Full Service Social Media Marketing

Have you seen this yet? Instagram rolled out another new feature! This one is… interesting.

If you're lucky and received early access as we did, you probably know what we're talking about. If not, let us fill you in.

Instagram has recently rolled out a new feature called “Group Profiles.” This means you can now have one account shared with other users where each group member can post their own unique content that all goes to the same feed and/or story. The content will be seen by your profile’s followers, other members' followers, and the group’s followers. Alternatively, you can also make it private.

So, what's the point of this new feature? Well, we've been thinking about that ourselves and have come up with a few use cases you might want to consider.

Team Culture

Create a group account and add all of your employees to it. Have them post content about their life in and out of work. Think of it as another version of employer brand accounts such as “Life At Google.” This will create a stronger relationship between your business and your consumers by showing who you are behind the scenes; authenticity builds trust! It is also great for potential hires to get a better feel for the company culture, values, and overall fit. And don't worry–you can adjust your settings so that admins must approve posts before they go live, so the team clown can't get too rowdy. (Imagine our very own Madison with free reins to our Group Profile)... #IYKYK

(For context, this is Madison…)

Brand Ambassadors or Influencers

Instead of influencers/ambassadors posting on their personal social media channels and you resharing, they could now post their content directly to a Group Profile. This will allow their content to reach an even larger audience and keep all content in one place, nice and organized. It will also help streamline the approval process as Page Admins can see the content before it goes live and simply hit Approve - right from the app! If you’ve ever managed influencers before, you know that chasing down content can be very manual and time-consuming. This feature could cut that down significantly! (We’ll certainly be trying this for our next influencer project.)

Live Event Social

Imagine not having to source hundreds of pieces of user-generated content like usual event social because it's all in one place–ready to go. BOOM. Instagram Group Profiles. Each Group Profile can have up to 5000 users. Yes, 5000. You can invite influencers/PR/social media managers or even all attendees to the Group Profile and have them post their live, on-site content right then and there. Not sure how you would begin to invite 5000 people? Well, lucky for us, Instagram also creates a unique QR code for each of these Group Profiles, so you can simply share that out. Another idea, while we’re at it: turn this event initiative into a contest where attendees have to post top-notch content in order to gain access to the group! This would require some managing, but that's where we come in. #ShamelessPlug

While this feature is unavailable for everyone (right now), we are excited to see where it goes! It opens up a whole new world for team engagement, employer branding, ambassadors, influencers and event social. We may just start our own Group Profile as a team to further test it out, so stay tuned! And we’ll be curious to see which other businesses do the same.

So, what do you think? Will you be using Instagram's newest feature? It's important to remember that new features are new opportunities. Try not to roll your eyes at it too hard. Get creative and give it a go!

And as always, we are here to help. Book a free call here if you need support with social media management, so you never have to worry about new features, again. Let’s connect!