Why Instagram’s new Quiet Mode is good for social media managers and businesses
In mid-January, as we emerged from a flurry of posts about New Year's Resolutions, Instagram announced Quiet Mode. It’s supposed to “help people focus” and “set healthy boundaries” on the app – but will it cut into your facetime with your followers?
To explore that, let’s unpack what Quiet Mode will actually change.
Like other time limits and out-of-office features, it will allow Instagram users to pause their notifications, display ‘In quiet mode’ as their status, and send auto-replies to people who try to slide into their DMs during focus time.
As a social media manager or small business owner, this should give you a feeling of relief. At least it gave me one! As I always insist, social media interaction needs to have meaning behind it, and nobody can be intentional online for twenty-four hours a day.
Setting up quiet mode on your app might improve your Instagram presence because you will be able to take a step back, think about big-picture communication, and be more creative when you return. Personally, I think it is even better if you turn off all notifications from all your apps anyway, but if you aren’t ready for that drastic step, this is a good compromise.
How to Enable Quiet Mode:
From your account page, tap the three lines in the top right corner.
Tap Settings and then Notifications.
Tap Quiet Mode.
From there, you can turn on Quiet Mode or set automatic times for it to go on and off daily!
So what about your audience?
Hopefully, they will also take advantage of Quiet Mode to turn off the mind-numbing barrage of notifications and scroll back to reality for a little while. If your content is thought-provoking, then your audience will engage with it more thoughtfully after they have a break.
So, no, Quiet Mode will not affect your business negatively on social media. It will just give you a little space to breathe because it’s hard to have balance when your work is on your phone, and your phone is constantly buzzing in your pocket.
My advice: set limits on social media time, and remember to use the other tools on Instagram – like scheduling tools and data about when your followers are active – to make the best of the time that we set aside to be online in 2023.
