Instagram is a social networking website owned by Facebook, specially designed for photos and video sharing online. Instagram provides you with various features either for personal usage or business provoking. Providing you with attributes like Images and video editing tools, posting photos easily, story sharing, tagging, searching people functions, sending messages, etc. which makes this social networking service among the top 10 most popular social media sites [1]. Instagram has many additional features as well that is renewed with every new update.
Updated Instagram Features:
For the past few years, Instagram has introduced many features for helping people to deal with privacy concerns, customizing posts/stories, getting alerts from the specific people, etc and making Instagram more enjoyable.
Custom/ Close Friends Stories:
Sometimes a person wants to post a story but does not want specific people to see it or only want specific people to see it. Instagram has come up with a perfect solution for this issue. You can now hide your story from anyone you want by simply going to story settings and then clicking on the ‘hide’ option. Recently, another feature is introduced where you can make up a particular list of close friends and post stories only for them by a single click.
Turn on Post Notifications or Mute Posts:
Are Someone’s continuous posts are bothering you? Instagram has given you a complete solution for that. You can easily mute stories or posts by clicking on the three dots beside the person’s post and that will stop showing up on your feed. The same is the procedure for turning on the post notifications. If you want to be updated with specific people/accounts whenever they post something, you will be notified as soon as they post.
Searching Places & Hashtags:
In addition to searching about the people we want, Instagram has now given an option for searching the popular and recent tags and any of the places/locations you want to look for. Location tags posted by the public is also available for finding places easily.
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Archived Posts & Stories:
The stories which are disappeared after 24 hours are automatically stored into the account’s archived stories section sorted by date to date. There is another option for archiving your posts which you neither want to keep in your insta feed nor do you want to delete. Archived posts can be brought back to feed whenever the person wants.
Story Highlights:
Story highlights is a section below your Instagram bio which allows you to make a kind of folder of your favorite archived stories and post these particular selected images/videos on your profile as a specific story folder. It is a new interesting feature introduced for making your stories live longer.
Story Editing Tools:
With every new update, Instagram introduces more and more options for editing your stories or and making them more enjoyable. Stickers like ask me a question, polls, countdown, music, rating, etc. which keeps the user and audience engaging. Moreover, there are gifs, cute emojis, and stickers that help in making your posts lively.
Saving Posts:
You can make a folder of saved posts by saving through the like symbol under the post. You can further divide and name the specific folders as well.
IGTV Feature & Live Videos:
IGTV is the latest feature by Instagram which allows you to navigate online featuring videos more than 60 seconds in the explore section and the same is the case with live videos that disappear after the live streaming.
Instagram Hacks, Tips Everyone Should Know
Make your Bio Catchy:
A person’s bio on Instagram should be catchy in order to get followers either for business or for personal use. People should know who you are by a single glance. Write something precise that defines you.
Use Stylish Fonts:
Using different fonts translated from online text generators will do a good job in making bio and username attractive.
Add Symbols & Unique Characters:
Adding symbols, emojis and other characters will add a fun element to make your bio creative.
Add a URL
If you have any link you want people to approach, do insert it in the bio.
Manage Multiple Accounts:
Instagram has provided an option that you can operate multiple accounts logged in at the same time up to five accounts but with different email ids.
Pre-Scheduling:
Instagram business profiles allow you to create and schedule posts in advance, which will then be posted automatically on the time to scheduled to.
Sharing others’ Posts/Story:
A post or story from a public profile or any profile you follow can be shared onto your story by the arrow icon under the post.
Explore the Activity Log:
A user can check through his recent activities like post liking, commenting, etc. by simply going through the ‘your activity’ option in settings.
There are a lot more features continuously updating on Instagram like group messages, video calls, voice notes, sending gifs/stickers by single click, pictures/video sharing, certain privacy and notifications settings, block/report option, switching to a public/business profile and whatnot. Instagram has a lot more features than any other social networking service. This is the reason people love using it and it is gaining thousands of users every day.
