Instagram is a popular and effective social media platform, and it can also be an effective means of personal communication. Users love reaching out to their favorite influencers, brands, and friends to connect and ask questions.
As commenting and messaging continue to be popular on all social media platforms, including Instagram, learning how to manage the communication aspects of the platform has become an essential part of managing social media. With new features constantly being added, keeping track of your IMs and responses is only getting more complicated.
To effectively manage your Instagram messages, you’ll need to understand the platform and maybe even learn a few new skills. Let’s investigate how to find contacts, reply to messages, turn off read receipts, form a group chat, and find deleted messages.
How Do I Find Contacts on Instagram?
When building your following, you’ll want to have contacts to message. Finding these people only takes a few clicks, but the directions differ, depending on your phone’s operating system.
iPhone Users
- Open your Instagram app.
- Click on your profile picture icon in the lower right corner.
- Click on the three-bar icon on the top right of your screen. This is often called the “hamburger icon.”
- When the white menu populates, select “Discover People.”
- Tap on either “Connect to Facebook” or “Connect Contacts.” You can go back and repeat these steps to select the one you didn’t choose initially.
- When the pop-up window appears, click “Allow Access.”
Android Users
- Open your Instagram app.
- Locate “Discover People” on your screen and click on the “See All” option to the right of it.
- Tap on “Connect Contacts” and then “Allow Access.”
How Do I Reply to a Message on Instagram?
As you grow your following on Instagram, replying to a message on Instagram and communicating with followers will be essential. While Instagram took a little while to roll out this specific feature, you can now respond directly to a message without having to worry about your reader being confused about which message you are referencing.
- Begin by opening the Instagram app.
- From your feed, select the messenger icon at the top of the page. This will allow you to access messages.
- Select the conversation you wish to respond to.
- Find the specific message you want to respond. Swipe right on the message until an arrow icon appears and opens a message box. Type your message and hit send. You could also hold down on the message, click “Reply,” and type your message.
- If you don’t want to send a reply but want to react to a message instead, you simply tap on the message and select your emoji. Click the plus sign for more options.
How Can I Turn Off the Read Receipts on Instagram?
Turn off the read receipts on Instagram if you don’t want your followers to know that you have read their message. A read receipt is a little notification within your conversation that says “Seen” when you have read the message someone sent you. While there’s no way to do this in totality, there are certain workarounds you can implement to get a similar effect.
Turn Off Your Message Notifications
When you click on a new message notification, it instantly gets marked as read. Unfortunately, there is no way to undo this. However, to prevent it from happening, follow these steps.
- Open your Instagram app and click on your icon in the lower right corner.
- Click on the hamburger icon.
- Click on “Settings.”
- Click on “Notifications.”
- Click on “Messages” or “Direct Messages.”
- Click the “Off” option for “Message Requests” and “Messages.”
Keep in mind that this turns off notifications for all messages, so you’ll need to go in and manually check for messages.
Read Your Instagram Messages in Private
While you may wonder how to turn off “Seen” on Instagram, there is no actual way to do this. Instead, read your messages in airplane mode. It’s a little cumbersome, but the process works.
- Open your Instagram app.
- Click on the Messenger logo.
- Switch your phone to Airplane Mode and turn off your wi-fi.
- Read your messages.
- Leave your inbox and go back to your profile page.
- Tap on the hamburger icon, tap on settings, and scroll down to log out.
- Turn off your airplane mode, turn on your wi-fi, and log back into your Instagram account.
How Can You Make a Group Chat on Instagram?
A group chat is an excellent communication tool. It allows you to talk to several people simultaneously, sharing the same information. And Instagram lets you create group chats as part of its messages feature.
- Open your Instagram app.
- Go to your messages.
- Click on the edit icon in the top right corner of your screen.
- Choose at least two friends to create a group with by tapping on the little circle beside their information. You can also use the search bar to find your friends.
- After everyone is selected, click the “Chat” button on the top right of your screen.
How Can You See Instagram Messages that Were Deleted by the Sender?
Have you ever gone back to a message to look at it again and found it had disappeared? That’s because the sender deleted it.
But don’t worry. Instagram messages that the sender deleted are not lost forever. It takes a few clicks and unzipping files, but these steps will guide you through everything you need to do.
- Open your Instagram app.
- Click on your profile icon in the lower right part of your screen.
- Click on the hamburger icon in the top right area of your screen.
- Click on “Settings” then “Security.”
- Click on “Donwload Data.”
- Type in your email address to receive the files.
- Within five minutes, those files will arrive in your inbox. At this point, you may wish to switch to a computer.
- Click on “Download Data,” which will take you to a .zip file of all your content. Unzip the content.
- Finally, check in the messages.json file to see all of your information.
I hope this information was helpful as you use Instagram to communicate with your followers. Please feel free to share any additional tips you have for managing Instagram messages in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!
— Sean