Paid Instagram Stories, TikTok Trends, and More — What's in It for Your Business

Clara -

Social platforms have been fighting for our attention and are implementing new features each week. Let's dive into the latest social media news and see what these novelties can bring to your business.

Instagram Paid Badges, Live Streams and Stories

Adam Mosseri claimed in his Twitter account that since January 2022, Instagram’s launching subscriptions to broaden monetisation options for creators.

Exclusive Stories that need to be paid for will be marked with a purple ring unlike regular orange Stories. Apart from Stories, users will need to pay to see exclusive live streams which only subscribers get notified of.

On top of that is a paid badge — a purple indicator that allows a creator to know that you're their subscriber when they see your comment, your DM, etc.

Throughout the year, the subscription feature will be available for more accounts.

Another novelty is that Instagram will automatically suggest your saved replies. So if you have some saved replies on Instagram (we strongly recommend you to have ones), now when you respond to anyone, Instagram will automatically offer you a saved reply.

What Does It Mean for Your Business

When the paid subscription feature is on, you can share exclusive content with your loyal customers and followers. Your regular clients will be notified of streams with sales, special offers and discounts. But even if the feature is tempting, don’t forget to give something useful to your followers for free, then they’ll be happy to buy something from you.

TikTok New Features

TikTok’s also working on group chats, a new option for screen-sharing within live-streams and creator subscriptions, which could be coming soon, given Instagram just launched its next phase of creator subscription tools.

Besides, auto-following on TikTok is on its way. But that’s not auto-following you might be thinking of. This way of getting more TikTok followers is about generating an invitation link. You can share the link in your Instagram stories, messenger, Twitter or wherever you like. Once anyone follows the link, they automatically subscribe to you on TikTok.

Location tagging is yet another feature that is soon coming. From now on, TikTokers will be able to tag their locations in videos.

And a feature that makes TikTok look a bit more like a proper search engine: keyword filtering for feeds. As per Matt Navarra, "TikTok may soon let you add keywords or hashtags to filter out from your feeds. When you add a keyword filter, TikTok will no longer show you videos containing the word in a video's description or stickers in your FYP or Following feeds".

What Does It Mean for Your Business

Follow link is a great option to get more TikTok followers from your other channels, like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and more! If you have a great followership on your socials but struggle to get some on TikTok, try this new feature TikTok has made just for you.

Location tagging gives lots of space to promote local businesses on TikTok. Shops, bars, restaurants, cafes, salons and more small to medium-sized business that are bound to one place now have a chance to skyrocket their clientele from TikTok.

Keywords filtering will force creators to think more SEO-wise when they make videos. It means creators and brands should pay more attention to the hashtags they use in the clip and a video caption.

TikTok has launched a new platform for influencers and brands - trends.tiktok. The platform is basically charts with top TikTok videos, songs, hashtags, and even ads!

What Does It Mean for Your Business

Now you can easily see what your competitors and other brands do on TikTok: you can sort ads to be shown based on the region, industry, campaign objective, and other criteria. To get full access to the platform you need to log in with your TikTok business account. You can compare trends in your region with other countries and stay on top of latest TikTok trends to use them in your campaigns.