Your business needs to be Instagram, if it isn’t already! Here’re the reasons why:
While 300 million may seem small compared with Facebook’s 1 billion+, how many small business owners you know would turn away at an audience this huge for marketing purposes? If your business is in North America, like The Intelligence Group, then you may be interested to know that 25% of those users are in North America and that most of its generated traffic, 28%, is from the US.
That’s a lot of potential customers.
By now we all know that mobile is king. I don’t know anyone who’s not on their smartphone throughout the day to check email or the news or play a quick game or, well, check their social media updates. Your business should have a sound mobile marketing strategy in place just to compete these days.
41% of Instagram users are 16 and 24 years old. The next highest group of users, at 35%, are between 25 and 34 years old. If these are your targeted audience, then now is the time to craft a solid social media marketing strategy.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform; however, with the recent “pay-to-play” model, it’s getting increasing challenging and expensive to get your message out. many small businesses are looking for alternatives.
It’s a common belief that Instagram is only for businesses that sell or do something glamorous photogenic, which is not true at all. In fact, many companies use creative ways to grow a huge following on Instagram. For instance, Media Temple leverages Instagram to show off their “Best Place to Work” award.
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photo from Media Temple’s Instagram
Every now and then a client would tell me that the reason he/she isn’t yet on Instagram is because “it’s just a place to store and share photos.” That’s only true if that’s all you do. Many companies have creative ideas that goes far beyond mere photos. Ben and Jerry, for example, ran a wildly successful contest called Capture Euphoria in which fans submit their photos eating a Ben and Jerry ice cream in hopes of being featured in local ads.
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Photo from Ben and Jerry’s Instagram
According to Forester, “Instagram delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.” People love pictures a whole lot more than words. Need some ideas on how to effectively encourage engagement on Instagram? Why not take a look at how Jenn Herman does it.
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Photo from Jenn Herman’s Instagram
Hopefully, by now you’re a bit more inspired to create an Instagram account for your business if you haven’t done so. If you need some guidance on how to create and set up your account, we’ll be posting a tutorial on that soon.
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