Instagram Trends to Watch for in 2020

Instagram has been constantly evolving as a social media platform and has brought some of its peers to the ground. It’s safe to say that the platform is no longer a parochial social media app, but a comprehensive platform of growing rates of engagement.

Aesthetic trends are constantly evolving in Instagram — but what does the feed hold for 2020? The Instagram feed is about to become more creative than before, from the “no-edit edit to home-made videos and the obsessed with carousel posts.

Whether you’re a brand, business or influencer, we’re highlighting the best Instagram aesthetic trends and predictions you’re going to need to understand for 2020. To help you stay on top of those changes as a marketer, we’re touching on a few Instagram trends that defined 2019 and bringing you some trends to expect in 2020.

IGTV Remains Intact

Instagram has, over the past couple of months, been one of the go-to video marketing platforms for video marketers. Over the next few years, having an all-new and improved IGTV platform will also cement its position. The updated IGTV platform now allows people to promote their videos across their feed. Thus, Instagram is no longer just for stills, so its video-sharing platform IGTV has evolved. It was quite a rough start for IGTV that led to slow acceptance by users, but IGTV has been improved by Instagram and is actively promoting its use across the platform.

IGTV also reflects its competitor not only with the interface look and feel, but also with how users interact with it. More users are also encouraged by Instagram to explore IGTV by getting one-minute snippets on the feed that will direct a user to the IGTV tab to start the video. As such, people are browsing more and more on the tab and it would be prudent for brands to start posting their content on it. Instead of being confined to IGTV, users can now cross-promote their IGTV videos on their feeds and have recently allowed users to share landscape or horizontal videos rather than just vertical ones.

When using IGTV, you can choose to go for a more “authentic” and “unfiltered.” You can, for example, share insightful interviews with experts, influencers, or just a scene from any of the trending events you are taking part in.

Instagram Stories Dominant Over Posts

Even though some pages post updates on a daily basis, we see a shift from the post grid to stories in particular. Posts are becoming more curated more purposeful and more minimalist. They carry on an evergreen image and leave the stories with the real-time fun stuff. The reason for this is simple: there is an incredibly high engagement to stories. Postings remain for business information. On the other side, stories are intended to be a keep-tabs-on-the-brand emphasis, with dynamic stickers and swipe-to-see-more links choices.

This feature is available for personal Instagram accounts as well as business Instagram profiles, and is a brilliant way to cross-promote your content so you can attract a broader audience. Instagram also has so many great features within the stories to take full advantage of. You can make your story attractive by adding music, animated stickers, locations, polls and more.

More and more marketers have shifted their focus on story content rather than feed content, and you ought to do the same.

Modifications in Explore Tab

The Instagram Explore tab curates content and links you with posts based on your past likes and interests. It used to be generic in the past, but since interest has recently been segmented, you can now move to the Explore tab for content you are interested in.

Instagram continues to make finding new accounts easier for users to follow, which is a great thing for your brand. Every day, more than 200 million users visit the Explore page, allowing even more people to see your brand.

The content on the Explore page of each individual user is directly addressed to their app activity so you need to ensure that you are marketing properly to your customers if you are hoping to find space in the Explore section of your target customer.

Interactive Content is the New Cool

For brands on many platforms, interactive content is pretty good right now; not just trends on Instagram, but the platform makes it incredibly convenient for you to jump on the bandwagon.

Instagram Stories provides functions such as polling, quizzes, questions and more to grant the followers the opportunity to interact with you and your content directly.

To incorporate interactivity in your Instagram story, open the Stories dashboard, take a picture or upload your content, then tap the stickers icon to view all your content choices.

It’s a cool way to get all the thoughts and opinions of your audience. You can add interactivity just for great entertainment, or you can use it for market research strategically and collect ideas for future products, services and launches.

Authenticity Makes You Win

Instagram no longer has anything to do with the flawless photos and hyper-curated feeds. It’s becoming more about real life, and what things really look like. 2020 is all about being real, authentic and unfiltered content.

To build a stronger connection to your audience, a high level of authenticity can go a long way. Your brand will be more directly relevant to your audience when you can showcase the good with the bad, the struggles with the wins. You can be authentic by getting creative and diverse and use untouched models in your product photography. You may also intrigue users by showing them behind-the-scene content showcasing life of a social media manager, a CEO or any other roles in your company.

You can draw inspiration from Humans of NY which is among the first of its kind and has persisted over the years due to the realistic photos of people with compelling stories. Of course, you don’t have to replicate the whole idea but you can get a clue to start a new social media campaign.

Influencer Game is Still Strong

Influencers on Instagram are still a big deal– so we think it’s going to continue to be so for a while. The app places more power in them with the influencers’ growth already going strong. And followers flooding influencer DMs with “where would you get that?’’ on their OOTDs. Instagram recently announced that they are pushing out an influencer shopping option.

To make a purchase, users rely on and trust influencers to figure out the many market products and services and provide endorsement. Instagram allows influencers to tag products to encourage users to jump straight into brand product accounts.

Many influencers may have as few as 100 followers, but brands have continued to value partnerships with them as getting their message across this way is now considered more authentic. They draw more attention and respond to comments and mentions are more prospective. In fact, these influencers have origins in niches that are hard to reach. Therefore, you will broaden your advertising reach by working with them.