There have been some important Instagram announcements lately and I think a lot of people have missed these so I wanted to share them with you. Staying up to date with the latest trends is important in digital marketing and we want to make sure you are prepared with all the knowledge you need for your business to be successful.

Hashtags

Instagram recently announced that their idea of best practices for hashtags is to use 3 to 5 per post. This is news because we would normally be posting 8-15 per post. Our research and experience say 8 to 15 is ideal so what to make of Instagram’s new suggestion? Their experts say the extra 10-20 hashtags will not help you get distribution. We don’t see how this can be true unless they are changing the algorithm. I’d say experiment with both options and the proof will be in the analytics. 

Ranking with SEO

Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, said these 4 things will help you rank with SEO:

1. Choose an appropriate handle and profile name. 
2. Include relevant keywords in your bio.
3. If your business is tied to a location, include that in your bio and handle if possible. 
4. Put hashtags in the caption, not comments. 

RIP IGTV

Instagram announced that IGTV and feed videos will now be combined into one format and they are going to call in Instagram video. Across the top of your grid where you normally see feed, reels, IGTV, etc. the IGTV button will be replaced with a triangle icon, reminiscent of the YouTube logo, and all of your videos will feed into that location. This will make it easier to browse an account’s video content in one place. This makes sense because in our experience we’ve seen that we don’t get nearly as much traction from IGTV as we do from reels. Instagram lets way more people see the reels so, for your marketing efforts, reels are the way to go with video. 

Update Your Instagram Marketing Efforts

We hope you will use this information to update your Instagram marketing efforts and find even more success for your business.