Instagram Stories for Desktop
Instagram Stories is now being used by over 250 million Instagram users every day, while Snapchat reports it has grown its total user base to a lesser 173 million daily users. The exciting news is that the feature is coming to the web version of the platform. When launched it will allow desktop and mobile web users to view Instagram Stories posted by their friends and others they follow – even more exciting is that fact that the web version will also allow you to post direct to Instagram Stories – expanding the potential reach of your stories even further.
Broadcasting with Friends or another business!
Instagram is looking at new ways to expand Instagram Stories, and have recently began testing the ability to invite live viewers to become a “guest,” or to broadcast live in real time with you. You will be able to remove and add new guests to your live broadcast at any time. In order to invite them, they must be viewing the live video during the broadcast.
Instagram Galleries Updates
Previously, Instagram have allowed the ability to share multiple images or videos in a single post, but all of these images had to all be in a square format. However, in the new update it will allow you to include both landscape and portrait formats of both pictures and videos. Whilst this isn’t a massive update, it will however give us more flexibility in terms of content and creative ability.
Instagram stories new features
We love getting creative with an Instagram story… it’s almost like having photoshop at your fingertips all the time! You may well have seen that if you wish to change the colour of your text, or the pen – you can use any of the colours that are on your image! So: take a photo, and then click the Aa or the little pen symbol – you will then have a pen pop up next to the WHITE down the bottom, if you tap on to that, you will then be able to move it around your image and choose from the hundreds that are on your screen!Our favourite new update is the POLL sticker – if you take a photo and click on the sticker icon, you will see on the 2nd line down a POLL image. If you click on that – you can ask your viewers any question and give 2 possible answers – you will then be able to see how they responded and the % of both answers.
Threaded Comments
This seems like a minor update, but it’s actually pretty significant; Instagram is slowly rolling out threaded comments on the mobile app. Previously, all comments were posted in order – if you replied to someone but others commented after they did, your conversation would be broken and disjointed. With threaded comments, we’ll be able to use the same system Facebook currently uses. As a result, this will make it so much easier to communicate with your followers.
Banned Hashtags
Did you know that by using ONE banned hashtag in your Instagram post, currently makes all of your hashtags undiscoverable for that post? Or that there are over 60,000 banned hashtags?When you’re searching through hashtags inside Instagram – there are two sections once you have clicked ‘search’, the ‘top posts’ which is what we are all striving for, and the ‘most recent’ section. If a hashtag is being used in an ‘un-savoury’ type of way – Instagram will remove the ‘most recent’ section and only displays a few top posts for you to look at. If you scroll down a little, you’ll see a banned hashtag message from Instagram: “Recent posts from #BANNEDHASHTAG are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram’s community guidelines.”
Monitor Instagram through Facebook
We are more than sure you are already aware of this update; but you can now monitor your likes, comments and activity on Instagram, through your facebook business page.Want to know more about our Social Media Marketing packages? Call 023 80001655 or email.