Instagram has long been one of our favorite personal apps, allowing even the most novice photography make a picture look beautiful. That said, the social platform has not catered to businesses like Facebook and LinkedIn until now!

Beginning in 2016, Instagram began rolling out their new Business Tools, which allow companies to leverage the platform for more than just pretty pictures.

Below we walk through some of the more exciting changes, and how you can use them to help grow your reach, brand awareness and social engagement.

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Contact button

Over the years, one of our biggest pet peeves about managing Instagram accounts for our clients has been sorting through likes, tags and comments to converse with customers. You may have noticed this on your account as well; you post a few pictures and the likes and comments come pouring in, it can be tough to stay on top of it!

One of the newest tools is the addition of a white contact button on a business account profile page. By clicking on this button, users can call, text or email a business directly.  Gaining a lead via social media just got a whole lot easier!

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Promote your posts

Looking to gain more followers or reach new people? Instagram makes it easy (and inexpensive) to do that now!

By selecting one of your Instagram posts, you can now click the promote button and choose your target audience, budget, timeframe, etc.

A detailed list of instructions with screenshots can be found here.

Improved data

Data can be overwhelming, am I right?

One of the new tools Instagram launched revolves around data and insights. This tool helps business owners learn more about their followers and the engagement they are receiving on each post.

Instagram is slowing rolling out this feature, so you may not have access just yet. We snuck a peak recently though and the interface is a dream, very clean and easy to use!

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What’s next?

Social media is growing and changing every single day, so we assume Instagram will do the same.

We recommend business owners take advantage of these new tools from Instagram as soon as possible. Do you need help with your social media strategy or updating your Instagram profile? Contact us today!