6 Emerging Instagram Trends
in 2022 Report

Understand the trends and forecasts
on Instagram for the third quarter of 2022.

From Instagram posts, reels, stories, YouTube, and TikTok deciding where to invest is tricky. Understanding how each platform is performing before you invest is essential.

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Is social media really still growing?

We've approached the time of the year when brands and agencies forecast next year's strategies and reflect on your year's performance.

In Australia, most agencies and brands spend a lot of time planning and actioning campaigns for Instagram. From paid partnerships, PR send-outs, or events, a large portion of the average brand's marketing and PR budget is spent on influencer campaigns on Instagram.

Nothing is more frustrating than spending a lot of your budget on a massive brand campaign and not seeing the figures you expected. When comparing your performance year on year, you might even see a decline in the number of posts or engagement you've generated compared to last year.

Understanding the context of your metrics, the platform you are marketing on, the highs and lows, and the trends and forecasts are essential for improving your performance in the long term.

We've compiled and analysed the data to help you understand the emerging trends on Instagram posts and stories in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2022 and what these trends could mean for Q4 2022.

Continue reading to discover 6 emerging trends we've discovered on Instagram posts and stories.

What's trending on Instagram grid posts?

Generating Instagram PR content is not as easy as it once used to be. Organic posts are getting harder to come by, with most influencers not posting on their feed without a paid partnership.

So what are the trends, and what should you be looking out for to ensure your partnerships are performing as well as they possibly can be?

Posting on Instagram posts in Q3 2022
is down by

-12

%

compared to Q2 2022

1. Decreased posting

An emerging trend we are seeing is a decline in the number of posts influencers are posting on their feeds. We had a look into this decline to understand what is going on.

Our analysis found that influencers, on average, are posting less and less each year. We took the ten most active influencers on Instagram posts in Q3 2022 and compared their collective posting activity from 2022 (January - September) to 2021 (January - September). What we found was interesting.

Compared to last year...

Our YTD comparison highlights just how much of a decline there is in grid post activity by top Aussie influencers. Our data concludes that the same influencers that posted 7,934 Instagram posts in 2021 (January - September) have only posted 6,102 posts in 2022 (January - September). This means that these influencers averaged posting around 793 posts each last year. However, this year, the same influencers have only posted an average of 610 posts each.

So what does this trend teach us?

Decreased posting by influencers may not be such a bad thing. All this means is that there is less noise for brands to compete with. With less noise on your audience's feed, your next paid partnership may stand out a little more than the same post would have last year.

2. Shift to reels

With the explosion of TikTok, it comes as no surprise the ripple effect the video-centred app is having on Instagram content. We had a deep dive to discover how much the shift to video content has affected influencer posting activity.

Our analysis found that influencers are shifting more and more to video-style content like reels and IGTV each quarter. We found that out of the 154,245 Instagram posts we tracked for Q3 2022, Instagram reels/IGTV made up 32% of that total. This is interesting when you take into account that in Q1 2022, Instagram reels/IGTV were only making up 9% of the total 153,912 Instagram posts we tracked.

Using this data, we can see an emerging trend happening on Instagram posts right now. Instagram influencers are shifting to posting more reels/IGTV each quarter.

So what does this trend teach us?

Using this data, we can predict that Q4 should see an increase in the percentage of posts driven by Instagram reels/IGTV. This means that more than 32% of Instagram posts will be reels or IGTV.

3. Engagement on reels

Is this shift to video content helping or hurting brands?

The good news is that our data shows that video content has a better engagement rate in comparison to typical photo content on IG. Brands should encourage their influencer partners to post video-style content to achieve better engagement results.

Our data shows that engagement on reels/IGTV is growing quarter on quarter. This comes as no surprise, considering the number of reels/IGTV being posted is also increasing quarter on quarter.

So what does this trend teach us?

When we dive a little deeper and compare the number of mentions to the engagement percentage of reels/IGTV, we see an exciting trend.

The percentage of engagement driven by reels/IGTV is increasing faster than the number of mentions.

Side by side, we can see that reels/IGTV make up 32% of the mention count for Instagram posts in Q3 2022. Yet, reels/IGTV make up 53% of the engagement count for Instagram posts in Q3 2022.

