What Should be Next for Instagram

Posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2016 by Joshua Murray

Nearly a year ago I wrote a list of 3 features that I was hoping to see in the near future from the Instagram social media platform.

Since that post in April 2015 we have seen the expansion of Instagram ads, and more recently, the addition of multiple account login (which was #1 on my list of wants), but there’s more I’m hoping to see soon.

Scheduled Posts

One of Facebook’s handiest features for brands is the ability to schedule posts for future dates and times. And you would think that Instagram, a member of the Facebook family, would also benefit from such a feature.

Now, this isn’t to say that all posts (or even most posts) should be scheduled and left to post on their own. However, for social media and community managers, this would be a time-saving and efficiency boosting addition.

Gifs

The internet runs on gifs.

Okay, not officially, but if you look around at any personal messaging app (Facebook included), or the feed in your Facebook and Twitter accounts you will see a ton of gifs rolled out by the general public and brands.

This may be the least likely item on my list to be added to the service, when you consider how popular Instagram videos are… but I’m including it anyway.

Analytics

Instagram Analytics It’s true that in your Instagram timeline and profile page you can see how many Likes and Comments a post receives, but I’d love to have access to more.

It may be getting repetitive, but demographic information of followers, reach and impressions of posts, and other simple information that is available on Facebook brand pages would help to inform marketers and improve the content and management of one of the most popular platforms on social media right now.

Working Links

This is a holdover from last year’s list, and here’s why. Active links in captions would be a fantastic step for brands using Instagram as a content marketing tool. At present the only thing we can do is direct followers to the single link on the “bio” page to move traffic, and that is not efficient or effective.

What I would love to see is active links in the caption section of Instagram posts. That small addition would allow for more traffic referral from the platform and increase the value of the interactions and content being posted on a daily basis.

Desktop Publishing

Another holdover from the 2015 wishlist, and for good reasons.

1) Great content created on a desktop with editing software needs to be saved to a cloud service or emailed and downloaded before it can be uploaded to Instagram via mobile, and that’s not efficient.

2) Writing captions and tagging users would be approximately 100% easier with a keyboard than on a mobile device.

3) It’s a pain in the ass. Social media and community managers are notorious for having our phones in our hands more often than our coffee cups, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t rather use our computers to do our jobs.

As I said in the past, I recognize that Instagram is a mobile first platform. But if I can login and Like and Comment on posts from my desktop, publishing seems like a natural next step.

Instagram is a popular network that has gained enough traction to become important to brands. The addition of new features would go a long way to making it easier and more efficient to use, and more valuable to the brands who are using it for general posts as well as ads.

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Posted in: Social Trends
Tagged: Digital Marketing, Social Media

About Joshua Murray

Fuelled by ideas, opportunity and coffee, Joshua attacks the social media landscape every day with a purpose. His experience in retail, customer service and public relations have combined to give him a 360 degree view of social media for brands and he is committed to helping all of his clients leverage their voice in the social sphere.