Instagram is catering to the business owners and advertisers of the digital world with a load of new features. The ‘Gram now hosts over 200,000 businesses and is offering new analytics and metrics systems to track social media engagement. They are also offering specialized business profiles and the ability to turn Instagram posts into ads directly from the Instagram app.

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Tech Crunch Reports:

“As noted before, the new business profiles will allow a subset of Instagram users to upgrade their accounts in order to gain access to an expanded set of features. This includes the added ability to let customers reach out to them via phone calls, emails or texts with a tap, and the profiles will include maps and directions to the business, when applicable.

Not everyone will qualify as a business on Instagram, however — only those who already have a Facebook Page for their business will be able to convert their account.

“In doing that, it gives us the payment credentials, as well as if they want to prepopulate some of the information like their street address, the phone number, and the website,” says Quarles.

It also means that self-promoters on Instagram who use the service to gain notoriety and followers but without a commercial interest won’t be allowed to use some of Instagram’s more desirable new tools, like the Insights feature.

With Insights, businesses will be able to track which of their posts are performing well, and other details about their audience’s demographics. As previously reported, this includes things like top posts, reach, impressions and engagement around posts, along with data on followers like their gender, age and location, for example.

The Insights experience is mobile-first — meaning that bigger businesses may use the feature while on the go, while smaller businesses may use Insights as their primary way of tracking their performance on Instagram.”

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