New features of Instagram
What’s new on Instagram? What’s changing? Is
your business using the right tools to grow with Instagram? Read this blog post
to learn about everything you need to know to make sure your brand can take
advantage of all of the new features and best practices. I’ll break down the
highlights here, so bookmark this site as well!
For those who aren’t familiar with it,
Instagram is a photo-sharing social network created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.
Unlike other online platforms, most people don’t use Instagram to share photos
directly but instead through their profile: A website to build an audience; an
app that lets users like pictures or respond quickly to posts they’ve been
tagged in.

With over one billion monthly active accounts,
Instagram has become the world’s largest social media platform, with over 600
million daily active accounts from around the world. In addition to being used
for sharing content, businesses also have access to additional insights on
their target market and increase engagement with existing customers. Learn how
these companies get closer to their consumers and improve marketing efforts
with our free Facebook ads guide. For example, if you have a clothing company,
you could be able to create advertising campaigns on Instagram, allowing your potential
buyers to see how you advertise and engage with your items. .
In a
recent survey, nearly 90% of marketers think that Instagram is essential to
their success. This means there’s now more reason to focus on Instagram,
especially since many business owners seem to struggle to keep up with the
competition and what’s happening in the industry. So, it’s easy to see why. The
fact is, Instagram isn’t just a place to show off amazing food photos. There’s
actually plenty of clever ways that brands can leverage the platform to boost
sales or simply connect with their audiences to drive even higher interest
rates. In this post, we’ll dive into those key areas, including tips and tactics
for growing your following on the photo-sharing platform.
The future of Instagram
Instagram is still young — the last time
Instagram launched was in 2010. It’s only been around since 2012, making it
less than three years old. But its current popularity continues to rise, with
70% of US adults stating they regularly use the service. Despite this success,
new features (like Stories) mean Instagram keeps catching new attention from
both businesses and individuals worldwide. Some notable changes include filters,
IGTV (videos), IGTV Reels (short-form video clips), live videos, stories,
shopping, hashtags, and branded hashtags. Whether you’re looking to attract a
younger demographic or bring your audience together, these new features will
help you continue to grow your presence and reach your goals..
1. Stickers
Sticker photos are no longer limited to
posting static images on Instagram as they’re used increasingly across
platforms. They can be used to add text or stickers, add effects like sticker shows,
and change the aspect ratio of images. Because of TikTok’s growth when compared
to Instagram, sticker creators can earn royalties of $100 per 1000 views across
300+ different categories on TikTok alone. If you do decide to go for the
sticker approach, start small and choose one image to use in each post. Once
you feel comfortable adding stickers to your posts, you can consider expanding
your offering to other formats such as a series of Stories, reels, podcasts,
etc. We recommend giving them a try because you won’t regret trying things like
this once you have a better understanding of how the feature works. Here are
five great examples of TikTok stickers.
2. Story Tags
Ever wondered how celebrities manage to stay
relevant and popular without relying solely on fame and endorsements? Enter
story tags! These are short summaries of a person’s image within a feed post.
Story content is usually posted after a photo, often with a tag. When someone clicks
the link, Instagram pulls information about that specific user’s interests,
likes and dislikes. Then, Instagram uses deep learning technology for
context-based tagging, which allows the system to detect common themes within
the same group of people and create a personal style that matches that style.
As a result, everyone who sees your story gets an insight into what’s driving
your follower’s behavior, enabling you to adjust accordingly. Remember, this
type of tagging is not currently supported for mobile or desktop browsers.
Check out our complete guide here to learn how to optimize your stories for
mobile.
3. Explore Feed
This Instagram update doesn’t necessarily come
with a direct impact on any individual brand’s account, but it does affect
engagement. While there are certainly reasons to be excited, the introduction
of “Explore” has resulted in a decrease in followers from 30 days ago,
according to Insider. Since this feature makes it easier to jump back into
posts on older posts, Instagram has seen the number of visitors drop
dramatically. However, while you might be wondering why your community won’t be
interested in discovering new content from followers they haven’t followed
before (there’s still a long way to go!), there are several factors behind this
decision to introduce this feature. First thing first: the Instagram Explore
page is not a permanent location anymore. Instead, whenever we open Instagram,
we are presented with a set of suggestions based on previous activity. That
said, the majority of posts are recommended by friends and other users,
suggesting that Discover may not accurately reflect what’s working.
Additionally, new content is constantly added to explore pages, so your
community may not find anything interesting to click on. Finally, although
there are fewer mentions of your brand overall within Explore, the number of
“unfollowed” accounts appears to be increasing with every day. Overall, we
believe Instagram should allow users to discover new content from people who
haven’t previously engaged with your accounts.
4. Videos
More advanced users are showing support for
third-party apps like Snapchat, with plans for an extension for YouTube soon.
Meanwhile, Instagram already supports various types of videos, including Live
Video, Reels, Reels and Story-driven content that comes via Stories or IGTV
Reels. To give people even more flexibility, you can easily add music to
videos. Furthermore, some of the newer updates can remove face filters
automatically, making it possible to filter your audience on TikTok in
real-time. All in all, videos are finally more accessible and engaging to watch
than ever.
5. Portfolio
If showcasing your work on Instagram were
easy, it would be impossible to compete with other visual mediums like
Pinterest, Flickr, Word, Tumblr, and TikTok. Yet, there are only a handful of
digital marketing experts in existence who truly get the idea. One creative
alternative to traditional branding is through portrait photography. Nowadays,
anyone can be a photographer and share their creativity online. People love
seeing unique pictures, especially if they relate to themselves through the
creator. As someone who sells custom wedding dresses, portraits are another
space where I’m super active. Many aspiring photographers have taken up selling
their portraits and are getting paid for their time. Another reason to invest
in portrait photography is that it involves multiple lenses on a single image,
as opposed to just a single lens on a photograph. An amateur photographer would
be very restricted and unable to show their personality. From a purely
aesthetic standpoint, we believe portrait photography is a much more
cost-efficient option than posing outside in front of a mirror. Simply put, the
process of taking a picture requires much more effort than just printing your
own photographs and putting them on display. By partnering with professional
artists to capture portraits in real life, you’re saving money on marketing and
editing costs.

6. Hashtags
Hashtags are the lifeblood of any social media
platform. Each one signifies a particular message or topic, allowing users to
find topics and ideas of interest, especially among similar groups of people.
Hashtags help you narrow down your search results, ensuring that you’re
searching for something specific in a general niche or topic. Unfortunately,
users have been known to utilize a hashtag incorrectly, accidentally combining
unrelated phrases, which can cause confusion in the search results. Hashtag incorrectly
is important for SEO purposes. Google recommends incorporating high-quality
keywords into your main page titles (with an H2 tag to make it stand out), meta
description (with #1 to encourage the search engine), internal linking to
external resources, and proper structuring of the tags (with numbers 1-12 in
order). In general, you want to ensure that you incorporate hashtags into the
background content to showcase the creativity of your brand as well as generate
traffic in more visible places. Don’t forget to check out our complete guide
here to learn more about optimizing hashtags on Instagram.
How to grow Instagram traffic
How do others benefit from these new features?
How can you gain traction with Instagram? Well, for starters, Instagram is
really good at generating leads, so you can tap into that opportunity to bring
in more exposure for your product. You can also rely on your Instagram
algorithm to pick the perfect picture for your campaign based on your
competitors or target audience. Lastly, Instagram is fairly robust, meaning
users can interact across the platform. Even though they may not immediately
notice it as a form of interaction, they can also participate in certain
behaviors that you wouldn’t expect in other social networks. So it’s safe to
say that with a little forethought