Trend Five – “Gossip Girl’s Fall”

Autumn has arrived, and Instagram has decided to make the most of it. This trend uses a Gossip Girl-inspired voiceover announcing the arrival of autumn, accompanied by cosy, seasonal footage. Think changing leaves, warm drinks, autumn outfits, seasonal decorations and anything that makes people want to put on a jumper.

It’s a simple way to show that your business is moving with the seasons, particularly if you’ve got new products, a refreshed space or a seasonal menu.

How to use it

Cafés and restaurants: Film your autumn menu, hot drinks, seasonal dishes or cosy interiors. A few close-up shots are all you need.

Retail businesses: Show your autumn window display, new arrivals or seasonal product collection.

Beauty and wellness businesses: Feature autumn nail colours, treatments, seasonal skincare or a cosy treatment room.

The trick is to make the footage feel inviting. Nobody needs a ten-minute tour of your pumpkin collection.

Listen to the Gossip Girl’s Fall audio on Instagram

Trend Six – “Answer in One Word”

This TikTok trend involves asking ChatGPT, or another person, to answer a question using just one word. The fun comes from the unexpected responses. Creators start with the instruction, “I’ll ask you a question. Answer in one word”, before asking something personal, unusual or deliberately ridiculous.

For businesses, it’s an opportunity to show a bit of personality while giving followers a glimpse into what you do.

How to use it

Small business owners: Tell ChatGPT what your business does, then ask it to describe your working day in one word. Share the response, particularly if it’s painfully accurate.

Food businesses: Ask ChatGPT to describe your signature dish in one word. Compare its answer with what your customers say.

Coaches and consultants: Ask ChatGPT to describe the biggest challenge in your industry using one word, then use the response to start a conversation.

You can screen-record the interaction or simply show the question and answer on screen. And if ChatGPT comes back with something completely ridic, even better.

Explore Answer in One Word on TikTok

Trend Seven – “What Do You Bring to the Table?”

This TikTok trend takes a familiar question and answers it literally. Creators place items on a table, one by one, usually timed to the music, revealing what they bring to a particular situation.

The format is simple, satisfying to watch and surprisingly adaptable. For businesses, it’s a way to show your products, tools or expertise without making another video of someone talking directly to the camera.

How to use it

Beauty businesses: Empty your professional kit onto the table, one item at a time. Show the tools and products you couldn’t work without.

Tradespeople: Lay out the equipment you take to a typical job. You could even include that one tool nobody else is allowed to borrow.

Coaches and consultants: Use objects to represent what you bring to a project. A notebook for planning, a laptop for research, a diary for organisation and perhaps an enormous coffee for everything else.

Retail businesses: Build a collection of complementary products, revealing each item on the beat.

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A post shared by Vili | Solo Travel & Soft Life (@itsvilitee)

Trend Eight – “Pumpkin Head Illusion”

It wouldn’t be October without someone finding a new use for a pumpkin.

This TikTok trend creates a simple visual illusion by holding a pumpkin close to the camera so that it appears to replace someone’s head. The person behind it then dances or moves around, creating the impression of a human body with a pumpkin for a head. It looks more complicated than it is, which is part of the appeal.

All you need is a pumpkin, a willing colleague and no sense of shame.

How to use it

Retail businesses: Film your pumpkin-headed colleague browsing the shop, inspecting products or helping prepare a Halloween display.

Hospitality businesses: Have your pumpkin-headed team member welcome customers, inspect the menu or dance through the restaurant.

Small teams: Introduce your newest member of staff. They’ve got a good head for business, apparently.

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A post shared by Kyle Offutt (@kylegoesoff)

Every format this month does the same job: it makes something ordinary look like more thought went into it than actually did. What you’re posting doesn’t change. How much show you put around it does.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Trend One – “The Moodboard”

A carousel that mixes photos, textures, colours, quotes, products and lifestyle shots into one visual around a single vibe. No single image has to do the work – the combination does.

It works because it reads as curated rather than dumped. A photo dump says “here’s what I did.” A moodboard says “here’s who I am.” One of those is rather more flattering, and it’s the one that doesn’t need a paragraph to prove it.

How to use it

Small businesses: Pull the colours and textures straight from your product or space. Wedge one client quote between two lifestyle shots. No text overlay – if you need a caption explaining the vibe, you haven’t made a moodboard, you’ve made a slide with commentary.

Service providers: Harder without a product to photograph. Use process instead – the notebook, the half-finished plan, a screenshot – next to a client outcome, next to a single number on a plain card. Same theme, different material.

Coaches and consultants: This is your personality slide. The books on the shelf, the mug, the whiteboard mid-scrawl, the testimonial. Resist explaining any of it. It works or it doesn’t, and explaining it settles which.

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Trend Two – “Make It Sound Illegal”

Describe your job in a way that sounds completely criminal while staying entirely true. The reveal lands at the end, and the gap between “that sounds like a confession” and “oh, it’s just plumbing” is doing the work.

It works best on businesses that sound suspicious out of context – trade work, weddings, photography, anything involving other people’s money or houses. The reveal has to genuinely surprise. If your job already sounds fairly normal, this one isn’t for you.

How to use it

Trade and technical businesses: “I break into people’s houses, take their money, and I’m gone before they notice anything’s changed.” Locksmith. Let the caption carry the reveal, not the video.

Wedding and event businesses: Describe the job as surveillance and crowd control. Reveal: wedding planner. The description should sound worse than the truth right up until it doesn’t.

