What started out as a photo-sharing app for social networking has now quickly become one of the most powerful brand-building tools available and used by many different businesses.
Many restaurants and retailers like travel agents are successfully using Instagram marketing and if you are a business startup, there are plenty of good reasons why you need to make use of this tool in order to grow and develop your business venture.
Instagram explained
Created in 2010, Instagram was created as a mobile photo-sharing app and social media network.
It only took two years of rapid growth for Facebook to make an offer to acquire the business for $ 1 billion and on the back of the infrastructure that this internet behemoth is able to provide, the number of Instagram users surpassed 300 million users by the end of December 2014.
The relevancy of Instagram cannot be denied with such a huge volume of users hooked into the service and it is definitely not a social network you can afford to rule out of your marketing plans.
Unique features
Instagram is distinctly unique because it is completely photo/video-centric, unlike other social networks.
This allows users the opportunity to post images and short videos of up to 15 seconds long, but not text updates, which you would use a site like Twitter or Facebook to do. The uniformity of the photos and videos which are all square, helps to give the app a more streamlined look and seems to inspire a great deal of creativity too.
The need for an Instagram presence
Instagram is recognized as a hub where people tend to find and also evaluate the specific visual identity of a business, so the absence of a strong Instagram presence opens up the distinct possibility that you will risk being ignored or forgotten by a large number of consumers, who are all potential customers.
Some marketing commentators consider Instagram to be the very hub of social engagement and research shows that the app is able to generate a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent.
This compares very favorably to other social networks and in numbers terms, Instagram delivers 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and an even more impressive 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter can manage.
Developing a strategy
A good way of developing a suitable marketing strategy that makes the most of what Instagram has to offer is to actually use the app yourself and get used to how it works as well as seeing how others are using it.
Take a look at how your industry competitors are using Instagram in their business as this will provide you with some potential inspiration as well as some useful competitive intelligence.
The general suggestion is to use Instagram in a way that broadly mirrors your general social media marketing plan.
Set goals
As with any business plan and marketing strategy, you need to set some clear goals and this is just the same when planning to use Instagram to try and increase your customer base and drive up sales revenue.
Decide whether you specifically want to use Instagram to increase product sales or increase the volume of traffic to your website. It might be that your goal is to increase brand awareness or maybe to generate more branded hashtag mentions.
Setting achievable and measurable Instagram goals will help you to get the most out of the app and track your progress as you develop and fine-tune your strategy.
The importance of a content strategy
Having decided what you want to achieve from using Instagram to grow your business, it is important that you then formulate a workable content strategy.
Decide how often you want to post new content and also work on what themes you will be using. Once you have this worked out, set a content calendar so that you maintain a regular posting schedule, which is what you need to keep an attentive audience.
You may have to experiment with the posting schedule and the time of the day you post the content by looking at the differing response rates.
Remember that Instagram is fundamentally about the visuals, so your aim should be to set out to build a unified and immediately recognizable brand identity.
When it comes to brand-building tools, the overwhelming evidence would suggest that if you want your startup to turn into a successful and prosperous business, you simply can’t afford to leave Instagram out of your marketing plans.
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