowed to post these stories as much as they needed it to stay up. But with story highlights, you can take your audience on a journey through your brand history, products, and events that have been held in the past. Story highlights can be customized with captions to indicate what journey or products your audience would love to see.

Pinned posts also serve the same function. Instagram has introduced the pinned post feature, with a limit of three pinned posts per page. You can now showcase your most beautiful or representative products/services. So, your audience doesn’t have to scroll for a long time to see what you have to offer/sell.

6.   Story Stickers and Quizzes

Engage your audience with the stickers and quizzes feature. Get to know what they like or would rather have you change to give them a better experience. These features could also serve as an insightful survey if used right.

The function of these features also extends to creating a certain visual and audio appeal for every story you post. You can include other stickers like Music, Countdown, Poll, Question, Hashtag, Mention, Emoji Slider, and Customizable links when the need arises.

7.   Carousels

Carousels help you display more than one product information more than once. This is especially useful when you need to reach out to a larger audience at a go. You wouldn’t have to promote each image individually, but all at once.

This feature also helps brands to educate their potential customers. You can tell your story with creative formats, let customers know more about your products and services and many more. Carousels basically help you spread important information about your brand.

8.   Gift Cards

Gift cards allow followers to show their support and appreciation for their favorite brands. The gift card stickers show how resourceful your brand has been and helps boost sales.

These gift card stickers also help followers promote your brand. They can reshare these stickers on their stories, which in turn help create awareness for your brand. However, these stickers only work for creators and business accounts.

9.   Cross-App Management

Facebook Messenger and Instagram now work in sync. You can interact with customers on Facebook Messenger, and share posts and stories to your Facebook right from your Instagram account. To do so, you need the latest version of both apps and a change in your privacy settings.

10.  Shopping Features

If you run an online store, the Instagram shopping features will be super helpful in promoting your brand. Businesses can now tag their products in pictures that’ll lead interested viewers to your product page when clicked upon. This also comes in handy when brands partner with creators who have access to this feature, as it is limited to only a few creators.

For a better shopping experience, Instagram also features a checkout that allows customers to make their purchases without leaving the app. This is only available to businesses in the United States and creators who own an Instagram shop.

Conclusion

Instagram has evolved to be way more than another social media platform for keeping in touch and passing time with interesting content. Now, it has become a business hub for brands and creators to boost their awareness and make a profit. With these features, you too can increase the visibility of your brand and help it grow.

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