Instagram continues thriving to be the leading social media platform from both the user’s end and the marketers and content creators. 

Over the past week, Instagram launched several updates on its features and is testing other ones as part of its broader video integration strategy.

• To start with, what most publishers and marketers have been waiting for has finally come to life.
  Now, users can publish their posts, whether photo or video format, on Instagram using a desktop, saving them time. Stories and Reels will be up next in the future stages.
  

• Instagram updates its Insights element to add more data analytics for business and creator profiles which will help guide these users’ posting decisions and provide more opportunities to optimize their profiles.
  The new metrics include:
  • Accounts Engaged: the total number of accounts that interacted with your content in a given time period
  • Engaged Audience: the demographic insights which show the users that are engaging with your content, whether they follow your profile or not, including top cities, top countries, top age ranges, and gender
  • Reached Audience: the demographic information about the people you’ve reached with your posts in a given time period, including top cities, top countries, top age ranges, and gender

• Last but not least, in line with Instagram’s broader shift towards video content, it has retired the IGTV brand and is now testing two new options that would further integrate its various video functions.
  
  • The long-form IGTV feature is now merged into a generic ‘Instagram Video’ format, meaning the end of a separate IGTV branding section.
  • Instagram tests a longer format for videos on stories, which means your 60 seconds long video will no longer break into segments.
  • The platform also tests uploading full Reels videos to Stories is also being tested, which means your 60 seconds long video will be fully previewed when re-sharing on Stories.

Even though there haven’t been any recent updates about Instagram’s official number of users, it still chases all trends, whether originating from competing platforms like Snapchat or TikTok or simply adapting to worldwide trends and issues. 

What’s still in store for Instagram during 2022? And will it be the leader platform in video marketing? 

Let’s wait and see!