What updates on Instagram. Innovation on Instagram: what awaits us? Augmented reality advertising and new tools for Instagram

December is the time to sum up the results of the past year and fantasize about “what will happen next”? Everyone wants to predict trends in advance, prepare in advance and be fully prepared. Therefore, there are a great many articles (and this one is no exception), but for many years now we have been talking about the same thing. Let's agree this way. Last year I did “Instagram Trends for Business in 2017.” Main points from it:

6 main trends on Instagram in 2017:

Video content
Working on Engagement
Decline in the effectiveness of MF/ML
Increasing value of bloggers
Statistics are everywhere
Development of Instagram business functionality

In 2018, last year’s trends are becoming more of a “to-do list” style, that is, mandatory for use and application. But to say that working with bloggers and producing videos is a trend is, to put it mildly, an accordion.

Convenient service for auto-posting, analytics and working with personal messages on Instagram.
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You can learn more about each of them because in 2018 nothing with these “trends” will change. As the video gains popularity and value, it will continue to do so. Just as engagement has been the cornerstone of promotion, it will remain so. Therefore, everything that was discussed for 2017 continues to remain relevant and I propose to leave these 6 “types of trends” as working in the coming year. Here's a little trick.

Now we can talk about what I see as key for Instagram in 2018.

1. Separate content strategy for Stories
2. Hashtags will get a new life
3. Instagram is increasing its viral potential
4. Non-standard
5. Normalization of the community
6. Statistics (I repeat)

As you can see, trends are not about what color content should be made or what applications to use.

Stories

I don't want to be the one to start explaining the importance of using Stories today, but I will. At the same time, I distinguish between 2 radically different approaches:

I take pictures of what I see
constant and systematic work on disappearing content

Captain Obvious

Random is rarely good.

Almost half of all small updates on Instagram in 2017, one way or another, relate to Stories, which is reflected in the numbers: 3 out of 5 Instagram users who log into the network daily also interact with Stories on a daily basis. At the same time, due to the obvious ease of creation and the “optional quality requirement” of an ordinary user, Stories have become a more “trustworthy” channel of communication with readers.

In fact, Stories are full-screen vertical content with minimal interface presence and automatic flipping.
One might say - an ideal format for consuming content.

The use of dedicated albums with Stories, cross-posting Stories from Instagram to Facebook, interactive buttons (there will be more, I’m sure) - all this forms a separate social network within Instagram, and it must be worked with according to different rules.

I am already considering developing separate content strategies and budgeting additional resources for systematic and ongoing work with Stories for SMM strategies for 2018. And I’m not talking about the format “Oh, it’s snowing. Let’s take a photo of our key visual against the snow for Stories.” A whole separate content strategy and content plan.

Hashtags

My dislike and “disbelief” in hashtags on Instagram began a long time ago and has not changed over the years. But Instagram gave us a surprise in the form of the ability to follow a hashtag. In this simple update lies, in my opinion, a second life for Cyrillic hashtags. Categories, which I had almost buried during the (shadowban) algorithmic and glitchy search results for low-frequency hashtags, are again becoming a must-have for everyone. The user can now not even subscribe to the account as a whole, but only to its individual sections.

On the other hand, the amount of spam for popular hashtags will only grow, and all industry, thematic and event tags will quickly be filled with left-wing content that has nothing to do with the original topic. If Instagram doesn't figure out how to overcome this problem, then following hashtags could become akin to Russian roulette. You never know what you will see next time.

Virality

Off the top of my head, I remember 4-5 different formats for content recommendations in feeds that appeared in November alone. The main problem of Instagram, in my humble opinion, has been the closed nature of the network throughout its existence. The user types a certain number of profiles that are interesting to him and then his information field does not expand anywhere, because he:

Satisfied my requests
Doesn't see anyone except those he follows

And the worst thing is that in most cases the average ordinary user is not very interested in expanding this information bubble. Because he’s lazy, everything is fine, he doesn’t know/can’t do it. It’s funny and inconvenient for us and you to think that people don’t know how to use the simplest Instagram, but if you could see what kind of questions people sometimes send to me in private messages with proud inscriptions @smm_raskrutka_omsk in their nickname, they would stop laughing at the circus.

