Another day, another Instagram update.
At this rate, you probably can’t keep up with the nimiety of IG updates. No worries, we’re here to help but be warned, by the time you finish reading this list, there could be new updates.
Make A Living
Expanding Subscriptions
Your content is valuable, and you can offer exclusive content in exchange for a recurring monthly payment from your followers. To see if you’re eligible for Instagram Subscriptions, open the Instagram app and go to your professional dashboard. If you’re eligible, you’ll see an option to set up subscriptions for your account. With the new update, It’s now available in all of the U.S. and will reach the UK, Australia, and Canada soon.
Stars and Gifts
Users can send digital gifts to creators as a way to show appreciation for their favorite Reels, and with the new update, you can now include photos and text posts. Plus, IG will turn it on automatically for eligible creators.
Gifts are paid for with ‘stars,’ which are purchased with real money. When a creator receives a gift, they can trade in those gifts for actual cash.
Buy & Sell Digital Collectibles
If you’re into the buying and selling of digital art, then these collectibles use blockchain technology to record ownership. Also, videos are now included along with photos as qualified pieces to buy and sell.
Anyone with an eligible connected wallet can buy digital collectibles on Instagram. Those with a professional account can also sell digital collectibles.
Security Updates
Nudges
Comments can get a little spicy, sometimes unintentionally. Now with nudges, you can get a notification to pause and consider how you want to respond before replying to a comment that Instagram could consider offensive.
Updated Blocking
If you’re quick to block well, it just got better. Besides being able to block a single account, but also any new accounts that a person may create. You can now block existing accounts that a person may already have.
Hidden Words Improvements
Lawd knows how grimey social media can get. Hidden words give you the power to filter hateful comments and message requests. Now with more updates, you can
- Expanding Hidden Words to cover Story replies. Offensive replies from people you don’t follow will be sent to your Hidden Requests folder, and you never have to see them.
- New languages, including Farsi, Turkish, Russian, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil.
- Improving filtering to spot and hide more intentional misspellings of offensive terms, for instance, if someone uses a “1” instead of an “i.”
- Adding new terms to filter those pesky message requests that might contain scams or spam. Right now, this is in English in certain countries, but more languages and countries coming soon.
Two-Step Authentication
Can’t stress enough how important this is, considering we’ve seen many accounts get hacked, and some have to start over. Two-factor authentication is a security feature that helps protect your Instagram account and password. If you set up two-factor authentication, you’ll receive a notification or be asked to enter a unique login code when someone tries logging into your account from a device we don’t recognize.
Hidden Gems
Scheduling
Oh, now this is good and so needed. Go through the regular flow of how you post but before you post, make sure you scroll to advance settings and click schedule. You can schedule up to 75 days out. Not all accounts have this feature yet, give it time to roll out, and then you can cancel any other costly scheduling system you use.
Refreshed Instagram Website
You might have already seen the changes on the site before the announcement, but if you haven’t, check it out. The website is cleaner, faster, and easy to use, and can take advantage of large screen monitors.
Import Audio
This is a game-changer. Ever wanted to import audio but didn’t feel like going to another app to bring it back into IG to post it. When you post a reel, you can now import audio from your own personal videos or a clip you got from the internet.
Hidden Like Counts
Social media is a realm that affects you mentally. Sometimes you may like posts without thought. You see, it has a lot of likes, and you follow suit, but you’re not fully aware of the content. Hiding likes allows you not to be so hyper-focused on likes, whether you’re the creator or scroller, and that’s a good feeling. You can hide your like count after and before you post.
Rename Audio
This might be a feature some don’t think about, but if your audio content is circulating the gram, you can change the original audio name on your reels. This means anybody who repurposes your audio will have your title with it. It’s another way to make sure credit is going to the appropriate person. It also can help grow your account.
Important:
Don’t like the name you chose? Or made a spelling mistake? You can only change the name of your audio once. So think wisely and check your spelling.
You can use symbols/characters and emojis in the name to catch people’s attention.
There are many more features that Instagram has rolled out, so if you have time to spare, check out Adam Mosseri, The Head of Instagram, to catch up on ALL the latest and greatest.
