By Arianna Crawford, The Social Media Explorer
Platform Watch is a collection of posts that aims to introduce B2B marketers and communicators to new social media platforms that may enable them to generate new, innovative, and uniquely meaningful approaches to reaching and interacting with their audiences. Adopting and maintaining new channels is a long-haul journey and will take time before any return on your investment. If you’d be interested in partnering with Big Valley Marketing, feel free to drop us a line at hireus@bigvalley.co
What’s going on with Instagram?
In 2025, we’ve seen a wave of new tools and features designed to level up large-scale community management and engagement on Instagram. These new options for accounts either 1) allow for exclusive content or 2) make mass engagement easier. As niche communities gain popularity across the internet, we can see these changes as Instagram/Meta attempts to make the user experience feel more personable and valuable, while also making the creator experience more lucrative.
What are some of the new tools, features, and strategies?
- Manychat: Think Instagram, but automated. Through Manychat, accounts can automate comment replies, DMs, and build out several other CTAs, like sharing links, encouraging a follow, and collecting email addresses. They also work eith Messenger, WhatsApp, and TikTok.
- Lockable Reels: Reels are Instagram’s version of vertical short-form video, and they’ve rolled out a feature that allows creators to gate specific reels behind specific passwords. This can be useful for building out content plans targeted to VIP lists, employees, or event registrants.
- Instagram Subscriptions: Creators and accounts with large followers can now create subscriber-only content for paid subscribers. These include lives, stories, badges, posts, reels, social channels, and broadcast channels – all for a monthly fee and in-app. Think Substack or Patreon.
- Close Friends Stories: While the ‘Close Friends’ feature for Instagram Stories has existed for years, we’re seeing more brands use it to support their customer loyalty programs and VIP audiences with exclusive content.
What are some B2B use cases?
- Influencer Strategy: Have a list of key journalists, influencers, or users/customers? These tools can make it easier to engage with them specifically, while maintaining your general profile strategy for your broader audiences.
- Event Activations: For B2B brands with flagship events, you can utilize Manychat to streamline registration. Or, you can use lockable Reels to share event-specific content with attendees, such as a special message from the CEO, which is gated to people who purchase exclusive passes.
- Employer Branding/Employee Advocacy: If most of your Instagram followers are your employees, you can use these tools to your advantage – build an exclusive community just for them, or use these features to give them exclusive content they can share with their networks.
