This is going to be a super a simple guide to the different features of Instagram.

Posts

These these can be photos, videos or carousel posts (carousels are just more than one image that you swipe to view). They appear on your profile page and can be viewed by others if you have a public account.

Stories

Instagram stories feature allows you to share photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. They do not appear on your main Instagram grid but rather at the top of your screen when you’re on the Instagram mobile app. They’re often the first pieces of content users see when they open Instagram. They also appear on your profile when someone taps on your profile picture.

Lives

Instagram Live are living streaming. It is an unedited stream for your followers to tune into and engage with. Instagram Live’s allows your audience to submit their comments in real-time. Hosting an Instagram Live can also help boost your discoverability on Instagram. Your followers will receive an in-app notification at you are going live. Instagram also lets you go live with with others so you can have people come join in with your lives.

Reels

This is Instagram’s version of Tik Tok. Instagram users can record and edit together 30-second video clips set to music and share them to their stories, their feed, and the new Reels tab on a user’s profile. Reels can be recorded as a series of clips and added together.

Guides

These are a really great way to share curated, scrollable content. It’s great for recommendations and tips as it collates posts into an easy-to-digest format. You can put a number of similar posts together to form a guide. Things like tips can make a great guide. That way people can click on the guide and all your posts on tips are all together rather than the user having to scroll through all your posts to view your tips.

IGTV

This is Instagram’s version of YouTube. Videos can be up to 10 mins long (60 mins. for verified accounts) and must be a minimum of 1 minute long. Instagram also allows you to post one-minute previews of their IGTV videos on their feeds to improve discoverability. You can create channels to categorise your IGTV videos. You can also save your lives to your IGTV so that they don’t just disappear once you have done them.

Instagram has continued to evolve and keeps creating new ways to share content. Each of the features has it’s own benefits. Instagram wants it’s new features to be utilised so easy adopters of their features tend to see the benefits in the terms that Instagram will push their content out to more people.

If you want to know how to best use each of these features to grow your business then get in touch at info@thesocialfactor or sign up to my “2-minute social media hack” emails.

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What makes social media so great for your business is that you can actually compete with the bigger brands because social media isn’t about spending money, it’s about spending time. Time to engage with your potential and current customers. It gives your business a voice that can be easily heard.

If you’re thinking that you’ve tried and it doesn’t work for your business, it might just be because you are having trouble making it work. I wouldn’t expect my iron to be able to get the creases out of my clothes if I just plugged it in and looked at it. It’s the same with social media, you can’t just have a social account (twitter, facebook, instagram etc) and just post on them and expect results from that.

What makes social media so great for your business is that you can actually compete with the bigger brands because social media isn’t about spending money, it’s about spending time. Time to engage with your potential and current customers. It gives your business a voice that can be easily heard.

If you’re thinking that you’ve tried and it doesn’t work for your business, it might just be because you are having trouble making it work. I wouldn’t expect my iron to be able to get the creases out of my clothes if I just plugged it in and looked at it. It’s the same with social media, you can’t just have a social account (twitter, facebook, instagram etc) and just post on them and expect results from that.

Have a strategy in place. Know what it is that you want your social media to achieve, think about your target customers.

Don’t think about what you want to push to them but rather think about what they would want to see. Remember social media is all about being social. Engage with others and in turn you will get engagement back.

Post rich content, things are are not just pushing your business but that are interesting enough to get people wanting to follow you. If you need some help with content then this is a great checklist.

You also need to understand what platform is best for your business. They each have their unique benefits. Social media is great for building brand awareness, learning about your customers and increasing web traffic, which in turn will all boost sales. This can only happen once you have a good following and an engaged community.

As with anything you need to invest time into it to make it work. Once you do though you will start to see the results.

If you don’t want to do this yourself remember The Social Factor can help. Whether it be with training, setting up platforms or managing them for you.

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