Why Instagram Is Considered a Top Social Platform for Business Marketing
Over the course of the past ten years or so, social media platforms have quickly risen through marketing ranks and have established themselves as highly regarded channels for acquiring new customers. Hardly surprising, considering that social media campaigns can easily catapult a brand, company, product, or service to new heights—especially if it’s orchestrated by capable hands.
Facebook and Twitter are undoubtedly the two best examples of social media that were systematically turned into a valuable marketing asset. Twitter, with its strong focus on B2B, provides the ability to share information instantly and in real time. On the other hand, Facebook is inclined toward engaging communities and is much more suitable for executing B2C strategies.
However, there is another social media platform that is slowly emancipating itself from the gigantic shadows of Facebook and Twitter, one that continues to prove itself over and over again as a fantastic marketing channel.
We’re, of course, talking about Instagram
Instagram’s popularity has been growing steadily since its highly anticipated debut took place back in 2010. With more than 1B active users on a monthly basis, this platform is currently the second most popular social media network in the world. It falls second only to Facebook.
The impressive number of regular users has a strong impact on increasing Instagram’s potential as a marketing channel. However, the amount of users is not what primarily draws businesses towards promoting themselves on Instagram.
What Makes Instagram so Engaging?
Not only is it hard to define, but user engagement is also challenging to measure.
Nonetheless, a survey of more than 2.5K micro-influencers revealed that about 60% of them believe Instagram is the best social platform when it comes to user engagement. Facebook, which was the survey’s runner-up, only managed to muster 18% of the votes.
These are the key reasons why Instagram is considered to be the most engaging social media platform currently in existence:
- Mobile functionality – As a mobile-exclusive platform, the main idea behind Instagram was to make something that’s easy to use when you’re on the go. As such, it allows users to immediately edit and publish images, which fits hand-in-glove with the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century.
- It’s easy to use – Instagram removed about as much onboarding friction as possible. It’s an easy app to use both in terms of publishing images and browsing through content posted by others.
- It’s all about the visuals – People, especially those stemming from younger generations, prefer gathering and interpreting casual information by sight. This is the main reason why visual marketing has become so popular in recent years. Obviously, Instagram perfectly aligns with this trend.
However, despite a lot of things going its way, there are still some drawbacks to Instagram when you opt to use it as a marketing channel. These are the most noticeable ones:
- The lack of links – There’s no way to publish links directly inside your Instagram post, which makes it hard to funnel people towards your site. Great news for end users, not so much for marketers.
- Inability to spark discussions – Simply put, Instagram is not where people go to chat. This means that a marketer cannot easily initiate and facilitate conversations among followers. So if instigating debate is the objective, other social media platforms are probably a better choice.
- Not ideal for text-based messages – Instagram users are not thrilled with the idea of reading posts—after all, if that were their goal, they’d visit other, more text-oriented platforms. For anyone hoping to promote a brand via Instagram, this means that their communication methods will be limited to the visual kind.
How Instagram Stories Fit into the Platform’s Business Marketing Potential
Of all the Instagram features businesses might find appealing to use for marketing purposes, the one that’s been attracting the most attention recently is Instagram Stories. And there’s a good reason why this is so. Instagram Stories offers a marketing solution that nullifies the aforementioned drawbacks, while still making sure you reap all the main promotional benefits of using the platform.
Since about 400M users view Instagram Stories on a daily basis, it’s hardly surprising that businesses quickly caught wind of what the feature could do in terms of marketing.
It is estimated that one in three of the most viewed Instagram Stories every single day come from businesses promoting their brands. Furthermore, over 50% of businesses present on the platform made a Story at one point or another.
Impressive figures, right? And here’s precisely why these numbers are so high. It is estimated that around 20% of views on Stories posted by businesses lead to direct interaction with the user who, at that point, is turned into a lead (a potential customer).
However, these leads hardly come out of thin air. There’s a lot of finesse that goes into crafting good Instagram Stories capable of generating potential customers. The following infographic is here to show you how the world’s leading companies create their own Stories and use them to raise brand awareness and generate leads.
By placing some of the world’s most impressive brands under the microscope, like Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, IBM, NASA, McDonald’s, and Airbnb, the infographic exhibits just how much voice and personality businesses can get from Instagram Stories.
A total of 30 different case studies are analyzed here, a sufficient sample size that allows us to reveal some of the most crucial dos and don’ts of using this Instagram feature for marketing purposes.
