In 2022 Instagram still has a lot of misconceptions associated with it. ‘It's just people taking pictures of food’; ‘TikTok has made the platform redundant’; ‘it’s only useful to visual brands with visual products’; you can pick your clichéd Instagram criticism! 

Whilst many have come around to Instagram and seen first hand it's marketing capabilities, lots of businesses still neglect their Instagram. With over 1.3  billion active users worldwide it is right up there with the most popular social media platforms and with the audience there, you just need to know the key benefits of using the app and how to reap these rewards. 

So what are the benefits? Let's break it down into 7 key segments...  

Show off your culture

Selling ‘serious’, more corporate products or being a service provider isn’t a reason to not share the visual culture of the business. Clients want to see who and what is behind the business they are working with and Instagram is the perfect platform to show this off.

Be it a picture of the MD with a client or a video of the employees doing something for a good cause, Instagram allows you to break down the corporate company barrier and show off their human side.

Instagram should be seen as an opportunity to get creative and show the business and its employees off to the world.

It allows you to enhance your brand identity in a big way

There are so many businesses out there that have an amazing website and logo, offer amazing products and services but when it comes to their brand identity, they can’t be distinguished from their own competitors.

Instagram allows a business to develop a unique brand identity, something completely visual that instantly reminds its clients or customers of the business.

This could be through a certain theme of photography, a series of videos only seen through Instagram or even use of a certain colour or filter which can be immediately associated with your business.

Again, it's all about creativity.

It offers a diverse range of content 

Unlike Tiktok, one of Instagram's biggest rivals, Instagram offers a wide range of content formats. Users can post permanent videos or photos on their profile, post temporary stories, create short video 'reels' and also longer form videos through IGTV and even set up product stalls on the marketplace. 

Each of these mediums can be used in promotion and advertising, meaning you can choose what mode of content best suits your marketing strategy. 

Maybe you are trying to form a consistent brand image on your profile, photo posts will be great for that . Perhaps you want to advertise a sale item that you want to push out to your audience quickly, a story would be more suited for this. 

Such a diverse range of content isn't offered by many other competing social media platforms. If your brand is a good fit for Tiktok and maybe you want to target a younger audience, you 100% should market on the app, but it is quite limiting in terms of content capability. 

It can drive traffic to your website

Instagram is part of the Facebook network and is directly connected to Facebook’s advertising platform, meaning that you can advertise directly to potential clients and customers on Instagram.

You can use a great looking video or image as an advert to drive traffic to a landing page and ultimately to your website. Instagram ads have a much higher click through rate compared to any other ads platform.

It can also be a great way of organically sending people through to your website as you can add a URL to your Instagram profile page. Basically, if you have an interesting profile you will drive more organic traffic.

It’s full of influencers

The most powerful marketing comes from friends, customers and people you follow. These people that you follow and that follow you can be used to enhance and project your brand to a wider audience: they are known as influencers.

Influencer marketing has often been associated with Twitter, but now big Instagram accounts have a huge sway with certain groups and demographics.

We turned our sister brand's Instagram feed into one big continuous picture!

Do some research and connect with the influencers who would be interested in sharing your brand to their own followers. It can provide massive results and increase your brand reputation in a big way.

Instagram has unique features

Instagram can be used slightly differently from other social platforms, which makes it very desirable to marketers.

You can use its advanced search tool to browse locations and hashtags that are relevant to your business. For example, if you want to see what sort of media has been taken in a certain location, like your head office, you can see it. If you want to know what sort of content people are posting about #websitedesign, you can type it in and it will bring back all of the relevant content for that hashtag.

This is great for competitor analysis, and brilliant to find out what sort of content your clients and customers engage with.

It’s completely mobile driven

Instagram was designed as a mobile app whereas Facebook and Twitter were built as browser based platforms. Instagram’s design has been conducive to being successful as an app from the beginning.

Mobile has now taken over desktop traffic, and more and more people are using their smartphones to connect to the internet. This means that more of your clients are going to be using their mobiles to find your business.

By having a really good Instagram presence you can capitalise on the mobile-savvy crowd.

Do you want to enhance your own brand on Instagram? Get in touch with us and we’ll take it from there.

And remember to follow us on Instagram @KarmanDigital