What is this about?
Well, everyone is on the gram, and we’re all aware how big promotions, promos, teasers and music videos are being released on Instagram and how big of a platform it has become. The photo-sharing app has now become a major revenue generator for Facebook and has change its dynamics ever since. They introduced stories and now 1 minute videos also expanded to IGTV (popularly known as Instagram TV), but what is something they can do to give celebrities and popular people, a breakthrough to introduce or promote their stuff for a time-period?
Agreed, stories are pretty much doing a lot, but there has also been something worrisome that I personally observed on Instagram. I follow a lot of celebrities like all people, and I have a huge girl-crush on Zayn Malik and Miley Cyrus. I keep checking their profiles too, for new content that doesn’t pop on my news feed, but there was something alarming that I saw with both of these celebrities, and that was —
They deleted all their content, completely wiped their Instagram accounts clean, and started the slate afresh!
Now, they did it both for promotions of new content. While Miley Cyrus was introducing her new album ‘Nothing Breaks like a Heart (NBLH)’, Zayn came up with his second album ‘Icarus Falls’, whose every song I love! ❤ But with that kept aside, it was shocking to see that all those amazing photos, those sunset shots and food videos of these two celebrities are now gone forever. I couldn’t search them up anywhere, and basically they had wiped out their life before 2018 from Instagram, which was a bit of a shock!
Of course they needed to promote their new albums, but I’m sure there could’ve been better ways to do that rather than deleting everything on your social media, especially if you’re someone who has millions of followers! Followers who check your oldest posts as much as they check your new ones. I’m also pretty sure that even Instagram would’ve faced losses because of content being deleted from their platform — content that generated millions of dollars!
You can check out some of the screenshots I took here —
That was her Instagram last December when she wiped it out completely!
That’s Miley Cyrus’ account. You can observe that she has a total of 264 posts, and her last post is of 01 December, 2018, and that is a video-snippet of her new music video from 2018 and that is Nothing Breaks Like a Heart. Maybe she did that out of a heavy promotion for the video or some other reason as this article on internet states — https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/07/204373/why-did-miley-cyrus-delete-instagram-theories
Same is the case with Mr Malik. His first post on Instagram dates back to April 2018. He also wiped out everything that existed on his Instagram before April, and it’s heartbreaking for a lot of fans. His first post also is a music video snippet of his new album! Here are some other theories as to why he would’ve done that — https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a19708804/zayn-malik-just-purged-every-gigi-hadid-instagram-photo/
But my concern is — if celebrities are doing this to get over their past life or toxic relationships, they should have a better option than manually deleting every post from their account one by one, and if they’re doing it for a digital promotional event, even then they must definitely have a better way to do this! Let’s explore both cases one by one –
To move on from your Past Life —
If you’re someone who wants to move on from your past life, or you’re no longer willing to be associated with your photos and videos on Instagram, you should have a one-click option to do that. There are two ideas that I explored during my research, and they are —
- Time Based Deletion
- Tag Based Deletion
For time-based deletion, the concept is simple. Users can select a time frame or a date before which they would want to delete all the posts on Instagram and they should do it with a single click. This would free them from seeing the data from the time they were in that toxic relationship with their ex or something else for that matter! While the second method is quite inclusive in terms of deletion.
Instagram heavily works on hashtags and they’re the first ones who introduced them. Similarly, they should be the first ones to leverage them as well. If you’re someone who uses a particular hash-tag under a specific category of photos, you should get an option to delete all posts with that hash-tag with a single click. For example, if you use your and your boyfriend’s name as a hash-tag like #JohnLovesMary, you should have one click option to delete all posts that use this hash-tag, and you’re free from the sins of your past life!
This method will also prevent all other amazing posts that you’ve published, but without using that hash-tag. Suppose you have a post of an amazing sunset in Greece, that you captured while on a trip with your friends, you won’t want to delete that, so you can safely use hash-tag based deletion.
Here is where it can be positioned —
In profile section, when you click on the hamburger menu, you can see ‘Settings’ at the bottom of the fly-out. In these settings, there can be a ‘Delete’ button, that further asks the users their choice upon how they wish to delete their posts —
Whether users wish to delete using Hash-tag or using time-frame? Once the user has selected a choice, he can select the time-frame OR the hash-tag that he wishes to wipe-out from his profile —
User can delete using time-frame or by entering the hash-tag. This will not only save time, but will also save efforts of deleting every single photo manually. Now coming to the second case –
To Promote something new —
If you’re on Instagram running a business or a celebrity launching your albums and launching movie teasers on Instagram, it is a huge platform for you, and you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity. And if you want to keep the launch so exclusive that whoever lands on your profile, only and only sees your promotional content for a while, and all your posts remain hidden or archived for that time period, you can do that too!
For this, I suggest a ‘Promote’ feature in Settings only, from where the user can decide the time-frame of his photos that he wishes to push into archives, and for how long. Even before getting all his posts back, Instagram will push a notification asking them whether they’re ready to make their account look like it was before or not.
In Settings fly-out, there can be a button for promotions.
There can be a “Promote” button above Delete, that gives the users a walkthrough about how they can promote their content.
Once the user selects which posts he wishes to Archive (the time-frame), and for how long does he wish for the promotional campaign to run, he will be awarded with a clean profile to begin with. He will be able to RESTORE all his archived posts either manually from ‘same Promote’ option, or if when the promotional campaign ends (his chosen time frame ends), all his old posts will come back, with his new ones remaining at the top (just the way it is currently).
This will give a lot of creative freedom and space to Instagram artists and celebrities to have a better control over their profiles and content that they post.
Moreover, hash-tag based deletion can be utilised in different dynamics by different artists, and it will also promote a more ‘CAREFUL’ and ‘RESPONSIBLE’ use of hash-tags, from future. Right now, another problem with Instagram hash-tags is that people add random hashtags to posts even though the post is related with that tag or not.