Instagram is making good on a promise it made last month.
In March, the Meta-owned social media platform announced that it would expand its product tagging feature to all U.S. users. Now, that feature is live.
An Instagram blog post explains the ins and outs of product tagging, which is available on all public accounts in the U.S. When tagging a brand in one of your posts, you’ll now be able to access a menu of that brand’s products. From there, you can find the specific sweater or sneaker you’re wearing in the post (if Instagram isn’t smart enough to suggest that exact item to you). As seen in the above image, products identified this way will appear as standard tags.
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Product tagging has been around for a while, but initially, Instagram marketed the feature to businesses and brands. The tags were sold as a way to “attract more customers” during busy shopping periods. Theoretically, the individual users who will make best use of product tagging will also be interested in e-commerce. Linking posts directly to individual items seems like a great way to increase clickthrough rates and drive more sales, especially within the context of an influencer marketing campaign.
This is hardly the only improvement Instagram has made in order to serve its professional community. The number of e-commerce features on the platform has boomed since top exec Adam Mosseri led the first Creator Week last year. So-called “Drops” allow users and brands to go viral with their product launches, and updates to Instagram’s branded content infrastructure have added more flexibility to sponsored posts.
As intriguing as product tagging is, it will become even more useful if it is extended to all pieces of Instagram content, not just posts. The company’s recent blog post ended by noting that “we’re also working on ways for you to tag products in Stories,” so you can expect some new technology for your short-form videos to arrive in the near future.
