After Much Consideration, Instagram are Taking the Next Steps Necessary to Try and Remain Fresh in a Social World Dominated and Dictated by TikTok
In order to continually evolve, social media platforms will want to try new ways of engaging audiences. This could take many formats, either in terms of communicating with others online, or by the way marketers are able to facilitate their messages across to their target audiences.
One of the ways Instagram is currently evolving is through the use of enhanced tags, which will help in highlighting the collaborative forces on certain projects; this then allows for people who may normally participate in content without being credited to get brought into the spotlight, helping them to be fully recognised for their contributions.
Additionally, Instagram has taken steps to remove ad placements from in-stream videos. Instead, Instagram are pushing organisations to try and market ads on Reels, going hand-in-hand with the removal of IGTV to put all video content into one specific format. Such evolutions could have serious implications on how marketers are able to engage audiences, given the removal of video formats which have been commonly used.
All of this seems to be in a push to help improve how people are able to market not only themselves, but the different products they may intend to sell on Instagram as well. In being able to consolidate all information into a similar messaging style, this should allow marketers to engage more directly and easily with Instagram users, as they will no longer have to adapt to the varying formats on the platform.
However, this does lead to issues and concerns regarding the homogenisation of media consumption, given the movement towards Reels has started to make Instagram look visually similar to TikTok.
In allowing these changes to occur, although it would make the access of information more easy for the users of Instagram, it may not benefit Instagram in the long-run as it may lose it’s unique feel to other social media platforms. Additionally, users of Instagram would have to adjust to the new changes, in which they may not wish to and move elsewhere.
On the flip-side, this might prove more financially viable to Instagram, as it would help to place more marketing tools on their platform. In being able to incentivise marketers, they could draw in more revenue in the long-run, should their new schemes prove successful.
In changing the way content is marketed, advertised, and collaborated on, Instagram should be able to establish a potential future framework to keep them relevant. However, should they introduce new features without them being used, it could prove to be wasteful if they continue to ignore feedback from their account users.
Finally, for our previous #SocialShort, click here.
