Instagram Saves has been around for a while, and businesses are leveraging it to grow and engage their audience. Although it has many benefits for Instagram business account owners, many are yet to realize these benefits and how they can use them for Instagram business success. This article will discuss the IG Saves feature and how you can make the most of it unless the account is private.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Instagram Saves
If you’re an active Instagram user, by now, you should be curious as to why brands and influencers on Instagram have recently been obsessed with getting lots of post saves.
I wondered about it, too, until I realized that IG Saves is the current Instagram hotcake, especially for businesses.
Instagram has been working towards removing the post-likes feature for a while. They’ve run tests in many countries and are looking to expand to other countries before making it worldwide.
The trial started with Canada, then Brazil, Ireland, Argentina, Japan, Italy, and New Zealand followed suit.
Because of the removal of Instagram Likes, brands and influencers had to find other better ways to measure Instagram campaign success. That is where Instagram Saves (a feature launched back in 2017) came into play.
I will show you what Instagram Saves is, how it works, and how you can leverage it to drive massive engagement for your business.
Grab your favorite snacks and drinks and relax. What you’ll discover in the next few minutes will change your business forever.
What Are Instagram Saves and How Does it Work?
Instagram Saves is an Instagram feature that lets users collect and save their favorite posts. They are a little-known feature compared to the popular reels feature. These saves are like Twitter bookmarks.
To save a post you like:
Tap on the “bookmark” icon at the bottom right corner of that post.
Automatically, the post gets saved to your general collection. Typically, an option prompts you to save the post to your choice of collection.
What are Instagram Collections? Let’s find out.
Instagram Saves vs. Likes
You may be wondering what the difference is between the two. An Instagram-like is a simple recognition that a user likes something on the social network.
However, when someone makes an IG save, it shows they took the time to do it. It means the post has value and that they want to come back to it again in the future.
It is also an indication to Instagram that the user whose post was saved has more value, boosting it in the algorithm.
What Are Instagram Collections?
Instagram introduced the Instagram Collections feature simultaneously with Instagram Saves to enable users to categorize their saved posts according to their interests.
You can classify your favorite posts by categories. This makes it easier to locate any post at any time. You can have separate categories for funny, investment, educational, and inspirational posts.
As a business, you can do the same, too.
You can have collections of your competitors’ killer content, user-generated content, business or branding ideas, etc.
Instagram Saves Are Important For Brands; Why You Should Care
Instagram Saves are essential to brands because they can help you track how valuable your content is to users. Besides, they are better than a like and similar to comments in the algorithm scheme.
Consider this:
If I see a post I like on Instagram, I may admire it, smile, and keep scrolling. At best, I will hit the heart icon before scrolling to the next post.
But if I see a piece of content I love, something I’m sure I’ll want to reference later, I won’t want to lose it. And the best way to not lose it is to save it for later.
The Instagram algorithm understands these minute human actions. It understands that saving that post means I find it valuable and won’t want to lose it.
That’s the catch.
For me to find that post invaluable, the algorithm believes others will find it helpful too. So, what does it do? It displays that post to more people.
If people keep saving the post, the algorithm will take it to the top of the Explore Page. Your post on the Explore page is a massive win for your brand. That means more followers and engagement on your account, likely resulting in exponential business growth.
See the screenshot below of the Instagram Explore page and how to access it.
Reasons Why Your Instagram Content Strategy Should Consider Instagram Posts Saves
If you’re yet to realize why Instagram post saves should be a part of your Instagram content strategy, read on to find out. However, if you have a private IG account, no one can save your posts on Instagram.
Instagram’s Algorithms Favor Saves
As mentioned earlier, the Instagram algorithm favors IG Saves. The more saves your content gets; the more Instagram displays your posts to people. And the more people see your post, the more visibility your brand gets.
Instagram Saves is an excellent strategy for creating long-term engagement rates on your content.
