Five Instagram trends you need to look out for in 2019
Hoping to increase your followers, engagement and sales on Instagram, this year? Here are five trends you need to look out for.
If you thought the Instagram frenzy was going to be short-lived, think again. Instagram continues to be the most used social media interactive platform, with a database of 1 billion users, and it only seems to be growing.
That said, the pressure is on Instagram to switch things up and make it more engaging and interesting for its increasing number of users. As a result, Instagram sees changes, mostly minor but significant in nature, at least once in every three months.
Whether these quarterly alterations will be enough to keep users hooked on or not is something we can’t predict at the moment. However, we can talk about the trends that are predicted to take 2019 by storm. Here are five you need to look out for.
1) Hello IGTV
In the middle of 2018, Instagram introduced a more elaborate and continuous video sharing feature – Instagram TV or IGTV. This allows an account to share specific videos on their page, apart from what’s on the feed. It cuts out images and creates a specific feature solely for videos, and content sharing in that format.
In 2019, Instagram is probably going to experience a massive boom in the usage of this feature, and the prediction is that people might even start using IGTV as a direct marketing tool for advertising, as opposed to YouTube, which is currently the favourite option.
2) Interactive stickers
What you can or can’t post on your Instagram story has gone through many changes since the feature was first launched. The introduction of stickers allowed people to interact with other users through polls, questions, rating systems, and so on.
In 2019, users are likely to see many more similar interactive options added onto stories, and might even get the option to add them onto posts on the regular feed. For brands and influencers this would mean more available options to get closer to and feel more connected with followers.
People are still using services and tools to help grow their Instagram, and this trend is set to continue. Check out this article by Bountii.
3) Ads in stories
Another story-related feature that will probably be promoted even further is the option to post ads between stories on different accounts. When you transition from one story to the other, ads can be placed.
There’s even an option to ‘swipe up’, which takes the user to the brand’s IG page or their official website. 2019 might bring a more smooth transition in this feature and also add more call for action options for viewers to interact with the ad and the brand.
4) Vertical orientation
There’s a reason why most of Instagram’s features remain unavailable on the desktop version of the platform – it’s because they want to stick to the mobile version.
Piggybacking on the fact that there are more mobile users of Instagram than desktop users, Instagram is now trying to make everything vertically oriented. This includes videos, ads, images and stories. While most of the features have a vertical orientation already, by 2019, almost all forms of content sharing are likely to happen in this way.
5) Direct shopping
While Instagram doesn’t come under the same category as e-commerce websites, it still offers quite a few online shopping options. Shoppable ads and sponsored content with direct links to online stores are already in use, and are gaining popularity by the day.
Over the coming year, brands can expect more direct shopping options to be added on, making it the perfect mobile advertising platform for many brands. Some researchers predict that along with shopping, Instagram might even implement payment modes.
Instagram has become an increasingly popular marketplace
It’s astounding to see the growth graph of Instagram since its inception a few years ago. What was once nothing more than a simple photo-sharing platform, has since become a full-blown marketplace for creators and consumers alike.
Of course, the essence of social media networking hasn’t been lost just yet, but how much more commercial the platform is going to become in the future is still up for debate.
These five trends are sure to make waves throughout 2019, but you never know, Instagram might just surprise us with more.
Written by professional Instagram agency iDigic.
Photo by geo uc