But not only did I see this as a significant flaw in the network, but also Instagram guide I said so modestly, generously motivated by kicks from Facebook management, suddenly became concerned about expanding the user’s horizons and began to shove “we recommend subscribing”, “you will obviously like this content” into every crevice. Even the recommended dialogues have already been seen, although it would seem.

The funny thing about this situation is different. A year and a half ago, when Instagram introduced an algorithmic news feed, it stated that users on average did not see 70% of the content that was in their feeds, although everyone was happy with everything. Now they are trying to shove in more of what I didn’t sign up for at all, what I didn’t ask them for at all.
It turns out that there is so little content that it needs to be diluted with “algorithmically proposed” content?

So here it is. Getting to the top of recommended content already brings a huge increase in the reach of publications, albeit with rather low involvement and conscious reading by the “accidentally viewed audience.” If the recommendations become even more sensible, are given in the feed with additional CTAs in the form of “subscribe” buttons and are accompanied by beautiful phrases “Your friend Dimon liked this photo,” then the effect of such recommendations will become much more inspiring. And this leads us to the next point.

Non-standard

A few months ago, my professional deformation reached a critical point and broke out. To be more precise, it was not Instagram that got me to a greater extent, but what the users did on it. In general, this is, of course, not bad, but not good either.

I am now actively mass following mom, I am mass following on mine personal account and received an excellent figure of 4.4k outgoing subscriptions. From time to time I scroll through the feed, and from this I made 2 interesting observations:

First of all, I almost always see posts from my closest friends and girlfriend anyway. The algorithm tries and gives me interesting posts at the top of the feed half the time, but not always.

Secondly, ordinary (mortal) people make shitty content. Seriously, my phone practically cries when it has to show those photos that ordinary people post.

What does this mean for businesses and bloggers? And the fact that ordinary highlighted content, which has long made anyone who is actively involved in Instagram nauseous, is still an infinite number of times better than ordinary photos published by an ordinary network user. Therefore, it still works, but people selling photo editing guides have to suffer.

Only to achieve success with the “ordinary quality content"It won't work. If you are a beginner blogger and even a mom blogger, then achieving success and world fame by doing everything that hundreds and thousands of similar lifestyle bloggers have done and continue to do will definitely not work. Or you will have to spend too much money, effort and time on it.

It’s easier to be different from others, introduce your own tricks and try options. Nicely said? And I think so.

In SMM it is very difficult with the laws of correctness and normality. They simply don't exist. You can't say that you have to post daily or that you have to add text.
There is no “right”, only effective.

To summarize the above: it is almost impossible to simply achieve success by creating another profile of a successful businessman, another talking head about Instagram, another mother who is great.

I miss sincere and honest profiles on Instagram. Disarmingly honest. It’s more interesting and useful to read about fakaps, listen to Uncle Lesha, yes.

Now try to make cool, unique, different content, publishing 1-2 posts a day. Yeah. Therefore, we post less, but with better quality.

Community normalization

The shortest point.

If Instagram is starting to prohibit taking selfies with animals, then that means a lot. Instagram has always been famous for its strange dislike for naked female nipples, while loyally accepting similar organs, or how to put it, from men. But in last year, for me personally, the Kremlin’s hand in attempting to moderate and introduce rules in general for everything is very noticeable. Unlicensed music will be banned, fake music will be banned, will spam be defeated?

The second area of activity in the normalization of the community is the introduction of new privacy settings, such as “ best friends», various settings privacy in the photos you send to friends via Direct, and automated spam filters. Instagram is trying to become cozy again.

Remember the story of the mass blocking of top bloggers on Instagram? Just as unexpectedly it began, just as unexpectedly it came to naught. Apparently, they were simply testing new algorithms that became wiser and began to filter out attempts at abuse.

Statistics

What Instagram statistics did the posts have at the start?

What was it like by the end of 2Q17?

Hurray, the statistics on Instagram are gradually becoming so cool in small steps that you want to cry with happiness and hug your colleagues.

Really, latest update statistics under posts from business profiles gave us the opportunity to observe where the views of a post came from, to understand whether hashtags or geotags work at all or not. Now you can actually test and monitor the effectiveness of all the fairy tales and theories about what you should/should not use high-frequency hashtags, popular geotags, get likes to get to the top, and much more.

