Everything You Need to Know About Using Instagram's Archive Feature
Instagram recently introduced the ‘archive’ feature allowing users to hide posts from from their gallery without deleting them all together. I’ll admit, I was wondering why Instagram would do it and who would use it? With some deeper thought and personal use, I found this new feature to be on my side.
While archiving posts from personal accounts may seem easier to justify, there are reasons both business and personal accounts may find this feature useful. Business reasons tend to be much different and more strategic than the many reasons one may archive a personal post.
With personal posts you may want to hide something from a potential employer, or a post that was funny in college but not so much these days- we all have those. Maybe you want to hide pictures of past memories but you don’t want to delete them forever.
Here are some of the top reasons you may use the archive feature:
Old Posts
There are most likely things on both your business and or your personal profile that just just don’t go any more. This could be a post thats inappropriate, maybe no longer relevant etc. Whatever it may be, you can archive them to give your grid a new look.
Archiving for this purpose can be a catch 22. In many cases, mainly for personal accounts, it is the appropriate thing to do. However with business accounts, it’s nice to see how a brand has evolved over time. Personally, I think it makes for a more authentic gallery. With that being said, rebranding has its reasons and archiving for this purpose is fully supported.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is easily one of the top reasons users want to delete a post. It is important for your brand to have a cohesive feed. As your business grows and changes you may venture into different styles of content. Cleaning up you gallery will allow it to look smoother.
Rebranding
Similar to archiving for aesthetic purposes, this is a useful tool when rebranding. Often when rebranding you are working with a specific color scheme and style among the rows and columns of pictures. It is easy for an out-of-place post to mess with your grid. Archiving those out-of-place photos can help with this!
Contests
A popular marketing approach on social media is running contests. If you run a contests, or post a picture on on your profile in submission to a contest, you may find the post irrelevant later down the road once the contest is over. People not only see the old contest posts on your grid, but because of Instagram’s new algorithm, people often see your contest post even after the contest has ended.
Legal Reasons
Based on my research, I found this to be one of the biggest reasons Instagram introduced this tool in the first place- and mainly in favor of those large companies using Instagram for PR. Let’s say a company posts something that offends the audience or is deemed insensitive in one way or another. For PR purposes, the company will most likely delete the post and put out a public apology. The problem with deleting a post is that it deletes all the data with it. A company may want to revisit the comments on this post in order to properly respond to the incident. Unless the company wants to rely on screen shots, they can now easily archive the post from the publics eye and revisit the post if need be.
So, how do you do it?
1. Select a post from your gallery that you want to archive and tap on it
2. Tap on the 3-dot button in the top right corner
3. Select “Archive”
It’s that simple! And here’s the good news- all the engagement and analytics that were on the post will be saved. On the contrary, if you wanted to reactivate the post later and return it to your gallery, you can do that in just one tap.
To be able to view your archived posts again for any reason, simply tap on the clock icon at the top of your profile, and voila! If you’re a business account on Instagram, then any data and analytics from the post will still be visible to you as well.
As you now know, there are many reasons why you may archive a post. It is a great alternative to deleting for those who have a hard time letting go of the post yet don’t want it in their grid. Have you used the archive feature? Leave us a comment and let us know the reason!
