One of the great things about Instagram is the way it enables users to showcase and shout out about their favourite local businesses, tagging their Instagram handle for effortless marketing and even tagging the location in grid posts and stories.
It’s the latter that we are focusing on in this article – specifically looking at how location tags on Instagram work and the benefit of the precise location feature.
But first, what are the benefits of tagging your location in an Instagram update?
Why Do Users Like the Location Tag Feature on Instagram?
Whether it’s a holiday, a day out, or a new local venture that you want to support, being able to tag your location in an Instagram post quickly tells your followers where your pictures or videos were captured – without a lengthy explanation in the caption.
When a follower then clicks on that location, they will see other posts from users who have visited the site or destination and will be able to access the destination’s own profile page with ease.
The benefits of this extend to both the business (for obvious reasons – hello 100% effortless marketing!) and to users who want to learn more about where a friend or connection’s pictures were taken.
One important thing to note, though, is that this location is not super specific – and requires the user’s manual selection of the location they want to tag. If, for example, you are visiting a beach with a few nearby cafes, adding a tag on Instagram will allow you to tag the beach in general or some of those businesses, but it will not pinpoint your exact set up on the beach.
For a more precise idea of location, you need to tap into Instagram’s precise location feature, garnering information which is not accessible to other users.
What is Precise Location Data Used For?
Outside of Instagram, precise location data isn’t something that we really think about. In fact, without it countless apps would be rendered virtually useless. Think for a moment about taxi apps, delivery apps, and your device’s map app – without precise location data, those apps would all cause outright chaos!
On Instagram, enabling precise location data helps to support what’s going on behind the scenes of your scrolling experience – curating better content based on where you are and the kinds of places that you are visiting.
It also allows you to pinpoint your location in stories and posts where you want to highlight those businesses and local gems that you’ve found while out and about. Rather than making you search for the business or local spot that you want to tag, precise location data is used to identify where you are – and offer that spot as a tag.
What Instagram will not do, however, is share that content unwillingly with other users. This is a safety measure, protecting users from their location being shared without their consent.
Can You Disable Precise Location Data?
Of course, if your precise location is something that you don’t want to share with Instagram, then you can always switch it off.
Unlike many settings, this is something that must be adjusted within the settings of your device rather than the app itself – removing Instagram’s access to the location data that is linked with your device or phone.
To do this, head to your device settings, locate the Privacy and Location services, and turn ‘Precise Location’ off for Instagram. You can repeat this across other apps that may be using your precise location as well.
Control Who Sees You, Where, and When
The beauty of Instagram’s precise location setting, for the most part, lies in how the app enables users to tag their location and showcase great local businesses and destinations with their followers.
If this makes you comfortable however, it’s easy to disable – instead searching for the places that you want to tag.
We hope that this article helps you to retain full control over who sees your location, where they see it, and when!
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