Anyone whose job sounds worse than it is: Accountants going through someone’s private finances. Photographers instructing strangers where to stand. If a stranger would flinch at the plain description, you’ve got the format.

@annaguanchemd It’s called being a dermatologist😉💉 #officehumor #workhumor #bellaskininstitute #drannaguanche #calabasas ♬ original sound – youhadmeatvintage

Trend Three – “The Documentary Voice”

Recreate the seated, dead-serious Netflix documentary interview – same lighting, same dramatic pauses, same score – and use it to narrate something completely mundane.

The humour is entirely in the mismatch. The more seriously you play it, the funnier the ordinary subject becomes. Underplay it and it’s just a bad interview.

How to use it

Founders: Film it dead straight. Dramatic pause. Reveal something unremarkable – “It was a Tuesday. Nobody warned me about the invoicing software.”

Service businesses with client stories: Recreate the testimonial as a documentary confession, but keep the “crisis” small – a missed deadline, a font nobody could agree on.

Team culture content: Same seated set-up, same score. Subject: who ate whose lunch from the office fridge. The format has never once cared how small the stakes are.

@annaguanchemd It’s called being a dermatologist😉💉 #officehumor #workhumor #bellaskininstitute #drannaguanche #calabasas ♬ original sound – youhadmeatvintage

Trend Four – “The Timestamped Day”

A grid of four horizontal clips, each with a timestamp, walking through moments of your day. Works for almost any business – the structure does the work.

How to use it

Solo operators and small teams: Four honest timestamps – the client call, the mistake, the win, the thing you nearly forgot. Real times. Staged ones are obvious.

Service businesses: Use it to show a project’s actual timeline in one grid instead of a highlight reel. The gaps between timestamps tell the story as much as the clips do.

Product businesses: 9am unboxing stock, 11am a return, 2pm a good review, 5pm packing an order. The unpolished timestamps do more work than the polished ones.

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Trend Five  – “Give Me Ten”

Built on the “give me 10” audio from Love Island, this format runs through ten relatable problems, habits, tips or facts your audience recognises in themselves. The pace is the point – no room to look away before the next one lands.

How to use it

Any niche business: Ten things clients say before they’ve worked with you. Quick cuts, no explanation. Recognition does the work.

Coaches and consultants: Ten habits of the client who’s about to burn out. Specific enough that people screenshot it and send it to a friend.

Service businesses: Ten reasons a project runs over budget. Said plainly, one per beat, then stop.

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A post shared by New Pathways Clinic (@newpathwaysclinic)

Trend Six – “The Girl Grip”

Soft, deliberate, aesthetic-coded ways of holding and handling everyday things – a coffee cup by the fingertips, a bag carried loosely, a door opened slowly. Ordinary actions shot to look graceful rather than functional.

How to use it

Beauty and wellness businesses: Apply it directly – product in hand, slow motion, no voiceover required.

Lifestyle and hospitality brands: The coffee cup, the door, the menu. Small gestures, shot slowly, nothing rushed.

Anyone selling a feeling rather than a feature: This format sells atmosphere. If your business is about how something feels rather than what it does, borrow the aesthetic rather than the specifics.

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A post shared by LIFT & GLOW | WOMEN’S GYM MAGHULL (@liftandglowgym)

None of these formats need a studio, a script, or a full production day. They need a real detail to attach to – the actual job, the actual timeline, the actual line you’ve been holding back on saying.

Pick the one that fits the post you were already planning to make. Apply the format. That’s your only job.

Someone pins a Le Creuset casserole dish on a Monday morning. By Friday they have bought it. That path from inspiration to purchase is what Pinterest has always promised. Now it is making good on it.

What Is Pinterest Amazon Storefront Linking?

Pinterest has launched Amazon Storefront linking, a tool that lets creators connect their Amazon Storefront directly to their Pinterest account. Once the accounts are linked, the creator’s affiliate link is applied automatically whenever they tag an eligible Amazon product. No manual copying, no pasting individual links, no workarounds.

Eligible creators will also see their Amazon Storefront handle featured directly on their Pinterest profile, giving visitors a fuller picture of the products they recommend – not just what appears in a single Pin.

In practical terms: if you have an Amazon Storefront and a Pinterest account, linking them takes a few steps and the rest runs itself. Tag a product, the affiliate link attaches automatically, the sale is attributed to you. Pinterest has also confirmed that storefront linking with additional partners will follow.

Why Pinterest Is Doing This (And What It Is Really After)

More than 50% of Pinterest’s 631 million monthly active users come to the platform to shop, and people search Pinterest more than 80 billion times a month. That is a large and commercially motivated audience. The problem, until now, was that purchase journeys kept leaking out of the app.

Simplified linking makes it easier to facilitate attributed sales within the app itself. Pinterest gets more commerce data. Amazon gets broader discovery for its affiliate programme. Creators get commissions without the admin. Everyone wins except the link-in-bio tool industry.

It is another step in Pinterest’s broader push to become a shopping destination in its own right, facilitating discovery and purchase in-stream – the same direction every major social platform has been moving for the past three years. Pinterest is not ahead of the curve. It is closing the gap.

What This Means for Your Business on Pinterest

If you run a product-based business and already have an Amazon Storefront, this is one of the more straightforward wins available on social media right now. The set-up is simple. The attribution is automatic. The only thing required is that your products are already listed on Amazon and you are an eligible Amazon Associate.

Pinterest users visit the platform to find or shop for products at more than twice the rate of other major social platforms. That is not a small distinction. Someone on Pinterest who sees your product is meaningfully closer to buying it than someone who sees it on Instagram or Facebook. The intent is already there. This feature removes the last bit of friction between that intent and a sale.

