Stay Relevant with these Instagram Strategies

Competition is rapidly increasing on the oh-so popular Instagram platform and it’s necessary for brands and influencers to stay abreast of the emerging marketing trends.

This year will be a particularly exciting one for Instagrammers and brands will be capitalizing on Instagram marketing more than ever before. There are more techniques for promoting and selling your products or services, more ways to be creative and create fun content, and more strategies to grow engagement and entice action.

1. IGTV

First up is IGTV. For those not familiar, IGTV is a feature launched in June, 2018 for creating and watching long-form, vertical video. Say goodbye to the one-minute time limit and hello to hour-long videos!

Sharing videos is a huge part of how users interact on social so IGTV is a perfect fit. Plus, the video platform supports vertical video and was clearly intended for mobile-only content! There is a separate app but Instagram users can view IGTV videos in the original Instagram app, meaning brands still have the opportunity to reach the 1 billion users who are active there.

2. Stories

Social marketers also need to integrate the Stories trend into their strategies. Over the past two years, we’ve seen how Stories has grown in popularity with users and Instagram made several updates to encourage this continued use. Functionalities like story highlights and a Stories nav panel mid-feed have pushed many users to adopt this feature as their primary way of sharing content. Essentially, Stories is set to overtake organic posting and we’ll see the main feed become a secondary page for more planned out and strategic content.

People like Stories because they give that personal touch! And there are lots of opportunities for brands to get creative, what with ads, shoppable stickers, gifs, filters, templates, and more fun things.

2a Highlights

The thing about Stories is that they disappear after 24 hours. The Stories Highlights feature let you save your best ones and keep them pinned to the top of your profile for as long as you want. Try experimenting with Highlights by creating a set of Stories that promote your company or a specific product. Your audience might also appreciate something that humanizes your brand and explains what you’re all about!

2b Ads

Over 25 million business are on Instagram and 2 million+ are investing in ads. Feed ads, yes, but also Stories ads. I’ve already explained how popular Stories is (Instagram says 400 million users view Stories each day) so that is a good indication that it’s a good idea to use it to promote your business!

Get started by heading to your Facebook Ads Manager.

2c Filters

It’s all about augmented reality filters in Stories! Or, rather, it will be once AR filters are opened up so more third parties. For now, it’s in beta and open to certain brands and celebrities like Will Smith. But soon more agencies and brands will be able to create custom Insta Stories AR filters.

Filters are a unique way to promote interactive content so keep them in mind as you’re looking for new marketing tools.

3. Buying Direct

It used to be that the only way to sell your products through Instagram was by advertising it in your feed (or Story) and having users click a link that went back to your website where they could then make purchases. Bloggers and those in the fashion or e-commerce industries had to wait quite a while for shoppable posts and clickable links.

But now there’s a lovely shopping feature which allows direct buying. Customer behaviors have changed and consumers desire convenience plus the ability to buy things in the platform that they’re using.

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Instagram is constantly changing – are you ready for what’s next? In 2017 and 2018 many huge changes and upgrades were made on the app. Users can now follow hashtags, highlight Stories, go Live, archive posts and more. Stories took over on-the-fly posting and will continue to dominate the Instagram landscape. Instagram for business has became a serious thing. Features like shopping directly via the Instagram app will have a huge impact in the coming years!

What Instagram tools and features do you like to use for reaching and engaging your audience?