Instagram has introduced a small but potentially very useful update for businesses. You can now add posts that other Instagram users have tagged you in directly to your main Instagram profile grid.
Previously, these posts would normally sit within the separate Tagged section of your profile. Unless somebody specifically went looking through that section, there was a good chance they’d never see them.
That’s now changing.
Instagram’s new “Add to grid” feature means that if somebody publishes a post and tags your business, you can choose to display that content alongside the posts you’ve published yourself.
For small businesses, we think this could be much more useful than it initially sounds.
Because somewhere inside your Tagged section, there might already be brilliant photographs, customer experiences, testimonials and examples of your work that deserve a much more prominent position on your profile.
What Is Instagram’s New “Add to Grid” Feature?
Instagram began rolling out the new feature in September 2026. When somebody tags your account in a photo or video, you can now choose to add that post to your main Instagram profile grid rather than leaving it exclusively within the Tagged section.
The post remains the original creator’s content. You’re not downloading it and uploading another copy as your own. Instead, Instagram allows you to display the original post on your profile alongside your own content.
Tagged posts displayed this way are marked with a small tag icon in the corner of the thumbnail, making it clear that they originated from another account.
If the feature has reached your account, you may see the option when you’re notified that somebody has tagged you, through the menu on the tagged post itself, or by going into the Tagged section of your Instagram profile.
And if you subsequently decide the post no longer belongs on your main grid, you can remove it again without deleting the original post. It’s a simple update.
But for small businesses, there are some very interesting possibilities.
Your Customers Could Already Be Creating Great Content About Your Business
Here’s the first thing we’d recommend doing.
Open Instagram and look through the posts your business has been tagged in.
Not just the most recent ones. Have a proper look.
Depending on your business, you might discover customers showing your products, photographs taken at your premises, videos from events, completed projects, recommendations, testimonials or simply really good images featuring your business.
Some of them might actually be better than content you’ve created yourself.
Until now, that content has largely been tucked away inside the Tagged section of your Instagram profile.
There’s nothing wrong with the Tagged section, of course, but somebody visiting your Instagram profile will immediately see your main grid. They have to deliberately choose to explore your tagged content.
Instagram’s new update gives businesses an opportunity to bring the best of that content front and centre.
And that could make your profile considerably more interesting.
Think of It as Curating Your Instagram Shop Window
We often encourage small businesses to think about their social media profiles from the perspective of somebody discovering them for the first time.
Imagine someone has been recommended your business. They search for you on Instagram. They land on your profile.
What do they see?
Your Instagram grid is effectively a shop window. Within a few seconds, that person is starting to form an impression of your business.
- Does it look active?
- Professional?
- Friendly?
- Trustworthy?
- Do real people actually use this business?
- Do customers seem happy?
- Can they see examples of the work?
Previously, businesses were mostly filling that shop window with content they’d created themselves. Now, Instagram is making it easier to add carefully selected content created by other people too. That’s potentially very powerful.
User-Generated Content Can Provide Valuable Social Proof
Let’s imagine you own a restaurant. You could spend an afternoon carefully photographing your food, editing the images and creating a beautiful Instagram post telling everyone how fantastic your restaurant is.
There’s value in that. But imagine a customer independently posts a photograph of an incredible-looking meal, tags your restaurant and writes about how much they enjoyed their evening.
That’s different.
It’s someone else talking about you. The same principle applies across all sorts of small businesses.
- A customer tags the hairdresser responsible for their new hairstyle.
- Someone posts photographs of the wedding venue where they just got married.
- A homeowner tags the company that installed their new kitchen.
- A client shares a video from their personal training session.
- A customer photographs something they’ve bought from an independent retailer.
- An attendee posts about an event you’ve organised.
This is known as user-generated content (UGC), and it can be incredibly useful for small business social media marketing.
Instead of your business telling potential customers how good you are, they’re seeing evidence from real people who have actually experienced what you offer. Instagram’s Add to Grid feature now gives you another way to make that social proof much more prominent.
Not Every Tagged Post Belongs on Your Main Grid
There is an important word in everything we’ve said so far:
Selected.
We’re definitely not suggesting you add every post you’re tagged in to your main Instagram grid. Some won’t be particularly relevant.
Some photographs might not present your business especially well. Others might not fit the overall quality of the content you’re trying to create. And, as anybody who has managed a business Instagram account for long enough will know, occasionally you’ll wonder why on earth somebody tagged you in something in the first place.
That’s fine. The opportunity here isn’t to automatically fill your profile with other people’s posts.
It’s to curate the best ones.
Ask whether you’d be happy for a potential customer to see that post when they first visit your Instagram profile.
- Does it show your business positively?
- Does it demonstrate something you sell or provide?
- Does it contain a strong testimonial?
- Does it show real customers enjoying your product or service?
- Does it complement the content you’re already publishing?
If the answer is yes, it might deserve a place on your grid.