For service businesses and those without Amazon inventory, the immediate impact is minimal. But Pinterest’s confirmation that additional partner storefronts are coming is worth tracking. The architecture being built here is a shoppable profile – one that shows visitors not just your Pins but everything you recommend and sell. That is a different kind of social presence from what Pinterest has offered before.

Should You Set This Up Now or Wait?

Set it up now, if it applies to you. The eligibility criteria are clear – Amazon Storefront plus Amazon Associates membership – and the process is straightforward. There is no advantage in waiting.

For businesses that do not yet have an Amazon presence, this is a reasonable prompt to consider whether one makes sense. Amazon Storefront is free to create for brand-registered sellers. If your products are already on Amazon, the storefront is largely a case of organising what exists.

Pinterest sits closer to the moment when inspiration turns into action than most other platforms. That has been true for years. What changes now is that the action can happen without the customer ever leaving.

People are harder to impress than they were six months ago. They’ve seen the formats. They know the hooks. The content that’s stopping the scroll right now is doing it by being slightly more honest than expected.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. 

Trend One – “Plan A, B, C”

A slideshow or short video that lays out different futures, options, or versions of a decision side by side. The appeal is that it mirrors how people actually think – simultaneously, in parallel, with a lot of “but what if” running in the background. The format lets them see that externalised without it being a 400-word caption.

It travels well across industries. The structure holds. Only the subject matter changes.

How to use it

Small businesses: Three versions of someone’s problem – ignoring it, having a go themselves, bringing in someone who does this for a living. The third option should be obvious from the framing alone.

Service providers: The actual decision your client is sitting with right now. Plan A is what they’re currently doing. Plan C is what they’re paying you for. Plan B is the thing they tell themselves is fine but isn’t.

Coaches and consultants: Surface the paths they’re genuinely weighing. The one they’re afraid to say out loud. The safe one. The one they actually want. Name all three and watch the comments section do the rest.

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A post shared by Christina Angelica S (@christinaangelicas)

Trend Two – “My Camera Roll Is Getting Full”

A format built around the visual evidence of growth – first client, first sale, the team photo from when it was just you and someone you met at a networking event, the screenshot you really should have deleted. It works because the arc is emotional without being manufactured. The images carry it.

Worth knowing: there are two versions. The nostalgic one earns warmth. The evidence version earns trust. Different registers, different results. Decide which one you’re going for before you start.

How to use it

Consultancies and service businesses: Pull the actual working assets – the messy first draft, the brief that changed everything, the version that became the thing the client now shows off. The polished case study is on your website. This is different.

Photographers and creative businesses: The format was essentially designed for you. The only mistake is overthinking it.

B2B and professional services: Go with the evidence version. First project, most recent project. First testimonial, most recent one. The camera roll as a proof stack rather than a nostalgia trip.

@propertywithdeanaEvery payout is a reminder of the risks taken, the sacrifices made, and the days I showed up when I didn’t feel like it. Keep going. The results always look impossible until they’re your reality🙏🏽♬ original sound – pr.khriz✝︎🇵🇷

Trend Three – “Lens Wipe”

A transition where a hand, object, or movement passes across the lens and cuts to a new scene. Before and after. The problem and the solved version of it. The viewer gets the reveal without needing sound, captions, or a voiceover explaining what just happened.

It works because the anticipation is built into the mechanics. The wipe creates the pause. The cut pays it off. And because it doesn’t need audio, it keeps performing when the phone is face-down on a desk.

How to use it

Property and interiors: Before the renovation, after the renovation. That’s it. The format does everything else.

Health, beauty, and wellness: The transition is the argument. Let the visual make it.

Professional services: Less obvious, which is exactly the point. What does a client’s situation look like before you get involved? What does it look like six weeks later? Strategy, operations, design – the contrast exists. The trick is deciding how to film it.

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Trend Four – “We Can Stay Here…”

A two-part comparison. Here is where we are. Here is where we could be instead. The gap between them is where the content lives. It performs best when option A is recognisable enough to be slightly uncomfortable, and option B is specific enough to be genuinely desirable rather than vaguely aspirational.

The format is often used as inspiration content. That’s the wrong application. The businesses getting traction with it are using it to name a real decision, not decorate one.

How to use it

Small and growing businesses: Option A is where your client is right now – doing the thing that’s technically working but not really going anywhere. Option B is concrete and specific. The gap sells itself. Don’t explain it.

Travel and hospitality: Genuinely effortless. Do it before everyone else in your sector does.

Financial advisers and business consultants: What does a year of the current approach actually look like versus a year of a different one? Concrete figures if you have them. Vague optimism without them is the thing to avoid.

@karolinevollstad or we can go up 🌟🌟🌟 #studytok #studymotivation #studymindset #wecangoup #academicvalidation ♬ original sound – MCedits49

Trend Five – “Basic Need”

The mechanic is simple: something that is objectively a preference gets presented as a non-negotiable survival requirement. Completely straight face throughout. It lands because the exaggeration is accurate – most people have things they feel this way about, they’ve just been too sensible to say so.

The businesses that use this well are the ones whose services sit right at the line between “technically optional” and “genuinely makes the week function.” Which is most of them.

How to use it

Fitness coaches and wellness businesses: The thing that makes Tuesday tolerable. Keep it deadpan. The funnier version is always the understated one.

Service businesses of almost any kind: Whatever it is you do that people didn’t know they needed until they had it – and then couldn’t imagine doing without. That thing. Delivered with the same energy as food, water, shelter.

