Author name: Mary Atamaniuk

Instagram is more than just a social media platform: more than 80% of its users are raving fans of at least one business profile, with over 200 million visiting one business account daily. is bringing new opportunities to the world of Instagram trends. And if you are trend-fluent enough, you will be able to make your competitors jealous in . Ready to wow your followers? It’s time to be up to date on the latest Instagram marketing trends and add them to your content strategy. Below find the 9 biggest changes that are going to shape your perception of this social media network in . 1. Stock images for niche content The number of brands that are creating marketing content is still growing. This means that competition for the attention of your target audience is growing too. As a result, more companies are niching down their focus. This allows them to target a very narrow, yet specific group of the audience. Brands get more attentive to the content they post, thoroughly choosing images from the stock to publish only the most relevant ones. Some of them use libraries with pre-selected stock photo collections to post truly original content. Nerd Fitness, for instance, demonstrates a wise use of this tendency. Instead of targeting anyone interested in keeping fit, the brand focuses just on the people who are deep into fitness. Tips on the Instagram trend: Analyze different segments of your audience; Decide what segment to focus on; Thoroughly choose and publish content aimed at that specific segment of your audience. 2. Instagram Stories highlights When Instagram announced its Stories launch back in 2016, it was quite a big deal. Users started to fearlessly share moments that will vanish after 24 hours. This worked perfectly well for ordinary users, but brands and influencers could not get any value out of that. So recently, Instagram announced Stories Highlights – an amazing function that lets you curate already published stories and keep them visible for as long as you want to. H&M takes advantage of Stories Highlights. With this Instagram trend, they bring together images of jeans, blouses, coats, knitwear, and collaborations. Users don’t need to visit the official website, as the new H&M collection is always just one Instagram Story away ????   Tips on the Instagram trend: Treat Stories as a separate social media platform and create a special content plan for it; Make your own hashtags and use them repeatedly to navigate users through your stories; Pick thematic icons that match your branding and use them as highlights avatars. Use Instagram Story templates to save time. 2. IGTV: the rise of vertical videos Back in 2015, who would have said that vertical videos will become a new social media breakthrough? No one, that’s for sure. But it seems like the people at Instagram know how to turn literally anything into a hot trend. Ever since the Instagram Stories hit the social media landscape, vertical videos took over Instagram Live, Instagram Stories, and IGTV. Have you noticed some celebrities launch 2 or 3 differently formatted videos for the same song? Now you know the reason. Even Jamie Oliver uses vertical videos in IGTV to share 5-minute recipes with his followers. Tips on the Instagram trend: Fit the 9:16 ratio to make sure your vertical video appears fully on mobile devices; Record optimum length videos – these are 2 to 5 minutes long; Use animated graphics, images, and text to make your videos compelling. 4. Customized AR filters for brands VR and AR were the buzzwords of 2018. Though there are countless ways of their practical implementation, Instagram AR filters are the talk of 2019. Today, the inbuilt service for creating branded AR filters is already operating, but it is currently in a closed testing mode. Still, you can try out some filters created by brands and influencers. You must have heard about Rihanna’s diamond filter that is currently beating all the records. Haven’t you? Then check it out! Here’s how it looks:   Tips on the Instagram trend: If your brand is famous, address Instagram directly to get access to the feature; If you are a nano- or micro-influencer, calm down and wait for the official release; Meanwhile, try to upload your branded stickers/GIFs to Stories and see how your audience likes them. 5. Personalized Instagram content Similarly to all other social media platforms, Instagram has also jumped on the personalization bandwagon. The website carefully considers user preferences and curates individual feeds by analyzing data from posts users previously interacted with. This gives the platform the ability to provide users with a highly curated, personalized experience. Surprisingly, brands can also get creative and build personalized feeds for their users outside Instagram algorithm. One bright example is a personalized marketing campaign launched by John Frieda. The brand created the #ShadesofMe marketing campaign, which allowed them to gather data about users’ hair color. Then, the brand created personalized videos describing what the specific shade of hair said about the user. Personalize your content too, and you’ll see up to 20% increase in sales. Tips on the Instagram trend: Let Instagram be the starting point of your marketing campaign; Lead users to a landing page with a quiz; Use the data gathered to promote products that are relevant to specific groups of users. 6. Hassle-free shopping on Instagram In 2017, Instagram shopping was just a buzz. Today, it’s the hottest trend allowing you to shoppify your feed with integrated Shoppable stickers. The idea behind it is very simple: users are one click away from inspiration to action. Once they get impressed by a certain product, they click a button, and buy it directly from the Instagram app. This shopping tendency is a win-win situation both for brands and their shopping-obsessed followers. At the time of writing, just about 20% of marketers take advantage of shoppable posts. However, more than 50% are planning to integrate them into their social media campaigns in 2019. This year,