Instagram Adds Active Status Notifiers, Testing Options To Control Content Visibility

Instagram unveiled a new Active Status notifier for direct messages and is currently testing new options for controlling access to your content. Let’s take a peek at these new features and find out how they will help you better engage with your Instagram followers.

Know when Instagram connections are active

The Active Status notifier is a small dot that appears beside your connections’ profile images. When any of your connections are currently online, the dot turns green to indicate that. The notifier appears in different places in your timeline, most notably in your Direct Message feed.

Instagram says that that the Active Status indicator will help you better engage with your connections in real time. By knowing when they are online, you can send your messages knowing that they will be able to read and respond to it immediately.

Only the people you are following, or those you have already conversed with in Direct Messages, will have their status visible to you. You can turn off the status indicators by heading to your profile settings. Additionally, you can hide your own status from others by toggling the Activity Status option on the settings.

More intimate conversations on Instagram

Instagram’s Active Status feature works in the same vein as its parent company Facebook’s chat message indicator, and Snapchat’s “Snap Menu” feature. The main benefits include:

• The site noted that 85% of people use Direct Messages to connect mostly with their closest friends. By giving them an easy way to tell when these friends are online, Instagram increases engagements within its app.
• Businesses can benefit as it offers the opportunity for increased engagement with their customers. When customers see businesses are online, they are sure that inquiries they send will get replies quickly and will more likely interact.

The indicator is the latest in a host of features Instagram introduced to build on Direct Message engagements. They previously launched a group video calling function that lets up to 4 people join a video calling session in the message threads.

Controlling access to your content

Instagram is also testing two new options for controlling who can see your content. The first one lets you easily remove followers from your public accounts.

Instagram now lets you manually remove followers!?!

h/t @blueasyraff pic.twitter.com/McIXETlR7I

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) July 17, 2018

Previously, the only way for public account holders to do this was to revert their accounts to a private one first. However, that option is not available for business accounts.

The new option will be useful for bolstering the popularity of your page. By removing inactive followers, you can focus more on the ones that do actively interact with you, getting better returns. This also contributes to better rankings on Instagram’s algorithm, since greater follower interactions can boost your rankings.

Limiting Instagram Stories visibility by region

The other feature Instagram is testing is the ability to restrict the visibility of your Instagram Stories to only users coming from specific regions. The feature was first spotted by Twitter user Matt Navarra, and it lets you select the countries to show your Stories in.

Instagram is testing a ‘Choose locations’ option for Stories.

You will be able to limit which countries your Stories can be seen in.

Mostly useful for brands/advertisers with global accounts wishing to run geospecific campaigns.

Spotted by @MattNavarra + @WABetaInfo pic.twitter.com/XD12UXPO8R

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) July 20, 2018

This function will be useful to users who have multinational audiences. By creating Stories that are region-specific and showing it only to followers from those places, you up the exclusivity of your content. This draws the interest of those followers and encourages them to engage with you more. You can:

• Create bilingual content for Canada.
• Create Portuguese content for Brazil.
• Focus on unique national holidays in one specific country.
• Address issues, such as customer service problems, in one country.

Instagram’s new Active Status indicator, and the two content visibility functions it is currently testing, are just a few of the small updates that it has launched in the last few months. These updates have a significant impact on how you can build your engagement with followers. Take advantage of them and watch your Instagram interactions grow larger.

Date: July 26, 2018 / Categories: Engagement, News, / Author: Rich Drees