Game changing social proof

Instagram is waving goodbye to vanity metrics and saying a big hello to Saves; the hottest and truest engagement metric that should be your brand social team’s newest obsession. Guest writer, Lizzie Newell of Iconic London, explains why.

The story so far

Saves aren’t anything new. They first appeared about two years ago as a way for Instagrammers to bookmark their favourite posts, saving them for later. When they were widely rolled out to business profiles in late 2017, brands and their audiences alike didn’t really know what to do with the little tab icon top-right of an image. In short, Saves were underused and misunderstood for a long time.

They’re certainly not the flashiest form of social proof but, in 2020, Saves are a big factor in how the ever-mysterious Instagram algorithm ‘reads’ and prioritises content. Basically, the more Saves a post gets, the more it will appear on your audience’s feeds. With Instagram still debating removing Like counts (the ultimate vanity point-scorer) across all business and personal profiles, Saves are to Instagram what a Super-Like is to Tinder.

The brand-building social game has changed significantly in the last two years, and even more so in the Covid-19 landscape. So, how do brands identify true effectivity of their social content strategy today?

Times are changing

The way people consume social content has changed so the way brands use the platforms must change.

Only a few short years ago, the primary focus on social media was time-wasting escapism. Instagram, especially, was used by millions as a chance to switch their brain off and scroll, dropping Likes on this and that reflexively.

In 2020 all of us are more conscious of wasting time than ever before, and try to practice (at least short-term) periods of digital detox. In times of uncertainty (the global pandemic), attentions are frayed and priorities examined more closely. So, when we do give in to an indulgent social scroll, the guilt that we could be ‘doing something better’ is unavoidable. We all feel the world today needs us to be pro-active, striving for change and increasingly ‘woke’.

Content that feels too contrived or frivolous potentially turns people off, and anyway, gets easily drowned out amid important world news, empowering life hacks and skills-based videos. Because we all want to ‘be better’, we know we should prioritise our time, consuming content that we deem worthier. Brands that sell non-essentials or luxuries need to work especially hard to prove worth.

The social user’s time is extremely precious and every post a brand puts out needs to be immediately relevant and strive to go more than surface-deep. Brands must deliver genuine, authentic quality, ‘save-ability’ and value more than ever before.

The algorithm

An aesthetically appealing feed is no longer enough. Instagram today doesn’t care as much about what time or how often your brand posts (within reason – posting without structure or flooding the feed won’t win you any favour). Content for content’s sake has never worked, but there’s no getting away with it now.

In 2020, things that heavily impact how Instagram prioritises content are consistency, original content, variation of content format and intentional engagements i.e. Saves and less so, comments.

Profile type (creator, business, personal), organic vs paid content, Like count and audience size have a far less significant impact on feed ranking now than in days gone by.

Adding value

There’s been an evident pivot to privacy; private messaging and small group chats are the fastest-growing areas of online conversation year-on-year. Users don’t want their every activity to be ‘seen’, so it really does go down in the DMs. Saves (and Shares) are hidden actions that feel like a safe way to interact with content. 

Whether your brand sells makeup or pension packages, your audience’s first interaction with social content must provide them with value. Perhaps the post could teach them something – how to get the latest fluffy brow look or the importance of amalgamating all their different pension pots – thus prompting them to Save for future reference and further investigation.

But ‘value’ doesn’t only mean teaching and learning. If the post makes the audience feel good, makes them laugh, makes them think or makes them question… it’s done something. If the post reminds them of a friend, it could be worth saving and sharing. If the post relates directly to their lifestyle, it’s worth saving as a ‘favourite’. By doing something a post stands a better chance of being deemed save-worthy.

Adding purpose

Alongside the need for content value, social audiences are also looking for posts with intention and practical purpose. For a consumer brand this purpose is predominantly to generate sales.

Social consumers are, and have always been, fickle; they have little brand loyalty and are easily-influenced. However, for some Gen Z shoppers, saving to and building wish lists can lead to spending down the line, and 60% of U.S. Gen Z shoppers use the platform as their primary platform for discovery of brands and products*. When you add in the fact that 70% of Instagram users are more likely to make a mobile purchase than non-users**, the role of Saves in social commerce today cannot be underestimated. 

Saves are taking the place of increasingly-outdated website wish lists; they allow a consumer to build a gallery of potential purchases and to re-visit and re-edit, narrowing down and adding to their options as many times as they like. With the added bonus of being able to sort Saves into Collections, this function has really tapped into the current trend for mentally de-cluttering and organising: categorised Collections = calm and clear mindset!

When someone does decide to shop from their Saves, the social purchase is exactly how they expect it to be in 2020 – quick and with limited clicks to checkout, thanks to the tagged products in the posts they have stored.

A call to action

It has been many years since brands have needed to add ‘like and comment on this post’ as a sign off in their captions. Those functions are inherent to the social-savvy (though on the decline), and usually only specifically listed as entry mechanics for Insta-grid giveaways. But, as the old saying goes, you can’t get what you don’t ask for.

Instagram’s on-page insights allow business profiles to see how many Saves a post has garnered but does not reveal by whom - and that’s okay. It’s reasonable to assume that, if Instagram exposed this, Saves would eventually go the same way as Likes: social audiences retaliate against being watched too closely by brands.

That being said, should brands in 2020 aim to prompt Saves by signing off captions with; “If you like this post, remember to add it to your Saves and send to a friend”? Food for thought.

So, what next?

Your brand’s 2021 social content strategy needs to place more importance on generating Saves over Likes. Your social team should stay close to this metric, tracking this new measure of true content effectivity daily, weekly and monthly.

With the increasing focus on digital business and the additional damaging impact of COVID-19 on physical retail, your brand’s social team must work harder and smarter to produce Save-worthy content, leading to purchases. But, let’s be clear, this should not translate as a frantic increase in content output; we’re talking about quality, value and purpose over quantity.

A Like says this is pretty, a Save says this is more than just pretty. A Like says I’ll forget this in thirty seconds, a Save says I need to come back to this. People may browse Instagram for the appealing pictures but they will focus in on the quality content.

Sources:

*https://www.glossy.co/fashion/how-gen-z-is-using-instagram-to-shop/
Kate Richards, Feb 2020

**https://adespresso.com/blog/instagram-statistics/

Anna Gotter, Aug 2020