Instagram — they’ve been busy.
A lot of Instagram’s changes over the last year have been a reflection of users’ habits and their demand to be entertained. You might notice your Instagram feed is featuring a lot more video content than the photo-sharing app used to do. In fact, I just opened my Instagram app and seven of the first 10 posts in my feed were video content.
Instagram isn’t shy about its focus on video, and even said so long to the IGTV brand to encourage creators to push more of its video content straight to users’ feed. As social media managers, we need to hop aboard the video train, too. Learn more about micro-content as a top digital trend of 2022.
Beyond video, Instagram also released a few new(ish) features that we’re excited to experiment with in 2022.
Collabs
Instagram Collabs allows two (or more) accounts to collaborate on one post or Reel. Once an account invites another to collaborate on a post, if accepted by the invitee, the post will appear on both accounts. The collaborators will share likes, views, and comments — which means it’s a great way to get in front of new audiences.
Collabs become tricky when considering brand voice. The caption created by the original account will be the caption posted for the other collaborators, making collaboration IRL important to ensure the caption works for both/all the accounts.
Still, we see Collabs being a great way to partner with CSU college, unit, and department accounts to help spread awareness about our campus partners.
Interested in trying it out? Here are step-by-step instructions to get your Collab on.
Remix
Reels have become an important part of our Instagram strategy, and we — like many social media teams — are planning to put more focus on Reels and micro-content this year.
Similarly, user-generated content continues to be a staple for many brands’ content strategy. Last year, Instagram released the Remix tool for Reels, allowing users to record a Reel alongside another user’s Reel (aka, TikTok’s Duet).
The Remix tool has since been expanded to all public videos on Instagram (emphasis on public).
As brands’ followers start creating more and more video, Remix offers a new and fun way for brands to interact with their followers’ videos.
Event Reminders
Instagram feed hasn’t always been the best place for event promotion, especially compared to its counterpart Facebook, which has far more robust tools for promoting events. Until now.
Now, social media managers can add reminders to their Instagram posts, including a title of the event, a start time, and an optional end time.
Followers can then tap on a bell icon that appears on the bottom left corner of the post and opt-in to receive reminders for the event.
Steps to add Reminders to your Instagram posts.
Add Yours sticker
The “Add Yours” sticker was launched in late 2021 and is a new way to engage with followers on Instagram Stories.
When you use the “Add Yours” sticker on Stories, your followers can add content to your Story based on a specific prompt. For example, we might ask our followers to share a picture of their favorite memory in Ram Country. Then, our followers could add their favorite pic to our sticker.
After a user adds to our sticker, the followers of that person can then add their own picture, creating a chain of pictures that can be seen by our followers.
I’ve also seen brands add incentives to their prompts/Add Yours sticker. For example, we could say that we’ll send a t-shirt to every person who adds a picture.
I’m not sure how Instagram prevents spam or inappropriate content from being added to the sticker, which has been a deterrent for us from giving it a go. But, we’re hoping to test it out this year.
Live scheduling and practice mode
The best part of going Live on any platform is actually having live viewers to see it. Late last year, Instagram released the scheduling and practice mode features to help users create the best Live event they can, and better promote that it’s happening to their followers.
Once you schedule going Live (which can be created up to 90 days prior to the Live event), you can share it as a post or add it to your Story, and it’s added as a badge to your profile so your users know a Live is coming up.
Practice mode allows the creator and guests of a scheduled Live event to join prior to going live to test lighting, connectivity, and all those last-minute details we all wish we had just a few more minutes to perfect.
Scheduling a Live event and practice mode
Customizable link sticker
When Instagram said ✌️ to the swipe-up link feature on Instagram Stories, we were okay with it because the new link sticker they launched made it possible for all accounts to add links to their Story, rather than just accounts with 10,000+ followers.
But, I know I was disappointed in the lack of call-to-action the sticker provided. Now, users can customize their link sticker and swap out the URL for useful text, like, “Learn more,” or something far more creative than I can think of as I write this blog right now.
On the horizon
Customizable grid
Instagram is apparently working on a feature that will allow users and brands to customize their grid by rearranging posts.
New feed
Instagram is also testing three new options for how posts show up in a user’s feed: Home, Favorites and Following. Word on the web is that the new “following” feed will be based on the original feed that featured posts chronologically, which users have been begging Instagram to bring back for years.