This is why our bottom line is to make sure your brand partners are posting as many reels as possible!

What's trending on Instagram stories?

Instagram stories have become most Instagram users' favourite way to keep their followers up to date. Tracking this technology is hard for brands and agencies to keep up with. Understanding the analytics on stories is something that all brands and agencies should be in the know about.

So what are the trends, and what should you be looking out for on stories to ensure your partnerships are performing as well as they possibly can be?

Posting on Instagram stories in Q3 2022 is down by

-2.5

%

compared to Q2 2022

1. Story activity was the strongest in Q2 of 2022

Let's have a look at the performance of Instagram stories over 2022 so far. Breaking it down by quarter, we can see that the trend on stories this year is neither growth nor decline.

As we can see from the chart below, the data highlights that we picked up the most IG stories in Q2 of 2022.

Quarter Comparison

At MVO, we are constantly expanding the list of influencers we are tracking on Instagram stories. We are aware that this means our focus group of influencers is changing every quarter on Instagram stories. So to accurately analyse Instagram story posting rates, we also examined how the same 200 ANZ IG story influencers have been posting on stories throughout 2022.

Below is a breakdown of the total stories 200 influencers posted throughout each quarter. This data reveals the same trend. Q2 2022 has been the highest story volume we have seen for 2022.

Top 200 Influencers

These 200 influencers posted an average of 440 stories each in Q1 2022, 528 stories each in Q2, and 490 stories each in Q3 2022.

The data highlights that Q2 2022 seemed to be the busiest quarter for influencer activity on IG stories.

Top 200 Influencers
Quarterly Activity

So what does this trend teach us?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why Q2 2022 was so busy on stories. From our data, we can see one of the top topics on Q2 2022 Instagram stories was Australian Fashion Week. We can assume that this event was a huge driver in coverage posted for Q2 2022.

This comparison highlights that Q1 or Q3 2022 has fewer stories to compete with on consumers' feeds. This is why we would suggest that Q1 or Q3 would be the optimal quarters to be conducting your send-outs, events or partnerships. These stories are likely to reach more people as they will have less noise to compete with.

2. Photo stories are superior

Videos seem to be everything right now. As Instagram posts data has shown, reels and IGTVs are increasing at an expediential rate. So our question is, are we seeing this same trend echo to Instagram stories?

After diving deep into our Instagram story data, we've found that influencers are, interestingly enough, still posting more photo stories compared to video content. See below for the percentage breakdown of the photo stories we picked up versus video stories in Q3 2022 based on 355,615 Instagram stories.

Q3 2022
Insta stories

We can take this a step further and look at how video stories versus photo stories have performed throughout the whole of 2022.

We analysed the million Instagram stories we tracked and saved from Australian & New Zealand influencers from January to September 2022.

Analysing the Instagram stories quarter on quarter, we can see that throughout 2022 photo stories have always remained the majority favourite for influencers.

So what does this trend teach us?

Utilising this data, we can confidently predict that photo stories will continue being the favourable format for influencers' Instagram stories in Q4 of 2022.

3. Ad content on stories

The explosion of the amount of Instagram accounts being classified as influencers is still growing year after year. Ad and paid partnership content is a big part of influencer posting activity. But just how many stories are being tagged or labelled as an ad?

We took a deep dive into this, analysing out of the million stories we have picked up so far this year, just how many of them tagged one of the below terms:

#ad
#advert
#paidpartnership
#partner
#sponsored
#spon

We were shocked by just how low this number was. Out of the 1,010,141 stories we picked up in 2022, only 12,310 mentioned one of these terms, which only makes up 1.4% of story mentions.

We broke this down by each quarter to see if this trend respectively continued. Ad stories made up 1.4% in Q1, 1.4% in Q2, and 1.3% of mentions in Q3 2022.

So what does this trend teach us?

Even though it may feel like influencers are heavily posting paid partnerships or ads, a lot of their stories are not labelled this way. This is either due to incorrect labelling or influencers majorly posting organic or gifted stories to balance out labelled ads.

If you want to read more insights surrounding Instagram stories, check out our blog posts! We are constantly publishing articles about the latest influencer trends we are spotting.

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6 Emerging Instagram Trends Report 2022