If you’re anything like us, you spend an excessive amount of time each day scrolling, liking, tapping, and . You follow friends, co-workers, family members, and your favorite bloggers, brands, and celebrities. But how much do you know about the people that bring the app to life on your screen?
We headed to San Francisco to chat with some of the women who spend their days pioneering change and growth at our favorite social media platform. From creating features like boomerang to championing inclusivity and protecting elections, there’s nothing these women cannot do. Read on to hear more about the ins and outs of their day-to-day jobs, what led them to Instagram, career goals, and how you too can land a job at Instagram.
Susan Buckner Rose, Product Marketing Director
In Product Marketing, we spend a lot of time talking to the businesses, creators, and people who use our products to understand what’s going well and how we can improve and what gaps still exist. We use this feedback to shape our product strategy to solve these challenges and unlock new opportunities. We are also responsible for educating businesses about how to be most successful on Instagram. It can be really confusing for businesses (especially small businesses) to navigate all the platforms and solutions available, so my job is to make sure we can give simple, relevant advice to businesses when they need it.
What are some of the challenges that businesses are facing when it comes to Instagram and how is Instagram working to alleviate some of those challenges?
People love discovering their interests on Instagram – whether that’s food, art, fashion, music, cars. It’s part of what makes Instagram so special. People often discover these datingreviewer.net/nl/bbpeoplemeet-overzicht interests through the millions of brands on Instagram. One challenge these businesses face, however, is helping people quickly and easily learn more about and potentially buy the products they offer. We are working to remove this friction and frustration. Businesses can now make their posts shoppable by tagging products, and consumers in the U.S. can even buy a product directly within Instagram. We want to make it as convenient and secure as possible for people to shop products they may love, which in turn helps businesses grow new and existing customers.
What does the future of business on Instagram look like?
Instagram helps millions of businesses and creators make a living by giving them access to audiences that is only successful when the people using Instagram are successful, so in the future, we will continue finding ways to support businesses and creators of all shapes and sizes. One example is building new education channels like the account, which shares tips, tricks and behind-the-scenes access with aspiring creators who want to create amazing content for Instagram. Another example is investing in simpler, seamless solutions for businesses to find value, including letting people checkout directly within Instagram when they shop or letting small businesses easily run ad campaigns from within Instagram. After five years at Instagram, I still see so much untapped opportunity for us to build even better solutions for people, creators, and businesses.
How do you work to determine business strategy for features like Boomerang, Instagram filters, and more?
We always start by listening to our community. For IGTV specifically, we heard that people want to get closer to the creators they love, but there was no way for them to watch long videos on Instagram. For creators, they also felt constrained and wanted more flexibility to tell their stories and connect with their followers in meaningful ways. We combined these insights with Instagram’s values of simplicity and craft to build a truly mobile-first and creator-first video product. We follow this same process with all of our new and existing features.