Accountants and operations consultants: Handing the thing over to someone who will actually handle it. The relief of that. Said once, plainly, and left to land.

@thestyleclub1My basic needs 🧘🏽‍♀️🥲♬ original sound – The Style Club

Trend Six – “Stretched Word Slides”

A carousel where a word is revealed across multiple slides – split, stretched, or partially hidden until the final frame. The viewer swipes to complete it. That swipe is the mechanic. Every swipe signals to the algorithm that the post is holding attention, which is why accounts with modest followings are seeing this format perform well above expectation.

The reveal has to be earned. A word that could have been said in the caption fails. The word that names the thing your audience wanted named – that’s the one.

How to use it

Service businesses: The outcome, not the service. Freedom. Clarity. Growth. The service is how they get there. The reveal is what they’re actually after.

Coaches and consultants: Specificity wins here. A generic aspiration is forgettable. The word that makes someone stop and think “how did they know that’s what I’ve been trying to say” – that’s the save, the share, the DM.

Anyone building a list: A reveal that lands gets screenshotted. Think about what’s attached to it and where it leads.

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Trend Seven – “Let’s Not Talk About It”

Two people agree to let something go. One of them adds one more thing. The format works because everyone has been both people in that conversation, usually in the same week.

For businesses, the use case is the opinion you’ve been hedging. The industry observation everyone’s noticed and nobody’s said plainly. The client pattern that comes up in every project debrief without ever making it into a proposal. The format is permission to say it.

How to use it

Service providers and consultants: The thing that makes a project harder than it needs to be. Said with genuine warmth rather than passive aggression – the audience will clock the difference immediately.

Founders: The decision you technically made three months ago and are still relitigating at 11pm. The thing you told your team was settled.

Anyone with a clear point of view on their industry: This is the format for it. The more specific the observation, the better it performs.

@bellavarelis Coffee & yap @Josh Carroll ♬ take my breath away – favsoundds

The formats doing well this month all have one thing in common: they require the viewer to do something. Swipe to finish the word. Watch for the reveal. Stay to find out which option wins. That small moment of investment is what the algorithm treats as a signal the post is worth showing to more people.

None of them require a studio, a script, or a full production day. They require having something worth saying and a format that lets the audience feel like they found it themselves.

Pick the one that fits the post you were already planning. Apply the format. That decision – right format, content you already have – is usually the only difference between a post that performs and one that doesn’t.

You post something. It does well. You post something similar. It flops. You spend the next forty minutes staring at your phone trying to work out what changed. Instagram’s own chief has finally explained what to look at instead.

What Did Instagram’s Boss Say About Engagement Rates?

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, shared new guidance this week on how to use the platform’s content performance insights, covering which data points are relevant to different types of engagement.

The short version: reach is the wrong metric to obsess over. If you want to understand why a post got more or less reach, focus on engagement rates instead.

Engagement rate is the proportion of people who saw your post and did something with it. Liked it. Commented. Saved it. Sent it to someone. That ratio is what tells you whether your content is landing.

Why Instagram Builds Reach From Engagement, Not the Other Way Around

Higher engagement signals to the platform’s ranking systems that content is more relevant, which can increase distribution. Engagement includes likes, comments, saves, shares, and watch time.

This is the mechanism. More engagement tells the algorithm that more people might want to see it. The post gets pushed further. Reach increases as a result of engagement driving it – reach is the outcome, not the input.

Mosseri also drew a distinction between connected and unconnected reach. Connected reach is followers who see a post. Unconnected reach is non-followers. The engagement signals that matter vary depending on which group you are trying to influence – like rates matter more for your followers, and send rates matter more for those who do not follow you.

So if your goal is to deepen the relationship with people who already follow you, likes are a meaningful signal. If your goal is to grow beyond your existing audience, shares and sends are what move the needle. Those are two different objectives, and measuring the wrong one explains a lot of frustrating months.

What Instagram Engagement Data Means for Small Business Accounts

Most small business accounts track whether their reach is up or down week on week. That number shifts constantly and is affected by factors outside your control – time of day, what else is in the feed, whether Instagram is testing a new format. It is not a reliable feedback signal.

Engagement rate is. Stronger engagement from followers increases the likelihood of content being shown more widely within follower feeds. A post with 300 views and 40 saves is performing better than a post with 2,000 views and 12 saves. One is telling Instagram something. The other is not.

Instagram’s feed ranking is based on interaction patterns, meaning users may not always see posts from accounts they follow if they do not engage regularly with them. This has a direct implication for consistency: if someone follows you but never interacts, your posts will gradually stop appearing in their feed. Size of following is a vanity figure. Depth of engagement drives distribution.

The second practical point is about saves. Saves are a private action – no one sees them except you. They carry no vanity value. They are also one of the strongest signals available, because a save means someone found your content useful enough to return to. Content that answers a specific question, solves a problem, or gives someone something to reference later is more valuable to the algorithm than content that gets a smile before the scroll continues.

Should You Change How You Measure Instagram Performance?

Stop looking at reach first. Pull up your last ten posts and check the engagement rate on each one – total engagements divided by total reach, expressed as a percentage. Most platforms show this in insights automatically. Look at which posts have the highest rates, identify what they have in common, and build from there.

Then look at saves separately. Posts with a high save rate show you the content type to repeat. Nothing saved in three months is a content brief.

Mosseri posts regularly on his personal Instagram as a way of staying connected with creators and giving transparency into how the platform ranks content. The advice has been available for a while. Most accounts just have not applied it yet.

