How Your Business Can Make the Most of Instagram’s New Album Feature

Instagram has introduced the ability to add up to 10 photos and videos to a single post, album-style. Users can now swipe through to see each piece of content in the post, similar to Snapchat’s slideshow storytelling format.

Image via Instagram Blog.

That might feel like the death of Instagram’s unique culture of-of careful curation, but this change offers a lot of opportunities, especially for businesses.

This change primarily introduces the ability to create carousel ads. Which we know from statistic are a highly engaging and interactive format that performs 10 times better than regular ads, and it is available for free.

Like carousel ads, Instagram’s newest feature will enable you to combine photos and video to tell stories and convey information in the best way imaginable.

5 ways businesses can use Instagram’s new album feature

Since albums are an easy way to create an interactive post, they’re also a low-barrier way for brands to share rich media and encourage more engagement with followers.

1. Showcase Products

The albums format is a great way to tell people about what you offer. You can choose to show off several different products or highlight features of a single product.

2. Tell a story

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what are 10 photos and videos worth? So much more! Albums give brands the opportunity to explore new creative avenues for storytelling, breaking stories down into multiple parts to make them even more engaging for the audience.

3. Explain how to do something

The ability to simply pull together multiple elements into one single post makes albums the perfect place to share a how-to. Write instructions on individual photos, have someone explain what’s happening in a video, there is no real limit.

4. Break a larger image into multiple parts

Lots of brands have successfully embraced the #triplegram – a tactic that involves posting three related images, or one image cropped into three, in series. With albums, this process is even easier. Crop a panorama into several pieces to show off details. Then, get creative with other functionality, like zoom, to engage your audience.

5. Share an event without spamming

Have you ever held an event and wanted to share, well, absolutely everything? But Instagram etiquette and the desire not to spam your followers meant you had to choose only one or two images agonisingly. Well no you don’t have to, you can carefully curate the best of the best photos or videos from an event and share them in a grouping that gives them added context and prevents your audience from hitting the unfollow button.

How to use the album feature on Instagram

One of the best parts of Instagram’s newest feature? It’s easy to use and anyone can do it.

1. Tap the + icon at the bottom middle of the screen to upload a photo or video
2. In the bottom right of your image, you’ll see a new stacked rectangles icon which allows you to select multiple photos and video—tap it
3. Scroll through your camera roll and choose the media you’d like to add to your album—up to 10 photos and videos
4. You can change how each photo or video is cropped by tapping the screen to adjust how it fits in the frame
5. Once you’ve selected your desired media, tap Next to move to the editing screen
6. Tap, hold, and drag items in the album to change their order
7. To delete a photo or video from your album, drag it to the trash can icon at the top of the screen
8. You can apply filters to all of the items in the album, or edit each one separately
9. Once you’re happy with your edits, tap Next to move to the caption screen
10. Add a caption and location
11. Tap Tag People, then swipe to find the photo you’d like to tag someone in—you can tag people in each individual photo in your album
12. Tap Share to post your album

Image via Instagram Blog.

On your profile grid, album posts will be denoted by the same stacked rectangle icon that appears in the publisher. When you see an album post in your feed, there’ll be blue dots at the bottom to let you know you can swipe to see more.

You can like and comment on album posts the same way you can with regular Instagram posts. Comments and likes will appear on the entire album, rather than on the individual photos or videos in it.

Image via Instagram Blog.

While you have the capability to edit the caption or location of your album, you cannot reorder, edit, or delete parts of your post or change accounts you’ve tagged. You can, however, delete the entire post.

Albums have a single caption and are square only for now, though Instagram’s announcement blog post hints at future updates to this feature.

Instagram albums are available as part of Instagram version 10.9 for iOS and for Android on Google Play.