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Instagram in February 2017 rolled out a new feature that allows users and brand marketers to now upload more than one photo or video into a post. A total of 10 media assets are possible per single post.
Please don’t use this functionality to add 10 lame stock art images, but there are some uses that could be useful for the viewer and the brand marketer.
A couple ideas on when to use it:
- When multiple pictures or videos in sequence are needed to tell the story. Or make the story better. It’s also one way to repurpose your awesome Instagram Stories videos and Snapchat Stories. (More on Instagram Stories can be found here.)
- When posting images live from an event (or family vacation). In the past those posts would be on top of each other. That could clog up people’s feeds. (Here’s a related story on Facebook photo albums, by the way.)
I tried this new functionality right away and it’s relatively intuitive to set up. Make sure the photos were shot in the perfect Instagram square because the adjusting and zooming out function doesn’t work too here, based on when I tried it.
How to add multiple photos to one Instagram post
Take the photos with your phone’s native camera or another app that allows saving to the camera roll, outside Instagram, to make this function work.
Start your post as usual and navigate over to the LIBRARY.
Click on SELECT MULTIPLE to get the option to select more images and determine the order:
Click next and pick a filter or disregard that option:
Then go ahead and publish it.
Users will know by the dots at the bottom that they can swipe over to more photos. At least in theory. I did notice them right away on somebody else’s post.
It’s a nice new feature that can help brand marketers tell better stories in a more succinct way. Images or video for that one story wil be in one post as opposed to multiple ones or only on Instagram Stories, which auto delete after 24 hours.
Bonus tip: As of late February 2017, these posts cannot be promoted.