If your company is not active on Instagram, then today is the day that you need to reconsider your decision!
Current Instagram users can experience a plethora of positive outcomes for their business – many of which you may be surprised to hear about.
To start off, let me tell you just a little bit about Instagram as a company and platform. Instagram is an online social network focused on sharing photos and videos as well as networking. While you can access it on a desktop/laptop computer, this is utilized best as a mobile platform. The network was launched in 2010 and, due to exponential growth and popularity, was purchased by Facebook in 2012. Currently you can access the Instagram application on iOS and Android only (about a 50/50 split). Lastly, it is always somewhere in the top 10 of popular smart phone application downloads.
Now, why should you be using it? Try these 9 reasons on for size:
1. Telling Your Visual Story: Visuals on social media (generated as images or videos) are proven to be more engaging then straight text posts. About 65% more in fact. Using visuals to acquaint your audience with your company and brand is a slam dunk when it comes to engagement.
2. Your Competition is Using Instagram: Don’t believe me? Let’s check the numbers. 93% of prestige brands use Instagram. 25% of the Fortune 500 use Instagram. Add to this the fact that brands post on Instagram an average of 6 times per week (so they are engaging on a consistent basis with the site). Plus – all of these numbers are growing!
3. It’s Growing Fast! Currently at the time of writing this, there are 300 million active users and 57% of these users visit the site everyday. In fact, there are 60 million photos per day, 1.6 billion likes per day, and the average user spends 257 minutes per month on the site. And all of these numbers are growing as well!
4. Outstanding Engagement: Did you know that Instagram posts get 15 times more engagement than Facebook Page posts? Need I say more?
5. Multiplatform Access: Instagram promotes you sharing your pictures and videos on other sites, and makes it easy to do so! This makes it easy to create useful, engaging content across the platforms that you use!
6. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Emotionally connecting with your audience using a visual is priceless. In fact, it is much easier to emotionally connect with a visual than a well-worded post with the same sentiment. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself and check out the results!
7. Build Trust: By showing more about your company, products, services, and connecting with your audience in a visual way you are able to build that all needed trust with your audience. Having a tough time in the court of public opinion? Instagram is a great way to rehab a poor public image.
8. Free Traffic: With such a high level of engagement, add your customer links to your pictures, videos and profile – then watch your website traffic soar!
9. Build Visibility: Is your Instagram content getting lots of views and engagement? Then guess what? You are building your visibility! Oh yea….for free!
So what are you waiting for? Create your Instagram account today and get started! There is no time like the present and don’t feel like it is too late to get started. The time is now.
Also – don’t forget to check out our Instagram webinar available on-demand in our video classroom.
