The Role of Instagram in Devising a Winning Internet Marketing Strategy

By now, we all know that social media has a big impact on Internet marketing results. However, it is not just Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn that play vital, there are many other specialized social networking platforms that are dubbed as digital marketing havens. A lot of businesses now migrate to Instagram as it is a wonderful avenue for social media marketing. With more than hundred million users across the globe, this mighty photo sharing platform is becoming a reliable online marketing tool.

About Instagram

On the Instagram official website, you can see the description—“Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends and family.” The statement presents a summarized view of what the platform is all about. In short, it is a stunning social media site which allows users to present little glimpses of their lives through photos and videos.

Instagram users, also known as Instagrammers, can create their personal profiles where they upload their content to share with others. They can follow and share these with family, friends, and whomever they want to across the globe. In order to identify the pictures and posts, “hashtags” are used as description related to the specific topic.

Say for example, if you upload your picture on a beach, Instagram may add it as #outerbanks in its description. The photo may also get uploaded to the Outer Banks profile along with thousands of other photos. So, anyone who is interested to explore Outer Banks may search on Instagram to see thousands of pictures.

Why use Instagram for business marketing?

It is fairly obvious why today's marketers are drawn to this social platform. Instagram is a handy tool for businesses that rely on the common public to sell off their products and services. Branding, in today's digital age, is highly dependent on visual media such as videos and images as they can be more appealing than plain text, and they can raise emotions leading to actions. A study, done by mashable.com last year, stated that using photos along with posts increases the chances of interaction with comments and likes by about 40% as compared to the text-only posts.

Which businesses get more advantage through Instagram?

Instagram is appropriate for all types of businesses. You can take Starbucks as a sterling example. The company profile has nearly 5.6 million posts at #starbucks and there are about 1.5 million followers. Their posts are basically photos of people having Starbucks coffee drinks or of their special offers. No matter what it is all about, the pictures tell volumes and depict the warm feeling of the very first sip of a creamy mocha latte to fire off an instant craving.

If you can use clever photographs of your products and services to ignite that sort of curiosity and admiration in the followers for Instagram, you can reap the best results through this platform. It is not just the B2C marketers, but even the B2B ventures also make use of Instagram for corporate marketing.

Benefits of Instagram

There are countless benefits of using Instagram as a potent online marketing platform. Here, we will discuss some of the major benefits that you can count on.

• Instagram is all about visual experiences, which appeal to the emotions as we discussed earlier.
• Same as blogging or Facebook posts, Instagram can also direct the users and followers to a website.
• User engagement through Instagram is much stronger as it is much faster than any other social media platforms.
• Instagram is one of the most user friendly platforms for mobile users as the posts do not include a lot of long text.
• Most of the users have integrated their Instagram accounts with Facebook account so that when they upload a picture on Instagram, it automatically gets uploaded on Facebook also.
• It’s fully free. Advertising through Instagram is fully free. All you need to do is just create and maintain a profile. It needs to be frequently updated, but the entire thing doesn't cost a dime.

Ways to explore the fullest visual power of Instagram

You may have heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and Instagram serves the same purpose. Social media and social networking are going through an evolution, and the user experiences and expectations are constantly changing as well.

People are now mostly lazy about reading the text heavy articles and the information portals and web pages. They want to get the idea delivered quickly and pleasingly. With the explosion of visual platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram over the last few years, users now prefer to get visual content to get information online, especially when it comes to choosing brands.

Telling the story

Due to its unique nature, Instagram gives brands an opportunity to tell a visual story about the company and its offerings. You can give users a fair incentive upon following you by sharing the brand culture and events. There is no better platform than Instagram to share the brand message and special offers.

Finding genuine followers

It is important to get your profile optimized to build your following. For this, there should be a strategic and robust “About” section in your site with the most relevant keywords and your logo. To get genuine followers, along with adding authenticity to your profile, you need to use the most prominent hashtags in your posts to maximize reach.  

Crowdsource

Another ability of Instagram is to utilize the hashtag campaigns to generate conversations around your products and brand. You can plan various intelligent campaigns for this such as introducing a photo contest with a hashtag like #CouplesPhotoContest. These initiatives can also help to get tons of user-generated content.

If you are thinking of hiring a professional service provider to administer your digital marketing strategy, it is essential to talk to them about their expertise in Instagram marketing too. It is a long-term process to get your brand established through Instagram.