I read that line at 6.30 this morning, one eye open and one closed.
However early the hour, I was extremely excited about the news. Instagram is undeniably an amazing platform for promotion; it’s just fiddly and hard to measure.
Right now, ads on Instagram are managed through Facebook’s ad platform (Facey owns Insta, remember?) and it’s not lovely. Instagram has now announced that will change, and the world of marketing will rejoice.
Easy contact
From the very small and blurry pictures (ironic), it looks like Instagram is going to let you add clickable contact details to your business profile page. At the moment, you can only have one clickable link on your profile (a URL), so adding click-to-text or click-to-call is a brilliant step, and I think I spy an address that would lead to directions.
However, if I’m untangling the information correctly, the click-to-call or click-to-text will be in the form of a contact button, so you won’t get the option to have a clickable phone number – it’ll just say contact and they’ll click to the form of contact you prefer.
Still pretty limited but a big improvement all the same.
Insights, glorious insights
What are we slogging away at every day, if not to see fruits from our labour? If you’re using Instagram as a business already, you probably count likes and comments manually. And if you’re at the stage I am, that’s pretty easy. There aren’t many.
That said, if you’re giving Instagram a big push this year, insights are going to be vital. It’s a pain in the proverbial to check engagement manually, and there are some things you yet can’t measure, like reach and follower demographics.
To convince anyone that Insta is the way to go, this is the kind of information you need unless you like stumbling about in the dark hoping for the best.
Promote
Facebook ad platform, be gone! When the UK gets this roll-out (sometime before the end of 2016 but the US will get it sooner), you’ll be able to pick posts to promote from stuff you’ve already published.
So, you’ll post something and monitor how it’s doing, then choose to put money behind it, picking your audience and adding a call to action. Easy.
At the very least, we’ll soon know whether our agonising over Instagram is worth it. Being able to track impressions and audience will give a much richer view of how it benefits your business – beyond the likes.
[bctt tweet=”Instagram means business – we’ll have insights, click-to-text and easy promotion by December.”]