The accounts still reporting total reach as their primary Instagram KPI are measuring the wrong thing. Reach is where you end up. Engagement is what gets you there.

A customer finds your competitor on Instagram. They were not looking for your competitor. They were not looking for anything in particular. That is how social search works. 

So what is social search, exactly? 

Social search is not a new channel. It is a behaviour that has been happening on your phone for years, and the platforms have only just started calling it something.

Someone types “festival makeup” into Instagram instead of Google. Someone asks TikTok what hotel to stay at in Lisbon. Someone finds a candle brand through a Reel they were not looking for and buys it within 24 hours. That is social search. It is discovery that happens inside apps people opened for something else entirely.

According to a Kantar study Meta commissioned in March 2026, 92% of people now use social platforms for product information. 58% find it more enjoyable than traditional search for discovery. 63% say they buy faster when social plays a role in the decision. Meta did not commission that study to be modest about the findings, but the numbers align with what client accounts show on the ground. People are not going to Google first the way they used to. The journey starts somewhere else now.

Google searches per US user are down nearly 20% year on year. Sit with that number for a moment before the next section.

Why Meta published this now

Two reasons, and neither of them is altruistic.

The first is money. If search budgets start moving away from Google and toward social platforms, Meta’s advertising revenue goes up. A 16-page report making the case for social discovery is one of the more elegant pieces of self-promotion in recent memory. It is dressed as industry insight. It is actually a pitch deck.

The second is timing. Google’s slice of US search ad spending is forecast to fall below 50% in 2026, down from 67.1% a decade ago. Advertisers will spend more than $100 billion on non-Google search ads by 2028. Meta wants to be the obvious answer to where that money goes. Publishing the research that frames the argument is step one.

None of that makes the data wrong. It makes the motive transparent. Those are different things.

What the numbers say that Meta is not loudly saying

Buried in the data is a figure that matters more than the rest. Meta’s own campaign analysis, drawn from over 10,000 geo-tested campaigns across more than 200 North American advertisers, shows that 64% of the customers it delivers are new to the brand entirely. And the return on ad spend for those new customer acquisitions runs 2.3 times higher than traditional search.

In plain English: Google reaches people who were already looking for you. Meta reaches people who had no idea you existed. Both matter. They do completely different jobs. The brands treating them as interchangeable are the ones puzzled by their results.

Meta has also introduced a shopping mode inside Meta AI called Muse Spark – US only for now – that responds to conversational queries and surfaces products directly from catalogues. The principle is the same as search, the interface just feels like a chat. 49% of consumers already use AI assistants for product discovery. 70% expect to use them more for shopping in the next six months. That is not an emerging trend. That is where this has already arrived.

What this means if you run a small business

Three things, and they are all more straightforward than the 16-page report would suggest.

Content needs to work as introduction, not confirmation. The formats driving purchase consideration on social are short videos and Reels (61% of consideration actions), creator reviews and demos (43%), and customer reviews and user-generated content (41%). Short video also ranks as the most useful format for moving someone from interest to action. A grid of product shots and quote tiles is not doing this job. It is talking to people who already know you, not the ones who do not.

Your product catalogue has become part of your search strategy whether you treat it that way or not. If the catalogue is out of date, image-poor, or missing variants, Meta AI has less to work with when surfacing products to people searching within the platform. This is not a future consideration. It is happening now.

Customer reviews are social proof and search signal simultaneously. A business with recent, visible, detailed reviews is more discoverable and more trustworthy at the same moment. These are not separate problems with separate solutions.

Should anything change in your marketing budget?

Not everything, and not immediately.

Traditional search handles utility. Someone who types “accountant in Chelmsford” into Google has already decided they want an accountant. Social search handles influence. Someone who comes across your content on Instagram has not decided anything yet – and that is precisely the opportunity.

The businesses winning at this are not the ones who abandoned Google. They are the ones who stopped treating social content as broadcasting and started treating it as discovery infrastructure. Reels that introduce. Reviews that reassure. A catalogue that actually reflects what is available.

The shift is real. The data is clear enough to take seriously even accounting for who commissioned it. The question is not whether social search matters to your business. The question is whether your content is doing the job of being found by people who do not know you exist yet.

If the answer is no, that is a 24 fingers-shaped problem.

You have seen it happen. Someone watches a 47-second video of a rooftop pool in Lisbon and within 24 hours they have booked the flights, the hotel, and a sunset tour they did not know existed. TikTok already owned the inspiration part. Now it wants to own the booking part too.

Enter TikTok GO.

What Is TikTok GO and How Does It Work?

TikTok GO is a new feature that lets users discover and book hotels, attractions, tours, and experiences directly inside the TikTok app. No switching tabs. No hunting down the hotel from the video. No losing the impulse somewhere between the app and a browser window.

TikTok GO surfaces lodging and things to do through the same ways people already find content on TikTok: videos, search, and location pages. When something catches your eye, you can view details, check availability, and complete a booking in a few steps.

The feature launched in the US and is available to users aged 18 and over.

The booking side is not being built from scratch. TikTok GO works through partnerships with Booking.com, Expedia, Viator, GetYourGuide, Tiqets, and Trip.com. Recognisable names. Credible inventory. The infrastructure is already there.

Why TikTok Launched TikTok GO (And What It Is Really After)

TikTok is not launching TikTok GO because it suddenly cares about your next sangria. It is doing this because it has been watching a problem for years: users discover something on TikTok, leave the app to book it, and TikTok gets no credit, no data, and no revenue from that transaction.

