What is happening with Instagram in 2019? Everyone knows about Instagram, the wonderful and fun social tool that allows you to take pictures, share them with your friends, develop your creative gifts and also market your business to hundreds of new customers everyday!
When it was invented almost 10 years ago, no one would imagine what would come out of Instagram. Businesses were not the least interested and it seemed like just another Internet fad, soon to disappear into oblivion… right ? NO!
Instagram actually gained the hearts of users straight away and it was an instant success. In the first 24 h of its launch, it gained 25 000 users, which have grown in just 8 years to the current number of 1 billion active users. That is quite an impressive number.
Instagram was invented and developed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The story of its inception is quite funny: In January of 2010, Kevin decided to show a mobile app named Burbn (after his drink of choice) to a couple of investors at a party. He wasn’t sure by then exactly what he wanted it to be, so its concept was still quite undefined. The only thing they were certain about it was that the app would have a location-sharing app and would have a photo-sharing functionality.
Kevin was lucky! The investors became interested and decided to invest $500,000. He then began looking for a co-founder and found Mike Krieger, a Brazilian coding expert who was also a Stanford graduate that had studied symbolic systems.
The beauty of Instagram that captivated users was its photographic filters, who had the potential to transform any regular picture into a photographic “master piece” with bright colours and a nostalgic touch. Due to its amazing success, in April 2012 Instagram was bought by Facebook for approximately $1 billion United States dollars in cash and stock. The move was seen with slight disdain in the investment circles as many business people and entrepreneurs could not imagine what kind of business model could result from that app, seen as another really cool one.
8 years along the road, these were proved to be untrue… We have now 25 million businesses on Instagram! Instagram is presently, not only a powerful social media and creative channel. It is also of the most important and efficient marketing channels of our times dearly used by all kinds of businesses. It is great for content marketing and paid advertising and, at the same time, for communication and customer service. It has the capacity to drive great engagement and better-than-average return on investment for a marketer, brand or agency.
Instagram has more than 1 million monthly advertisers and 8 million business profiles. Plus, it is widely used by millennials who are maturing and taking on leadership roles in front of all kinds of businesses, and the next generation, Generation Z. Sites like Gold Nitro can help you make a mark in this industry.
So How is Instagram doing in 2019?
Lets look at some statistics about Instagram ?
- Total Number of Monthly Active Instagram Users: 1 billion
- Instagram Stories Daily Active Users:
400 million - Number of Photos Shared to Date:
50 billion - Number of Businesses on Instagram
25 million - 68% of Instagram users are Females.
- 80% of Instagram users come from outside the U.S.
- Instagram is used by 31% of American women and 24% of men.
- Six in ten online adults have Instagram accounts.
- 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 use Instagram
- 68 of female internet users use Instagram and 26% of male internet users use Instagram
- 72% of Teens use Instagram.
What new trends will we see flourishing in 2019 and upcoming years?
Instagram Stories
Instagram has evolved, also due to the way its users interact with it. Something that has changed over the past couple of years is engagement. This has declined quite steadily, maybe due to the global rise in the number of users, and other platforms appearing in the market. What happens is that if one gets less impressions on posts, it is likely to see a decrease in engagement too. Experts thus state that in 2019 it’s time to look at “Instagram engagement” through different eyes, and focus on engaging with followers through Instagram Stories instead of just your regular feed posts. Instagram Stories has exploded in the last couple years, with over 400 million people watching stories every single day. But engagement continues to be the most important thing for businesses, so how to increase it? So When working with Instagram stories it is time to move from Likes to Stickers! Instagram has a huge variety of sticker options you can use in Stories.
This is very important because the combination of Instagram users following more accounts, watching more stories, and the Instagram algorithm prioritizing personal content has meant that regular Instagram feed posts simply aren’t getting seen as much as they used to.
Authentic Instagram Influencers
On the aftermath of the fake news scandal swiping the Internet world, “Authenticity” has become a key value for most people. It is also considered a big Instagram marketing “trend” in 2019. The days of perfectly posed Instagram posts, overly edited photos, and Instagram bot comments are over, making way for more genuine experiences and authentic relationships.
This might explain the meteoric success of body positive Instagramer Jenna Kutcher who gained over half a million followers in one year, growing from 166k to 700k+ without ever paying for a single follower. Her lovely Instagram account narrates visually her daily life as a real motherof a young baby, holding a all too human body, .
And this is good news.
Maria Fonseca is the Editor and Infographic Artist for IntelligentHQ. She is also a thought leader writing about social innovation, sharing economy, social business, and the commons. Aside her work for IntelligentHQ, Maria Fonseca is a visual artist and filmmaker that has exhibited widely in international events such as Manifesta 5, Sao Paulo Biennial, Photo Espana, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Joshibi University and many others. She concluded her PhD on essayistic filmmaking , taken at University of Westminster in London and is preparing her post doc that will explore the links between creativity and the sharing economy.
