The popular photo sharing app, Instagram, has come up with new business profiles and tools. These new Instagram business tools will be available in US, New Zealand and Australia in the coming months. For everyone else, the company will launch the global rollout by end of 2016.
Instagram Business Tools
An increasing number of companies are using Instagram to promote their businesses. The Instagram business tools are designed to make it easier for businesses to run ad campaigns in the app. These new tools will allow businesses to view post engagement and performance metrics. They will also be able to promote posts directly to reach out more customers and that too from within the mobile app.
Business Profiles
Business profiles are also launched by the Facebook-owned-photo-sharing app. These profiles allow customers to talk to businesses directly via the app. This feature is very useful especially for the small vendors. They can add their email address, phone number as well as text message option in their profile. Users will see the addition of a contact button to the profiles of businesses. This makes it easier to interact with stores and brands.
Insights
Insights allows businesses to track which of their posts are performing well in addition to the audience demographics. This will also include top posts, impressions, engagement around posts, data on followers and more. Those with business profiles will also get access to the analytics. Instragam has included analytics for the first time within the app. It will provide detailed look at post engagement audience, follower demographics and more.
These tools look like Facebook’s own page insights tool which displays reach and impression numbers as well as fan growth rates.
These new features are built to help companies stand out and reach new customers. Instagram business tools are created in response to the feedback from companies where it was challenging to sift through comments on Instagram when users post questions.
The users who already have a Facebook Page of their business will only be able to convert their account as a business on Instagram. This also implies that self-promoters without any commercial interest won’t have access to new Instagram business tools such as Insights feature. The company said that it will begin testing with verified account and then may consider rolling out the feature to the wider community.
“We’ve grown to 200,000 active advertisers on Instagram, and the vast majority of those are small to medium businesses,” says Instagram’s Global Head of Business and Brand Development, James Quarles, explaining the need for a specialized set of tools for business owners. Plus, he adds, “fifty percent of people follow a business on Instagram, and sixty percent learn about products and services on Instagram.”
Although many big brands are already advertising on the Instagram platform, but now a dedicated experience is available for small stores as well. Instragam counts over 400 million users and has had advertising for some time but with this, it takes a strong robust in the field of advertising. Instagram has recently rolled out 60-second video support.
What are your thoughts about Instagram business tools? Let us know in the comments.
