If you read our 2022 Social Media Predictions blog post a few months back, you may remember that we suspected social commerce would be BIG this year. And just as we anticipated, Instagram is now rolling out product tags to ALL users. Yep, personal accounts included!

Historically a feature only available to business accounts, qualifications to now tag products on a personal account include:

The account must be public.
The user must be over the age of 18.
The user’s account must be active over the last 30 days and have no more than 2 Instagram policy violations.

WHAT ARE INSTAGRAM PRODUCT TAGS?

Within the past few years, social media has really made an effort to streamline the buying process by enabling in-platform purchases (hello, Instagram Shops!). Product tags, also known as shopping tags, are comparable to real-life, in-store price tags. By clicking on the shopping tag, you can learn more about the individual product and even purchase the item without ever having to leave the Instagram app. This feature is advantageous to brands as fewer steps in the purchase process lower the chance of losing a potential customer somewhere in the conversion funnel.

THE BENEFIT OF ROLLING OUT PRODUCT TAGGING TO ALL USERS

Formerly, brands were the only users able to tag their own products to shop. However, within the next few months, ALL users will be able to tag products from brands in their posts. Meaning, consumers can now share and directly tag to shop the products they love!

Instagram explained that this creates new opportunities for brands to:

Drive increased distribution of their products
Allow consumers to more easily discover their products from users they trust
Encourage engagement with their community
Help shoppers understand how products look in diverse settings and lifestyles

Similar to when a user is tagged in a feed post, brands will have the ability to remove a product tag from a feed post, if desired. They can also control who is allowed to tag their products to shop. Learn more about how to manage how users use your product tags on Instagram here.

AFFILIATE OPPORTUNITIES ARE NOW AVAILABLE DIRECTLY ON INSTAGRAM FOR BRANDS AND INFLUENCERS

That’s not all! To keep up with the rise of influencer marketing, Instagram now allows brands with an Instagram Shop to create an affiliate program that allows creators to share and tag products with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app. Talk about an awesome and easy incentive to encourage influencers to share about your brand!

Once brands have gone through the process of creating an affiliate program on Instagram, they will be able to manage commission rates, easily view creator content promoting their products, explore insights, and monitor sales. Keep in mind that unlike shopping tags from standard users, brands are unable to remove shopping tags from affiliate posts.

Needless to say, if you’re a product-based business that doesn’t have your Instagram shop set up yet, there’s no better time to get started than now! The potential for in-app discovery and purchases are only on the trajectory to increase.

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xx- The Homies