It can be hard to keep track of all the new features added to your favourite social media apps so to help you out here’s a few of the latest features of Instagram that you may or may not have heard about.

Archiving

If you’ve been posting content on your feed for a while now there’s always the chance that some of your historic content is now out of date so take advantage of Instagram’s archive feature – it allows you to move posts from your profile page to a private tab that only you can see. Don’t worry though, if you need to reshare your post at a later date you can choose to do so and it’ll re-appear back in it’s original chronological position.

So, to archive a post you can follow the following steps:

1. Go to the post you want to achieve and at the top right of the post tap the three dots to reveal the options and select ‘Archive’.

2. The post will then be moved into your archive. To view your archived posts go to your profile and click the ‘clock’ symbol in the top right of the screen.

3. When you’re ready to reshare the post (if you need to) just go to the post in your archive and click ’Show on profile’.

Bookmarking

Like Twitter, Instagram gives you the ability to save your favourite posts into private bookmark collections. which is great for inspiration or to keep track of what your competitors are up to. If you’ve not done this before here’s how:

1. Go to the post you want to save and click the bookmark icon on the bottom right corner.

2. If you’ve existing collections you’ll be able to select the collection you want the post to go into. If you’ve not got a collection already, just go to your profile page, click the bookmark icon and then click the ‘+’ sign in the top right corner. Type in your new collections name, tap ‘Next’ and save the post.

3. When you want to access your collections just click the bookmark icon on your own profile.

‘Places’ search

This is a powerful and often forgotten feature of Instagram but it allows you to see the most popular and recent posts surrounding the place/area you’re searching which is great to engage with local people and fuel your own location-based posts.

1. Click the magnifying glass search icon at the bottom of your profile

2. In the search field type in your location and click ‘Places’ to be shown a range of results options surrounding your location based search and then yiew your posts.

Add UTM links to Stories

If your businesses has over 10,000 followers you can take advantage of Instagram new linking ability – so if you’re sharing a news story, blog post or even a contest you’ll now be able to send followers directly to your website page. How cool is that! Here’s how:

1. In Stories, take a photo or video

2. In the top right corner of your story click the chain link icon

3. Add the URL and publish your story not forgetting to include a strong call to action.

Live video replay

No longer do you lose live videos after the stream ends. Now you can repost the video to your Stories for 24 hours without losing views, comments or the like. Here’s how:

1. Record your live video and when your broadcast ends, at the bottom of the screen click ‘Share’ and your video will be available for an additional 24hours.

So there you have it, just a few of Instagram new features to help you engage with your audience and hopefully gain even more! 

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If you need more information or help on how Instagram could work for your business please get in touch with me at http://paulkirkdesign.co.uk or at @PKirk_designer

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