Read Time: 3 minutes

SOCi Integrates New Messenger API For Instagram

 

As a multi-location marketer, your location’s presence on Instagram is a must when it comes to localized social. After all, Instagram has over 1 billion users every month, making it the second most used social network (behind Facebook). While Instagram is an excellent place for businesses to post locally and connect with consumers, messaging on Instagram has been impossible to scale and track due to the lack of an API integration. Consider this – 47 percent of millennials use Instagram as a messaging app! With all those users, you were likely missing out on countless messages by not having the ability to track them in one place. So, while your multi-location business is likely leveraging Instagram’s messaging feature, it was nearly impossible to keep up with every message that each local page receives natively on the platform – until now.

 

SOCi – One of the First Platforms to Launch Messenger API for Instagram

 

At Facebook’s F8 Refresh, Messenger from Facebook made the incredibly exciting announcement of API support for Instagram. Previously, the Messenger API for Instagram was only available to a small number of select beta testers, including SOCi. And as a result, SOCi is one of the first to offer this new integration to our customers!

 

The new API will enable businesses to leverage messaging on Instagram, at scale, by empowering them to handle Instagram messages within SOCi’s centralized platform. This exciting new API can be used to send and receive messages from other Instagram users within our platform or app and is intended for businesses who need to manage messaging on Instagram at scale.

 

The Messenger API support for Instagram on SOCi rounds out our multi-location messaging workflows. It ensures customers have a 360 view of all messages coming into their corporate and local social pages by consolidating all messages into one dashboard. This integration will eliminate the need to monitor and respond to Instagram messages and Instagram Story mentions natively. Customers can now use SOCi’s Engagements product to manage messaging on Instagram in real-time.

 

When asked about the integration, Instagram shared, “We are thrilled that SOCi is launching an Instagram messaging integration. The Messenger API for Instagram is now available for all developers who make it possible for brands to improve and enhance messaging experiences with customers,” said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, VP of Platform Partnerships at Messenger. “By integrating the Messenger API for Instagram, businesses and developers can effectively scale messaging workflows to better own the customer experience and build more authentic relationships.”

 

Why This New Integration Matters for Your Business

 

While it’s clear that managing your Instagram messages through SOCi will help save your business time and effort, there are other added benefits as well. For instance, this new integration:

• Empowers multi-location businesses using SOCi to improve their customer care through personal and local conversations on Instagram.
• Provides your business with a chance to increase social selling opportunities by privately engaging with potential leads on Instagram.
• Consolidates all corporate and local social page messages into one easy-to-use dashboard.
• Provides your business with insight into how customers and potential leads are using messages to engage with brands and local businesses on Instagram.

 

When businesses need to monitor and respond to messages on Instagram, SOCi will help them quickly find, respond, and resolve critical engagements and leads. Through this integration, your business can receive various message types – including messages with text, messages with videos and photos, messages from Instagram business accounts, Instagram Story mentions as direct messages, and messages from Instagram Shop product detail pages. Now that you can consolidate your messages into a single dashboard, including your Instagram messages, with SOCi, what comes next?

 

Get Started Building a Winning Local Social Strategy

 

If your multi-location business is already taking advantage of SOCi Social to manage its local social efforts, good for you! If your business hasn’t gotten the opportunity to use SOCi’s Central Command^TM yet, it’s time to reconsider. Not only will the platform empower you to manage your business’s messages on Instagram, but it’ll also consolidate all of your localized marketing needs into a single platform.

 

For more insight on how SOCi can help give your local social efforts the boost it needs while strengthening other aspects of your localized marketing strategy, request a demo today! SOCi is the all-in-one platform for your localized marketing needs and the central command for multi-location marketers. Navigating localized marketing across 100s or 1,000s of business locations can be nearly impossible, but SOCi is here to make your life easier, and take your business and career to the next level.