The second important thing is that Instagram began to transfer business profile statistics to third-party services, which greatly simplified the creation of monthly reports for SMMers and gave us all a lot of opportunities to analyze and accumulate profile statistics over long periods of time.

Resume

Instagram is developing, all social networks are developing, and there is no news in this. 2018 will be in many ways indicative of how much Instagram will be integrated into Facebook and WhatsApp, what will happen to reach and algorithmic feed. We wait, hope and believe.

P.S. About mass following and mass liking. Mass liking continues to “lie down”; as far as I know, the problem of banning services from liking has not been solved ideally. At the same time, mass following continues to live and flourish. The average efficiency of the channels that work on my accounts is 10% and above. This is still the cheapest way to attract subscribers, but it is not scalable. You are unlikely to be able to attract more than 2,000 subscribers per month. For some, this figure seems fabulous, but it will take you a long time to grow to the size of a hundred thousandth.

Therefore, I would now call MF vitamins for small regional businesses. You can and should take it, but you won’t get fabulous results.

Developers social network Instagram regularly releases updates that add new features. This is how media platform participants received Stories, Direct and Live Broadcast. Some users encountered a problem - these tools did not appear in the application, there is only one reason - outdated version mobile client. In this guide, we will tell you how to update Instagram on Android or iOS. Readers will also learn how to enable or disable automatic downloading of a new version.

The photo resource Instagram has changed a lot over the past year; now it is not only a platform for sharing pictures, but also a full-fledged social network where you can correspond. Users have received the innovations well, so it’s definitely worth installing the latest version of the application.

The procedure is the same for everyone mobile devices, only the store is different:

For users operating system Android will need to go to Play Market.
For lucky owners of iPhone and iPad, the iOS platform is provided.
If you are using portable Windows devices Phone, you will need to go to Place Market.

How to update the Instagram app

Step-by-step instructions are shown using the example of Android gadgets:

Using this scheme, you can download the update for Apple gadgets. Typically this procedure is performed automatically, that is, without user intervention. Your function is disabled.

Usually, owners of smartphones and tablets refuse to automatically download new versions due to saving traffic and money on mobile account. If you have unlimited internet or you are connecting to Wi-Fi, then the option can be launched.

How to update Instagram on Android manually

We've dealt with the manual process, now we'll set the settings so that Instagram downloads the latest updates automatically. This also applies to other programs installed on your smartphone or tablet. We again need to enter the Play Market or the store dedicated to your operating system. To open the Settings menu, swipe from left to right. In the window that appears, select the Settings section and tap on the inscription.

Click on the item marked in the screenshot. The system offers three options:

Never. You have this item installed; in this mode, new versions can only be obtained manually.
Always. Downloading is carried out on any connection. If you are using limited mobile internet, it is recommended not to select this mode.
Only via Wi-Fi. The best option is that Play Market will download files only when you are connected to Wi-Fi; there are no extra costs with this mode.

Select the appropriate option and save the changes. How to update Instagram to latest version on Android, readers found out. The same steps are performed in the App Store and Place Market.

How to update Instagram on iPhone

After the update, some media platform participants encounter errors: the client does not launch, crashes, and cannot log in. The problem can be solved by reinstalling. Open the settings of your smartphone or tablet. In the main menu, find the Applications menu. Open it and find it in the Instagram list.

Tap on the icon, information about the program and two buttons will appear on the screen: Stop, Delete. Stop the application, confirm the action, and then tap on the Delete field. Re-download Insta and complete the installation. After this operation, the errors should disappear.

Download the latest version of the application immediately after release. If you ignore and do not update, the program will stop working correctly: some functions will become unavailable, and new ones will not appear at all. In this article you will learn how to update Instagram for free from Android and iPhone smartphones.

Instructions for smartphones

The manual is suitable for users official version, which can be downloaded from the pre-installed application store for free - Play Store and App Store.

How to update Instagram on Android:

Open the Play Store software store.
In the top left corner, tap the three stripes icon.

Select first item My apps and games.

Find the program in the list.
To the right of it, click the button.

Wait until the download completes.

How to download to iPhone:

Go to the App Store.
In the panel below, select the appropriate section where you can update the program for free.

Find the application.
To the right of it, click the download button.

Wait for the installation to complete.

Anyone can update the program completely free of charge. If they demand money from you, this is a scam.

Follow this procedure every time there is an Instagram update from the developers.