The launch of TikTok GO signals the company’s broader push to keep users inside its app, from discovery through purchase. TikTok has run this playbook before: TikTok Shop launched in the US in 2023, bringing e-commerce directly into the app so users could buy products featured in videos without ever leaving.

Travel is just the next vertical. And it is a significant one. TikTok GO positions TikTok as a one-stop platform where viral travel content can drive bookings and revenue, systematically converting its discovery engine into a transaction layer.

That is not a small ambition. That is a direct challenge to Google Search, Google Maps, Booking.com, and Tripadvisor – all in one move.

TikTok GO for Travel Creators: How the Commission Model Works

If you are a travel creator, this changes your earning potential. Creators who showcase hotels, attractions, and experiences can connect their content directly to bookings, with opportunities to earn through commissions and creator campaigns.

Think about what that means in practice. You film 24 seconds of a boutique riad in Marrakech. Someone watches it, taps the booking link embedded in your content, and completes a reservation. You earn a commission. No affiliate link in bio required. No awkward “link in bio” caption. The content becomes the shop.

TikTok GO for Hotels and Travel Brands: Direct Booking Through Social

TikTok GO gives local businesses and travel partners a way to reach people who are already looking for inspiration. By connecting merchants with TikTok’s discovery ecosystem across video, search, and location pages, GO helps businesses reach new audiences, drive bookings, and build stronger connections with the communities they serve.

For hotels, tour operators, and experience providers, this is worth paying attention to. Your TikTok presence is no longer just brand awareness. It is now a direct booking channel. The question is whether your content is good enough to convert.

And here is the honest bit: most brand content on TikTok is not. The accounts winning on the platform are the ones that feel like creator content, not adverts. If your TikTok strategy is still “post a nice video of the lobby with a backing track,” TikTok GO will not save you.

Is TikTok GO Available in the UK? What UK Brands Need to Know

TikTok GO is US-only right now. So if you are a UK-based travel brand or creator, you are watching from the sunlounger for the moment.

But “for the moment” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. TikTok Shop rolled out in the US first too. TikTok GO will come. The brands and creators that have already built an engaged TikTok presence will be ready when it does. The ones who waited will spend 24 months catching up.

TikTok has already been chipping away at Google’s core businesses in search and maps, as users increasingly use TikTok as a search engine, and TikTok GO pushes that competition further.

That is not hyperbole. Gen Z already searches TikTok before Google for restaurant recommendations, hotel picks, and things to do in a city. TikTok GO turns that search behaviour into a closed loop.

How to Prepare for TikTok GO: Three Things to Do Now

Three things.

Build your TikTok presence now. When TikTok GO arrives in the UK, the algorithm will favour accounts with existing engagement history. Starting from zero when GO launches is not a strategy.

Make your content feel earned. TikTok GO will surface content that performs. That means content that feels authentic, not content that looks like it was made by a committee with a brand guidelines document. The 24 seconds that converts a viewer into a booker is a genuine moment, not a produced one.

Think about your inventory. If you are a hospitality or travel brand, start thinking now about which booking platforms you are listed on. TikTok GO’s current partners include Booking.com and Expedia. If you are not discoverable on those platforms, you will not be discoverable through GO.

TikTok GO and the Future of Social Commerce

TikTok GO is not a gimmick. It is the latest move in TikTok’s systematic effort to become the platform where people do things, not just watch things.

Instagram did the same thing with shopping. YouTube did it with channel memberships and product links. The direction of travel – no pun intended – across every major social platform is the same: collapse the gap between content and commerce.

TikTok is moving fast. Your competitors are already packing their bags. The brands that check in now will be sipping cocktails by the pool while everyone else is still stuck at passport control.

Meta has launched a new app. It’s called Instagram Instants. It lets you send disappearing photos that vanish after 24 hours and can only be viewed once. Sound familiar? Yes, Snapchat has been doing this since roughly the dawn of time. BeReal tried. Even Instagram’s own “Shots” feature had a go before it was rebranded and relaunched as – you guessed it – Instants.

And yet, here we are. Writing about it. Because if there is a new platform feature doing the rounds, you need to know whether it is worth your time or just noise. So let’s talk.

What Instagram Instants Actually Does

It is genuinely quite simple. You open the app, you take a photo using the in-app camera (no uploading from your camera roll – that would be too easy and also, apparently, too curated), and you send it to your mutual followers or Close Friends list. They can view it once. It disappears. You keep your copy. Theirs vanishes.

No filters. No editing. No cropping. Text only, if you must add anything at all.

The tagline is “real life, real quick.” Snapchat’s lawyers are presumably thrilled.

It is currently being tested in Italy and Spain, with iOS and Android versions available. No desktop version. No confirmation it will roll out globally. Meta has stated they are “exploring multiple versions of Instants to see what people like” – which is corporate for “we have no idea if this will stick, but BeReal’s decline has left a gap we intend to fill.”

Why Is Instagram Doing This Right Now?

Two reasons, and neither of them is altruistic.

The first is engagement speed. Instagram’s algorithm has been tracking “instant” signals for years – how many people engage within the first 10 minutes, whether someone watches past the first three seconds of a video. Features like Instants are designed to generate that immediate, real-time reaction. It fits perfectly with where the platform is headed.

The second is competition. BeReal is not the force it once was. Snapchat still has 16 million-plus subscribers paying for premium features, which tells Meta there is money and appetite in the disappearing-content space. TikTok is reportedly testing its own quick photo-sharing tool called PhotoSwap. The race is on, and Instagram does not like being third.

