ALL THE INSTAGRAM FEATURES OF 2018 AND WHY YOU NEED TO USE THEM!
Instagram introduced a new feature almost every other week in 2018 and continued to change and grow at a rapid pace. The slew of features this year has kept marketers, content creators, and brands on their feet.
The app has come a long way from just being an image sharing platform to one of the most sought after digital platforms for marketing, brand building, creative content, and now even for selling products and creating long-form content.
That might sound overwhelming, and of course it is, but put together, these features are greatly beneficial to use in your brand messaging, and grow your relationships organically across the platform.
So without further ado, let’s jump in and look at all the features that made their way into Instagram in 2018, in chronological order!
JANUARY 2018 — GIF STICKERS, ADJUST STORY DIMENSIONS 👻
What: Instagram introduced GIF Stickers for more playful and fun engagement on Stories.
Why: Who doesn’t like GIF Stickers?! It’s a super fun way to add more character and personality into your Stories and make it more attention grabbing.
How: When you tap to add a sticker to a photo or video in stories, you’ll see a new GIF option. Tap it to open a library full of thousands of moving stickers powered by GIPHY. You can browse what’s currently trending on GIPHY or search their extensive collection to find a sticker for just about anything.
ADJUST STORY DIMENSIONS 📐
What: Instagram’s introduced the option to upload photographs and videos of any dimension. Earlier, a photograph would be cropped to accommodate the vertical format, but Instagram now allows you to pinch the photograph to its original optical format to share on your stories.
Why: You can use it as a creative template for stories. Alternatively, you don’t have to stick with a full-screen cropped image that you don’t like. You have the option to scale it down and share an image in landscape format.
How: Just pinch to increase or decrease the size of the image on your phone screen.
FEBRUARY 2018 — TYPE MODE IN STORIES 📱
What: Instagram introduced native fonts for Instagram Stories. Instagrammers can now share their creative thought with different fonts and backgrounds, without a photo or video.
Why: Brands and bloggers can use this feature to make an announcement.
How: When you tap on the camera icon on Instagram, you’ll see “Type” next to Normal under the record button. Write your thought out, and on tap the font options on the top of the screen, to browse through the font options and make a selection. For the background, tap the color gradient circle on the bottom left to select a background color. You can also add these fonts to photos or videos on your stories.
MARCH 2018 — HASHTAGS & PROFILE LINKS IN BIO 🔗
What: Instagram allowed people to include hashtags (#) and profile links (@) in their bio, which serve as live links that lead to a hashtag page or a profile link.
Why: This can be useful in expressing your interests as a blogger, brand, or user and connect to a wider audience. Example, you could be a #comedywriter, #guitarlover, or an #illustrator and you can include that as live links in your Bio.
How: To add a hashtag or profile link to your Bio, tap on Edit profile and go to your Bio section. When you type# or @ you will see many recommended options in your type-head, and you can select the ones that fit your profile.
APRIL 2018 — LAUNCHED “FOCUS” MODE 📷
What: Instagram upped their selfie game with “Focus” mode. In March 2018, they gave their users the focus mode to take selfies with a shallow depth of field, where they’d be in focus, while the background softly blurs.
Why: This photo capture mode offers a certain aesthetic to the image. As a brand it comes in handy, if you want to take an image, but don’t have a professional camera on standby, you can now do so without compromising the quality of the image.
How: Open your camera, and you can find the focus option next to Boomerang under your record button. Just tap on the screen where you’d want the focus to be and click! You can also record a video in focus mode.
Instagram also launched the @MENTION Sticker, where you can post an image or video on your Stories, and use the @mention sticker to tag a friend.
MAY 2018 — COMBATING BULLYING COMMENTS, MUTE OPTION & CELEBRATING EMOJI SLIDER 👮
What: Instagram does not take bullying lightly. In 2017, they introduced an offensive filter to hide toxic comments. But they took more stringent action this year by providing users a feature to hide rude comments.
Why: As a brand Instagram stands for building community, supporting kindness, hence protecting people and users right to express without being attacked for it.
How: Go to your Settings, and select Comment Controls. Turn on the filter for “Hide Offensive Comments.” You can also turn on the Manual Filter option right under in and provide certain keywords or phrases that will be hidden from your comments.
