Article by Nourane Owais

Creators like myself come to Instagram every day to create and connect, grow our audience, and build our business. With more than 2 billion people surfing Instagram each month, the platform offers a global reach and wide breadth of features, making it a one-stop-shop for all creators, and providing a variety of opportunities and experiences for creators everywhere.

Instagram is a treasure trove of features and tools, but guess what? There are some hidden gems tucked away that you might not have heard about. I’m here to unveil these gems, sharing some sought-after features that aren’t exactly mainstream but hold immense potential for boosting your content and forging connections with your audience.

Reels Templates:

Ever seen a Reel and wished you could remake it? Now you easily can! Instagram recently introduced “Reels Templates” which allows you to recreate a Reel with the click of a button. You can drag and drop your content into a pre-existing template, and Instagram will do the rest of the editing for you. It will sync with the music, in the same way that the template you’re referencing has and be ready in minutes!

Trending Audios:

This is a quick and very useful tip to help you find trending audios for your Reels; if you’re watching a Reel and the audio it’s using is trending, there will be an upwards arrow next to the name of the audio. Using trending audios really helps boost your content to reach more people.

Anytime Mentions within Stories:

At some point everyone has posted a story and forgot to tag someone, be it a friend or a brand you are collaborating with. With anytime mentions, you don’t need to delete and repost. Instead, tap the three dots at the bottom of your story and select add mentions. You can tag your missing friends, even after it’s been live for some time.

Follow refresh:

Summer cleaning, but make it for followers! Instagram has built a new tool that makes it easier than ever to refresh the list of who you follow. Simply tap ‘following’ on your profile and sort through who you’ve interacted with the least lately, then you can unfollow at your leisure. You can also choose to interact with these accounts more often to increase connection and make them more likely to appear in your feed in the future.

Need more tips and tricks?

Instagram has opened up avenues for creators like us to mingle with the broader creator community through channels like @Creators. In addition, aspiring creators now have resources like Instagram’s Creator Lab, which offers best practices, product news, tips & tricks, and much more. Make sure to follow these channels to keep updated with the latest in the creator world!