Instagram Stories and Business Profiles

Over the summer Instagram made two huge launches that resulted in Instagram stories and business profiles. Now business profiles are something that we have been waiting for a long time to see! Insights on Instagram has been one of the most asked about features and it is finally here.

Here are some of the highlights of business profiles:

• The ability to see insights for your followers and on individual posts
• The ability to promote an Instagram post directly from your account
• A big contact button so people can more easily get in touch with you

While they haven’t come out and said it, one of the disadvantages of switching to a business profile may be restricted reach. Facebook did the same thing where they required people to switch and then made it harder for pages to reach their fans without promoting posts. While Instagram isn’t forcing brands to switch to a business profile yet…it’s possible that it will require it at some point. In my opinion though, insights are so important to a business that it makes the switch worthwhile.

Unlikes business profiles, which we have been waiting a long time for, Instagram stories pretty much launched overnight with a very small rollout period. Instagram stories gives you the opportunity to post more real-time content, such as multiple photos and videos from one day. The product feels very, very much like Snapchat…no surprise here that Instagram basically copied a successful product.

That being said, it is a great product for summer camps. Especially those who want to share surprises during the off-season or real-time events such as reunions or camp fairs. The stories disappear after 24 hours, so you’ll want to continue using Instagram posts in conjunction with this new feature.

These are only a few important changes that happened on social media over the course of the summer…so stay tuned for more updates!