instagram - a powerful tool to grow your business

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Instagram: A powerful tool to grow your business By Gabriela Oviedo

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Instagram: A powerful tool to grow your

business

By Gabriela Oviedo

About InstagramInstagram is a mobile app used for photo editing-sharing and social networking service that enables users to take pictures and videos, edit them, and recently to stream live.

Users share all these content publicly or privately in the app with other users. This platform can be connected to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. to share the content with followers outside Instagram. You can also add several Instagram accounts to manage them and you can easily switch from one to to another.

For organizations now you can indicate in Instagram that the account is a Business and you you have access to insights about your followers and you can promote your posts. Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks worldwide.

Source: Wikipedia

Instagram’s Value Proposition

• Track what your followers are up to.• Fastest easier way to share photos.• Let you search for pictures by hashtag.• Everything you post will be in your followers’ news

feed.• Only social media platform which is mobile focus.• Offers native advertising

In order to consider whether Instagram is a good platform for your business, first you must learn what is Instagram’s value proposition.

Instagram allows brands and business to interact directly with their target audience in a more personal way. User can feel an humanized brand that tells stories through powerful images and interacts with them with content that are of their interest. This is their main Value proposition, besides that it allows you to be creative and find different ways to engage with your audience.

• Consumer engagement with visual content has increased.

• You can create Instagram contests• Tell stories through moving animation• Instagram ads• You can now filter comments on

Instagram

Other valuable characteristics of Instagram are:

Who uses Instagram?

500M

300M

Android50%

IOS50%

Male32%

Female68%

US Users Russia Brazil Turkey0.00

10.0020.0030.0040.0050.0060.0070.0080.0090.00

100.00 88.44

27.52 26.9816.34

35+10%

Less than 35

90%

Instagram has a total of 500 million users, from which 300 million are active on a daily basis = 60%

Instagram users are 50% iPhone owners and 50% Android

On Instagram 68% of users are female while 32% are male

Instagram has been more appealing to younger demographics since 90% of its users are under the age of 35 years old.

The country with the highest numbers of Instagram users worldwide is US. Followed by Russia, Brazil and Turkey.

US18%

World82%

US Instagram users represents a 18% from all users around the world

Demographics source Wikipedia

When to post on Instagram?

Source: Hubspot

One of the key factors of the success or failure of Instagram posts is knowing when your audience is online. If you post at 9:00 a.m. but your followers are at work or they don’t check the platform at that time, your post will have less impact, less views and less engagement.

1

• You can post from Monday to Thursday during all day, except for the hour between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

2

• Video posts are most likely to do best when they are posted at night between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.

3

• Specific times that were shown to work well for some posts are at 2:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.

The best time to post on Instagram is when your followers are online and when they spend longer time on the platform.

Optimal times/days to post on Instagram

Instagram for Business

Instagram started as a social media platform for users only and later on, a lot business of companies joined the platform to promote their products. Let’s evaluate, why would a company wants to use Instagram

Mobile RocksPeople uses their smartphone to access Internet. Since Instagram is a mobile app its traffic has increase rapidly during the last year.

People engage more on InstagramThere are more users on Facebook than on Instagram, but the people on this platform engage more with brands. Instagram’s engagement rate is 4.21% per follower.

Creation of targeted focused campaign through HashtagsHashtags a very important feature because allow brands to target their communication to people who is directly interested in their product or service.

Instagram allows CreativityThis app is about visual stories, all the content has to be visually appealing in order to catch more eyeballs. Instagram has filters that allows you modify your pictures and make them more appealing, and you can share it right away.

Source: Forbes

Instagram for Business

Relate to your AudienceYou can create content that can relate to your audience: behind the scene, day-to-day routines. Followers love to engage with brands when they feel a personal connection with them.

Makes your brand easier to be foundIf your content is visually appealing and you can relate to your audience, your brand will be more likely to be found by new followers who share the same interest.

Brand you self through contentFollowers don’t like that brand sell directly on Social Media. Instagram allows you to share visual content, tell a story and have interesting captions to promote your brand.

Your post get more exposureWith the integration with Facebook you can now boost your post on Instagram as ads. You can reach people and your posts will more guarantee to be seen because they appear on the users newsfeed. You can target people who is not following you and generate brand awareness.

Source: Forbes

Instagram Analytics

Instagram recently included the option of having analytics of the content that you are sharing and posts that you boost. You have to activate your account as a business account (it’s free) and you have the analytics available.

You can see your follower’s demographics: age, geolocation, gender, etc. You can also see at what time your followers are online to identify the best times to post content. You can see the results of your posts: engagement and reach. It gives you the most relevant information you need to know to make adjust your strategy and have better results. This analytics are free on your account.

There are also third party sites that provide analytics for Instagram such as:- Quintly- SimpleMeasured- Instafollow

Is it worth to use Instagram?