People save your posts to revisit them later. When they revisit, that’s more views and engagement for your brand’s business page.
When you create high-quality, savable content, you create a reason for people to keep revisiting your page. Instead of one-time engagements, you’re getting people to engage with your content as often as they revisit their saved posts.
IG Saves Are a Measure of Your Content Quality
Instagram Saves is a critical measurement metric for unique content quality. The more saves your posts get, the more the Instagram algorithm perceives your posts to be of high quality.
Instagram Saves is a Way to Assess What Type of Post Works for Your Audience
The “View Insights” feature on Instagram gives you a breakdown of how your posts are performing. You’ll see, among other things, the number of saves a particular post has.
With that, you’ll know the kind of content your audience resonates with and create more of it.
Instagram Saves is a Cost-effective Way to Promote Your Brand
Instead of running many fruitless campaigns on Instagram, you can focus on creating valuable content. Remember, the more valuable your content is, the more saves it gets and the more it is displayed to a larger audience.
What’s the primary purpose of promoting your brand? To get more visibility, right?
You can get much-needed visibility with little investment in quality content.
Create Infographic-Style Images
Infographics are a super-powerful way of driving engagement. Most people appreciate having detailed information in one image.
Leverage infographics that target your specific audience to drive massive engagement on your Instagram account.
Remember, your followers must like and save your posts before the Instagram algorithm can pick and show them to more people.
Write Memorable Captions
You might have a high-quality image or video but receive little engagement because of a poor caption. Your caption is part of what gets people to stop scrolling and engage with your content.
Write memorable captions for all your Instagram posts – compelling captions that drive curiosity and excite your audience.
You can consider Instagram captions as a means for you to microblog. I mean, there are over 2000 characters of space available to you. You can write mini blog posts to engage your audience.
A couple of tools on the internet could help you craft powerful, memorable captions. However, have your audience in mind, as they are the actual consumers of whatever content you create.
Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is ageless content; content is not limited to specific seasons. They are not based on trends or trivial highlights and remain relevant yearly.
When you create evergreen content, trends don’t affect your engagement. After a couple of years, someone can still return to their collections and pick up one or two essential things from your posts.
And they don’t get to trash them like they would other content they saved during specific trends or seasons.
Create more evergreen content if you want long-term engagement from your audience. This will help grow your IG saves from others along the way.
Some examples of save-able Instagram posts include:
- How to posts
- Directions to get somewhere
- Results of a survey
- Recipes for food
- Stats of a niche
- Schedule of events
- Quotes to help others feel better
- Listicles
- Recommendations
Create Tips and Hacks Posts
People are continually in search of tips and hacks. They want to learn to do certain things without going through the “hard way.” Creating tips and hacks is a sure way to increase engagement on your posts.
An easy way to do this is to discover the pain point questions people are asking in your niche and the activities and tasks they find difficult. When you figure these things out, you’ll find it easy to craft “tips and hacks” solutions for them.
Make Your Posts Quotable
Another way to leverage Instagram Saves is to create quotable posts – posts that are brief and concise.
Users will save your post when they figure out that they can easily turn it into quotes later. And the more your posts are turned into quotes, the more visibility you get on and off Instagram.
Add a ‘Save for Later’ CTA
This is a crucial and powerful way of getting people to save your posts.
Your content might be super rich with value, but if you don’t tell your audience to save, they might not remember to do so. Sometimes, later, they might recall not saving that post, and by that time, it will be too late.
You may have to explain what IG saves are to your audience too.
Always add a clear and compelling CTA that reminds them to save your posts and revisit them anytime they want.
Track and Measure Your Instagram Saves
If Instagram finally removes likes, you may not have another way of measuring the post’s performance if you don’t use IG Saves.
Social media analytics is essential and tracking your Instagram Saves is one effective way of measuring the performance of your business posts. You can check how many saves your posts have and, as mentioned earlier, also use this to know the kind of content your audience prefers.
