Instagram is one of the latest social networks that have become popular and the one that has grown the most in recent years, reaching 800 million active users, since it is the most successful social network among young people.
The main content of Instagram is images, since the application itself has filters to edit photos, although the recent functions of Instagram Stories, Instagram Live and IGTV have achieved enormous popularity that make it a key social network for your business’s marketing strategies.
Some of the marketing objectives that you can set on Instagram are:
- Increase brand visibility and reputation.
- Define and show the company culture.
- Recruit employees.
- Search for new clients.
- Connect with other companies, bloggers and influencers.
- Promote participation and interaction with customers.
- Increase customer trust in the brand.
- Grow the community around the brand.
- Turn it into an online catalog, showing your products, services and news.
- Boost sales.
Why include Instagram in your business strategies
Users turn to Instagram for inspiration and to discover content that they find interesting; in fact, 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram. For this reason, more than 25 million brands have a profile on Instagram, and more than two million advertisers use this social network to improve their company’s results.
Additionally, these are some of the reasons why it is a good idea to use Instagram for marketing:
- It is available on mobile, which helps with immediacy, although you also have the option of scheduling publications with some applications.
- Despite Instagram’s continuous algorithm changes, the reach of the posts shown to your followers is broad, making it a social network where it will be easy for you to have a presence.
- It is a social network widely used by influencers, which makes it an ideal platform to create marketing strategies with them.
- The community of Instagram users is more active and participatory than on other social networks, so you will possibly have more interactions than on other channels, as long as you share interesting and original content.
- You can increase your visibility because it allows you to geolocate photos so users can locate your business.
- There are many companies, especially SMEs, that have not yet decided to open their profile on Instagram, so you will have less competition than on other social networks.
- Instagram is a good way to get to know your customers, since users usually share their personal tastes, as well as knowing what type of publications they like the most based on the likes they have achieved.
- It is ideal for showing what your company and the people behind it are like, and thus establish bonds of trust with your followers.
- You can redirect users to your website, including the link in your Instagram bio.
- You can share Instagram content on other channels, since uploading a post allows you to also do so on other networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Your company profile on Instagram
The main tips that we can give you to achieve a successful company profile on Instagram are the following:
- Choose hashtags well.
- Use Instagram Stories.
- Upload interesting and original posts.
- Create quality content.
- Show the human side of the brand.
- Interact with followers.
- Combine photo and video.
- Create contests and promotions on Instagram.
- Choose well who to follow.
- Use analysis tools.
Other Instagram features for your business
Stories
The Stories function – photos or videos that disappeared after 24 hours – was presented in August 2016, competing directly with Snapchat, and had a very good impact: in less than six months, it achieved 150 million daily active users, a figure that took Snapchat six years to reach. But it was not only successful among people: a third of the most visited Stories are from companies. Additionally, one in five Instagram Stories has a direct message. Therefore, it is important to add this function to your social media strategy.
Live videos
Instagram Live is an Instagram feature, launched in late 2016, that allows users to broadcast live videos. One of the features and advantages of this feature for your business is that Instagram notifies users every time an account is broadcasting a live video.
IGTV
On June 20, 2018, Instagram launched this new feature: a vertical video autoplay app that allows Instagram users to upload videos of up to ten minutes or one hour, depending on the popularity of the creator. This new functionality, a direct alternative to YouTube, has its own application but is also available in the Instagram application and on its website.
Ads
Of course, another possible way to do marketing in this application is through traditional advertising, since Instagram offers companies several options to advertise on the social network:
- Photo Ads
- Video ads
- Sequence ads
- Ads in Stories
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