Instagram is a great platform for all the reasons mentioned before, but in order to determine if it is worth for your organization to used it, first you must consider the following:

• What are the objectives you want to achieve?• Is your target audience on Instagram?• How much time they spend on the platform and how much they engage in the platform?• Can you pursue your objectives through Instagram?• Are you willing to put the effort on generate content frequently and nurture your community?

Is your answer is yes, this platform is worth it because of this interesting stats:

• Instagram is consider the most important social network by American teens than any other (32%)• Instagram has 500 million users from which 300 million are active every day, that’s 60% of users.• Top Brands on Instagram are seeing a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent.• Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6 percent more engagement.• Instagram’s per-follower engagement rate for top brands is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times

higher than on Twitter• The average engagement per Instagram post has grown by 416 percent over two years• Posts tagged with a location receive 79 percent higher engagement

Source: Hootsuite

Instagram for B2C or B2B• Instagram is more beneficial for B2C than for B2C businesses because of its

nature of being a social media platform that allows brands to approach directly to consumers through images and videos.

• B2B business requires more research, more dialogue between the two companies, and negotiation. This relationship goes beyond social media, it is more face-to-face or by phone because requires more details.

• Although, there are some B2B companies that have Instagram accounts and that promote their services and products on the platform, but B2B marketers are more likely to have higher results on Instagram, because their communication goes directly to their target audience.

• To consider Instagram for your business you have to identify if your target audience is on this platform, if it is not, is not worth to be on the platform just because it is a trend. B2B target audience spend more time in other platforms since Instagram is more used for younger demographics and for people that wants to engage with their favorite brands.

National Geographic’s Success

National Geographic is a great example of an organization that has successfully used Instagram to further its objectives. They have increase their community in an organic way without paying add.

National Geographic is an organization dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. They support expeditions and scientific fieldwork promoting natural conservation and inspiring audiences through pictures, vibrant exhibitions, events and great stories. – National Geographic

• National Geographic has 62 Million followers• Is the Top non-celebrity account on Instagram• From May 2015 to October 2016 it has grown 45

million followers• More than 1 billion likes on its posts

National Geographic found through images a new way of telling stories. They have inspired people to conserve nature through sharing powerful images on Instagram that have been taken by their researchers and photographers. It’s content has become known increasing its reach very quick. They have achieved their objective and more. They attract eyeballs right away, every image captures attention and the caption of each picture provides the details behind it. National Geographic increased brand awareness which became an increase in web traffic and donations from this Instagram posts.

Many brands look at National Geographic as a case study of success on Instagram, to take all the things they have done well as an example to excel their Instagram accounts and have better results

Source: National Geographic

Caesar Entertainment's Success

Source: Instagram Business

This Casino and Resort launched a highly targeted campaign to increase their sales by people booking vacation packages with them. Their results were double digit from the ad spend.

Instagram helped us effectively capture the excitement of our properties during key sales initiatives. With the help of CitizenNet’s ad technology, we were also able to scale our Instagram volume, and beat previous benchmarks through audience discovery and automated media optimization.

Dwight PirtleInternet Marketing Manager, Caesars Entertainment Corp.

”The great success of this brand’s campaign is that were able to identify its target audience by afinity with their service and products. Their add were tairlored to all their segments and the results were very good for them

Instagram Business – Expected costs

• For using the platform you don’t have to pay a fee, its free.Platform

$0.00

• If you want to increase your reach and increase followers, Instagram recently activated ads on the platform and through Facebook, so you can add your desired budget to promote your posts, define your audience and your goals.

AdsAs need it

• Managing social media platforms is time consuming if you want to do a good job and nurture your community. The results are not immediate so you have to consider that it will take time, but at the end it’s worth it. You have to be consistent in order to watch those results

Time

• If you want to have result on social media you will have to higher a community manager that can generate content for your platforms, schedule the post, reply to comments or questions, etc. Salary $21.00 hourly rate.

Community Manager

Get started on Instagram

https://business.instagram.com/gettingstarted/

You want to know more about how to set up your account and start your marketing communications through Instagram, check this guide that will help you understand all you need to know to create, manage and excel your account.

Information sources• http://

blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-times-post-pin-tweet-social-media-infographic#sm.000028dsarfrrek8x3m2mbxr71fsf

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennifercohen/2015/05/05/8-reasons-all-brands-should-be-on-instagram/#5100be97447b

• https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics-for-business/

• http://www.merrittgrp.com/mg-blog/how-national-geographic-is-winning-on-social-media

• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/here-hour-hour-breakdown-when-people-post-instagram-167094

• http://65.media.tumblr.com/3c84f9684e9717224c126a4bb3d53e20/tumblr_inline_obae6aJ6lz1svf3j7_540.jpg

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users/

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/272933/distribution-of-instagram-traffic-by-country/

• https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2365-6/14858504_1074968919288135_5180799481846693888_n.pdf