Instagram has morphed into a powerful marketing tool for any business looking to expand reach and enhance visibility. If you haven’t jumped the bandwagon, now is the perfect time to do so. Sadly, many companies argue that posting images might not drive traffic to their websites. It’s not the case; on the contrary, Instagram continues to introduce features that make advertising and driving traffic easy. Still not convinced? Here are 15 reasons your brand should be on Instagram.

1. More Active Users

Instagram has the most active users compared to other social media platforms. Currently, it has more than 800 million active users ranking second after Twitter and Facebook. Five hundred million of the active users use the platform daily, and 80% are based outside the United States. Additionally, 34% consist of millennials, and 38% visit multiple sites every day. With such a large number of active users, any business can be successful with a dedicated Instagram strategy.

2. Any Business Can Thrive Regardless of its Size

With such a large audience, both small and large businesses can thrive on the platform. You only need to keep an active presence and have a routine. A post or two every day should attract a reasonable following. That’s how big companies like Adidas and Coca-Cola, as well as small businesses are thriving on Instagram. Other platforms like Facebook make it difficult for small businesses to get noticed because it is extremely crowded.

3. Ability to Earn Directly from the Platform

Instagram continues to upgrade its features in a bid to cater to different user needs, including businesses looking to earn through the platform. One such feature is the shoppable post that enables a company to add tags to products on images displayed. The images should have links that show the price, description, and the icon ‘shop now’ to lead the user to the online store. The feature makes it easy for businesses to generate conversions. Stats show 72% of Instagram users have admitted to purchasing products through the platform.

4. Add Stories to Make the Business Relatable

Potential customers want to engage with brands in a personal way. Instagram stands out from other platforms when it comes to this purpose as it allows businesses to promote brand engagement with their users.

Instagram stories have particularly made it easy for marketers to engage with customers by humanizing their brands. Videos showing how products are produced, or employees interacting with each and live Q&A sessions with your audience help interact with them on a personal level.

Consider leveraging Instagram live posts, too; they help build rapport and trust with followers. Showcasing your businesses as more than an enterprise looking to make money, makes consumers more trusting of your brand.

5. Form Partnerships with Influencers

Instagram has yielded a new form of user called Influencers. They are online celebrities and renowned bloggers with a large following and often promote brands or products. Businesses can leverage such an opportunity by forming a partnership with a dependable influencer to generate sales. The partnerships increase not only a company’s ROI but also its reach through access to a new following. Note that influencer marketing is only useful when working with the right individual. Some things to look for when looking for an online influencer include:

Relevance: The influencer’s content should be aligned with your message. Read their archived posts to determine the type of consumer they are
Reach: Marketers often determine an influencer’s reach by looking at their visitors. This is a pretty biased view as followers are effective to the extent the influencer showcases your brand to a target audience. For example, if you are a car seat manufacturer, a travel blogger who has a small reach is more influential than a food blogger with up to 100,000 unique visitors
Engagement: This aspect shows how interactive the influencer’s audience is with content. Does the audience like, share, comment? The extent of response determines how meaningful the relationships are
Frequency: There’s a direct correlation between how often the influencer posts, traffic, and return visitors. Visitors need multiple exposures even to click or follow a brand

6. Increased Visibility Using Hashtags

Instagram hashtags have become an invaluable marketing tool businesses can use to expand reach, increase brand awareness and attract more followers. Hashtags are keywords that summarize the content of a post.

Research shows Instagram posts with one hashtag get 70% more likes than those without hashtags. Famous Instagram Hashtags like Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke have made the company more visible to followers. As such effective use of hashtags should help your business stand out. Some tips to curate effective hashtags include:

Create targeted hashtags to increase your chances of reaching the intended audience
Limit the number of hashtags to 5-30 on each post
Downplay the appearance of the hashtags because tags that stand out appear cluttered and out of place
Add hashtags to Instagram stories. The tags create another way for a new audience to find out about your business

7. Ability to Engage with Customers Using Visual Content

Instagram allows you to engage with customers daily. Regular posts attract comments, likes, and shares, which enhance a company’s visibility. Posting high-quality photos, including trending hashtags, and forming partnerships with other brands should help you get more likes.

Research shows visual content is a critical business tactic for optimizing social media marketing strategy hence the need to capitalize on high-quality images. If using videos posts, use behind-the-scenes clips or short tutorials as they elicit engagement and views.

8. Extremely Versatile

Unlike other social media platforms that started as browser-based websites, Instagram was developed as an application from the onset. With many mobile users spending 90% of their time on apps, companies can leverage this opportunity by making posts visible to viewers whenever they visit Instagram.

What’s more, the platform has a cleaner outlook compared to Facebook, attracting more users and increasing engagement ten times more than any other social media medium.

9. Monitor Competitors

Instagram also provides a means for you to keep an eye on your competitors. You can analyze their accounts to identify ways to improve your marketing skills. Look at what and when they post content, how the content performs amongst the target audience. It helps benchmark your business against a brand with a comparable size and resources.

10. Can be as Creative as You Want

Features like the photo-sharing app allow you to explore as many ideas on how to attract more followers and increase conversion. You don’t want to come off dull or devoid of personality, show your audience that you are the best business to shop with by mixing up videos, contests, vivid images, and more.

11. Lack of a Filtered Feed

Social media platforms like Facebook display posts to a small audience, but Instagram posts are visible to all your followers. Such visibility ensures all valuable content is seen. What’s more, the images are organized in a chronological order increasing your chances of being visible to your followers.

Instagram is designed for use on mobile devices, which makes sharing pretty straightforward regardless of your location. It is this feature that makes Instagram an excellent platform for sharing behind-the-scenes shots or posts that attract significant engagement.

Great for on-the-go-sharing — 15 Reasons Your Business Needs An Instagram Presence 7

Research shows nine out of ten Instagram videos are shared on Facebook. This makes it easy for marketers who want to drive traffic and shares between both platforms.

14. Instagram is a Content Creator for Other Platforms

Visual content has become an invaluable marketing tool not just on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest use it too. The difference is Instagram is equipped with features to help you create eye-catching images. You can use the images as content on other marketing channels like Pinterest boards and Facebook posts without making additional modifications. What’s more, the Instagram app can take photos that you can save on your smartphone for later use.

15. Access to Advanced Advertising Target Features

Instagram has a broad range of advertising features starting with those similar to Facebook. For example, Facebook enables businesses to advertise by age, location, interests, and behavior. Since the features are also available on Instagram, marketers can target an advertising campaign to a specific audience within the over 800 million Instagram users.

Additionally, businesses can leverage Instagram’s extensive retargeting capabilities to generate leads and conversions. You only need to create a custom audience based on Instagram post engagement, video views, customer email lists, among other features.

Such capabilities help a business heighten its marketing strategy on Instagram and create specific sales funnels to achieve the desired results.

Now you known why your business needs an Instagram presence. It’s not just about being trendy but also personalizing your brand and engaging with your clients on a personal level. The platform strips you of that impersonal image traditional businesses have worn for years by making you relatable. Its numerous features allows you to curate a story any audience can narrate.

15 Reasons Your Business Needs An Instagram Presence