The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Trend Predictions for the New Year
Are you looking to grow your Instagram channel or stay relevant as an influencer or small business? Knowing the upcoming Instagram trends is important for your brand’s growth. There are tons of articles out there predicting what social media trends will be popular this year, but let’s talk exclusively about Instagram and what you can do in 2024 to stay on trend and come out on top.
How to Keep Your Instagram On-Trend This Year
Keeping your Instagram profile on trend this year doesn’t have to be rocket science. Check out these tips below and read the linked articles if you want more information to build the best strategy for the New Year. With BeFunky’s Instagram templates and photo editing tools, you'll be ready to create on-trend Instagram posts in no time.
1. Prioritize Instagram Reels
With the growing popularity of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels are set to be a priority for the company this year. Ever since Adam Mosseri revealed that all video posts would become Reels, it solidified the direction that this platform would be prioritizing video content in the near future. If you aren’t yet creating Instagram Reels, this is the year to start – as this feature is dominated by this demographic. The platform even implemented reply Reels, where creators can reply directly to comments with another Reel.
It is important to note your demographic here when choosing this strategy for your Instagram. If your audience is between the ages of 25 to 34, this is a great option to start exercising this year or continuing to put effort towards.
2. Prioritize Meaningful Connections Over Growing Followers
One of the trends this year is “meaningful connections.” I think this stems from people’s personal lives, where rather than trying to acquire new friends or partners, people are prioritizing growing their current relationships. Users are also prioritizing content that is more focused on self-improvement in some way. If you can hit any of these topics with the content you produce, you will be on trend.
One of the new ways to do this is with Instagram’s Hype Comments on Stories. In the past, users were only able to reply directly to the creator of a Story, but now they can reply with a comment that is viewable to anyone who watches the story. This is a great way to continue to prioritize meaningful connections on the platform. Not everyone has been given access to Hype Comments, but it is something to look forward to as it rolls out this year.
3. Enhance Authenticity With Photo Dumps
The age of perfectly curated Instagram Feeds is out. Users prefer seeing an uncurated approach to photos from those they are following, which include behind-the-scenes photo dumps of their lives. If you aren’t doing this, try utilizing our strategy of posting photo dumps in a carousel post – that way, you can still keep your Feed clean, while also giving a daily look into who you are.
Creating sharable content is key here. With Instagram’s implementation of making public the number of times a post is shared, this can be a helpful metric that gains you more shares from other users if you include content that they want to share with their friends.
I think that this is one of the best strategies that you can start implementing and is a method that touches authenticity at its core. Try posting the same memes you send to your friends on DM’s, or take pictures of your daily habits like the food you are eating, photos you are editing, or games you are playing when you take breaks throughout the day.
As a side note, the era of flashy Instagram posts is so niche that it is not trending any longer. People want relatability. They are prioritizing thrifting over fast fashion, and repeating outfits for sustainability reasons – and I think this carries over into other industries as well like room or house flips, furniture flips, dupes, and more. Users want to express their individuality and like knowing the individuality of others.
4. Add Text-Posts to Your Content Calendar
This is a low-maintenance type of post if you’re looking for extra content to supplement your other regularly scheduled posts. While high-quality images are always popular, text-based posts are trending this year. These are the kinds of posts that are screengrabs of an X post overlaid on a cute background. Again, this kind of content is sharable and relatable, hitting multiple trends at once.
5. Add Trending Audio to Your Instagram Posts, Reels, and Stories
A new feature that is gaining popularity is adding music to your Posts. Yeah, you heard us right, not your Stories, but your Posts. While video is king on this platform, adding a song to your Post is a great way to make your Post more captivating to users. I’ve noticed that while scrolling, I will hear a song and wait for the Post to start playing, thinking it is a video. The longer the “hover time” on a post, the better that post will perform to other users, per the algorithm.
Using trending audio on your Instagram Reels is also important if you want to get your videos seen on the platform. You can see if the audio is trending if there is an uptick arrow next to the song when you are selecting it.
There are many other useful Instagram Story strategies for your brand – and if you’re looking to boost your engagement on stories, take a look at this article.
6. Develop a Strong SEO Strategy
Tapping into relevant audiences can be a little difficult on Instagram if you don’t know how to find them. This is where SEO comes into play. The more people who discover your content, the more followers you will get, and the more you will grow your community of like-minded users. To do this, you need to develop an SEO strategy.
Good SEO can be found in descriptive captions, making sure to include trending keywords. You can also enhance your SEO by adding good keywords to your profile name and bio. Also, including up to 30 relevant hashtags on your Posts will help your SEO perform at its best.
Stay On-Trend In the New Year
Staying on trend on Instagram doesn’t have to be difficult. Follow these tips to create the best, trending content that you can. Remember, this year is all about authenticity and casual posts. The less effort you are putting into your Instagram content, the better. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be posting regularly, but just that you don’t have to go all out with every post to make something go viral. Take it easy this year and simply showcase your life. This will be the ultimate trend in the year to come.
