As social media becomes more common, platforms need to constantly innovate to provide new options to everyday users and the social media marketers who use the platform to reach their fans and customers. Heading into the new year, Instagram has announced new features that will help brands interact with followers and target audiences in exciting new ways.
Just in time for holiday photos and more, Instagram has added a feature that will let users interact with Stories in a different ways. These features can help spread music, allow for more options to be Live on Instagram and it even adds a countdown mode.
In a post announcing the features, Instagram wrote, “Starting today, you’ll see new ways to interact with your friends and form a deeper connection with the people you follow on Instagram. You can now use the questions sticker for music recommendations in Stories or to connect in the moment with people you follow on Live. You’ll also see a new interactive sticker in Stories that lets you count down to exciting moments together with your friends.”
Instagram is a good way for people to discover new music. Many users have music in the background of their videos and some artists use Instagram to showcase music videos. Now, users can ask the question “What song is that?” using a question sticker with the new music icon. The original poster will have the option to answer by choosing a song directly from the music library to share with the question asker.
This is a great way to share music. User’s will be able to open the viewer’s list to see all their responses and tap the play button to listen to the songs. There will also be an option to share favorites to your story and add a capture a photo or video as the music plays in the background. Additionally, will be new effects in the camera that respond to the beats and sounds of a song. It gives a lot of options for content creators on Instagram.
Instagram users will also have the option to give live replies to questions asked on one of their Stories. Users would go to someone’s story and use questions sticker as they normally. If the Instagram user who is answering the question uses Live to answer, there will be a “Q&A” notification in the stories tray. They could then join the Live video and see the question being answering at that moment. They could then ask even more questions that will go to a list that appears to the person who is live.
This option has many uses for content creators and brands. A company’s Instagram page could be used to host an ad hoc question and answer session. All they would need to do is place a Story soliciting questions, and they could give live answers. Similarly, if someone has a question about the proper way to use a product, brand ambassadors can do a live demonstration and answer any additional questions the audience may have.
Countdowns are great way to build excitement for an event. It reminds people about the event time and generates a sense of urgency for those who need to take action before the countdown ends. Instagram is introducing a new way feature that will users create countdowns within Instagram. It can be used to count down to any upcoming moment, like a holiday, the start/end of a retail sale or just to celebrate the end of day on a Friday.
To use the feature, add a countdown sticker to an Instagram story by selecting it from the sticker tray after taking a photo or video. All that’s left is to name the countdown, add an end date/time and customize the appearance. The Story can then be shared with fans and followers. It’s a great tool for promoting limited time sales or event registrations.
These new features make Stories even more useful to social media marketers on Instagram. They create several new ways to engage with target audiences and it’s something business owners should consider using in 2019.
For more recent news about social media marketing change in 2019, read this article about updates that are coming to YouTube in the new year.