Not content with stealing Snapchat’s thunder, it looks like Instagram’s set to take on Pinterest with its new Collections feature.
Since last year, you’ve had the ability to save or bookmark any photo or video on Instagram that you want to look at again, but this feature seems to have been incredibly underused – in a recent blog, Instagram itself revealed that only 46% of Instagrammers have saved ‘at least one post’ – we wonder how many of those 46% have only saved one post and if it was by accident (it’s very easy to do, trust us).
Building on saved posts, the new Collections feature allows you to sort your saved posts into, you guessed it, collections. Like your saved posts, Collections are currently only visible to you and so there’s no need to be embarrassed (go on, start a Harry Styles Collection, no one will ever know!).
To start your collection, you’ll need the latest version of Instagram (we’re expecting devices to be updated throughout this week) and a photo you want to save. Then it’s incredibly simple:
- Hold your finger on the bookmark icon underneath the image
- Click on the + icon on the screen that pops up
- Name your collection and voila!
You can access your saved photos and collections at any time by clicking the bookmark icon on your Instagram profile page.
The possibilities for Instagram Collections are endless – you could use them to:
- Organise a holiday: all the best holiday photos happen on Instagram, right? Well now you can save photos of all the places you want to visit on your upcoming trip.
- Create a visual shopping list: be it fashion or beauty, Instagram is one of the best places to hear about the latest trends and products, so the ability to save everything you want to order on pay day into a collection sounds like a wallet-busting dream!
- Save your favourite photos from a wedding or party: any celebration worth its salt has a (hopefully) unique hashtag these days. What better way to keep the best photos from your wedding close at hand than in an Instagram Collection?
- Put together your own recipe book: Imagine a curated list of all your favourite @ChefClubTV cheese-tastic recipe videos?? Heaven.
- Get inspired: as marketers we’re always looking for something that sparks our imagination, or demonstrates an amazing use of formats. Now we can organise our own lists of content we want to aspire to or beat.
It’ll be interesting to see how Collections fare with an audience that’s generally younger than Pinterest’s core users, and we’re anticipating that, if they take off, you’ll soon be able to share your Collections with others (and perhaps even follow Collections you love).