There is also a third reason, if we are being completely honest. Instants requires you to agree to terms and conditions that allow Meta to use the data it collects to target you with ads. So: engagement data, behavioural signals, and a fresh advertising funnel. Nice little package.

Should Your Business Be On This?

Hold up. Instants is squarely aimed at everyday users right now – the people who find Instagram too polished and curated and want something more spontaneous. That is not most business accounts.

But.

If you are a creator that thrives on personality over polish – behind-the-scenes content, location drops, candid moments, the kind of thing that makes your followers feel like insiders rather than spectators – there is a case for experimenting here. The 24-hour window and one-view rule create a scarcity that Stories alone cannot quite replicate. Done well, it rewards your most engaged followers with something that feels genuinely exclusive.

The key word is “experimenting.” Nobody should be pivoting their content strategy around a feature that is still being tested in two European countries.

What We’d Recommend

Wait for the wider rollout. Watch what early adopters do with it. And in the meantime, focus on the 24 things that still matter more than any new feature: your strategy, your audience, your consistency, and your content quality.

New platforms and features launch every few months. Most of them either fade out or get absorbed into something else. Instagram itself was once a Snapchat clone. Threads was going to kill Twitter. Remember when everyone was on Clubhouse?

The creators that win are not the ones who sprint to every shiny new thing. They are the ones who know their audience well enough to judge when something is worth their time – and when it is not.

Not sure which platforms and tools actually deserve space in your marketing strategy? That is quite literally what we do.

Instagram has been busy. And when we say busy, we mean the kind of busy where you blink and half a dozen things have changed while you were making a cup of tea.

Some of these updates are useful. Some are shiny and questionable. Let’s get into it.

You Can Finally Reorder Your Carousels

It has only taken the best part of a decade, but Instagram has finally let us reorder images in a carousel after publishing. No more deleting and re-uploading because you put the before photo after the after photo. No more lying awake at 2am knowing slide three was supposed to be slide one.

It is a small thing. It is also enormous.

Scheduling Reels Will Not Hurt You

Adam Mosseri (bigwig at Instagram) has confirmed that scheduling Reels does not tank your reach. It never did, but the myth has been stubbornly persistent. The bonus: if you translate your Reels, scheduling gives Instagram more time to process those translations before your content goes live. Useful if you are reaching audiences across multiple languages.

You can plan ahead without penalty. Sighs of relief all round.

Tap to Pause is Now a Thing

You can now pause a Reel with a single tap instead of holding the screen like you are trying to keep it from escaping. Small change. Big improvement for anyone reviewing fast-moving content or trying to catch text before it disappears.

Google Might Start Serving Your Instagram Profile First

Still in testing, but Google is experimenting with a redesigned knowledge panel that pushes Instagram profiles higher in search results. If someone Googles you, your Instagram profile could be one of the first things they see.

Worth keeping your profile clean and consistent just in case. Let us know if we can lend a hand with that.

Clickable Links in Captions (With a Catch)

Instagram is testing clickable links in post captions for Meta Verified creators (not businesses, just yet). Currently capped at 10 links per month and only visible on mobile. Meta Verified starts at $14.99 a month, so this is not a free lunch.

At 10 links a month, your link in bio tool is not going anywhere. But it is a sign of where things are heading.

The Edits App Is Growing Up

Meta’s video editing app has had a fresh batch of updates: new visual effects, a more visual Ideas tab, and the ability to highlight specific words in captions during playback. The development team is pulling feedback from creators and monitoring social platforms for feature requests, which means this one is moving fast.

If you want more videos for your feed but feel less than savvy with producing videos for social media, let’s chat. Spoiler alert: you don’t need to be Steven Speilberg.

Creator Tools Are Now Open to All Public Accounts

Instagram has opened up scheduling, the insights dashboard, and access to trending audio to all public accounts, not just professional ones. If you manage smaller or newer accounts, this will help.

A few advanced features still sit behind follower thresholds or Professional Mode, but the basics being accessible to everyone is a solid move. Thanks Insta.

Control Over Your Profile Grid

You can now edit post thumbnails directly in your profile grid. This sits alongside Instagram’s recent shift to larger thumbnail images and the broader push toward profile customisation.

For brands, this matters. Your grid is often where people land before they decide whether to follow. Make it look pretty.

Reels Might Become Your Default Homepage

Instagram is testing a design that opens directly into Reels, with a customisable “Your Feeds” hub where users can switch between Following, Friends, Latest, Saved, Favourites, and Suggested. Given that users already spend around half their Instagram time on Reels, this is less of a surprise and more of an inevitability.

Short-form video is the main event. Everything else is the support act.

Instagram is Coming to Your TV

After launching on Amazon Fire TV in December, Instagram is now available on Google TV in the US. Reels on the big screen, organised into topic-based channels. Mostly a US story for now, but worth watching if you’ll pardon the pun.

Which of These Updates Matter for Your Business?

Which of These Updates Matter for Your Business?

Instagram keeps moving, and keeping up with every change is pretty much a full-time job. Luckily, that is our full-time job.

The carousel reorder will save you real time. The scheduling myth finally being put to rest means you can plan your content properly without second-guessing yourself. And the Google knowledge panel change, if it rolls out widely, is a free visibility win that costs you nothing except a tidy profile.

Not sure what to act on and what to ignore? That is where we come in. We have been navigating changes in marketing for over 34 years now, and we are very good at working out what actually moves the needle for businesses like yours.

April is the month when people stop pretending they’re going to stick to their Q1 plans and start actually doing things. The content that’s cutting through right now reflects that – it’s interactive, contrast-led, and a whole more clever. Less overthinking. More zooming in, filling up, and showing the before and after. Which is, as it turns out, exactly what the algorithm wants too.