How To Track Your Instagram Saves
To track your Instagram Saves, click on the “View Insights” icon at the bottom left corner of the post you wish to track. This icon is above the likes, comments, and share icons and is only available for business profiles.
To enjoy this feature, you can create a business profile or convert your account to a business/professional account.
The view insights icon does not just show you the number of saves you have in a post but also how many people your post reached. You can measure the number of saves against the number of people reached to know how a particular post performed.
This is a powerful feature you can use to grow your Instagram organically and take your business to unimaginable heights.
How To Measure Instagram Engagement Based On IG Saves
Check the ‘Content Tab,’ tap ‘See All’ under your feed posts, and use the filter to review saved posts.
If you need to calculate your engagement based on likes, comments and saves, use this handy formula:
Engagement = (Comments + Likes + Saves) / (Impressions x 100)
After reviewing the saves engagement, you will get a feel for what is working and what is not working for your Instagram Saves. You will be able to adjust your posts and content strategy in the future to generate more saves.
You can also check if you have gained more followers in the insights tab of your profile. If others see your posts more from saves, you may also gain Instagram followers as an added bonus.
Frequently Asked Questions on Instagram Saves for Business
More FAQs on IG Saves
Final Words on Leveraging Instagram Saves for Business
Instagram Saves are not only designed for personal users; they are priceless assets in the hands of businesses and influencers. Many brands are already using it to grow their businesses, and you can do the same.
However, learning what it means isn’t enough; you have to learn how to use it to measure your performance and improve your engagement.
This article gives you a detailed guide on how to use Instagram saves to promote your business. Finally, I hope you stop at nothing to give your brand the visibility it deserves.
Want to learn more about how to take your business to the next level? You can learn a lot about how to scale your online business, and these five emerging social media techniques can be all you need to take your business to the top.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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I saved a reel which when I clicked Save the bar graphic said Saved private but I didn’t put into a collection and now I can’t find it.
I’ve looked everywhere I know.
Do you have to put it in a titled collection?
Hi Terri, I believe you do have to title your collections or they won’t save. You can check your profile feed to see if you can find the reel. I hope that helps!
What a wonderful read. People need a reliable indicator of achievement if IG bans Likes globally. I loved reading this brilliant review. Fantastic work!
The main reason I haven’t been utilising the function is because I don’t often store material. But it’s a great technique to gather information to read later or for references. Without trying to, I bookmarked. But now I see why saves are a crucial Instagram statistic.
Lisa, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Ahmad, welcome to Inspire To Thrive. Yes, it is a little-known feature of Instagram. Saves help you to come back to things you wanted to see again and it helps the account that you saved the post from in the algorithm. You could ask for saves from your followers too on certain posts. Thanks for reading and have a great day.
Hi Lisa,
What a great read. I have not been using the feature, primarily because I don’t normally save content. But it’s a fantastic way to build a collection of content for references or to read later. Think of Instagram Saves as Pocket, a software that allows you to save content in a collection for later use or reading. I have been using Pocket for the longest, and IG Saves works just like this tool. You tutorial makes it even more exciting to use.
Thanks for sharing, Lisa!
Thank you, Moss. Yes, it works for you to save great info and for your followers to do the same if you create savable content. It will help your Instagram posts go further in the algorithm for more people to see. They (Instagram) will find your content more valuable.) I appreciate your coming by and have a wonderful day.
I saved posts by accident a few times Lisa. I bookmarked without intending to do so. But now I get why saves are important on Instagram as a key metric. If IG removes Likes across the globe folks need a good measure of success. I enjoyed this dazzling review. Sensational job!
Thank you, Ryan. Oh yes, there is a reason for everything on Instagram that can affect the algorithm. And of course, it may change often. I didn’t realize how it worked until a little while ago. The same goes for archiving. It takes it off your feed if you archive a post on Instagram. Thanks for coming by and make it a great day Ryan.