Staying On Top of the Latest With Instagram in 2016
Do you want to know how to use Instagram for business?
Do you feel overwhelmed by all of the changes in Instagram?
Do you want to know what has changed in Instagram in recent months?
The once, simple social platform has slowly added more features and 2016 was a year of many, many changes for Instagram. Instagram has slowly gained popularity, and notoriety. In fact, it has over 500 million users! To stay fresh, relevant, and competitive, Instagram has rolled out a number of new features in the last year that have changed how users use the app. Here’s a look at the notable new features:
Saved Drafts
Instagram now allows you to save drafts. After selecting your photo and filter, if you’ve entered in any text and try to go back, the app will prompt you to save or discard the post. When you go back in to select an image for any future post, you’ll see the drafts as an option to select.
Zoom In!
Instagram now offers the ability to pinch to zoom in or out on images! For those that use the app a ton, this is a great feature!
New Explore Section
Instagram replaced the Popular page with Explore, which is different for every person. It’s made up of both posts you’ve liked and other trending videos that you might like. The Explore section is similar to LinkedIn’s Pulse section where the platform may take viral topics and high-trending videos and share them to the entire Instagram community. Post some quality content and you could be famous!
Stories:
This summer, Instagram released a new feature called Stories that lets you share numerous moments of your day in a slideshow format that disappears after 24 hours. These pictures won’t appear in your profile’s feed or grid. You can post as much as you want to your Story because it’s easy for friends and followers to see brief clips of the image in the slideshow.
You can view stories of others at the top of your Instagram app. Short video clips work great in the Stories section and you can easily swipe through to see the stories of all of your friends. You can make your own story by selecting the icon in the top left of the main Instagram screen, or select the first icon on the Stories ribbon where it says “Your Story.”
Mutable Stories
Instagram gave users the ability to mute specific users’ stories, given you the ability to watch only if you want. In order to mute someone’s story slideshow, simply tap and hold down on the person’s Story icon. You’ll get a prompt to mute them. You can un-mute in the same way.
Save Photos From Stories
While some may be fine with their stories disappearing after 24 hours, many people don’t want to get rid of it all completely. That’s why it’s so great that Instagram released the ability the save your stories. To do so, go to the gear icon in the top left screen of the photo window for recording your Stories. The settings will open and give you the option to turn on the “save shared photos.”
Change Text Colors On Stories
You can now change the text color as well as play with other handwritten strokes to put on top of your photos/video in the Stories section. This brings some fun character to the things you’re posting in this fun new section of Instagram.
Links In Stories
Instagram is starting to roll out (to only some verified accounts as of now) the ability to add clickable links within the story frames. These will show up as a “see more” clickable text at the bottom of the frame. If you don’t see it yet, don’t worry! It will roll out to all soon.
Boomerang Is IN Instagram Now.
Boomerang is a separate video app, created by Instagram, that takes a burst of photos and puts them together in a mini video. However, now Instagram allows you to include a Boomerang right within the Stories section, without making you go and use a separate app. Much, much more user friendly way to do things!
Instagram is always updating and changing things up, and the users seem to like the changes. Instagram usage is up significantly for personal accounts and businesses are slowly getting on board with this fun, interactive social platform!