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Guest post from AWAL The sheer scale of Facebook’s owned-and-operated crown jewel makes it a vital endpoint in the content race—an inspiring and overwhelming launchpad for preternaturally gifted yodelers, abnormally adorable dogs, and generational artists who set new standards across design, fashion, music and comedy. It’s a beautiful, confusing world in our pocket. With a little help from Instagram’s Strategic Partnerships Manager, Sunil Singhvi, we’re uncovering the trends, statistics, and hidden tricks of a powerhouse app helping shape the pulse of entertainment. Let’s go.Shifting Behavior
Social networks are collections of user decisions. When scaled, they become global case studies for human behavior. Patterns emerge, and the best content strategies reflect them. While Instagram’s billion monthly active users—human beings!—don’t behave like clones, common threads deserve emphasis.When Instagram first took off, perfection reigned supreme. Superficial realism filled timelines. There’s still plenty of self-curation to go around, but Instagram has gone somewhat rogue. Impromptu, rough-around-the-edges material now has a seat at the table in an era of Finstagrams and cultural transparency. Feed filter usage has declined, while ephemeral Stories—now deployed by 400 million people every 24 hours—are a daily staple of digital life.Indeed, “less is more” doesn’t always hold true. In the middle of his panel at AWAL’s BBC Music Introducing Live 2018 event, Will Page, Spotify’s Director of Economics, argued that “fans interpret silence not as you being busy, but as you taking vacation.”Hip-hop/R&B fans could point to Frank Ocean’s infamous online presence, restricted to Tumblr for years, as the antithesis to Page’s comments. Likewise, Anderson .Paak’s renowned Instagram feed prioritized perfection, establishing a rare wow-factor for the multi-talented artist that, regardless of individual post metrics, left a lasting impression on many viewers.That said, .Paak recently wiped his feed clean, and Ocean activated his IG account days ago. A$AP Rocky once lost 100,000 followers in less than 12 hours when, piece by piece, he flooded timelines with an elaborate image. Relevant metrics to consider here: The average Instagram user checks in 16 times each day. (That number rises to 21 app opens for those under 24.)Ultimately, these examples are ~just~ data points. How you use them is your call. For every 10,000 people who do the same thing, there will always be one outlier who makes a mark and shifts the paradigm. (We explored some of the folks doing just that in a piece about Insta-Albums.)Standing Out
One great way to retain attention? Experiment with everything at your disposal. The pursuit of simplicity might govern our digital world, but there’s always room for easter eggs, hidden rewards, and the dopamine rush they bring to the user experience. Some low-key features worth checking for include…-
Screen Fill: Add a Stories card, select a pen color, then hold your finger down on the middle of the screen to fill. Now erase a portion of the frame fill for the reveal.
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Boomerang Menu: Open your Boomerang app (we know, not Instagram, but relevant!) and repeatedly tap the screen with four fingers. Your enthusiasm will trigger a secret menu, enjoy.
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Live Photo: Take a live photo. Now upload it to Stories. Hold your finger down on the screen. Congrats, you’ve made a Boomerang : )
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Advanced Gradient: This is trickier. Add text to a Story and select all. Then, place and hold one finger on a color option while placing another on the right text selector. Simultaneously slide both horizontally along the screen. Nice one.
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Anything Else? That’s all for now, but we recommend bookmarking the Instagram press page for product updates
