How Brands Can Use Instagram’s New ‘Close Friends’ Feature

By: Colleen Lutolf

November 30, 2018

Instagram rolled out a “Close Friends” list feature for Stories today, allowing users to share their content with a smaller group of followers that they can choose.

You can update your list and add or remove followers at any time. Followers can’t request to be added to it and they won’t be notified when you add or remove them from this list, but they’ll know they’re on it and you share content to that list–those followers will see a green badge when viewing your Story. There will also be a green ring around their profile photo in the Stories tray.

Brands could consider using the Close Friends list for followers with whom they want to share exclusive content or to communicate with a certain segment through the app without using direct messaging. While you can adjust the list as frequently as you like, there is only one Close Friends list–creating multiple, segmented lists of followers is not possible.

To add followers to your list, go to your profile and tap on “Close Friends” in the side menu. When you share to Stories, you’ll see the option to share with just the people on your close friends list.