Posted by Some of us may have missed the video announcement by Adam — on the last day of June 2021.
He said “We’re no longer just a square photo-sharing app”
With the pace at which social media platforms are changing constantly we barely have time to breathe between the changes. It’s safe to say that Instagram’s announcement was nothing but a reminder to stretch an arm and expand your online presence to multiple social platforms. Also, to focus on different types of content beyond the ones we’ve been stuck on for many years.
He added — “Instagram is focusing on four key areas: Creators, Video, Shopping, and Messaging”
As a content creator, it’s important to know what to work on and how to make your content relevant to your audience on each social platform.
Let’s dive deeper into each of these focus areas and what’s in store?
1. Creators
Instagram is constantly looking at experimenting and trying to bring in features in a way to allow creators to make money. They’re shifting the power from institutions to individuals and that in itself is a big change (a good one) for creators who put their heart and sweat into content on this platform.
The features they’ve introduced are helping influencers, creators, artists, and public figures to be differentiated from the business and professional Instagram accounts.
Amongst many, here are a few of the features that you will see when you switch to a Creator Instagram account –
Filtering messages: The account has an option to filter messages into – Primary, General, and Requests. You can additionally mark messages as Unread and even Flag messages within your inbox.
Labels: You can now add labels specific to your niche. You can go to Edit Profile> Scroll down to Categoty> Select the one> Tap the toggle to Display on profile> tap the ✔️ to save. And you’re done!
2. Video
With TikTok being banned in a few countries, there have been concerns among video creators. However, there is still big competition from TikTok and the biggest video platform — YouTube!
Their focus is now to embrace video more broadly, focusing on full-screen and immersive content. They started off with IGTV and went onto Reels that is now one of Instagram’s most engaging content.
Now that we’re talking about video content (especially Reels), here are some of my previous articles that would help you if you’re still trying to crack the Instagram Reels feature.
1. Steps to create Reels
2. Reel Content ideas for Creators
3. Reel content ideas for small businesses
3. Shopping
E-commerce is huge and the platform has already tapped into shopping.
The pandemic took us through a rise in online shopping and supporting small businesses was a need in this difficult time.
With the increase in shopping on social platforms, interacting with creators and small business owners it only felt right for Instagram to focus and make better the features for this online shopping experience through their platform.
You can make your Images on feed, Stories, Instagram shops, and videos shoppable now.
As soon as someone comes across your posts they can see it, love it and shop it right on the spot.
This feature ensures your Instagram account acts as a storefront and an opportunity to grab new customers. Here’s how you can set up a shop on Instagram
4. Messaging
The way we communicate has changed, especially with the pandemic. Instagram wants to tap into more messaging features outside of the Feed and Stories.
Daily conversations between people and businesses on Messenger and Instagram grew by over 40 percent. This is why Facebook developers also recently announced Messenger API to support Instagram giving businesses new tools to manage their customer communications on Instagram at scale.
The API feature enables businesses to integrate Instagram messaging with their preferred business applications and workflows. This could be Crowdfire and apps like Crowdfire that help drive more meaningful conversations, increase customer satisfaction and grow sales.
While the future of Instagram is not fully known, these little updates and information of what they plan for the coming months are super helpful for you and me to change our strategy for this particular platform.
⭐️Bonus: Instagram features on Crowdfire⭐️
Currently, if you’ve linked your Business Instagram account to Crowdfire, here are the features that can help you-
1. Scheduling – Schedule your Instagram posts to make sure that you post consistently. Use the Crowdfire best time feature to make sure that you post when your audience is most active. This will help you get higher engagement on your posts.
2. Image recommendation- Crowdfire will recommend fresh images often, to keep your account active and get you the right followers. These Image Recommendations depend on the number of relevant content we can fetch from the creators for your account and the topics that you’ve added. This is to ensure you get maximum engagement for such posts which in turn helps you reach more audience.
3. Mentions – You can reply to all the comments and DM’s on your Instagram posts from the Crowdfire app. Engaging with your audience is the key and it helps in beating the IG algorithm.
4. Analytics – You can measure your current engagement and can adjust your posting strategy based on the concrete data.
That’s it, folks! 🙌
Let me know if you found this post helpful?
Also, If there is anything you’d like to read more on, do share your suggestions in the comments and I’ll get put my brains, hands, love, and research all into it! 
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. it for free.
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