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In an announcement from Instagram focused on “helping businesses connect with followers,” the IG Business Team laid out a number of important, strategic changes that will soon be showing up on the app.

The biggest changes mentioned in the post include:

Full-screen feed

As has been mentioned on various news sites in recent months, Instagram is considering a major change to the mobile app that would essentially mimic TikTok’s full-screen experience:

“We’re currently testing various new experiences that explore a full-screen feed, with video more front and center. Photos remain an important part of Instagram, and as part of these tests we’re working on the best way to create, share and enjoy them in a full-screen feed.”

The potential benefit, according to Insta, is “more space to tell your story.”

Focus on Original Content

As with most of the social media giants these days, Instagram is pushing Creator content as much as possible. They are also keen to get people posting their creative work directly on Instagram as opposed to favoring TikTok and then reposting to Insta.

These forces (and likely others) have now led to “updates that aim to prioritize distribution of original content in recommendations in places like the Reels tab and Feed.” Original content here refers to posts you upload directly to Instagram and that have not been posted to other places first (this seems to indicate that those TikTok-watermarked videos will be suppressed algorithmically moving forward).

Here are some tips for how to comply with this algorithm update to make sure you’re focused on making the most of the original content preference:

• Use “Remix” – The Remix option lets you repost content from other accounts with your own spin (and yes, this is basically a TikTok rip off 🙂). This has been available for Reels since at least January, and is now also an option for Photo posts, too.

  • How do you Remix a Reel?: “Tap the three dots at the bottom of the reel you want to remix. Tap Remix this Reel, then record your reel.”

• Use “collabs” when partnering – Collabs is the official way to display a partnership between two accounts for one post, and can help boost the post’s reach and engagement, too.

• Share customer testimonials to Stories – “If a customer tags you in a story, you can still repost to your own Stories to share customer testimonials.”

Focus on video (especially Reels)

Instagram is broadcasting a growing focus on video content, and encourages businesses to follow suit. They say that users currently spend 20% of their time on Instagram engaging with Reels and see this as an opportunity for brands to take advantage of “more space to tell your brand story, captivate audiences with immersive creative and get discovered by people who may love your business.”

Here are a few new features that should help brands take full advantage of Reels:

• Templates: “Templates allow you to borrow the structure of another reel and use it as a starting point. Templates pre-load the audio and clip placeholders, so all you have to do is add and trim your business’ clips.”

• 90-second Reels that provide more time to “tell slightly longer stories.”

• Sound Effects: “emphasize key moments or heighten the drama in your Reel.”

• Audio import: Take audio from any video on your device to use in the background of your video.

• Stickers: Already popular in Stories, you can now use the Sticker library in the Reels composition screen, like Poll, Emoji Slider and Quiz.

Check out more tips for using Reels.

In-feed recommendations

The final update shared by the Insta team was that suggested posts will soon be interrupting your previously scheduled programming.

Currently, suggested content is usually found in the Explore tab, but with this change the IG feed will use signals like posts users previously engaged with, other people they follow, and other interactions to make suggestions about other content they may like from people they do not yet follow.

Why it Matters

There’s a lot here!

While the full-screen change is technically still a test, the form of this announcement makes it seem like the feature is all but approved. So it’s likely a good bet to anticipate this becoming the norm in the coming weeks or months.

Be sure your team knows the growing importance of both video content and original content, too.