Anyone can become famous on Instagram, from makeup artists to gadget reviewers, cake makers, and people who dramatically lost weight and inspire hundreds of thousands of followers. Now Instagram is introducing new features for influencers. The new “creator accounts” will provide new analytics and messaging features like direct message filtering.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new account type is still being tested with select users before it’s officially rolled out to all influencers next year.
“We want to make sure that Instagram is the best place, and the easiest place, to build fan communities and also build [creators’] personal brands,” Instagram product manager and IGTV head Ashley Yuki told the news outlet.
Rather than having a business account, influencers will be able to build their own personal brands. The new creator accounts will allow them to customize different sections of the contact information on their profile and provide new tools to help them filter messages by easily separating their personal and professional messages from spam.
Instagram influencers aim to attract as many followers as possible with original and aspiring content. The more followers they have, the greater the chance they will be contacted by a sponsor or other business owners and brands. However, the set of options currently available makes this difficult for individuals, which is why Instagram has been working on new features for influencers.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new features for influencers also include better analytics tools, which are slated to provide “weekly and daily data around how their follower count has changed.” Instagram currently offers some analytics tools for business users to look at when they click beneath a photo they uploaded, but the data is not as detailed as it could be.
A new analytics tool would help users remain more secure and assist them in deciding which content works best for them. Creator accounts could become quite popular because they will allow influencers to more accurately follow their content on Instagram.
Instagram users currently use a great number of third-party apps, which don’t guarantee their safety, but they provide accurate analytics data that Instagram doesn’t. Such apps can be dangerous because they could make users vulnerable to hackers. If Instagram offers more analytics tools on its own as part of the new features for influencers, users will be safer because they won’t have to rely on potentially shady apps to provide the data they need.
