Instagram has been updating features on its professional dashboard to help creators in multiple areas of the platform, including over on Threads. Here’s an overview of some of the most important and interesting features.
Creator Collaborations
A new section under ‘your tools’ labelled ‘collaboration’ has been added to the dashboard. The feature functions similarly for LinkedIn’s ‘Open to Work’, but is instead for creator to creator collabs.
If creators turn on the open to collaborating status, it will appear on their profiles and direct messages to help them “connect with creators you might enjoy working with.”
However, creator economy expert Lia Haberman questioned the effectiveness of the feature in her newsletter ‘ICYMI’, saying “Speaking from personal experience, the matches seem pretty random so far.” It will be interesting to see how many creators utilise the feature, and if it can bring about impactful, logical collaborations between creators.
The feature is rolling out to select creators, so keep an eye out for the new tool.
Reels Best Practices
After recently announcing the prioritisation of ‘sends-per-reach’ in the algorithm, Instagram is helping creators understand best practices when it comes to Reels content.
Just like the new collaborations feature, these tips can be found on the professional dashboard under the ‘your tools’ tab.
The tips include: creating 10+ Reels a month, focusing on deeper engagement through likes, reshares and comments, making your content relatable, sticking to Reels that are between 30-60 seconds, using trending audio, and making video high-resolution.
Be sure to check out the feature yourself to get all the details on how to improve your Reels content.
Threads Bonuses
It seems Threads is reaching out to the next wave of creators asking them to join the Threads’ bonus programme. The company confirmed they had been testing the invite-only programme since March, and it appears more creators are being contacted, however, there has been some confusion around the requirements.
The confusion mainly surrounds how many views creators need to get to qualify for the bonus. Previously, guidelines have stated that a thread needs to get 2,500 views, but some creators who have been contacted are told they only need 750 views.
According to an email sent to Andrew Curry, VP of Digital Strategy for LA Magazine, Instagram told Curry “You’re eligible to earn money by posting threads with text that receive 2,500 or more views each.” But if you look a few lines below, the email also claims creators can “earn up to $500 by posting threads that receive at least 750 views each.”
Instagram’s Help Centre does state “the details of the bonus programme may vary by participant.” But the stark contrast between 2,500 views and 750 is puzzling, to say the least.
The push for more engagement on Threads comes after it recently hit its first anniversary. Many are asking ‘what now?’ for the platform struggling to define itself outside of being an X alternative.
