12 Instagram Updates From 2019 That You Need To Make The Best Use Of It

Instagram is a global platform with over 800 million active users and more than 60 million photos are posted each day which effectively helps businesses to grow brand awareness and introduce new products. Instagram is eternally changing, launching new features, switching up their algorithm and all-round keeping us updated to new technologies to attract and engage followers.

Instagram has introduced business to an exciting range of advertising with Stories, Ad- placements, IGTV videos, and visual branding continue to evolve. Let’s stay one step ahead of others and have a look at 12 Instagram Updates from 2019 to make the best use of it.

1. User-generated Content

User-generated content is an effective way to create great content for your Instagram page without doing any of the hard work. Leverage your audience to generate useful content for your brand and user-generated which also increases brand authenticity.

When you are running a business on Instagram, make sure that everything you post is in tune with your brand message and also create a branded hashtag to encourage Instagram users to be more interactive with your business.

2. Reminders For Product Launch

Instagram is a great platform to advertise your product and product teasers are a simple way to talk about your product and increase excitement. When you tease the audience about products or events, they will be more likely to pull the trigger to buy something or engage with your post by commenting, liking and sharing it within their community circle.

Teasers- Build hype and grab audience attention through product teasers. Product teasers are a great way to inspire the audience to take action and get viewers to click on your website.

Count down timer– Countdown timers inspire the audience. Add a functioning countdown timer within your Instagram stories to build hype around your posts.

3. Shoppable Posts

Instagram has launched a new feature called Shoppable posts which is a game-changer for e-commerce businesses. Shoppable posts on Instagram are posts when tapped, display the price of a product and lead users directly to the product checkout page. Add Shoppable posts and educate your potential audience about the product and its benefits in the caption and increase leads to sales.

This feature is exclusive for brands that sell physical products on Instagram and doesn’t require more followers unlike the swipe up feature.

4. Interactive Stickers

Stickers are a great way of creating brand awareness which builds new relationships and grabs attention among the audience. Stickers can be used for various purposes:

• Launch a new product or announce an upcoming event or opening.
• Create urgency for early bird offers.
• The limited product offers that are expiring.

Quiz Stickers-Quiz Stickers allows brands to ask questions and provide multiple answers. Quiz stickers are the latest Instagram story update. 

Question Stickers – ‘Ask me anything’ stickers on stories encourages the audience to ask questions.

Polling Stickers- Create a polling question to the story and give the audience choices to choose between. And find the vote percentage.

5. Hashtag Insights

To create instant engagements, come up with an interactive branded hashtag. Instagram has introduced the ability to track hashtag insights through which you can track exactly how many impressions you are getting from each hashtag.

This new Instagram feature will make it easier to determine which particular hashtag gains more impressions and which hashtag needs to be improved.

6. Q&A Instagram Live

We are quite familiar with Instagram Live; Instagram has added a new feature called Q&A Instagram Live that combines Instagram Stories question stickers and Instagram Live. Previously it was overwhelming and confusing when trying to shift through questions in comments during live streaming videos in real-time.

But with the updated feature, a simple question box appears and interested users can pop their questions so you will never miss a question and the audience can clearly see what question is currently asked, regardless of when they join the live-video.

7. IGTV Updates

IGTV (Instagram TV) offers the possibility to create long-form videos for individuals and brands to share with their followers. Brands can greatly increase new audiences over to long content by adding a preview video (60 seconds) or teaser to their Instagram feed.

Instagram has also added the biggest new feature providing the ability for followers to turn on alerts that inform when new episodes in a series are available for viewing. Add links to IGTV videos, establish featured content to engage your audience, boost relationships, build more engagements and sales.

8. Threads

Instagram has launched an independent direct messaging application called Instagram Threads. It is a camera first significantly user-focused messaging application technically integrated with Instagram. Threads let Instagram Stories meet direct messaging with full screen, vertical images and videos that can be quickly shared among followers.

In addition to its fast sharing capability, it has also got AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) away messages styled status updates like ‘at the movies’, ‘at the gym’ which helps in quickly sharing status.

9. Rise of Augment Reality

We are quite familiar with virtual reality, Augment Reality is the same as virtual reality, but we are augmenting only one factor instead of designing a completed landscape. For example, if you are running a cosmetic business, you can make use of AR technology for users to see how certain hair color, lip color, or hat would look for them. It offers enormous value in digital marketing, an extremely valuable context that encourages the audience in making a buying decision.

These exciting interactive features help businesses sell more on the Instagram platform. When customers are looking for a certain shoppable tagged product, they can upload pictures and choose the ‘try it on’ options to see how it suits them.

10. Reels Mode

Instagram is always great at spotting competitors and puts a twist on its key features and doing the same with the TikTok’s Reels feature. TikTok is an extremely popular application amongst the younger generation that allows users to create and share short videos with musical overlays and AR filters.

The Reels mode on Instagram works with Instagram Stories, where short videos can be created, remixed and uploaded. Reels include a range of editing features including adding a musical library, variable playback speed, and ghosting. It creates cool new creative options to inspire and entertain a new audience.

11. Hiding Likes

Instagram has been moving from one place to another, testing the removal of the public like counters. Instagram has planned to hide likes count in seven countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Japan, and New Zealand).

The concept of hiding likes is to make people concentrate less on likes count and focus more on creating stories. The account owner can view their likes count so that they can have the same power over the content which helps in analyzing the performance of posts.

12. Rise Of Influencers

Influencer marketing is considered the fastest way to reach potential customers who have already built an audience with a large following. People trust influential posts and buy products based on what they see in their feed.

Build a relationship with each influencer, create lasting brand awareness with a new audience and get your brand out in front of more potential users. You can still use your existing customer’s user-submitted posts to influence people to buy your product.

Conclusion

Instagram is a go-to platform for image sharing with new updates and features, and it has dominated the social media world. Quality over quantity holds definitely true in the above mentioned 12 Instagram updates. These are actively analyzed by major businesses, encourage in paying more consideration to performance analysis and give influencers creative control. Track your right metrics to see how your Instagram marketing efforts are paying off.