With visual content on social media becoming more and more popular, it has also become increasingly imperative for brands to become creative and leverage it to their benefit. The move by users to adopt visual content-led social media has catalyzed businesses, big and small, to start communicating with customers, followers, and fans in visual media. With more than 150 million users worldwide sharing over 55 million images every day, Instagram has emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms for businesses to engage in visual-led communication.
Benefits of Using Instagram for Business
1. Enhanced Level of Engagement
Activities by brands on Facebook and Twitter are frequently overlooked by users, however this does not hold true of users of Instagram. Businesses have discovered to the delight that with an Instagram account that has interesting content relevant to the user demographics, it is possible to build very high levels of user engagement without too much of an effort. This is corroborated by a Forrester study that observes that content posted on Instagram generates an engagement level that is an astonishing 58 times more than that of Facebook and an incredible 120 times more per user on Twitter.
2. Building Confidence and Personality
As content posted by brands are seen to be more popular on Instagram for engagement generation, businesses have leveraged this phenomenon to build an emotional connect between their brands and customers. The great thing about using Instagram is that it can be used to share information about what is happening inside the business and exciting developments regarding new products in a very casual and informal manner. This apparent lack of structure makes the relationship between the brand and its fans more personal and hence more durable. Customers simply adore knowing more about the company’s behind-the-scene activities through photos of the business in action and that of employees engaged in the delivery of the concerned product or service. Such an opportunity to take a peek inside the company builds a level of trust that is otherwise very difficult to achieve.
3. Increase in Traffic
Even though it is not possible to add clickable links to the posts businesses publish on Instagram, the social media platform can be a very powerful source for generating sales traffic. This is possible because of the superior levels of user engagement that it manages to create with visually-appealing content and user engagement techniques like contests. Businesses have found that creating and maintaining an Instagram account with compelling and relevant content can be a very potent sales driver. If you have content that is magnetic, you really don’t have to use an Instagram bot to acquire followers.
4. Obtaining Competitive Edge
Because they have been around longer than Instagram, the number of businesses that have taken to Instagram is as of now quite small. Those that have embraced this powerful social media platform have put themselves ahead in the race to create customer awareness and engage with them for increased loyalty. Today it is far easier to reach targeted audiences with Instagram than with Facebook or Twitter because there is simply too much noise and clutter on those platforms from the competition.
5. Targeting the Right Market
If you own a business that is likely to see a lot of sales from customers that are less than 30 years of age, Instagram is the place where you should definitely be flexing your marketing muscle. Recent studies have revealed that more than 37% of the people in this age group are using Instagram. However, it is also seen that even brands that have customers in more mature age groups stand to benefit from Instagram marketing as its visually-led contents appeal just as much to them.
