Coming 2022, the way Instagram has worked for the past few years is likely to change.

I started JZB MEDIA because I’m really passionate about seeing people (and their businesses) grow and achieve success. Myself and the team here at JZB MEDIA are really intentional about being part of your brand’s success, even if you’re not directly a client of ours; which is a huge reason why we write blog content to keep you informed about different ways for you to help your brand.

Content strategy is an important piece of any social media marketing plan. Great social media marketers rely on two things: user behavior and how a platform is designed to work. Coming 2022 the way Instagram has worked for the past few years is likely to change. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri recently took to his Instagram Stories to discuss some upcoming changes to the platform in 2022 - we’ve summarized those points below with some added takeaways from us.

More focus on video

Video and messaging are currently the main factors driving Instagram’s growth. Instagram has fully committed to a platform where sharing still images will not be as effective as sharing video.

The Takeaway: To take advantage of Instagram content algorithms that help you reach a larger audience, you’ll need to shift to a content strategy with video as the primary component.

Chronological feed option

Instagram users will soon have the option to choose between a curated or chronological feed. With a chronological feed, users would see posts in order as they happen from everyone they follow.

The Takeaway: If the chronological feed catches on it will be a lot more important to post at certain times of the day when your follower base is more likely to be using Instagram. It will also be more important to post content more consistently - posting more than once a day will have value again.

Another thing to consider: If someone currently follows a lot of accounts and they switch to chronological view, they may quickly get overwhelmed by consuming content from that many accounts. This could spur an ‘unfollow exodus’ where users trim down how many accounts they’re following. Thereby making it all that more important you’re speaking to the needs of your audience, and presenting content in a way that makes them want to consume what you have to say - otherwise your account may not be valuable enough to follow.

Higher focus on teens

With TikTok being a serious competitor, Instagram will increase their efforts to encourage a younger demographic to join the platform.

The Takeaway: Instagram will likely become a viable platform to reach a younger demographic (13-17) in mid-to-late 2022.

NFTs

NFT stands for non-fungible token, and is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger. NFTs can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photos, videos, and audio.

Instagram plans to implement NFTs into their platform in a way that makes them more accessible and more of a benefit to creators.

The Takeaway: There’s no “for sure” prediction around NFTs and how they’ll be implemented into Instagram. Creators might be able to display which NFT’s they own, or they might be able to sell them straight from a tab on their Instagram profile.

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