THE LATEST INSTAGRAM PLATFORM UPDATES
To understand the future of Instagram as a platform, it’s vital to recognise the key users that the platform has in mind when building new features. As outlined recently by Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram, most development teams are focusing on the following:
1. Young people, as culture goes to where the youth is. As any tech provider will tell you; futureproofing your platform comes from listening to the next generation. You only need to look at early-stage social platforms that refused to diversify (Bebo, MySpace, Twitter to a degree) to see how it stagnates growth and usage over time.
2. Creators, as they’ve seen a huge shift in power from institutions to individuals across all industries. Sports is becoming more about athletes than teams, journalists are writing independently of the mainstream media. Instagram are thinking about influencers in every facet of the meaning with this second category.
The platform updates that have been announced across May and June of 2021 reflect these audience segments and the unifying factor of the updates brings a new level of transparency, as well as opportunities for brand building.
From a cynical perspective, it’s clearly a move to anticipate influencers beginning to migrate to other platforms, or de-prioritising Instagram as a place to house their creativity if they aren’t earning money or see decreasing returns from Instagram. You only need to look at the rapid creation of the “Reels” tool (meaning Instagram currently overservice on the video front) as a means to stop losing audiences to TikTok, to realise how proactive Instagram can be when it has to be.
FEATURES AVAILABLE NOW:
Reels Insights
Now that audiences (and brands) have become a little less apprehensive using Reels, as is always Instagram’s strategy with new features, they’ve now bolstered the option with stronger insights to help brands make it commercially viable. Along with Instagram Live, influencers will now be able to access the same level of insights available on other surfaces like grid posts, Stories and IGTV.
For Reels, Instagram will now provide data on Total Plays, Accounts Reached, Likes, Comments, Saves, and Shares.
For Instagram Live broadcasts, users will be able to access data on Accounts Reached, Peak Concurrent Viewers, Comments, and Shares.
This makes Reels significantly more attractive to brands for paid partnership deliverables. As the newest content vertical on Instagram, Reels isn’t completely saturated so influencers have been keen to use Reels as deliverables so they can stand out, but until now the payoff for brands has been limited as they have had little clarity on its commercial standing (compared to other options).
Deeper Insights into Reach
Alongside the new insights into Reels and Live (which will also feed into overall Account Insights) Instagram has also expanded Reach breakdowns into new details about the specific accounts reached and which content formats are working best for your account in real time.
A common complaint from content creators has been about decreasing reach and engagement on their content, so this (alongside the new monetisation features) is part of the platform’s efforts to move performance focus away from reach alone. In simple terms: it’s quality over quantity.
This will be a useful tool for potential brand partners to use when planning activations with influencers, particularly when maximum reach is a campaign KPI.
Branded Content Tools
Rolling out in the next few weeks, influencers can tag two brands in a single piece of branded content and each brand will be able to see the other brand tagged. This is important to remember from a contracting perspective as up to now brands have had automatic exclusivity within branded content, whereas now influencers can reference more than one. Brands can also give influencers pre-approval to be able to use the Paid Partnership function.
Creator Shops
Personal Instagram accounts can now link a native Instagram shop to sell their own merchandise. Making the creation of shops easier will be a huge advantage to anyone who has tried (and struggled) to manage products via the current system, which relies on Facebook’s Business Manager, a clunky system which leaves a lot to be desired – and doesn’t fit with the easy-breezy functionality that has become the norm on Instagram.
New Tools to Allow Users to Control their Individual Experiences, Including Hiding Post Likes
Instagram have also launched a set of features orientated around controlling the feed experience. You can now choose to either hide likes on your own posts or hide likes on other people’s posts. This means that underneath posts it will show the username of one person that liked the post, followed by “…and others”. Remember that even if you don’t select this for your own account, your audiences may have chosen to.
Users can also hide message requests, turn off comments and only share content with select groups. Instagram have said that influencers can decide whether they want to use each piece of content an opportunity to make a point or a time to fuel up your community and prompt a back-and-forth discussion.
DMs
With the aim to make the DM experience as positive as possible, Instagram have introduced the ability to turn off DMs from people you don’t know and add a list of “hidden words” that flags up triggering messages. This is no doubt an extension of their anti-bullying work which was launched in 2020 with great success. It’s worth noting that much like the option to stop seeing likes, Instagram is putting the responsibility of limiting exposure to harmful content back to the users themselves (as it is most likely too much to navigate from their end with the volume of content in question).
FEATURES CURRENTLY IN TEST PHASE:
Native Affiliate Tool
This is maybe the most exciting addition to Instagram’s suite of features from an influencer’s perspective. It has been rumoured to be coming for years, and this is the first time Instagram have officially confirmed a move into affiliate marketing. Designed to help creators discover new products and see monetary benefit when their followers make purchases through Instagram, it’s a revolutionary move to have this housed within the platform.
External affiliate marketing platforms like rewardStyle, AWin and Rakuten have been the driving force helping influencers make money from their content, and Instagram has historically been one of the best places for influencers to monetise. With the native affiliate tool, influencers can get paid to create content, followers send tips and now monetise their organic content, all within Instagram. You should expect huge drives by the aforementioned platforms looking for influencers to create exclusive content using their own platforms (LikeToKnowIt, as an example) as they will no doubt be very concerned if Instagram’s option is more attractive than their own.
It’s arguably a more nuanced take on the Creator Fund model adopted by TikTok and YouTube. As on all social media platforms, content receives more reach than engagement, which is why TikTok and YouTube have quantified creator’s financial success on views (TikTok creators need at least 100K authentic video views in the last 30 days to be eligible to join the Creator Fund). As demonstrated by the other updates, Instagram are still benchmarking success with interactions, various types of engagement and sales while trying to move away from reach.
A Commitment to Creators
In a recent Facebook post shared by Mark Zuckerberg, he went on the record to say:
To help more creators make a living on our platforms, we're going to keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and our upcoming independent news products free for creators until 2023. And when we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30% that Apple and others take.
This means that the company will not take a percentage of revenue generated by any of the features mentioned above, including the affiliate and shops. Facebook and Instagram are also launching a new pay-out interface to link all the creator revenue streams together. It’s no secret that Instagram have heavily explored the ideas of charging influencers to use their site, so it’s interesting that they are now confident enough in their back-end storage to be able to hold such personal, financial information.
Desktop Posting Capabilities
Listen closely and it’s the sound of a thousand social media marketers cheering. You can currently upload from the Creator Studio (available in Facebook and Instagram’s business profiles), but desktop integration is coming.
So, what’s next? Here are our predictions for what’s coming in 2021 on Instagram.
Digital Checkout Rollout
This is the logical next step to influencers being able to set up their own shops. Currently eligible businesses and creators in the US can sell their products directly in-app using Facebook Pay, but this isn’t currently accessible in other territories.
Affiliates Surface
With the introduction of the new native affiliates tool, we foresee a LikeToKnowIt-style curation of products that can be house on an influencer’s Instagram page, meaning that items they haven’t yet featured in other content verticals yet can still be browsed (and bought) by audiences.
New Insights for Branded Content
As Instagram have been rolling out new features to empower creators, it stands to reason that brands working talent on Instagram will also see improved tools. 2021 will almost certainly see more detailed insights optimised towards creators working with brands, including longer access to insights from Stories, which currently expires after 14 days.