Instagram has announced that content creators will soon be able to save their unfinished stories to drafts. The highly requested feature will make it possible for users to come back to their in-progress stories later, allowing them to edit and post when they’re ready. Some users are already able to access this feature with the rollout available on some Apple iOS devices.

This is particularly welcome news for brands and social media marketers who have been asking for more control and flexibility over how and when they post stories since the feature was first introduced.

If you’re not familiar with Instagram stories, they are basically short timed videos or photo snippets which last 24 hours (unless pinned as a highlight by users). They are capable of driving tons of engagement. According to Instagram, there’s already more than 500 million accounts using the feature every single day and it’s very, very popular. A survey found that more than 50% of users have visited a website to make a purchase after seeing a product or service in a story. It’s quickly proven to be a powerful tool for engaging with customers, growing traffic and increasing awareness - but it’s often laborious and time-consuming for brands to manage. Drafts are set to change that.

Screenshots leaked online by Alessandro Paluzzi suggest that it will be fairly straightforward, prompting users to save or discard their draft story with a pop-up window when trying to navigate away.

So, what are the potential benefits to user’s and brands on the platform?

Scheduling

One of the main potential benefits of draft stories is that it offers businesses the flexibility to prepare posts ahead of time, ready to be published at a later date. This will allow businesses to schedule and plan posts more effectively, making it possible to line stories up ready for a big event or announcement and making it simpler for businesses to post at the optimal times for the audience.

Up until now businesses have been reliant on third-party apps for scheduling and managing stories, which has been clunky at best. Non-native tools lose a lot of the interactive features of stories, such as stickers, which means brands have been left choosing between manual posting to make edits, or losing functionality with scheduled posts. Drafts are expected to make posting stories much more streamlined and intuitive as businesses will be able to create content when it’s convenient for them and send it out when their followers are most likely to see it.

Team collaboration

The ability to save story drafts is extremely useful for teams who work together to manage a single social media account. Having drafts saved to an account will make it much simpler to manage workflow as it means that teams can collaborate on editing content before it is sent live. For marketing teams, this is an excellent addition as it means that clients can review content in its final form before it is published, making approval processes easier.

Review time

At the moment, users don’t have the option to sit on their content and decide whether or not to post it. If you’re second guessing yourself, you’ll need to choose between discarding any of your edits on your story and making it live. Most of the time this is fine, but sometimes brands and influencers need time to mull over their content before publishing, and sometimes the moment just isn’t right. The drafts option means that you don’t lose your carefully crafted content, even if you’ve decided not to go ahead with posting it right now.

Creative content

Most brands are already regularly using Instagram stories to promote their campaigns, share news, sell products and much more. With a drafts folder, it’ll be even easier to get creative with content, making it much simpler for brands to coordinate account takeovers or collaborations with other brands, prepare new campaigns, manage giveaways, provide tutorials, unveil new products and offer behind-the-scenes insights into their business.

With this feature now beginning to rollout, it’s expected that many users will soon be able to benefit! Stay tuned to find out more.