December 19th, 2016
Instafamous: Game Changers
By Debisi Sami-Orungbe
If you couldn’t achieve instacelebrity in the old instagram, the new features create an opportunity for you to truly shine, show your talents and grow your following
I don’t know about you but I personally love when Instagram releases an update because unlike most apps that bother with ‘bug fixes and improvements’ *yawn* it is a proper update and it usually comes with a facelift. It’s never shocking but enough to keep you interested.
If you couldn’t achieve instacelebrity in the old instagram, the new features create an opportunity for you to truly shine, show your talents and grow your following. Here are instagram’s top game changing updates:
Video
Instagram killed 2 birds with one stone here. Their introduction of 15 sec videos in summer 2013 changed the game and 15 seconds became the unofficial time length for social media clips. Content creators started finding ways to reformat their skits, music video trailers, beauty hack videos into exactly 15 seconds. This update also became the beginning of the end for their indirect competitor; Vine whose 6 sec clips now seemed ridiculous and seemed to be catering to a relatively smaller audience. The video update gave rise to new stars who were restricted by the previous photo formats. Vine creators migrated, youtube stars took note and the instagram video star was born. The limit to video length has been extended to 1 minute which not only gives more room for content creators but has also made the app more commercially attractive as it now competes on the same time-length format with Youtube and even television.
Stories
Instagram Stories has probably been its boldest and most controversial update so far. The release of this Snapchat copy and paste update in July 2016 was met with a lot backlash from fans calling out Instagram for what they felt was a desperate move. However, to the enlightened it presented a unique chance for 2 groups of people. Those who had tried to migrate the same following they had on Instagram to Snapchat and those who were stars on Snapchat but had felt limited by the careful curation of Instagram posts. The former no longer needed to migrate and could engage with their built audience even more and the latter group could transfer their brand of entertainment from Snapchat to the new Instagram.
Business Profile
In a quiet rollout in September 2016, Instagram users could update their existing profiles to ‘Business Profiles’. This gave users access to stats such as reach, impressions and engagement per post. You could also keep track of your follower growth and demographics. In the same rollout, you could finally promote posts right from the app without having to go into facebook business manager. What did all this mean and what opportunities did this create? Simple: Test, Optimise, Promote and Repeat. You could now have a clear understanding of what your followers responded to and could make sure your content was gathering the reach and engagement you needed. And if you noticed a post was doing really well you could put some money behind it and get some more traction from it. Stats wins games….watch ‘Moneyball‘.
These are just 3 of the instances that updates have created chances for more instafame. With more features about to roll out including Instagram Live everyone can begin to find their niches and the unique ways to stay relevant. Find yours.