These days, social media feeds are busy with news, memes, creator content, ads, organic marketing from brands — and arguments about whether the dress is black and blue or white and gold. The one thing you don’t see much of on social feeds anymore is organic, uncurated posts from friends and family. There are many reasons for this shift. But the fact that personal updates don’t live in plain sight doesn’t mean they’ve completely disappeared from the social media landscape.

In August 2023, Business Insider interviewed a handful of Gen Z Instagram users for an article ominously titled “Social media is dead.” But Close Friends stories and finstas aren’t the only private places Instagram users share personal updates with friends. Even more engagement happens in DMs. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said in a recent episode of the 20VC podcast: “Most of Instagram’s growth has been in stories and DMs.” He also admitted Meta was aware of messaging app Telegram growing into a potentially significant competitor, even though Instagram is “not a messaging app.”

Maybe this is why the team at Instagram has developed many new DM-centered features recently, including:

  • Notes, the text-only status updates that live and can be answered in DMs
  • Broadcast channels, a one-to-many messaging system inspired by Telegram
  • Improved guardrails against unsolicited messages

So, what does this mean for social marketers?

First, tracking brand-related engagement is more difficult when it happens in the privacy of DMs — off-limits territory for social listening tools and traditional analytics. But that doesn’t mean it can’t yield significant business results.

Second, brands and organizations need to get comfortable with the fact that DMs are the preferred communication method for most social media users. This goes for B2C conversations too, which means that social media will become even more of a customer service channel in coming years.

To-Execute List

  • Encourage your audience to DM you with questions and feedback.
  • Get your social team ready to handle customer service inquiries. Give them tools (like Hootsuite Inbox) that will help them keep track of and easily answer social messages from all your accounts across networks.
  • Set up automated responses for simple, frequently asked questions and the times of day when your team is offline.
  • Use UTMs to track (at least some of) the traffic you get from DM shares.
  • If your organization uses social media to share timely content, news, or important PSAs, consider starting an Instagram Broadcast Channel.