Show Notes
9 hidden features you're not using on Instagram
1. Hide unwanted tagged photos
a. Show where this is at first. In the app go to Settings -- Privacy -- Tags and toggle.
2. Link in bio
a. Use https://later.com/free-link-in-bio/ personally one of the best I’ve used.
3. Share a story to your main feed
a. Talk about how it’s popular to do it the other way. Go to your story. Click the 3 little dots and hit ‘Share as Post…’.
4. Turn on Instagram post notifications
a. If you see a post from someone you like you can click the 3 dots and hit ‘Turn On Post Notifications’ this will allow you to get notified every time that person posts.
5. Set up quick replies
a. Go to Settings -- Business -- Quick Replies. This one works a bit different from Facebook because you have to set up shortcodes like LMA or T4T in order for the Quick Replies to show on your conversation.
6. Access more colors in IG stories
a. Just tap and hold the color options to show full color wheel.
7. Copy and paste images in IG stories
a. Copy an image from your phone and when you go back to your Stories you will see it available as a Sticker.
8. Sneak peek of new post
a. Put picture in first then tap color you want background set to and just tap and hold on background and you will get a full color display. Which you can erase to reveal the picture behind it.
9. Hide old posts without deleting them
a. You can archive instead of deleting. Hit the 3 dots and click Archive. This will keep it in the archive until you decide to unarchive it.
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Transcript
Christian [00:00:00] Instagram has a bunch of stuff that you probably don't even know about. So we decided to sort of pile up nine hidden features that you're definitely not using on Instagram. Actually, you may be using one or two of these, but some of those are going to surprise you. So check this out.
[00:00:17] This is the marketing name, providing ways to grow, improve and succeed in your business.
[00:00:25] And now your host, Christian and Aaron.
Aaron [00:00:31] Righty. This is gonna be a really fun episode, guys.
Aaron [00:00:35] These are. Yeah, we've talked about this in our local marketing academy, actually. So if you are interested in hands on advice for this and not just to listen, check out local marketing dot academy. But these are nine hidden features you're not gonna use that you're not using Instagram more than likely. Number one. Hide unwanted tagged photos. I've been trying to tag photos of Christian from college for like three weeks now. And somehow he's not it's not showing up on there. Why? Why is that?
Christian [00:01:03] Because I have it hidden. So there's a little nifty and again, we're talking about him. But they're just features that you have to dig through the settings, you know, to find this. So this one, you go to your profile, you click on the three little bars on the very top. Right.
Christian [00:01:18] You get the settings and then you head over to privacy and then tags. Yes.
Christian [00:01:28] Inside of tags, you will see text control and you can toggle that on to manually approve tags so that people can just tag you on it and then will show up on your on your profile.
Christian [00:01:40] This way you can actually control when people tag you on a post vehicle.
Aaron [00:01:46] And I can think of a lot of good reasons. There's some spam bots out there like, hey, I got this great offer and you get tagged in it. It happens quite frequently for me, honestly. It's just more annoying to go in there and like, unreal and remove yourself. Yeah.
Christian [00:01:59] Yeah. So definite recommend. Yeah. To to do that. Settings, privacy tags. You will see the toggle in there to turn on or off.
Aaron [00:02:06] Yeah. And you'll still get a notification. So many tagged you and you can approve it. So yeah. Like it's done. Number dos. The link in bio. You see this probably all the time in posting like oh what does that mean. Link in bio. And then obviously there's a link up in their profile. Yes. But this is actually an app that you can use or an app. This is a website that you can use to help you with your profile. So how exactly does this work?
Christian [00:02:30] There's the Linkedln Tree I think have link tree, link tree and there's a few other ones. But I think this one is the best because they're visual but is made by later. So you can go check it out later. Dot com forward slash free dash link dash in dash bio. Or you can just Google it later. Dot com. Free Link in bio. And it personally is part of one of the best ones because it's so visual. So when you click on that link in bio, it will show you if your feed essentially and they can kind of pick and choose on what poster we're looking at.
Aaron [00:03:04] I thought you said feed first taken and so far. Why are people going to people's feet? Sorry.
Christian [00:03:09] You know who to get to that particular link that you're trying to share. So that's the only reason why I really like the later dot com version of Link in bio is because it's very visual and it shows you your feet right there. It's not like your I've seen other ones where you click on that link in bio and then yeah, they may give you different options for the link, but visually you don't remember what it was supposed that you were at or what it was that you were trying to go to. So I think it's kind of confusing sometimes. But this one, I think it's double notch.