This Could Be Particularly Useful for Visual Businesses
There are certain types of small businesses where we can see this Instagram update being particularly valuable. Restaurants, hotels, wedding venues, photographers, hairdressers, beauty businesses, gyms, personal trainers, retailers, tradespeople and tourism businesses naturally generate plenty of opportunities for customers to take photographs and videos.
Take a wedding venue as an example. The venue will obviously have its own professional photography.
But it might also be tagged in incredible photographs from photographers, florists, caterers, entertainers and, most importantly, couples who have actually celebrated their wedding there.
Some of that content could make the venue’s Instagram profile significantly richer. Or imagine you’re a builder.
A customer posts photographs of their finished extension and writes about how pleased they are with the result.
That’s not just another nice photograph. It’s a miniature customer case study.
Now you can potentially make it part of the main Instagram presence people see when researching your business.
Collaborations Become More Valuable Too
This update isn’t only about customers. It could also be useful when working with other businesses, creators, suppliers and community organisations.
Imagine a local café collaborates with an independent bakery on an event. The bakery creates a brilliant Reel and tags the café.
Previously, the café could share that Reel to its Story, but the content wouldn’t automatically become part of its permanent main grid unless it was published as a formal collaboration or separately reposted.
Now there’s another option. The café can potentially add that tagged content directly to its grid.
For small businesses that regularly collaborate with others, this creates another reason to make sure everyone involved is correctly tagged when content is published.
A strong piece of collaborative content can now have a much more visible life across the profiles of the businesses involved.
It Could Also Take Some Pressure Off Your Content Creation
One of the biggest challenges we hear from small businesses is:
“We don’t know what to post.”
And we understand it. Coming up with ideas, taking photographs, filming videos, writing captions, creating graphics and actually finding the time to publish everything can become another job in itself. This Instagram update doesn’t magically solve that problem.
But it does remind us of something important.
You don’t necessarily need to create every piece of content yourself. Your customers, employees, suppliers, partners and other businesses might already be creating content involving your brand.
If that content is genuinely good and presents your business well, why shouldn’t it form part of your Instagram presence? Social media content creation doesn’t always have to begin with an empty Canva template. Sometimes the content already exists.
Give Customers a Reason to Tag Your Business
This update also makes encouraging customer tags potentially more valuable. If you’re a business that customers naturally photograph, make sure it’s easy for them to find and tag your correct Instagram account.
- You could occasionally remind customers to tag you in their photographs.
- You might reshare customer content to Stories.
- You can engage with posts you’re tagged in.
- Most importantly, acknowledge the people taking the time to talk about your business.
If customers learn that you regularly interact with and occasionally showcase their content, it may encourage more people to tag you in future. Over time, your Tagged section could become an extremely useful library of authentic content about your business. Then you can select the very best examples for your main profile.
There’s Another Benefit: Seeing Your Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes
Even if you decide not to add a single tagged post to your main grid, we’d still recommend regularly looking through them. Why?
Because they can tell you something about how customers perceive your business. You might discover that customers repeatedly photograph something you barely think about. Perhaps there’s a particular feature of your premises people love.
Maybe one product constantly appears in photographs. Perhaps customers talk about a particular part of your service much more than you’d expect. Those things can give you ideas for your own Instagram content strategy.
If customers repeatedly find something interesting enough to photograph, film and share with their friends, there’s a reasonable chance it’s worth talking about in your own content too.
User-generated content isn’t just content you can reuse. It’s customer research.
Your Instagram Grid Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
We should probably address something else while we’re talking about profile grids. Don’t become so obsessed with creating a perfectly coordinated Instagram aesthetic that you reject brilliant content because it doesn’t match the exact shade of blue you used in Tuesday’s graphic. Your profile should look professional.
There should be some consistency. But your social media account also needs to look like it belongs to a real business occupied by real people and real customers.
A fantastic customer photograph might not perfectly match your carefully designed grid.
That doesn’t necessarily matter.
If it demonstrates that people love your product, shows the quality of your work or provides convincing social proof, it may be considerably more valuable than another perfectly coordinated branded graphic.
Good social media content should achieve something.
Looking pretty is not a strategy by itself.
Go and Check Your Tagged Posts
Instagram updates arrive constantly. Some fundamentally change how businesses use the platform. Others are interesting for about five minutes before being forgotten. We think this particular update is worth small businesses paying attention to because it’s incredibly simple to use and there could already be content waiting for you. So here’s what we’d do.
- Open your business Instagram account.
- Go into your Tagged section.
- Scroll back through the content.
- Look for posts that show your business at its best.
- Find the brilliant customer photograph.
- The glowing recommendation.
- The fantastic finished project.
- The collaboration with another local business.
- The Reel somebody created while visiting you.
Then ask yourself a very simple question:
Would we be happy for somebody researching our business to see this on our main profile?
If the answer is yes, Instagram has just given you a much easier way to put it there. And if you’d like help making better use of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and the rest of your social media presence, SMR Social can help.
We’re a family of social media managers helping small businesses with social media strategy, content creation, community management, ongoing social media management and paid social advertising.
Because sometimes improving your social media isn’t about creating more and more content. It’s about making better use of the great content you already have.