Maximise Instagram trends for your social media campaigns

How to maximise Instagram trends for your social media campaigns

It’s been a great year for Instagram with some exciting new features and updates which not only help to make the platform even more exciting for users, but offer huge opportunity for digital marketers.

Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to reach your audience on Instagram as we start planning 2019.

Insta Stories

Insta Stories has been a huge success for Instagram, and as its daily user-base has grown by 150 million in the last year, it should definitely form part of your Instagram marketing strategy.

Why is using Instagram Stories beneficial?

• Increases engagement and your brand’s profile
• Generates buzz around campaigns
• Drives traffic to your websites as links can be added to the Instagram story by using “see more” or “swipe up” (available for business accounts with 10k+ followers)
• Using stories on Instagram is an actionable way to step away from the “on brand” feed and add personality to your profile

Insta Stories Highlights

Another great feature to concentrate on in the months ahead is Insta Stories Highlights, which allows users to create a permanent home to show off their ephemeral content without posting to the main feed.

It’s easy to create and edit a highlight, so it can be easily accessed by followers.

You can add up to 100 photos or videos to a story highlight. It makes the process of seeing what a brand has to offer much easier as all your content can be compartmentalised into the different services you offer as a whole.

How to make the most out of Insta Stories Highlights

Here’s some things you can do:

• List services/products you offer
• Highlight behind the scene type exclusives
• Share your achievements
• Announce events
• Collect user generated content to gain customers’ trust

With Stories Highlights, content is more organised, simpler and faster to navigate through.

Insta Stories Ads

With 400 million people watching Instagram Stories every single day, and the cost of Facebook advertising increasing, Instagram Story ads are the cheaper, more innovative way of advertising your products to a larger reach as we move into 2019.

With its full-screen, vertical format, businesses can share photos and videos that submerse followers in their content.

With the ability to target your ads by reach, video views, traffic, conversions, app installs and brand awareness, there’s real potential to drive business results.

Insta Stories Shoppable Stickers

The new shoppable stickers for Instagram Stories mean businesses can tag physical products from their e-commerce platform.

When users click on an item in a post, they’re able to view the item name, price, and description.

Shoppable Instagram Stories stickers can be placed on both images and videos, so it’s a great way to offer product information without coming across like you are constantly trying to push a product on your followers.

The great news is that you don’t need to be verified or have 10,000 followers to use them!

Micro Influencers

Influencer marketing continues to boom as brands collaborate with opinion leaders to enter an already-established community to promote their product. Micro-influencers have become a new trend on Instagram.

It’s proven that micro-influencers, who have a media following of anywhere between 1,000 and 30,000, drive more significant engagement than influencers with a larger following.

Why collaborating with micro-influencers is beneficial

Collaborating with micro-influencers allows you to save on promotion as their rates are lower.

You can expect a higher average engagement rate and also establish contact with them in order develop a longer term relationship and collaborate in the future.

Instagram TV

IGTV is a new Instagram feature and app for sharing and viewing video in a vertical and full screen format. It offers the potential to create hour-long episodes of a long-term series, or to use Instagram TV as an extension of your standard Instagram profile.

Play-Doh has used IGTV to great effect with its series, “The Play-Doh Show”, which brings creative, colourful fun to life. While the series likely has kids fighting over their parents’ phones, it’s fun for all ages and you can do it too! Instagram provides a wealth of opportunity to reach current and new audiences in exciting and engaging ways. Definitely not a platform to be ignored when planning your 2019 marketing strategy!

If you want to find out how to take your social media offering to the next level, contact us at agency:2 on 0203 598 9194.