The latest updates recently announced by Instagram have it looking like a direct TikTok competitor. Nonetheless, it’s important for businesses to keep up with—and use—the new tools available to the social media platform.
A full-screen feed, much akin to TikTok, is currently being tested by Instagram, furthering its plan to put video front and center. Photos, however, “remain an important part of Instagram, and as part of these tests we’re working on the best way to create, share, and enjoy them in a full-screen feed,” wrote the Instagram business team on its blog. The platform says it plans to listen to user feedback during the testing period to ultimately decide what to launch.
If you’ve been seeing a lot of recommended content from accounts you don’t follow on your main feed, plan to see more: In-feed recommendations, based on data including previously engaged with posts, accounts followed, and interactions are ways Instagram reportedly helps users connect with new businesses. If users see something they don’t like, they are encouraged to provide feedback by tapping the “…” in the upper-right-hand corner of the post.
In a continued effort to focus on its Reels feature (Instagram reports its users spend 20% of their time on the app using Reels and also says that’s its fastest-growing format), a number of updates have been made to offer users and businesses more ways to engage with their audiences.
Templates, which feature preloaded audio and clip placeholders, make it easy for beginners to add and trim their business’s clips to evoke popular Reels styles. Reels are now available in 90-second clips, an increase that allows for longer stories. New sound effects let creators emphasize their content in a number of ways, and an audio import feature allows for audio from any video in a camera roll to be added to a Reel. Finally, the popular stickers from stories (such as Poll, Emoji Slider, and Quiz) are now available in Reels, adding another facet to their engagement.
For more information on the updates, visit Instagram’s business blog.
Image courtesy of Instagram
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