With over 2 billion active users, Instagram is one of the best tools to use while creating and solidifying your brand. The affordances on this platform have made it super easy (and fun) to experiment with images, videos, and words. In 2023, there are so many features to revamp your Instagram that can help improve your reach.
Reels
Instagram’s answer to TikTok has taken over the platform. Reels are short form videos, now up to 90 seconds long, that can be creatively edited into something fun – they can really be whatever you want them to be. You can add stickers, music, filters, and stitch multiple videos together. Reels is also now the primary video template, so if you’ve posted plain videos in the past, they are not classified as reels.
Reels are a huge asset to upping your personal brand as an artist. There are so many options here – you can make a 15-second teaser to a music video, a short cover of a song, or just a little video that introduces your personality. These, unlike Instagram Stories, are permanent, so they’ll always be on your page.
Reels are easily discovered by the public because they can be found on the explore page, the Reels page, or on your own feed. They’re super easy to create and so fun to watch! Perhaps the most important aspect is the “sounds” – not only is it important to use trending sounds, but it’s also important to use your own music as sounds.
Commerce Tools
For a while now, Instagram has allowed for anyone to create shoppable posts, which are regular posts that allow for different items in an image to have virtual price tags or stickers on them. A user can quickly be brought to that specific item when they click on the sticker. Now, this feature has led to a whole new shopping page on Instagram.
If you’re trying to sell merch, physical copies of music, or anything else in the world, this feature is for you. It’s very accessible for buyers and sellers.
IG Live
It’s always important to keep your followers engaged. If you aren’t currently performing live or on tour, you can utilize this tool to gain more exposure in this way. More and more musicians are using this tool for engagement, exposure, and performing.
You can also use this feature to promote merchandise or other products without seeming disingenuous. Live-streaming gives your followers a sense of who you are, while simultaneously increasing your reach.
Stories
These are short form video clips or images that disappear after 24 hours. Much like Reels, you can use stickers, sounds, text, and filters. You can create content within the app, share another user’s post via stories, and you can upload videos and images via your phone/tablet.
Highlights
Highlights are a way to archive certain stories you post that you want to highlight. Highlights appear below your profile photo. This is a great way to not only engage your fans, but also an aesthetically pleasing way to showcase your brand. They can be of concerts, certain live performances, collaborations, studio sessions, song releases, and so much more!
Another feature you can utilize is uploading a cover photo to your highlights. They should be enticing and on brand for you.
Experiment With Curating
We all know about Instagram’s carousel posts, which allow users to upload multiple (up to 10) photos/videos in one post. This feature increases the amount of airtime your post gets on someone’s feed because followers are spending more time on swiping through this one post of multiple images or videos.
Instagram’s algorithm helps us out here by giving followers multiple chances to “like” your post. While most single posts will disappear after one scroll through the feed, these carousel posts are boosted up to 10 times on one person’s feed, showcasing different media from that post each time someone scrolls through. This is a great tool to help you experiment with how well certain pieces of content compliment each other.
We recommend using this feature as it will help curate your aesthetic in a single post and engage your followers.
Threads
This NEW feature is, of course, Meta’s answer to X, formerly known as Twitter. Threads is the text based, conversational app extension that you can use to be more conversational and personal with your fans. Designed to join community conversations and engage with other users, you can post videos, photos, or just plain text with a character count of 500.
Since it’s still in the testing phase, there are some limits at this time. For instance, Threads isn’t available in the EU, you can’t exclusively see the threads of people you follow, or delete your account without deleting your Instagram account. BUT that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out!
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