Here are the seven trends worth your attention this month – with notes on how to apply them to your business without spending 24 hours producing a single reel.

Trend One – “Zoom In for a Sign”

You’ve seen this one. The visual looks normal – maybe slightly vague – and tiny text at the edge is daring you to look closer. When you do, there’s a hidden message waiting: a quote, a product detail, something that feels like it was put there just for you.

It’s low-effort to produce and high-reward in terms of engagement. Every zoom is extra watch time. Every extra second of watch time tells the algorithm this post is worth pushing. Simple, clever, and very repeatable.

How to Use It

Service businesses:

Hide a common client fear in the small print. The discovery moment creates connection before they’ve even read the caption.

Product businesses:

Tuck a product benefit or seasonal detail into the image. Make people feel like they found something.

Coaches and educators:

A quote that speaks directly to your audience’s inner monologue. The kind they screenshot and save for later.

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A post shared by Verb Products (@verbproducts)

Trend Two – “With and Without”

Start with nothing. One quick cut later – something appears. The contrast between absence and presence does all the heavy lifting without any explanation required.

It works because transformation is satisfying. The faster the flip, the more impactful the reveal. No build-up needed, no voiceover required.

Best Suited For

• Product-based businesses – let the product be the reveal
• Service providers – show the impact of what you do, before and after
• Coaches – the transformation is the message
• Beauty and wellness – almost designed for this format

@kay.oaky The first sip is magical ✨ #icedcoffee #coffeelovers #girlythings #dunkindonuts ♬ original sound – bad bunny’s #1 fart sniffer

Trend Three – “I Have Therapy”

The hook: “Sorry, I can’t today. I have therapy.” Cut to whatever your version of therapy actually looks like. A product. A process. A moment of genuine enjoyment.

This trend works for any type of business because it doesn’t require you to be vulnerable – it just requires you to be human. And slightly self-aware. Which most small business owners absolutely are, even if the grid doesn’t always show it.

How to Use It

Any business:

Show what your actual “therapy” looks like. For a marketer it’s a content plan that finally clicked. For a product brand it’s the thing that makes Tuesday bearable.

Service providers:

Position your service as the relief. Not pushy, just honest.

@refybeautyit’s a weekly appointment!!♬ Another Day in Paradise – aino

Trend Four – “Bad Day No More”

Simple hook, reliable results. “When you’re having a bad day but remember you…” – then finish with something that genuinely improves the mood. The shareable factor is the whole point here. People don’t save motivational content for themselves; they send it to someone else who needs it.

That forwarding behaviour is exactly what boosts views. High share rate, algorithm happy, job done.

Hook Ideas to Adapt

• When you’re having a bad day but then you book this…
• When today isn’t it… but this makes it a little better
• We all have those days… this is mine getting better

Applicable across fashion, fitness, coaching, hospitality – anything where the end result is feeling better than when you started.

@andrea_suboticmade my day 😂♬ Lush Life – Zara Larsson

Trend Five – “Oh, She’s So Lucky”

Start with the highlight reel – the win, the result, the moment that looks effortless from the outside. Then cut to what it actually took. The discipline. The cancelled plans. The days that were not photogenic in any way whatsoever.

It resonates because it’s honest in a format that usually isn’t. The contrast between perceived luck and actual graft is the kind of content people stop scrolling for.

How to Use It

Founders and entrepreneurs:

The result people see versus the 24-hour stretches they don’t. Show both.

Coaches:

Client outcomes paired with what the journey actually required. Real process, not just the trophy moment.

Service businesses:

Position the outcome as the result of consistent, unglamorous work – yours and theirs.

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A post shared by Stefi Olivia (@stefiolivia)

Trend Six – “To Fill It”

Lead with empty. A bare shelf. A quiet room. A cup that hasn’t been touched yet. Then cut to everything it becomes.

The absence is the hook. The transformation is the payoff. And because it doesn’t rely on words, almost any business in any niche can use this without having to write a single caption that explains it.

How to Use It

Interiors and product brands:

The empty space before your product fills it. Let the visual contrast speak for itself.

Hospitality and events:

The quiet venue before it’s full. The table before it’s set. Before and after without a single word of explanation.

Service businesses:

What the situation looked like before you arrived, versus after. Strategy, design, organisation – all of it works.

@azeaniNew separators are changing the game♬ Fill the room and make it a home – Gelsey

Trend Seven – “Double Checking”

An interactive carousel that encourages people to swipe and – crucially – save. It puts a question directly to your audience: have they done the thing, bought the thing, sorted the thing?

It makes people pause and reflect instead of scrolling past. That pause is engagement. That engagement is reach. And if they save it to come back to later, the algorithm treats it like gold.

Best Suited For

• Education and coaching – accountability content works brilliantly here
• Marketing and design – a checklist your audience will actually save
• Service providers – remind people what they haven’t done yet (gently)
• Any problem-based business – the checklist format is your friend

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A post shared by I N F U S D ® (@infusd)

Why This Stuff Is Working Right Now

Because contrast is quick to process, interaction keeps watch time up, and anything that requires the viewer to do something – zoom, swipe, tap, pause – is playing the algorithm at its own game.

April’s content doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to be deliberate. Pick one trend, apply it to something you were already planning to post, and see what happens.

The businesses getting reach right now aren’t producing more. They’re producing smarter. And smarter, it turns out, often looks a lot like an empty hand or a tiny hidden message that makes someone stop mid-scroll.