As visual content becomes more popular on Social Media, it also becomes increasingly important for brands to create and leverage. This shift to visual social media means that more and more businesses, big and small, are starting to communicate visually with their fans, followers and customers. Brands tend to have a fairly firm grasp on how to handle Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram still appears to challenge many companies.
Instagram, launched in October 2010 ,acquired by Facebook in April 2012. has around 55 million photos shared everyday. With over 75% of leading brands including Intel, American Express, Adidas originals, Red Bull and Starbucks already present on the platform, it is shaping the ways people interact not only with one-another, but also with brands and companies.
Many conversations are taking place on Instagram every day, and there’s a high chance that some of them mention your brand. Why not join in to shape the way your brand is seen and discussed on Instagram? Why not use Instagram to create meaningful interactions with your community and fine-tune your message to improve your brands’ visibility?
Here I am going to talk about some advantages of using Instagram as one of your social media tool for marketing.
1) Engagement
Instagram registers 15 times more engagement than Facebook, for some brands it delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter. Instagram’s tagline is “Capture and Share the World’s Moments” so it is not how a brand is posting a photo, it is about using follower’s photo on a brand’s posts.
That Greek yogurt brand Chobani for example. In just a matter of weeks after joining Instagram a year and a half ago, Chobani (@Chobani) attracted a loyal clique of some 9,000 “Chobaniac” followers, which helped catapult the company from little-known to must-have. Chobani generated buzz about its brand on Instagram by encouraging followers to share their own pictures and holding weekly contests.
2) Building a Brand
Instagram can be highly resourceful tool for building a brand. Alice and Olivia’s designer Stacey Bendet is a shining example of how showcasing your point of view will connect you with your customers in a way unparalleled by any other medium.
According to Instagram, Bendet shares photos and videos that capture what she is seeing, feeling, or thinking in the moment and provides followers a genuine glimpse into her life of fashion and design and the inspiration behind her brand.
“That is really what building a brand is about, not just showing the product but showing the story all around it,” Bendet says.
3) Networking
It’s easy to get caught up in all those pretty pictures, but like I mentioned before, there is more to Instagram than the photos. Instagram is like any other social network.
Social networks were created to help people meet new people and build relationships. Start interacting with a whole new network of interconnected people. In turn, you could gain followers, potential new customers, or new partners.
And it doesn’t end there. Instagram is connected to Facebook and Twitter. This makes it easy to connect all of your networks and use them interchangeably without too much stress.
Hastags are a great way to get your posts—and brand—noticed in the vast universe that is Instagram. Generally 80% of brand posts contain at least one hashtag, and the average brand post will have three.
Most brands are likely to use popular hashtags for their industry so their brand will come up often in people’s searches. However, some popular brands like Topshop and Gucci consistently use their brand hashtags to encourage users to adopt them in their posts, and they are not surprisingly among the top-10 most popular brands on Instagram.
Instagram offers an excellent opportunity for your brand to diversify your content as a means to broaden your online reach. If you haven’t created an Instagram account for your business, it’s best time to do it now.
Please do ask questions on the comment field below if you are still confused. I am also available on twitter @abhijitdasuk.
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