Aaron [00:03:44] And the one thing that you should know is that it will create a later account for you by logging in Instagram to do that. So I mean, that's just a bit.
Aaron [00:03:53] It's gonna happen. So in later is actually a platform the way you approve of it. It's like a really good place for you to schedule Instagram. And I think you can do stories not to.
Aaron [00:04:02] Just as a side note are a number three here we have a share a story to your main feed. So you love an Instagram story, say a Christian. I do it for a bit branding and you like, oh, I want to post this on my feed. How's that possible, Christian?
Christian [00:04:17] You just click on the three little dots and posts on and feed. We're talking about the stories that you created yourself.
Aaron [00:04:24] Yeah. They can't be like it can't get so much shared. Yeah. Yeah. So the other way around is kind of easy. And a lot of people do that actually where they see a post they like and they want to share to their stories. People do that a lot. But let's say you took a really good picture. You just posted directly to your stories, but now you're like, oh, they actually gain some traction or a lot of people commented or DM me from this story. I want to make that a post. You can do that. Just click on that. That little dots the bottom and sharing as a post in this story. Like in the story. The story you've got channel where you're looking at. So I guess a lot people don't know that, but they do do the other. They do the from the feed to the stories. Yes. They all everyone knows that from the story you can do to your feed. But again, it has to be something that you've already posted.
Aaron [00:05:10] Right. And it needs to be just as a rule of of like Instagram anyway. It should be of higher quality. I mean, you can have great engagement, but it's interesting for your feed. You probably want it to be a higher quality video, not just like something. It gives the story behind it, maybe even better than the fact of the actual then it was an actual post. So just think about that as you're doing it. No, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about now. But just make sure you keep the Instagram feed clean. All right. Number Quattro that is number four turning on Instagram post notifications is what you should do for a bit branding. Tellme how they can do it.
Christian [00:05:47] No, I mean it's the same thing. Very. Click on other little dots and then click on turn on those notifications now and where from the profile?
Aaron [00:05:58] Because I'm saying if you're listening to this right now, it's really like it's not as obvious as what you think. Because, I mean, I had to be told a couple of years ago where I had to turn on the post notifications.
Christian [00:06:09] Well, the thing is, you can't do it from the profile. You have to be on like your feed. Seeing that someone clicked on. Again, just those three little dots are magical. And that's where all the hidden stuff is, really. But when you click on that three little dots on an actual post on your feed, the last option should be turned on. Post notifications.
Aaron [00:06:27] See, I didn't know there. I thought I had to go to that person's profile and then do that. But that's so much easier. Like, so if I don't like. For example, playing a running club. I'd have to go play a running club profile and then click the three little dots. And I don't even have an option there. So it is better to just see their person feed and do it.
Christian [00:06:45] Yeah, I think that's the only way to do it is from from the feed. You see a post that you like.
Christian [00:06:51] And then you turn on post notifications, those notifications just like it says it will give you a notification whenever that person burning. Yes, bitbranding doesn't wanna do that. But I think someone who made it really popular was Gary Vaynerchuk. He was one of the ones who said, hey, make sure you turn on those notifications. Yes.
Aaron [00:07:09] Yeah. You saw and then you saw a bunch people after that was like really bad pictures of them, like pointing like pointed at their little. Yes. Turn it on. You like. All right. These people turn and pointing here now, you know, know it's been bothering you for years.
Aaron [00:07:23] All right. Number five, set up a quick replies. This is great for you. If some people ask the same questions all over. So if you're a retail location. Hey, what's your address? And it's in my bio. What's your phone number? It's in my bio. Instead of doing that, if somebody replies, you can hit like quick replies and give them these short codes and it will answer the questions for people like us. If they ask us questions like, hey, do you guys have that Website calculator? Yes, we do. And we could do a short code for it and send them the website calculator.
Aaron [00:07:53] You're good. You're just kind of really good at walking people through how to do this, Christine. But how do you do it? Quick reply?
Christian [00:07:59] Well, I guess if you're on your DM's right now and you just click on a random person, you will see at the bottom you'll see the camera icon.
