Why Your Business Should Be On Instagram………………..

You have probably, by now, heard of Instagram. (If not read our blog “Instagram, what is it?”)

Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms but many businesses are struggling to know how to use it. We feel Instagram is a brilliant social media marketing tool, which helps increase sales and direct traffic. 

Here are our top pointers as to why your business should be using Instagram:

·         200 Million Active Users

Earlier this year Instagram announces they had over 200 million active monthly users. This is a brilliant mile stone for the company seeing as they only launched in 2010!!! 

It took Facebook five years to reach this number and Twitter six and a half.

This is a user number your business cannot miss out on – think of all that exposure. 

There’s a good reason why Instagram managed to get to this number so quickly which leads us onto our next point;

·         User Friendly

Instagram is extremely user friendly. There is no algorithm to determine what users will see (i.e Facebook). If you follow someone on Instagram you will see their posts – it has no filtered results. 

This is excellent news for your business’ images you’ve spent time on – no missed exposure. 

Instagram has a stream-style feed very similar to Twitter however it is not as fast moving. It displays the most recent posts at the top and you scroll down to see the rest. It is quite hard to miss a post from someone you are following on Instagram (depending on how many people you are following.)

It is also very east to like and comment on a post. To like it you simply “double tap” the image. To comment you simply hit the comment button and you can leave a short comment. 

It is extremely quick and easy to upload your own images and, of course, to add an effect on them. This brings us to our next point;

·         Visual Marketing 

Visual marketing is growing rapidly (catching up with content marketing), this could be because the human brain understands an image 60,000 times faster than text. Also there are no language barriers with images, and of course, is a great way to show off your products in a way text never can. 

A recent study learnt that “Instagram style” (where you’ve used one of their filter options) receive a 25% higher conversion rate. Your business cannot afford to miss out on visual marketing. Bringing us onto our next point…….

·         Higher Engagement 

Instagram produces a higher engagement rate compared to other social media platforms.

A study carried out this year shared the same images to multiple social media sites and measured the engagement on each. They varied the postings so some posted at the same time while others posted at peak times for each respective site. Here’s what they found:

§  Instagram – 40 likes; Facebook – 5 likes

§  Instagram – 23 likes; Facebook – 4 likes; Twitter – 0 retweets or favorites

§  Instagram – 19 likes; Twitter – 1 favorite

§  Instagram – 34 likes; Google+ – 4 +1′s

§  Instagram – 70 likes and 14 comments; Facebook – 9 likes and 1 comment

§  Instagram – 42 likes and 4 comments; Facebook – 20 likes and 14 comments

§  Instagram – 38 likes and 9 comments; Facebook – 15 likes and 14 comments; Twitter – 2 favorites and 1 retweet

§  Instagram – 34 likes and 20 comments; Facebook – 6 likes and 2 comments

You can see that Instagram continually produces higher engagement levels.

Bear in mind that your follower levels will impact on engagement, however if you can build your Instagram followers your engagement should be true to trend.

Bringing us onto our next point

·         High Quality of Traffic

The quality of traffic following you on Instagram is higher. This is because you have to work to get people to visit your website via Instagram. You cannot place hyperlinks in images only showcase your website in your bio section. The traffic is of high quality because they have to take calculated efforts to reach your website. Which is worth it as your bounce rate will be non-existent.

So there you have it, our top 5 pointers as why your business should be on Instagram. Remember if social media is getting too much then we’re here to help as a top Social Media Agency. We do not sign our clients into contracts and being a social media agency is what we do best.