How does having feed options impact Instagram strategy?

Social network will give user the opportunity to choose from Following, Home and Favorites as the feed types

The year had barely begun and Instagram was already announcing changes to the platform. Adam Mosseri, CEO of the social network, released a video in which he revealed that, in the coming months, users will be able to choose between three types of feed: Following, Home and Favorites.

In the Following option, the user will only see the publications of the people he is following – detail: in chronological order –, without interference from the algorithms. In Home, little will change from what’s available today. Favorites, the third option, will also offer a feed in chronological order, however, with content from people that the user marks as favorites.

But how will these new feed options impact brands, agencies and influencers?

Craft leader at Eyxo, Adriano Ellert believes that the changes on Instagram show a good time to ‘revisit and realign communication strategies’ on the social network. In recent years, recalls the specialist, the presence of advertising has become much more aggressive and intense on the platform.

“This strategy, which, on the one hand, can leverage the presence and expression of brands, on the other, ends up tiring the user experience in a space full of ads and interruptions”, he analyzes.

Ellert also sees the need for more organic content planning. “It is a time when brands and content creators will be able to pay more attention to the timing and frequency of content, since it will appear chronologically to users”, he highlights.

With this change, the Eyxo executive warns that it will be necessary to better understand the times, days and occasions to publish something. “For users, it’s about time they could choose what they wanted to see and consume on the platform. This desire has always been present in the community and, perhaps, it is a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the end consumer and Instagram”, he says.

The feed option is just one of a series of changes Instagram has been making in recent times. And the last one, so far, happened in August of last year: the replacement of the ‘drag up’ function by a sticker.

According to the platform, at the time, the purpose of the change is to make it easier for people to share links.

NARRATIVE ‘RETURN’
Managing partner of MAP Brasil, Amanda Gomes says that the new Instagram feed will ‘give back’ control of the narrative to the user, at the same time that it will increase the demand for the quality of the content.

In other words: with the feed returning in chronological order, it will take agility to embark on the stories as they happen. “And that goes from sharing news in real time to commenting on programs, going through sequential content that creates more consistent stories”, he guarantees.

In addition to content agility, quality is another important point on which Mynd’s head of social media agrees with the MAP Brasil executive. Judeilton Reis says that the changes come to reinforce the importance of investing in quality content.

“Instagram’s goal with this change is to make people feel more comfortable with the time they spend on the app. Therefore, the better the content created, the more chances it has to appear in any of the three options in the feed”, he points out.

END OF CRITICISM TO ALGORITHMS?
Until 2016, content appeared in the Instagram feed from the most recent posts. However, in March of that year, the network announced that it would be ordered by algorithms, which generated criticism from creators regarding the delivery of content.

The CEO of Banca Digital, Murilo Henare, said that the vertical, which is born from a chronological feed, will open up a new space for people to consume more content. Citing Twitter as an example, the executive says that, on this network, it is possible to move between the chronological feed and the one suggested by the platform.

“Specifically for the market, it will emerge in a very positive way, even for people who complained a lot about the algorithm, which it didn’t deliver much, they will be able to go back to chronological order and, for now, it may be a solution to the problem of feeling that the content was not being delivered”.

Transparency is also another word present as a consequence of the new feed options, as highlighted by Vinicius Taddone, CEO of VTaddone. “It will be more transparent for users who previously complained that some publications did not appear on their timeline, mainly because of the algorithms”, he points out.