Instagram Favorites – New Feature
The latest update of Instagram was a launch of a new feature ‘Favorites’. This new tab is presented by the icon of a star inside a circle. It represents your ‘star friends’, your ‘star followers’.
In order to understand this new feature, one can think about the Facebook option of ‘Close Friends’, which is a subgroup of your friends and you can choose to show posts, photos, etc, only to them. Instagram, through this change, is getting closer to the usability of Facebook. Favorites helps you share more privately. So if one has a public Instagram account, now he/she can share more privately posts with a group of specific followers.
How does it work?
The star icon is shown in your profile tabs. When you press on it, a new green page shows up, where you can edit your Favorites list, add or take out followers. Instagram shows some suggestions of followers based on your and their activity towards your posts, direct messages and stories.
Once you have created a favorites list, you have the ability to share posts and stories with this smaller group and no one else can see them.
Usability
It has been said that when you are added on someone’s favorite list, you will be informed about it. Up until now, from what we have experienced, there is no such notification yet. Another thought regarding this new Instagram feature is the ability to create multiple ‘favorites’ groups where you can share different moments to other group of followers, for example: family, colleagues, friends. For now, there is no such feature but it may be added in the future if Instagram Favorites are broadly used.
Corporate & Professional Advice
How can this new feature affect your business account? It is not a strong corporate tool but it can have some useful aspects of how it is used:
1. Businesses and brands can share with specific followers potential posts in order to see how they act towards them, before they are publicly posted. Favorites for them, could be their main influencers, shareholders or strongest fans – followers.
2. It can also work as a tool of communication inside the group of employees or project participants that are responsible for a brand’s social media posts. This could work as a communication platform in real time in order to skip emails and phone calls.
