Instagram is a social media site or platform that works well with photo and video sharing. It was introduced in 2010 and has rapidly risen to be one of the top social platforms in the recent times. The users are so involved with the platform that the active users visit it at least once a day and one-third of them visit it multiple times in a day.
Since Instagram works on visuals, it is an outstanding platform for introducing new products and for creating brand awareness. With this medium, there is a personal touch and hence without directly selling your product to your audience you, as an advertiser, are able to generate interest and engage in a creative dialogue with the user.
To start using Instagram one needs to
- Create an Instagram business account: Since it’s a business account and not a personal one, one needs to be careful while choosing the username and the correct profile photo. Fill up the Instagram Bio giving a proper description of your business or your purpose of being on Instagram. There is also the option of adding a hashtag or clickable URL to drive traffic to your website.
- Proper Story settings: This is the place where you can add your list of followers. These are the people who will be able to view your stories. Since this is a business account, you would want your followers to interact and engage with you as often as possible. This feature will help you do that. It is also a good idea to connect your Facebook business page with your Instagram business account. Instagram also allows you to block out comments and feedback that are negative or not good for your business profile. For this feature, you need to mention certain keywords and whenever there is a remark with those keywords; the site will hide that remark.
- Instagram allows posting of images, videos and stories: While putting up images, the advertiser must be careful not to post only product photos. This site is not ideal for direct selling. It is great for brand building and to do so, the images need to be subtlety talking about the business, its values and aspirations. Any type of image or video that would attract the audience and keep them hooked onto your account. A lot of brands talk about their CSR activities here. Some involve influencers to talk about their experience with your company and products, while some get into motivational posts and some re-post their followers’ post. All this helps to create a genuine image of the brand and of the company.
- Instagram also provides a live video streaming option: This is sharing real-time information with your followers who can watch your video live and comment immediately. It’s an excellent platform to showcase engaging activities where the audience gets a chance to be involved.
- Lastly, frame the caption with the correct words so that it catches the attention of the audience.
One important aspect that brands rely upon as a marketing tool is influencer marketing. Influencers are people who can have an immense hold on a group of people who could be their followers on social media sites, friend and family circles.
They can easily influence this group to re-align their thought process, impact their lifestyle, purchase-related decisions and lots more. Marketers invest in this form of marketing to help:
- grow their brands;
- strengthen their brand value;
- achieve increased sales as word-of-mouth is still one of the preferred decision-making methods while making purchases;
- build credibility of the brand
Due to their quality, the chances of this content ranking high on search engines is enhanced. Marketers can access data related to the effectiveness of this form of marketing on Instagram and analyse the ROI.
Influencer marketing is paid and marketers need to pay either money or offer products to influencers in return for writing and speaking about their products. Having said this, the marketing expense here is much less compared to hiring celebrities to endorse products and brands. Also since Instagram is one of the most popular social media sites, it makes more sense to engage powerful influencers to talk about a product or brand.
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