Are frames useful on Instagram?

​@Chris-Anderson I’m not sure if this is still helpful, but for the ecosystem of IG having branded frames seems off. This does depend on your audience, but I think if you are playing in the IG space as a bank, adding a frame makes it seem like you’ve heard of The Tik Tok and The Instagram and you want to hang with the “cool kids”. Also, I think it makes people treat your content like an ad and gives them permission to quickly scroll on because their first thought might be I don’t want to hear from my bank vs. oh that’s an interesting picture. 

Hi ​@Chris-Anderson, while I don’t have specific data, we now more than ever users and the algorithm favor authenticity and less polished/produced Instagram feeds. For example, we’ve found a lot more success in sharing Customer Spotlights when we moved away from graphic templates capturing their quotes to simply uploading their photos and putting their quote in the caption below. Keep us posted if you make the switch how it goes! 

This would make for a great creative test. In my experience, authentic photos and videos with minimal branding have worked best. Even a carousel where the first slide is a photo while the following slides are more graphic heavy have worked for me. Also, I would be mindful about how much space a frame is taking away from your image. On mobile, your post will be much smaller and you definitely want to take up as much real estate as possible with your post.

Definitely reciprocate what ​@tcsandoval is saying here.

What you need to keep in mind is your own audience. Everyone has a different audience so this is the perfect time for an A/B test. You can take two similar posts, publish one with the frame and another without. It’s helpful to try isolating variables by publishing about the same time of day with two posts that will be closely related.

Major BONUS when your supervisor or colleague asks you about why you are/are not posting with the frames.. BOOM! You’ve got a data driven strategy now. Hope that helps!