Your update on Insta’s latest updates! – Propel Digital
Your update on Insta’s latest updates!

By Lauren Morton

Your update on Insta’s latest updates!

Ahh, Instagram, it continues to inspire us, entertain us and also completely mind-boggle every user. 

Flashback to when Instagram was first created, the photo-sharing app of the future where every second photo had the valencia filter over it. The simple life, right? Well, fast forward 9 years and the platform has completely changed. From reels to guides and everything in between it can be so hard to navigate! 

In recent months, there have been many changes on the platform with the aim to improve usability. As we live on Instagram daily, we thought it might be time to update you on some of the newest features as the changes begin to come into effect. 

 

No longer a square photo-sharing app

So, you know how we mentioned a little earlier that Instagram was a photo-sharing app? Well, think again! See when it was first created in 2012 it was just that, a simple photo-sharing app that turned (almost) everyone into a photographer. In 2013 they introduced video posts and has since added stories, IGTV, Lives, and lastly Reels. 

According to Adam Mosseri (Instagram’s Company Head), the app will now focus more on video content rather than photos because people – according to research – use the app for entertainment. So what does this mean for those who solely share images? Well it means you may need to look at capitalising on reels. 

 

Reels can be 60sec long

It can be so annoying to come up with a reel idea, plan it out and film it only for it to not fit into the dedicated 15 to 30 second time limit. Well, now that Instagram is focused more on video, they have now increased the limit to 60 seconds – woohoo! This is a positive for businesses as it means you can get a little more into those reels without having to turn to IGTV!

 

Advertising in Reels

Now with Reels being, let’s face it… KING, Instagram has released the ability to have Reels as an ads placement! The video can be up to 30 seconds long, people can interact with the ad and it will include the call to action button. 

 

Sharing posts to stories

Sharing your posts to stories is a great way to attract more of your audience to engage with your content. Soon, however, it might become a little bit more tricky to share directly to your stories. In a new update users will have to use the new ‘Re-Share’ sticker to share their posts encouraging them to become more creative with their stories. 

 

You can see that the new process will show you recently viewed, saved and posts including reels. Simply click the post or reel you want to share and it will appear. It gives you the ability to have an image in the background and share your post. The options are endless!

 

Expands tracking data on analytics

When the features like Reels were introduced back in late 2020, we were not given the opportunity to see traceable data within the app. It made it difficult to see how many people had actually viewed the content or taken action. With a new update, we are now able to see in depth, the accounts, actions and impressions, not only our reels but our posts and stories have gauged. We are able to now drill down to 7 days or even 30 days and find our best performing content over that time period. It’s a great way to get an understanding of the type of content that your audience engages with.

 

No more ‘swipe up’ links

No longer will you need to reach 10K followers to receive a ‘swipe up’ link on you Insta Stories! The features has been retired as of Aug 30th and in it’s place will be a ‘link sticker’ – a tappable sticker that can be accessed via your story tools and will link to an external website!

 

There are so many updates out and so many more to come but here are a few of the ones we thought were pretty interesting and cool. So go on, try them, we know you want to! If you need any help feel free to reach out, we’d be more than happy to help you out!