Since social media usage continues to grow across all demographics, social media marketing has become a valuable strategy for businesses. However, consumer preferences change, making it challenging to maintain multiple platforms with varying strategies.
Like many marketers, you might doubt the usefulness of Instagram to promote your business. Indeed, it would be best to consider that Instagram has 800 million followers.
By this, you might understand that Instagram is one of the most important social media platforms for businesses to promote their brand. It doesn’t matter if you manage social media for a large corporation, a small business, or if you’re using it to market your brand; Instagram is a necessity.
In case you’re still unsure about Instagram’s importance, read these reasons for deciding:
List of Reasons why Instagram Marketing is essential to promote your business
1. Focuses on Storytelling
We are wired to tell stories. Most Instagram posts focus on storytelling as people are more likely to read stories with informational or message-oriented twists. From a business perspective, telling an exciting story creates a connection with your audience on an emotional level.
Reach out to your audience and share what you are all about. Invest time in understanding your customers and ambassadors and build a positive relationship. Years of marketing have led to a customer-centric approach considered the best practice.
It is vital to feed the feelings and emotions rather than products. Take advantage of Instagram’s ability to encourage an emotional response to your brand, and you’ll see a positive impact on your business’s success in terms of visibility, sales, and customer loyalty.
Note: Use Instagram Stories to tell people your behind-the-brand stories and personalities.
2. Visual content is effective
Instagram is a great platform to engage with customers and make them return. Visual posts attract customers and are more engaging than text-only posts on the web. Test what resonates with your audience visually on Instagram, and incorporate the results into other marketing channels, such as your blog and email newsletters. This will help you develop your branding across all channels.
Note: Make sure your Instagram feed reinforces your brand identity with consistent color schemes and styles.
3. Wider Reachability
Instagram provides businesses with broad potential users as it has over 700 million monthly followers. When posting, hashtags play a significant role in reaching the target audience. Use relevant hashtags that your target audience is searching for. You can also target your ads to reach even more potential customers if you’re willing to spend some time and money on them.
Note: Using banned hashtags and overusing hashtags can negatively impact your reach.
4. Community Engagement
Instagram has the highest engagement rate of all the major social media channels, beating Twitter and Facebook. It has a higher brand engagement rate than other social media platforms, which shows that Instagram users are more open to brand content. To improve engagement, you can start conversing with users who follow, comment, or share your visual content on their posts.
Create your hashtags and inspire your followers to join the conversation. Publishing photos and videos of your products is not only the way to engage with the users, but you need to connect with them. You need to engage with them. Using bots to comment and like on other posts can be tempting to increase your likes and followers. Don’t automate the conversations or engagements, as realistic engagements can convert into actual sales and loyal customers.
Note: The best way to boost engagement with your brand is to run a successful Instagram contest.
5. Feedback and Insights
You, as a marketer, probably already monitor conversations about your brand and products on social media. Keep tracking your stories on forums, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. But are you aware of what people think about your brand?
Regardless of your brand’s presence on a particular platform, people still use it as media to talk about your brand. They will publish pictures of products they buy from you, record videos, comment on your brands’ posts, etc. You can’t turn a deaf ear to feedback. It’s essential to know how customers perceive your brand. Utilize Instagram well to know valuable insights about your brand.
6. Competitor analysis
If you are still not utilizing Instagram as a platform to market your products and services, you can look at your competitors to understand their activities. Look how they interact with their community? What content do they post? How often do they post? How they engage with their audience etc. You will know how to make your moves on Instagram and define your creative strategy by answering these things.
Note: Keep an eye on the hashtags used by your competitors to stay one step ahead. Digital Catalyst caters to brilliant Instagram marketing strategies to build your brand on Instagram. For more details, please visit Digital Catalyst.
