Instagram: Potential New Grid Customisation
New features on social media platforms are always exciting news. For businesses and influencers, it provides them with new tools to up their engagement and reaches audiences in new and exciting ways.
Those who keep their finger on the pulse of social media updates are often able to get ahead of the game and leverage new tools to greater effect before their competitors do the same. In this article, we will be looking at an interesting new feature currently being tested by Instagram which will help users better design their grids in custom ways.
Grid Design: To Date
Whether a business, influencer or user, visit most Instagram accounts and you will find that the order of images and videos are – well, random.
Instagram posts currently appear in the order in which you publish them, moving from most recent at the top of the page to least recent at the bottom. This gives feed a chronological order and is typically the way that most people would use Instagram as a social app – letting them communicate with their friends what they have been up to most recently.
However, some brands and influencers prefer to take a different approach by focusing on creating a visually pleasing feed. For example, these accounts may use third-party tools to publish large grid images or consistently publish in a series of themes such as a video, then a quote, then a selfie.
Although this is possible to do using the current features on Instagram it can take a considerable amount of planning and discipline to consistently achieve.
New Instagram Features
App tester Alessandro Paluzzi recently announced on Twitter that Instagram is testing a new feature where users will be able to rearrange their profile grids in any order that they please. This means that images and videos will no longer need to be ordered chronologically.
It has also been reported that the social media platform may be working on a way to allow people to pin one or several desired posts to the top of their feed, much like the functionality currently available on Twitter.
What Does This Mean?
In reality, if this new functionality gets rolled out across the platform it is unlikely to have a drastic impact on how people and businesses interact with the app. However, it will offer a new way for accounts to present their content, which could unlock new and creative methods of interacting with audiences.
Not only will this update allow users to create more aesthetically pleasing grids, but it will also allow them to rearrange their content in terms of those pieces that they believe to be most important – helping them to communicate key messages more succinctly.
Users will be able to post regular content which will appear on their audience feed, but greet them with a more tailored experience when their audience members click through to view their profile.
Ultimately, this update will allow users to arrange their grids in a way that works for them without the need to plan out their posts well ahead of time.
Rearranging Instagram Grids: Summary
It is clear that Instagram is looking for new ways to make user experiences with the app more customisable. However, there is a possibility that these continuous updates will lead to the app becoming cluttered and unfriendly to users. It is important that Instagram keep things simple, as this is a major appeal of the platform for many.