Instagram has more than 400 million monthly users making it the second most popular social network. Not surprisingly, it’s become an extremely attractive platform for marketers to reach a younger and highly active audience. There are, however, a few things we’d like to see on Instagram to make the product even better. Here are 6 things we want from Instagram for Christmas.
- More Ad Options – Early this fall, Instagram opened its platform to advertisers of all sizes. A select few national brands gained early access in 2014 to work out initial bugs and to see how the Instagram community at large would react to advertising. Since the roll out, the only option available is clicks to website. A highly valuable objective, but we’d like to see more. Facebook (owner of Instagram) has a large stable of objectives to meet the many needs of its advertisers. We’d like to see these options available on Instagram as well.
- Analytics – Currently, Instagram doesn’t provide native analytics. There are some services you can use to glean bits of this information, but nothing to the level that Facebook or Twitter provide. To truly optimize the audience’s experience with a brand, analytics are a necessity. You can find some information through services like Simply Measured or Sprout Social, but not enough to make impactful decisions.
- Clickable Links – Sure, you can run an ad on Instagram that will drive website traffic, but it would be nice to take advantage of this opportunity with organic audiences. Currently, the only link that is clickable is in the bio portion of the profile. This is great, but it doesn’t take full advantage of the available audience. Creating clickable links within an Instagram post would create a more dynamic experience for the user.
- Multiple Account Access – This is a feature that is currently being tested out with some Android users. For social media managers and community managers, this is likely the number one request for a new feature. Logging in and out of multiple accounts is nothing short of an awful waste of time. Frankly, it’s a feature that is long overdue.
- Native “Re-Graming” and Scheduling – Apps like Latergramme and Repost allow you to re-gram and schedule posts, but not without a level of inconvenience and multiple hoops jumping. In today’s social media world, these are no longer “premium” tasks. They should be available inside the Instagram app itself.
That’s our Christmas list for Instagram—what about yours?