Instagram Trends for 2020

Instagram Trends for 2020

Talks about 2020 trends are here I decided to take the liberty of forecasting the upcoming avenues of Instagram marketing.

As for trends in 2019, those were AR, online shopping, change in the Instagram algorithm, video content, focus on Stories, and UGC.

Now let’s cut to the chase and speak about Instagram trends 2020 in detail.

1. AR effects

Augmented reality is not new on Instagram. Everyone knows and used these funny Snapchat-like cat face masks at least once, but the trend is not about it.

Admittedly, these masks are not going anywhere, but they will be accompanied by AR effects made by brands and casual users. Now brands can create their own AR masks where an object can be not a face only, but their product as well.

This is a hot trend right now. Check it yourself: open your Instagram page and view your followings’ Stories. How many of them contain no effect at all? I bet, not many. AR masks easily go viral, so even a no-name brand can get its audience thanks to them.

How to use the trend?

Create your own masks! If you’re not tech-savvy at design, you can ask your in-house designer or a freelancer to help you out. If you’re lucky and the mask you’ve designed goes viral, people will start following you.

The drawback of this strategy is that some of those followers may not interact with your page. Then it’s for you to decide what to do with those followers — manually remove part of this dead weight or try to attract their attention with your content.

As a brand, you can create your product-related AR effect, letting your audience virtually try out a piece of cloth, accessories, and somehow interact with your product. Brands like ASOS, Starbucks, Off-White, and others already follow this path.

2. Nano-influencers

Quality over quantity in terms of followers is a crucial rule. This principle also works when you’re trying to outreach a relevant influencer. So far, nano-influencers are those bloggers whose audience is active, genuine, and responsive.

The audience considers the blogger as a friend, so they do read and watch what is being promoted by an influencer.

Such influencers have up to 5,000 followers, but very engaged ones, not bots. The audience of influencers likes and comments a lot. A small tip: the longer and more informed the comments, the more followers are engaged with the content.

So partnering with them may be a cost-friendly and an actionable way of getting new followers, and later, clients.

Accounts of such bloggers look like personal blogs, not polished profiles like those of influencers with thousands of followers. Besides, their feeds and Stories are not overwhelmed with ads because brands don’t outreach them often.

How to use the trend?

Search for relevant nano-influencers with your target audience and start collaborating with them. This may be not easy to find a suitable blogger because you can’t rely on the followers’ count. 

What you need to look at is the way the influencer talks to the audience, their engagement rate, overall quality of followers (make sure the audience is not bots or Instagram shops), and their ER by reach.

Hope you get the point: just be confident the audience is your buyer personas.

Once you find your ideal nano-influencers, you can turn them to your brand ambassadors and create an affiliate program with them. Or even give exclusive coupons to the blogger’s audience. Thus you will also track how the campaign is working.

3. Lengthy captions

In 2019, social media experts already noticed this trend in influencers’ posts. The average amount of characters used in a caption is growing year by year.

If in 2016 we typically saw only photos and videos with a short description or even without a word, now Instagram influencers tend to write more extended captions.

Communication with the audience is the clue that helps build a trustful relationship and grow engagement. Bloggers who know that their audience is genuine and engaged, try to become friends with the followers, and friendship means communication.

Even influencers started using lengthy captions for their blogs, and for businesses, it’s a must. You don’t need to write novels in your captions, just let people know that you care and not making content for content.

Besides, Instagram itself endorses this approach and claims that words help your media get on the Explore Tab.

How to use this trend?

Length of captions significantly depends on the account goals. On online store pages, this may feel strange to see long captions. Still, if your account is associated with you as an individual, then you should try to use captions as an advantage — inspirational quotes, tips, advice, infographics, life stories, random thoughts, etc.

4. TikTok’s influence

TikTok — a fast-growing lip-sync app — is popular among kids and teenagers (now even adults) because it’s easy to make content for the platform and become famous in just one night.

If Instagram tends to make things complicated in getting followers and reduces reach, TikTok does the opposite: only one viral video is enough to become a TikTok star.

The platform has the For You page, which is similar to Instagram’s Explore Tab where users can discover new creators and follow them right from the page.

Content creation is effortless on TikTok; that’s why many youngsters choose it as the leading platform and then attract the existing audience to Instagram.

Besides, TikTok has a powerful video editor, features used by many Instagram bloggers for Stories and IGTV. TikTok effects look fresh and new on Instagram.

Moreover, TikTok sets lots of trending challenges and memes, which later go viral on Instagram.

How to use this trend?

Open a TikTok account and start making content there. There, you can easily find influencers relevant to your business who can promote your product on the platform.

5. Bigger eCommerce potential

One of the rumours around Instagram shopping is that Instagram top management wants to turn the social network into a Shopify counterpart. And this tendency is already transparent.

Look what shopping tools Instagram offers now: shoppable posts and Stories, shoppable influencers’ posts, shop section on the Explore, and residents of the US can even check out right on Instagram.

Experts say that the latter feature will be implemented in more countries this year.

How to use this trend?

If you are on the market list where Instagram shopping is available, you can use its full potential — create a Facebook catalogue, add all items, and start selling.

6. Updated Instagram analytics

Instagram is testing new insights that will show us how people find our profile on Instagram. Most of all, the update will touch on hashtags.

Instagram will show us how many impressions we gain from a particular hashtag. This will assist in hashtags research.

Probably, this is not the only insights update from Instagram that will be rolled out soon. Some countries already have it, so check your insights to see if you have it, too.

How to use this trend?

As soon as the insights are available to you, you are free to use them for your benefit. Such an update can significantly streamline the process of hashtags research as sometimes it’s challenging to find relevant hashtags that will bring you followers or profile visits.

But you need to remember that impressions are not as crucial in Instagram analytics as reach, ER, and ER by reach.

7. Focus on IGTV Series

In 2019, people did watch IGTV finally. And one of the reasons is that Instagram has ultimately accepted landscape videos which allowed brands and creators to share the content as it was.

In October 2019, Instagram launched IGTV Series, which work like YouTube Up Next videos when a current clip ends, and the next one is recommended to play. Aside from it, you can now turn on notifications to be alarmed when a new episode of your favourite creator is live.

This trend is predicted to be widely used both by brands, influencers, and casual users.

How to use this trend?

If you have a story to tell, you can now start implementing this strategy into your business. Storytelling sells rather well and keeps an audience engaged as people are waiting for a new episode to come out. Remember how you are looking forward to watching your favourite TV show’s new episode. This works similarly in marketing.

8. Tweets and memes

Like it is with TikTok, the interaction between Instagram and Twitter is a trend of 2020. Many meme accounts use tweets screenshots and crop them to post on Instagram. Typically, these are funny jokes or, on some accounts, motivational quotes. No matter the content itself, we are going to see lots of tweets on Instagram this new year.

As for memes, brands actively use them, too. Clothing brand River Island posted a series of memes (and tweets) on Christmas.

How to use this trend?

If you want to hit the trend, you need to keep the memes, tweets, and jokes relevant to your target audience. They need to be niche-specific and easy-to-digest for your followers. The example above is a perfect one since the jokes resonated with the brand’s audience and engagement under these posts was remarkable.

Hopefully, you found some of the trends interesting and useful, and we’d love to see you implement them in your brands’ profiles!