Instagram continues its steady march towards shoppability. This week, it announced that its recently-piloted product-tagging feature is available to all U.S. users. For those unfamiliar, it lets Instagram users, influencers, and brands tag products in their posts to facilitate shopping on the social platform.
By doing this, Instagram is leaning into existing user behavior in the shareability of life moments… many of which involve products. For example, someone excited about sneakers they just bought may naturally post about it on Instagram. Now they can formalize it – and make it more shoppable – in a tag.
To put some numbers behind Instagram’s organic bent toward product discovery, it reports that 1.6 million people tag at least one brand each week on the app. This includes content that ends up in the formal Shop tab, as well as the main Instagram feed – both of which see high shopping intent.
Tag, You’re It.
Going deeper, Instagram users now have an additional option in the familiar post and Story workflow. They can take or select a photo as normal, then choose to add a caption – all familiar stuff to Instagram regulars. There, they can choose to “Tag Products” to search for brands/products to tag.
Given that it’s a selection process, this makes it fairly structured from a taxonomy standpoint. This will ensure that the tags are well organized and avoid duplicates and other messy data scenarios that cause headaches for brands. It also adds structure on the user end which may lessen friction.
From the brand perspective, they’re also notified when tagged and can see all the places they’ve been tagged in their Instagram Shopping profile. Their dashboard lets them control who tags their products, thus enabling brand safety. Altogether, it’s a compelling set of features for brand marketers.
Put another way, this is a clear move towards boosting engagement for consumer brands on Instagram. When they see that they’re being tagged by users and influencers, it’s an explicit signal that Instagram hopes they’ll act on. That action can include heightened organic presence… or paid ads.
Meanwhile, this also appeals to users, creators, and influencers who now have more control over their posts. That could be a hook to engage more, playing to their vanity. Or in the case of actual influencers, it could spark affiliate relationships with brands, further incentivizing posting volume.
Peak Shoppability
Back to the broader shoppability trend, it marks the rise of buy buttons and transactional calls-to-action in everything from Instagram Stories to YouTube videos to real-world items you point your phone at. The latter continues to emerge in visual search such as Google Lens and Snap Scan.
But it should be noted that this isn’t a new phenomenon, given years of social media giants adding buy buttons to their feeds. But it’s been accelerated as it piggybacks on Covid-era eCommerce inflections. It’s a natural pairing as people like to share tastes and brand affinity, thus offering products a viral kick.
As for the new product tagging rollout, it builds on Instagram’s status as one of the original shoppability players. It hass conditioned a use case around product discovery. Expect it to continue building on that UX persona in ways that reduce friction in the eCommerce flow – from browsing to buying.