Download the application only from official sources - pre-installed Markets. Otherwise, there is a risk of loading malicious file and even loss of access to your profile.

If you installed the latest Instagram update, but not all functions work:

Your smartphone is outdated and does not support new modes.
The innovation has not yet reached you - you will have to wait.

Update overview

You can see all Instagram updates on his page at App store or Google Play. We will look at the main ones for the period from November 2017 to April 2018. How it works: find the desired tag in the search, go to its page and click the Subscribe button.
After subscribing, popular posts and stories with the tag will appear in your personal feed.

Version: 30.0
Date: January 29, 2018
What's new: Text input mode in stories.
How it works: Go to story recording mode, select Text mode at the bottom, tap the screen to record.
The mode has built-in backgrounds, so you don’t need to download them separately.

Version 25.0
Date December 4, 2017
The developers have fixed bugs and improved the application.

Version: 24.0
Date: November 20, 2017
What's new: functions in Direct.
Stickers, text and drawings for photos in messages.
Control viewing using the “single viewing” and “repeated viewing” switch.

Instagram has these functions, the updated version of which was released in April 2018. Follow the innovations and update for free in the market so that the program works correctly.

Instagram stories - what is it? In 2016, Instagram announced a new Stories option. Since then, rumors have not subsided around her. Why are they needed and what do Instagram stories mean? How do they benefit business promotion? How to view a story on Instagram? The answer to these and other questions is in this article.

What are Stories on Instagram

The “Stories” option allows you to post photos and short videos on which you can add texts, notes and emoticons. Unlike regular posts, the time of stories is limited; over time (after 24 hours) they are deleted. Why is this necessary? Why can't you post regular photos?

Stories allow you to avoid spamming your friends’ feeds while still sharing unusual photos or videos. New posts can be seen in the slider under the application header, and those who are logged into the social network will be able to view them there. Thus, the user can always share what he considers necessary without clogging up the feed. Just open the service and you will see your friends' recent posts. If you don’t find Stories, it means they simply don’t exist. Read more about this in our material.

How to Watch Instagram Stories

The innovation is simple, but novice users and older people may have problems. Where are they located, how to find and view stories, how to use Instagram Stories?

Watching new stories on Instagram is quite easy. New stories are located at the top of the feed. To be able to determine which user the post belongs to, you should look at the avatar in the form of a circle. Entries are constantly updated, they are always visible, new ones added soon disappear. Stories are displayed in the order of interaction with another user's account. Those. The more often you view a user’s photo, leave comments and likes, the sooner his story will be displayed.

To add a new one, you must:

go to the social service itself;
after entering pay attention to the left top corner the application itself - all the functionality is here;
Click on the icon and the camera should open. The shutter icon allows you to record video. You need to hold it and then release it, then the video will be recorded;
Adding inscriptions is easy - you can even do it with your finger. New story saved to the phone's memory. The big arrow in the middle sends the post to Instagram. Everything takes a couple of seconds.

Why do you need Instagram stories?

Users really like such innovations because they resemble the famous Snapchat. But stories can also be used for business.

It’s easy to promote a local business using Stories – just show high-quality and “live” photos. It is enough to mark the release of a new product with slightly edited photos with funny captions. Such live content looks much more interesting than photoshopped images that users see dozens of times in their feed.

You can also promote brands with the help of stories. The best way talk about them - show the brands from the inside - how the company lives, how its everyday life goes, what achievements it has. Particular attention should be paid to what will be interesting to users - testing a new product, customer feedback, educational elements. The goal is to constantly give your audience something new.

Stories is also suitable for PR. Because it is important here feedback, subscribers can respond to a story with just the swipe of a finger. Such techniques will help to form the right opinion among the target audience and a positive reputation about the brand.

Subscribers who use Instagram can ask questions - you shouldn’t ignore them, since live communication with target audience very important for promotion. Live broadcasts are the best way to provide consultations. Online mode is the easiest way to answer all user questions and explain anything unclear.

What benefits do Stories bring to business?

Instagram stories are one of the important growth points in the process of promoting a business on Instagram. The advantage of such posts is the ability to create “live” communication between the user and the subscriber. This good opportunity show the company and the product itself from the inside, stories about key moments and stages of creation. Direct communication with subscribers creates a trusting atmosphere, which helps promote the brand.