On Monday, Instagram announced it would give creators the ability to schedule posts up to six months in advance. The new feature enables creators to decide when, exactly, images will publish to their feed, as well as IGTV videos. There’s just one catch: In order to get access to the scheduling features, you’ll need to already have a Facebook Page for your business. In other words, it’s aimed more at brands, artists, and celebrities with significant followings — a move that suggests that the social network, like the Facebook of years past, will emphasize commerce over individual users.
Until relatively recently, scheduling Instagram posts required complicated workarounds that were little more than glorified notepads. Third-party social media manager Buffer, for example, would let you write a post in advance and then, at the time the post was scheduled to go up, the app would send you a reminder. Then, you had to copy the Instagram draft and post it manually. Hardly an automated system.
In early 2018, Instagram created an API that allowed third-party tools like Buffer to offer direct scheduling, which improved the process. But this week’s update deletes the middleman entirely. Now, brands can schedule posts directly from the app. The message is clear: If you position yourself as a brand, you get the best features, without using a complicated secondary app. Anyone with a Facebook Page can now be a “brand” and manage their online presence. You could just have a personal Instagram page, but the platform incentivizes users with a brand to manage, no matter the scale. The definition of what we consider a “business” is expanding and anyone in the club gets a growing list of features that regular users don’t.
It’s another in a long line of steps aimed at making Instagram a friendlier place for brands. Earlier this year, the company started placing sponsored posts in its Explore tab in an effort to increase exposure to valuable brands. Before that, it created virtual storefronts and an in-app checkout system so users can buy products directly from brands without leaving Instagram.
The company did not respond to a request for comment. But following the money — and corporate chain of command — suggests a likely reason for the change.
The definition of what we consider a “business” is expanding and anyone in the club gets a growing list of features that regular users don’t.
“Facebook obviously wants to monetize Instagram,”
says Anjana Susarla, associate professor of information systems at Michigan State University. The slow shift comes at a time when the company is struggling with its primary social network, Facebook. The average amount of time a user spends on Facebook each day reportedly dropped from 58 minutes in Q1 2017 down to 49 minutes in Q1 2019. Meanwhile, Instagram is on the rise, growing from 31 minutes to 34 over that same time period. It’s not quite to Facebook levels of activity, but it’s getting closer and, more importantly for shareholders, on an upward trend.
But Facebook’s strategy of empowering and promoting brands on Instagram is at stark odds with its current strategy for its own platform. Earlier this year, Facebook announced it would focus its news feed more on “meaningful” content, emphasizing personal connections over public Pages. Businesses and branded content still had a place on Facebook, just not quite as prominently as they once did.
The refocus for Facebook seemed to have worked. From January to July, user engagement increased. This included the average number of comments or reactions to posts, but counterintuitively it also included the number of times users clicked on ads. In the U.S. (notably one of Facebook’s most valuable demographics), ad clicks rose from a median of 13 per month to 17.
This raises the question of whether the reverse effect could impact Instagram. If Facebook sees success by shifting toward more personal content, can Instagram succeed by going in the opposite direction? Is Instagram the place where branded content can succeed where it might not on Facebook?
“Undoubtedly, some of the user experience will be different with a lot more branded content,”
Susarla says. That said, it’s clear that the general vibe of Instagram is already brand-friendly.
“A lot of celebrities use Instagram and some of the content is branded whether we realize it or not,”
she adds. Following a model or an actor on Instagram and being exposed to the products they endorsed (disclosed or otherwise) can be valuable to advertisers while still feeling more authentic to users.
But there may be a limit to how far that can go. A recent study from analytics firm InfluencerDB found that engagement rates with sponsored posts declined to 2.4% in Q1 2019, down from 4% three years prior. Importantly, during that time frame, Instagram began a push for more transparency in sponsored content, which may have raised awareness among users about when posts were being paid for
.
If Instagram alienates users by flooding their feeds with sponsored content, shopping links, and carefully orchestrated brand “experiences,” the service may not have as much to fall back on as Facebook itself does. When Pages weren’t doing so hot, Facebook pivoted to promoting its closed groups and events to connect people to each other. Instagram has comparatively fewer features, and it could be harder to bring users back to the feed if it becomes too “corporate.”
For now, Instagram is cool. And the ads aren’t cool. Striking the delicate balance between building a social network that users want to hang out on, and selling things to those same users is a difficult task. Facebook went a bit too far in the latter direction and now has to course correct. As Instagram pushes further into becoming a platform for brands, it will have to be careful to avoid the mistakes of its corporate overlord.