Establishing an online presence for your small business can be quite difficult and time consuming, particularly when you have limited resources at your disposal. Luckily, in today’s society a plethora of social-media platforms are available – and are free – enabling you to network, promote your business and interact with your target audience. Instagram is just one of these many social-media platforms.
What is Instagram?
Instagram, like Twitter and Facebook, is a social-media application used by businesses of all sizes, from top international brands such as Topshop with 2.22 million followers to small Melbourne businesses like Cupcake Central with an impressive 70,005 followers.
Instagram is best described as a ‘fun’, ‘quirky’ and ‘beautiful’ way to share photos and videos with your followers and simultaneously share them on multiple social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Primarily accessed and used on a portable mobile device or tablet, Instagram allows you to take, post and share photos and video footage with the ability to add artistic filters.
Disguised as another playful social-media platform, Instagram is also a powerful digital marketing tool that can grow and flourish your business through building relationships with your customers or potential target audience.
Instagram is a powerful digital marketing tool that can grow and flourish your business.
So how will my business benefit from using Instagram?
Humans are visual creatures and naturally we are attracted to images. To truly get the most out of Instagram, the business’s owner or social-media specialist needs to consider how they can convert their followers into traffic that is going to their own website. Statistics show that there are more than 150 million people on Instagram with over 55 million photos being uploaded every day. The numbers indicate that Instagram is growing in leaps and bounds every month and at a greater rate than other social network platforms out there.
Benefits of Instagram
- Interaction – The most important thing you can do on this application is interact. Users connect with your visual content more than any other form of content on social networks. Engage with your followers on a more personal level and you’ll build a reputation for your business as one that understands its customers.
- Personality – Instagram allows you to show your followers that you’re not just a faceless business, which helps to build credibility and stronger relationships with your customers. By posting behind-the-scenes images and interacting with your followers, you demonstrate that your business is on their level. It portrays excellent customer service and the transparency of your business. Personalise your company image with photos of your staff at work; show that you are actually people and your customers and followers will respond positively.
- Networking – Not only does Instagram allow you to interact with your target audience, but you can also build relationships with local businesses in similar industries. For example, a wedding photographer and a florist based 10km apart might find each other through Instagram. Over time they build a professional relationship and eventually they become each other’s preferred suppliers within their own wedding network, therefore being able to pass referrals back and forth and build each other’s businesses. It’s also a great way to share followers by tagging each other in related posts.
- Target new demographics – With more than 150 million users, Instagram helps you tap into hard-to-reach markets that could not have been accessed by traditional advertising methods. You get instant access to a world of potential customers and clients.
- Market products and services – Post and share your products and services for free on Instagram and post the address of your website in the comments beneath it. It’s the perfect way to promote new products and instantly gauge the reaction.
- Measure – Easily measure the effectiveness of photos via number of likes, reposts and commenters. We can also measure a brand’s popularity via number of followers.
- Hashtagging – The ‘hash tag’ (#) is a popular tool used to categorise photos into groups on Instagram. Hashtagging your brand name or unique products will create a group for that and allows for easy reference of posts.
Have any tips you’d like to share? Comment below – we would love to hear them!
David Packer, ROI Connect