Christian [00:08:09] You'll see force as message. You'll see that a little plus button. So when you click on that plus button, you will see a little more a few more icons show up. The fourth one for me at least. It's the little speech bubble with again, you guessed it, three little dots. You click on those three little dots and you will see that quick replies menu. From there, you'll see that. I mean, you probably don't have any quick replies. We have one set up right now for LME, so you can set up a short code just like Karen was saying. So whenever I type in the words, the letters LME together, the quick replies will kind of pop up and say, hey, you have a quick reply with that short code element. You want to insert it? He's like, yes, let's that's cool. And then from that little menu right there, you can also have that plus button where you can add new quick replies right there. So again, this is just shorter ways to, you know, say the same things. Maybe your store hours is something that you get frequently asked or do deliver internationally. Those kind of things you can set up as quick replies. You can create a short code where you literally all you have to type in is just dash your code and you'll see the blue speech bubble and it will just automatically paste all that text within there.
Aaron [00:09:23] I think that's going to save you guys a ton of time. Make sure to do it. It takes a minute to set up these quick replies. You already know what they are. You already know the answers. Don't waste so much time trying to continue to do that. Quick replies are probably one of the biggest hacks. They're. All right. So this is your favorite part of the podcast where we tell you guys a little bit more about that bitbranding. This is 20 20. We have some big goals. And one of those goals is to build a lot of Websites to help businesses grow. The best way that we can do that is to get more insight like how our business is looking at their Web sites and just getting some information about it. And we created a tool that is mostly unlike anything online that it's probably the most accurate online. I want to say that out loud with some quotes here, and that is to go to calculator that bit branding dot CO. That's our Web site calculator. It'll take you about five minutes, answer some questions, figure out exactly, you know, within a little bit of margin of error how much it would cost for you to redesign a Website, build a Web site or you know how. Depend on how you answer that. Just get some website questions answered. This isn't I guess, a push or a sell for us. You don't have to reach out to us. You want to do anything. It's just literally figuring out this calculator. It's more of a personal way that you can find out. How much does a website cost. And again, go over to calculator dot bitbranding dot co, answer those questions and you will get the results instantly.
Christian [00:10:58] All right, we're back. Right. If you do such a great job with that. Yeah. You're messing with me.
Aaron [00:11:04] I feel like it was recording me on Instagram and like a trend and now there's this new thing. Oh, yeah. The layouts on Instagram stories. Have you seen that? Yeah, that's pretty cool. I haven't played it to do much, but I'm sure that it's gonna be amazing. Whatever you're doing. I did it.
Christian [00:11:18] It was it was gonna be some content. But I need to figure this out for number six, which we have access to more colors on IG stories. Now, this is kind of cool because maybe a lot of people don't know about this, but you take a picture and you want to, let's say, write something on that picture. Right. And you get a little marker thing at the bottom. You get those preset it colors where you can scroll through and see a few colors in there. Now, if the blue that's in there, you dumb and I don't want that blue.
Christian [00:11:52] You can just tap in a hold and it will literally give you the full color spectrum where you're with your finger. You're browsing around and looking for that perfect blue that you want. So again, you just look at the little bubbles at the bottom. You tap and hold and it will automatically give you all those colors, literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different colors within there.
Aaron [00:12:20] Yeah. And I think that whenever you click on light, doesn't it give you that eyedropper tool as well or is that in a different spot.
Christian [00:12:26] Yeah. Yeah. It gives you the eyedropper. So if you're looking for a color similar to the picture that you've already taken or the store that you're working on, you can click on the eyedropper tool and moved that. I dropped tool right there within that picture to grab a color very cool.
Aaron [00:12:41] Yeah. Because I mean most people what you'll see is you'll see like I don't know how many pick colors are I like maybe eight or 10 different colors and people like, oh, quit doing black, quit doing whatever. So you can actually choose the color that you want it to be, which is I mean what I think is cool and it kind of helps make your story stand out a little bit. Yes. All right. Number seven, copy and paste images in IG stories. And I guess we can explain this a little bit more, but this is probably the closest thing that I've sold it whenever we talked about it in the academy that people were like, wow, yeah, how directly how the heck can you do this?
Christian [00:13:19] So this one is kind of cool because it's definitely very well hidden. There's really no setting or no. Three little dots that you click on. But if you go to if you're on your phone, I'm on an iPhone. So if I go to my photos and let's say that I took a picture of this pickle Beer actually took it out yesterday.
Christian [00:13:40] So and I click on the arrow with the box up and I copy the photo.
