May 24, 2018
Earlier this month, Facebook spoke of some very exciting planned updates for Instagram to be rolled out throughout 2018. Given the platform’s Stories feature now has 300M active daily users alone, viewing organic and brand-based content, it makes absolute sense for substantial investment.
It really is the perfect time for both B2C and B2B brands to leverage the wide range of marketing abilities of the platform. It allows for a variety of different campaigns such as awareness, traffic to a site, app installs and even lead generation. We recently shared a lot of information on why we think B2B brands, in particular, should join the bandwagon. Watch this video – it’ll all make sense. (https://immediatefuture.co.uk/blog/instagrams-becoming-a-major-player-in-b2b-marketing/)
The updates brands should look out and start planning for:
- Custom Filters– Creators, influencers, and brands will be able to create their own custom Instagram filters using Facebook’s AR Studio. They’ll be debuting these with a number of partners: Ariana Grande, BuzzFeed, Kylie Jenner, and the NBA, among others.
- Third Party Integration- Users will now be able to use a ‘Share to Stories’ feature from third-party apps. So far, we’ve heard of Spotify and Go-Pro. When they’re listening to playlists, songs or capturing footage, users can share them straight to their Stories. There is huge, huge potential for brands here, especially e-commerce brands. For example, brands could get customer feedback before a product purchase.
- Deep Links in Stories– If you’re selling products on different platforms, simply add links to your stories to all of your followers. These deep links will direct users to apps such as Amazon- a much more pleasant shopping experience than using the swipe up feature before.
There have also been a number of smaller updates to improve user experience:
–Embed posts: allows users to take a post from their Instagram feed and embed it directly into one of their Stories.
–A mute function: an option to mute profiles, enabling users to stop seeing updates from people without having to unfollow them.
–Insights- taking part in the time-well-spent movement, users will have access to data on the time they spend on Instagram.
As Instagram continues to considerably impact Snapchat’s growth, it is well worth it to keep the platform and their upcoming updates front of mind in your planning and strategy.