What's Happening on Instagram

And other social media. updates

Social media has had a hard time in the press recently, and the conversation around how it plays in our daily lives has had a lot of media real estate.

While the ‘designed to be addictive’ debate spills out into the hallways of government, one thing is for certain - social media is not going to fall under governance quickly and one consideration is the changing relationship we have with social media.

What’s new in the world of Instagram and other social media platforms?

As an agency that is ‘Instagram first’, we’ll start with the headline changes from the visual leader in the META suite.

There have been some technical updates and creative best practice changes from META that we wanted to share with you.

Views on Instagram have changed

Instagram have changed the way they determine a Reel has been viewed. 

There has been a significant shift in how your Reel now counts views. Essentially someone needs to have paused on your Reel while scrolling, expanded the copy caption or shown the platform some kind of ‘intentional’ watch to count as a view.

We know this is frustrating for some people BUT it’s actually good news! This gives us much cleaner and clearer data about real people giving quality attention to your content. Much more meaningful.

Like & Subscribe

Speaking of likes, we are seeing the ‘validation’ makers of like, comment and follow slowly diminishing. We have even noticed this behaviour in ourselves. As the algorithms of social platforms automatically serve us more of the content we like (through intentional watch time, sharing, etc.) - we’ve become lazier about ‘following’ accounts. It’s a trend we are seeing across client and major content creator accounts.

We are also seeing nascent client accounts with very small following have huge success on Reel watches. It seems that you no longer need to have a community in the thousands to reach a wide audience. Frustratingly, you do still need an audience of over 1,000 to unlock some of the features within IG such as live broadcasting.

Carousels that educate

We are seeing the return of Carousels as a means of gaining intentional engagement. The success of these lies in telling a story that people want to swipe through, whether that’s a ‘how-to’ from your field or a photo retelling of a live event.

Real reels

Reels are still the hottest form of content and the number one style is a basic talking head video. People are engaging the most with simple, relaxed, zero-edit reels that feel like they are a stream of consciousness from the creator.

Professional Dashboard on Instagram

Are you still keen to see Reel stats? Professional dashboard is where it’s at.

With all these changes you might be wondering where you should be looking to get a real understanding of how your account is performing. On your main account page in the app you’ll see a section called Professional Dashboard.

Here you’ll be able to access insights, trends and much more.

Shoppable links on Instagram

You may have heard that shoppable links are coming to Instagram. The early launch of these links will allow content creators to add affiliate links to selected retail partners like Amazon only. This is an exciting update, but not quite the shoppable link that we know some people are hoping for. We will keep watching to see how this feature develops over time.

The Human Marketing Touch

Photo credit: Andi Garbarino Photography. Taken at Banana Bread Breakfast Club

The Social Byrd continues to research creative trends, music, hooks and writing tricks that will keep your account aligned with the most up to date guidance and best practice.

AI continues to factor in conversations around social media and our stance remains the same. AI is a useful tool for analysing data, kickstarting ideas, editing for SEO refinement and other practices BUT it is not a replacement for great human creativity. 

Social media platforms such as META are clear in their move towards rewarding content that is authentic. We see brands and businesses who copy + paste their content directly from the AI platform to their social platforms and it shows.

As a people first agency, we look to tools like AI for assistance with our systems, but not as replacement humans. So if you’re ever in need of a real person chat about your social media and marketing, just give us a call!