Tom Welbourne
Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
Why You Need To Use Instagram To Grow Your Business
- February 6, 2019
- , 10:44 am
Since being founded in 2010, there have been more than 40 billion photos shared on Instagram.
To top it all off, they now have more than 1 billion monthly users and Instagram is now the fastest growing social media platform today.
In this article, we’re going to talk about the benefits of using Instagram and how it has the potential to be the best social media channel for your small business.
Make Money Directly From Instagram
Just like its big brother, Facebook, (Facebook bought Instagram in 2012), you can now make money through product placement on Instagram.
The Shoppable posts, allow businesses to add tags to the products in their photos with links that will include price, product description and the option for the user to shop now.
You can also use Instagram to let your followers know about upcoming sales and run a promotional ad campaign to increase awareness, as well as drive more traffic to your website.
Or you could build up the suspense by using Instagram to provide a sneak peek into your latest product release or offer. Your followers can also turn on the story and post notifications feature to be alerted as soon as you post new content.
Put A Face To Your Brand
You can now let your audience behind the scenes into the day-to-day operations, photoshoots or anything else you may think might be of interest to your audience.
This can be done using posts and stories which you can use to introduce the people behind the brand or through the use of live Q&A sessions or polls.
This will help grow your business because you will be able to build rapport, trust and be seen as more credible by your audience.
Partnerships With Influencers
What is an influencer you may be wondering?
According to pixlee.com, Influencers are Instagram users who have established credibility and audience; who can persuade others by virtue of their trustworthiness and authenticity. Your brand’s influencers are users that employ your brand hashtag who have the largest number of followers.
If you find an influencer that you think shares your brand’s vision and values, then this has the potential to take your sales to a whole new level where you can access customers you wouldn’t normally reach.
Smart Phones Are Taking Over
You’ve probably noticed (unless you’re one of them), that on your commute to and from work, most people around you are glued to their phones. This is no surprise as users are spending 69% of their media time on their phones.
This is important to know when discussing Instagram because it’s a mobile-only app. If you don’t have the app, then you can’t use the full functionality of Instagram.
Engagement Is Much Higher On Instagram
Despite more people using Facebook compared to Instagram, you are more likely to get a higher engagement rate using Instagram.
What does this mean for your business?
It means that more people are going to be interacting with your posts, your page and your brand. Instagram delivers an engagement rate of 4.21% per follower which is 58 more times the engagement you will receive per follower than Facebook!
Summary
We hope this article has provided you with an insight into the many uses of Instagram and informed you on why it is important to make the most of this ever-growing social media channel.
With its high rates of engagement, opportunities to make money via the platform and the increase in mobile phone usage, you can see why it is in your best interests to start creating content that your audience wants to engage with on a regular basis.
Instagram is one of the easier to use social media platforms available but to use the platform to grow your business, it is worthwhile integrating it into your marketing strategy. If you’d like to have a chat about how to grow your business using Instagram and would like somebody who can guide you in the right direction, then schedule a call with us today!
