Every time there’s a new feature or tool launched on a social media channel, you are given a new way to share your best moments with people who matter to you. And this is exactly what Instagram has come up with one more time, announcing 3 features that you must use. So as we say, new features, new ways to share. Let’s see how!

1) Live Videos on Instagram Stories

With the launch of Instagram stories in August last year, Instagram gave its users another reason to be more active and to keep on sharing more from their lives. Users on this platform did not only share the best but day-to-day moments also. With stories, they brought life to their images using different drawing tools, text and had fun. They could connect more with their friends having a glance at what they are up to, through the stories that they shared every day. It also gave a boost to the number of daily active users on Instagram.

Instagram took it to another level recently introducing Live Videos on Instagram stories, that allows you to share what you want to, with your friends right NOW for up to an hour. Just open the camera and start live video. Your friends may get the notification that you are live and choose to tune in. Once you are done, your live video will disappear unlike it happens on Facebook, which gives you more comfort of sharing anything anytime. You will see “Live” under the profile picture of anyone you are following if that person is live. You can also check out other exciting live stories happening at that time if you go to “Top Live”. Tune in to watch one of your friends’ live story, swipe right and left to skip and see more. Watch the video below to have a feel.

Marketing Tips – 

1. Go live with authentic ‘not-at-work’ moments of your top executives and also with your team outings.
2. Interact with your followers and build the momentum for pre-launch of a new product. Launch your product ‘right now’ with Instagram live.
3. Show small bites of your after-party (or the wind up) 😀
4. Team up with other brands on Instagram. Convey your gratitude to your followers for an increase in number of followers.
5. Interact with your followers and answer them if they have any questions.
6. Get on a live video with random fun stuff and entice your followers to comment and engage with your stuff.

2) Disappearing photos and videos for groups and individual friends in Instagram Direct

Facebook and Instagram, no doubt, have always been leading in the race and have effectively and successfully leveraged the power of timeline and news feed. What could be the next for them? Yes, you guessed it right! It’s one-to-one communication among friends through new innovations for Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct. But hold on, THIS is not the news!

This time, they enabled users on Instagram to share photos and videos spontaneously with the group of friends that they have created or are part of and with individual friends in Instagram direct. The process is same – open the camera, select ‘send it privately’ instead of start live video, take a photo or video and send it to groups or individual friends. Once the receiver sees the photo/video they’ve received from you, it disappears allowing them to reply immediately or later. Sounds familiar, right? Yes, disappearing messages is a common Snapchat feature, but what’s new here is, that this feature also permits you to see who replayed and took the screenshot. Maintaining everyone’s personal space, it will only allow you to send these disappearing photos and videos to people who follow you and no one else, irrespective of whether your account is public or private. Have a look at this video to know how it works –

Marketing Tips – 

1. Send ‘not-so-promotional’ images and video bites to your followers just to be remembered. Your top followers are your advocates, reward them using this new feature.
2. Use ‘Instagram Account Report’ to know the stats and discover your top followers, the best time to engage etc.
3. Touch base with popular bloggers and industry influencers asking them to review, feature or post about your brand/product to boost your reach and credibility.
4. Provide ahead-of-time exclusive updates.
5. Create a series of videos that talks about different USPs of your product and share them using this new feature one-by-one, keeping your followers engaged. Spread the reviews of your happy customers.

3) Saved posts

Instagram now also gives its users the option to save their favourite posts. This feature will allow them to save a post they see on news feed, to a new private tab in their profile just by a click on the bookmark icon below the post. This new tab is only visible to them. A user can save a post whenever he stumbles upon an interesting post (could be a video or an image) and go back to ‘Saved Posts’ in his profile anytime to see them.

Marketing Tip – 

1. Since now you know that you can be with your followers or prospect customers for a longer time, to remind them about your new product/ service/ feature/ offer/ discount, include a CTA in your images/ videos asking people to ‘Save this post’.

You can also team these features up with a Hashtag contest on Instagram for more virality. Read our article on 6 Tips To Leverage A Global Search Tool ‘Hashtag’ to know more!

Kiran Arora Agarwal

I am a certified and experienced 'Social Media Marketer' with core competency in strategic planning, organic virality, big budget facebook advertisement for various industries having 5+ years of experience in social media. While not at work, I read books, cycle, travel to new places & learn music to express!