EMOJI SLIDER 😍
May also saw a fun new way to interact — the emoji slider! The emoji slider lets you ask more nuanced questions like how hot is a pair of new sneakers or how scary is a new horror film! It also allows people to emotionally engage with their responses.
Why: It’s an interactive tool that brands and content creators can use to engage their audience in a fun manner and garner feedback.
How: Once you have selected your image or video for the Story, tap the sticker tray on top of your screen, and add the emoji slider from it. Place it on your screen and write your question. Your audience will be able to respond as soon as you share it.
INTRODUCING MUTE TO CUSTOMIZE FEED 🤫
What: Sometimes you feel your feed is too crowded, and it takes forever to get to the information that you like and seek on your feed. Well you can achieve that now by using the “Mute” feature introduced by Instagram. This allows you to to mute certain accounts from your feed, without unfollowing them or letting them know, so that you can have a cleaner, more organized feed of information you need.
Why: This can help make your browsing experience more rewarding to mute the clutter, and focus on information and feeds important to you. You will still get an update if the muted accounts tag you in a post, and you can see their new posts on their account page.
How: You can choose to mute an account from your feed by clicking the …button on the right of their account name on your feed. It gives you the option to Mute Posts or Mute Posts and Stories from that account. Choose your option, and continue to mute the accounts and personalize your feed.
JUNE 2018 — SHOPPING, VIDEO CHATS, MUSIC IN INSTAGRAM STORIES & IGTV 🛒
June was a big month for Instagram in terms of launching some landmark features! They first announced — Shopping in Instagram Stories. This was revolutionary from a marketing and accessibility viewpoint! With 400 million daily users on Instagram stories, following brands and products they love, it was an organic evolution to lead them to a direct shopping experience on Instagram.
Why: Brands have been early adopters of stories, and have managed to create incredible, engaging content. Not only is Instagram a great platform for them to market their product, and engage with their audience, but now they can also provide a shopping experience to their audience in a way that’s native to the platform.
How: When you see a sticker with a shopping bag icon, you can tap on it to see more details about the product or be taken directly to the merchandise page. Woah 😻
IGTV 📹
What: IGTV was one of the biggest announcements by Instagram. It’s a standalone app for creating and watching long-format vertical videos from all our favourite Instagram creators. IGTV is also available inside the native Instagram app wherein people can follow, comment and like on different channels of their choice.. In a nutshell, it’s television for mobile!
Why: This is a great opportunity for brands and content creators to engage with their audience for longer than 15 seconds. It is also an incredible opportunity for content creation in a mobile-first native format.
How: IGTV is a stand alone app, though it can also be viewed on Instagram. However to share content, you need to upload the videos on IGTV.
MUSIC IN STORIES 🎵
What: Instagram Stories and the features have always been tools for brands and users to express themselves. Music is just another cool weapon in the arsenal to express their story.
Why: Instagram is trying to think of all the elements that can enhance storytelling and add to the experience. Having a song play when someone is watching your story, evokes an emotional response that you hope to achieve with your story. It’s pretty spectacular to have that option and it raises the bar for content creators to get creative with their storytelling skills.
How: When you tap to add a sticker to your photo or video, you’ll see a music icon. Tap on it to open a library of music, you can choose by genre, mood, or search a specific song. You also have the option to play it forward to select the part that you want to play in the background of your story.
VIDEO CHATS 📱
What: Instagram wants to make their platform a one-stop platform for all interaction. Until now you could share, like, comment posts and even send direct messages. But the one thing that was missing was being able to Video Chat with your friends. Well, you can do that too now 🙌
Instagram has introduced the video chat option in Instagram Direct, and now you can connect on video with anyone that you are directly connected to on the platform.
Why: Why not! You already connect, engage and interact on the platform. This takes the experience a step further to stay connected with the people that matter most to you. Also, you can do a group chat, minimize the window, where you can still see each other, and continue to multitask.
How: If you go into your Direct Messages, or swipe into it, you can open a message thread and see the camera icon on the top right corner of the screen. Tap that, and call your friend 🤙
JULY 2018 — QUESTIONS STICKER 🤓
What: This is the Questions Sticker that really took off on Instagram. It’s an interactive sticker to share with your audience and it lets them ask you questions to answer.
