“Instagram Plus” Subscription Rolls Out
Instagram Plus is offering users an opportunity for more reach and priority placement in Stories along with some profile upgrades and customization. These are “nice to have” type upgrades but could ultimately shift the landscape for brands and marketers with a new pay-to-play model.
So, is it right for you? Let’s break it all down!
What You Need to Know
The new Instagram Plus is rolling out now and is a paid upgrade feature. It will cost $3.99/month USD and may vary slightly in different regions for pricing.
There are no clear instructions to actually purchase the upgrade. It’s only available on mobile and when you go to the help page on Instagram’s help site, it tells you to upgrade on your mobile device. That’s it lol. But, either it hasn’t rolled out to all users (aka me) or they’ve buried it somewhere because there’s no sign of it in the profile settings options (from the 3-line button on your profile) for my profiles. But apparently, there should be an option from that 3-line menu button to choose Instagram Plus.
So, what is Instagram Plus? Here’s what you get with it:
Things to Be Aware Of
This new subscription model changes the game for brands and businesses. It’s a low-price entry into pay-to-play. It’s low enough that many brands will say, yes, let’s try this and get the added Stories performance opportunities…
But, then it (potentially) pushes average users into less exposure, forcing more brands to buy into the model to compete for the same exposure. Which, in turn, could impact the overall user/customer experience and cause negative implications in the long run.
I say it all the time, marketers ruin everything! If there’s a way to take something and manipulate it for better reach, views, or dollars, we (collectively as marketers) will do it.
Some things to consider with these upgrades:
All this being said, yes, there are obvious advantages to many of these features.
Why This Matters: The Strategic Shift
For brands, Stories are some of the best converting content on IG. It’s your dedicated space to be more raw and authentic, to share content that appeals directly to your followers (non-followers don’t really see your Stories like they do feed posts and Reels), and easily include links or other CTAs for conversions.
So, yes, some of these perks could be advantageous to many brands and organizations.
Have a promo, a sale, a new product launch, an ebook, a signup form, an event, etc. that you want people to know about? Spotlighting your Story gets that to more people, absolutely. Extending that Story to 48 hours to reach more people without reposting is valuable.
But an interesting note in the IG announcement is that Spotlights and super hearts are listed as being for “friends”. Now, in the IG world, a “friend” is a mutual follow - you follow them, they follow you. So… it’s possible that Spotlights are ONLY prioritized for your mutual follows, not all of your followers. This would have a significant impact on the usage and value of that feature if this is the case.
Posting directly to your profile isn’t something everyone will take advantage of but there will be scenarios where you want to post something for first-time visitors or something to clarify a brand detail (maybe your store hours) and you don’t want it to go out into the feed. This applies to feed posts (including Reels) and Story Highlights. However, because it doesn’t go to the feed, recognize that those posts will have much lower engagement (likes and comments) than most of your content and you do risk a vanity metric perspective if people see that content as low performing.
These are the most impactful upgrades as they relate to brands and businesses. Most of the other features are more for your own use as you please but won’t have significant impact on your brand strategy.
How This Applies to Your Organization
If your organization is debating leveraging this subscription, you'll want to consider:
Want to help your team think through this strategically or determine how to maximize these features for your brand?
That's exactly what I do as a speaker and trainer for organizations! Reach out and let me know what you’re thinking about and we can devise a solution to support you directly.
