Instagram Upgrades Broadcast Channels with Replies, Prompts & Insights
Instagram / Broadcast Channel Best Practices
Instagram has added new ways for creators to interact with fans through Broadcast Channels. Updates include:
Replies: Creators can turn on replies to have back-and-forth conversations with fans. Messages are organized into threads, and creators can delete or report comments as needed.
Prompts: Creators can use Prompts—either their own ideas or suggested topics—to encourage fans to respond with text or photos for up to 24 hours. Creators can also like their favorite responses.
Insights & Best Practices: Creators now have access to new metrics, such as total interactions, Story shares, and poll votes, to track their content's performance. They can also set goals for their channels (increase engagement, drive participation, and get recommended actions on how to achieve those.
Why It Matters: Broadcast Channels are evolving to allow for deeper interaction between creators and fans. Enabling replies shifts Broadcast Channels from a one-to-many messaging platform to a more interactive, two-way communication channel. This helps creators build stronger connections and gives fans a more engaging experience.
The new metrics provide creators with insight and understanding of how their channel is performing along with actionable suggestions from Instagram to help improve channel performance.
With over 1.5 million messages sent on Broadcast Channels every month, these updates should help increase that number.
Creators have traditionally used third-party apps like Discord, Slack, or Geneva to manage communities. Now, with Broadcast Channels and YouTube's recent Communities feature, social media platforms are adding native tools that allow creators to host communities alongside their content, which offers convenience for creators and their fans.
