6 Reasons Why Your Business Should Be on Instagram
Instagram has been growing in popularity for the last couple of years, and today it is dominating all other social media platforms. Why is this? More importantly, why should businesses use Instagram? Posting on Instagram is the easiest way to reach consumers in our busy, everyday lives. By uploading intriguing images and using relevant hashtags, you can reach thousands of people in an instant. I am going to point out 6 reasons for your business to use Instagram and highlight 4 Instagram features for marketing on Instagram. It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to reach your audience. Here we go.
Number 1: Instagram Allows You to Reach All Your Followers – Instagram allows you to reach up to 100% of your followers, Facebook allows you to reach about 6%. You don’t have to worry if your content is getting lost out there in an organic feed. Whatever you post on Instagram is going to end up in your followers news feed. Have you ever opened Facebook and thought that it was like a screaming match? Everyone is trying to get their posts seen, saying “look at me,” hoping their message won’t fall on deaf ears. With Instagram you know your followers are seeing your content. You don’t have to pay to play.
Number 2: Instagram Has the Highest Engagement Rates – Instagrams engagement is amazing (likes, comments, shares, etc.) – 58 times more than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter. Organic engagement has grown by 115% on Instagram – compared to a 63% decrease of organic engagement of Facebook (Source: RivalIQ). No joke. People have sticky fingers on Instagram and love to scroll, like, scroll, like all day, because it’s easy.
Number 3: Instagram Has 1 Billion Monthly Active Users – 1 billion people use Instagram monthly (Source: Statista). Let’s break this down a little further. Of the 1 billion monthly active users, 500 million people use it daily (Source: Statista). What does this mean for you? Each day, you have renewed opportunities to reach more and more of your target audience through Instagram Marketing.
Number 4: Instagram Uses the Appeal of Imagery – The entire focus of Instagram is to share stories primarily through images. This is very much in contrast to platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, where they are centered mainly on content. The majority of information transmitted to the brain is visual. That means no matter what your product is, you have to present it in a visual way. For example, Post-it, how do they use Instagram to sell sticky pieces of colorful paper? Do you think they just post pictures of Post-it’s all day? Nope, they focus on what their customers produce with their product.
Number 5: Instagram Increases Brand Awareness and Sales – Most buyers state that social media has a strong influence on their purchase decisions. Social media sells and Instagram is a great way to soft sell your product or services. Instagram allows the user to choose what they want to see and what they don’t want to see. This seems backwards but it works. If they choose to follow you on Instagram then they most likely value your brand and will make a purchase.
Number 6: Instagram Takes Customers Behind the Scenes – Show your audience what it is like to be an employee at your company and give sneak peaks of upcoming products, releases or events. You can also walk them through your how your products are made. Show your customers what it looks like in a day in the life of your company! How fun would that be?
Instagram Features for Marketing
- Stories – There are so many cool things you can do with Instagram Stories. Some businesses choose to share fun facts, post pop quizzes, or even run polls to learn more about their audience. Others use the advertising features and allow followers to see events in real-time.
- Instagram Live – This is an excellent way to get your customers to interact with you and provide value to them at the same time. You could host a video with a series of questions you get from your customers and answer all of them in live stream. You could also use this as an opportunity to teach or inform your audience on something of value to them.
- Instagram Ads – Ads can help you to gain additional exposure and get on the radar of people who don’t yet know about your business. Send them to a landing page or a direct sales page.
- Comment Block Filters – As a business owner, managing your reputation is not always easy to do. However, negative comments or even a lot of relevant spam comments can hurt your image. Comment block filters can take a lot of that work off your hands, keeping your page positive and clean.
Now you know not just why your business should be on Instagram, but also some specific features that you can use to market your business successfully. So get to work on your strategy and then set it in motion. Once you do, you’ll be in line for the many benefits that this dominating social network has to offer. And as always, we would love to hear from you. We want to see you win!
Written by: Kara Haan – owner/designer of Leviathan Design