Why: Build a relationship with your audience while ensuring you’re engaging with everyone and maintaining transparency at the same time.
How: Select the question sticker from your sticker tray, and write out your prompt like — “Ask me a question.” You will find your audience’s questions on your Stories Viewers list. You can tap to respond to the questions and publish them on your stories.
AUGUST 2018 — ABOUT THIS ACCOUNT 🔍
What: Instagram wants to create a safe community, and in order to achieve that it has provided the “About this account” feature to it’s users that will allow them to see more information about accounts on Instagram so you can evaluate the authenticity of the account you wish to follow.
Why: It is important to have a deeper understanding of accounts that reach many people on Instagram, and ensure that authenticity. You will be able to see the date the account joined Instagram, the country where the account is located and any username changes in the last year.
SEPTEMBER — GIFS IN DM, SHOPPING ON INSTAGRAM STORIES 💃
What: Instagram launched GIFS in Direct Messages. You can now interact with your friends and fans, using GIFS!
Why: Because it’s more fun to express yourself in a visual message 🤷🏻♀️
How: In a message thread, tap the GIF button to open the GIF library. You can either select from the trending GIFs, or type and search an appropriate GIF for your response!
SHOPPING ON INSTAGRAM STORIES 🛍
What: Since it’s Shopping Feature launch in May, Instagram has provided a fun, interactive, and easy shopping experience to it’s users. Instagram attempts to make this experience even more enjoyable for brands and users alike on Instagram Stories.
Why: Brands and IG users have a more organic connection. Now when users watch Instagram Stories of their favorite brand, and see something they love in a video or a post, they can tap on the product to find out more details about it.
How: If you see the shopping bag icon on a Story by your favorite brands, and like the product, you can tap on it, to know more about it! There will also be a Shopping Channel on the explore page with shopping posts from brands you like and follow.
OCTOBER 2018 — NAMETAG ⌘
What: Nametag is a customizable identity card, that allows people to find you on Instagram, when it’s scanned.
Why: It’s unique, and a fun way to interact and make new friends!
How: Go to your profile, and tap the button with three lines. In the dropdown, select Nametag. Customize your nametag with different, colors, fonts and emojis, and save! And in order to scan someone’s nametag, open your camera, hover on the nametag and it should give you the option to scan the nametag.
NOVEMBER 2018 — MORE OPTIONS FOR HOLIDAY SHOPPING 🛍
What: In May Instagram introduced the Shopping back icon to make it easier for users to directly purchase a product, followed by accessing shopping tags in stories and having a customized shopping channel. Now Instagram offers it’s users three ways to discover new products, shop from their favorite brands and keep track of all their shopping inspirations on instagram.
Why:
- Shopping Collection: In order to shop smart, research is the first step. You can save all your inspirations in your Shopping collection and revisit it later. When you tap a shopping icon in your feed or Stories, tap the save icon in bottom right corner and add it to your Shopping Collection. You can find your Shopping Collection on your profile.
2. Shop on business profile: If you want to save even more time, and just shop by brand. You can now visit a brand’s business page, and click the shop icon to see all their products with their price tags.
3. Shop in Feed Videos: Now if you see a video in your feed from your favorite brand, tap the shopping icon in bottom left to know more about the products.
Below is a calendar of all Instagram features that were launched in 2018, and if you’re not using them in your posts and stories, you’re not making the best of the creative tools available to you!
JANUARY
- GIF Stickers
- Adjust Story Dimensions.
FEBRUARY
- Type Mode in Stories
MARCH
- Hashtags & Profile Links In Bio
APRIL
- Introduced Focus Mode, and @Mention Stickers
MAY
- Filter for Offensive Comments
- Emoji Slider
- Mute Option
JUNE
- Shopping in IG Stories
- IGTV
- Music in Stories
- Video Chats
JULY
- Questions Sticker
AUGUST
- About this Account
SEPTEMBER
- GIFs in DM
- Shopping on Instagram Stories
OCTOBER
- Nametag
NOVEMBER
- More Options for Holiday Shopping
There is no doubt 2019 will be an even bigger year for Instagram, marketers, and content creators. If you have any predictions on expected IG features, please let us know in the comments below!