Christian [00:13:47] That photo that I've just copied. I can go back to Instagram stories and it will show me the photo for me to add it as a sticker to the post that I'm working on instead of Instagram stories, and I know this is kind of weird and probably wouldn't make sense what I'm telling you right now. So we'll probably make a little Instagram tutorial for this one, but it's essentially you copy a picture from your photos inside your phone and then when you open Instagram stories, it will pop up automatically saying, hey, you just copied this photo.
Christian [00:14:19] Do you want to be added as a sticker? And you just added as a sticker on the post that you're working on some showing here and now.
Aaron [00:14:28] Yeah. I mean. Well, that. Did you actually buy that pickle beer?
Christian [00:14:33] Yeah, it's excellent. If you like pickle, it doesn't like beer. Taste like pickle juice.
Aaron [00:14:39] That's good. I'm curious about that. Pickles are really good after it runs completely. Side note, but yeah, I. Where did you buy that beer?
Christian [00:14:46] I don't know. It was a gift of two megan. It's a Texas beer, though, is made in Texas by Texans.
Aaron [00:14:51] Yeah, because it's the best made pickles. If you're in Texas, you know that those are the best pickles. Perfect. All right. Awesome. Never hear a sneak peek on new post.
Aaron [00:15:04] So what do you what do you mean by that? Like peekaboo? What is it? Basically, what people do on on Instagram stores all the time.
Christian [00:15:11] You know, where they could have a new post and then they try to cover it would like to marker like some gif or something. Well, there's also what you can do is you can go to Instagram stories and you can put the picture full screen in there. So I'm kind of doing this so I can kind of walk you through this.
Christian [00:15:30] But so I have to put the picture from my I can't do this Share post necessarily. Correct. So I have to just put the picture there. And then what I want to do is I want to click on the marker again where I was selecting the multiple colors and you select the color that you want and all you do is just tap and hold. And that will basically completely cover your screen with that color, which is kind of cool.
Christian [00:15:58] And then you can take their razor and just erase just a little bit of that image and then you can do that little sticker that says New Post. Go check it out on my page. I guess bad thing about this is that it's not necessarily linked, but it's a cool way to in a different way to show that, hey, you have a new post on your on your page, which they can always just click on their profile picture at the top left and they will be able to go to your profile that way.
Aaron [00:16:24] Yeah.
Aaron [00:16:25] And then I think that it's still that they guess that's been available for a while, but it's still not like most people not to use it. So it's like, OK, this is at least catching people's attention. So definitely worth checking out for yourself. Number nine, our last one here. It is a hidden one. You just can't hide old posts without deleting them. This is what you see like younger people do. But like, oh, I have nine pictures total on Instagram, even though, you know, like three weeks ago they had like three hundred and they'll just archive them and they'll be like, oh, let me show like four more like I don't know why they do it. I don't know. But there is a way to do it. How did it how did somebody do this?
Christian [00:17:01] I just had a little nuts. Now you got to archive. I mean, there are different reasons why you wouldn't want to archive something. If you're a business owner, maybe you're running some sort of promotion.
Christian [00:17:13] And yeah, the promotion is over and done. You want to archive that then? That's way to do it. So you'd have to sort of delete the post. You can always kind of bring it back for whatever reason. But running a promotion, maybe you want to archive that. Actually, there's a popular Instagram account called Dallas Social where they share a bunch of like social events and things good that are going on. They archive like past events and things like that. Just not have, I guess, a whole feed full of things. They just had their feed with their most current events that are going on. Right. So that's a, you know, another way. I mean, I'm thinking that they archived them. Hopefully they do. Just so that they can bring back up. Maybe, you know, they have a prospect that wants to promote their event through that they can actually show them all the data. All the information is still there when you archive a post.
Aaron [00:18:06] All right. So if you start archiving posts. But it's. No. Awesome. Awesome. So thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We really appreciate it. We do not take your attention lightly. If you've been listening for a while, please make sure to go over Itunes. Leave us an honest rating in review. We will figure out some way to reward you. These reviews help us grow. We know there's people listening. We can see our stats. So just covered items. I know sometimes it can be a little bit of a process, but leave us an honest rating review and this will help us grow. And this is your first time listening to the podcast. Please make sure you hit the subscribe button. Doesn't matter of you're on iTunes. I might have you on Spotify wherever you at. Subscribes to that you get notified every Monday when we come out and put out new content for you. If you guys have any questions at all or any episodes that you were like, hey, could you dive a little bit deeper, make sure that you go to Instagram and then search for a bitbranding hit us a DM and we are really responsive there can answer your questions. All right. We wish you guys a great rest of your week.
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