What is Instagram?
Instagram is a platform, which enables you to share either an image or video with a description. It’s a known fact that images and videos can create a lot more engagement on social accounts.
Instagram provides you with the potential to reach a large audience, through varying means such as hashtags. The app currently has over 300 million active users with an average of 70 million photos being shared each day on average.
Instagram enables you to connect your other social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter) to the account as well. Therefore, meaning that you can create a post and send it to each platform, saving you time in the long run, which is always great!
Instagram provides a humanised approach to your business as you can showcase your products and company in a different way to that of Facebook and Google Plus.
The only downside to Instagram is that you cannot currently upload an image from on your desktop to the platform. The image has to be uploaded from on a mobile device. Instagram are in the process of updating the platform though with new features, as they have recently added the search bar onto the desktop version.
Why is it a beneficial platform?
- Instagram gives you a personal experience with your audience.
- You are able to show what your product can do or a specicifc service by posting a short video. Instagram makes sharing videos easy so that you can be doing it more frequently.
- You are able to share your Instagram post on Facebook and Twitter if you link the profiles together.
- 51% of users are male while 49% are females, this means you can target almost equally the two different demographics.
Instagram for your business
While Instagram does not currently have a business account that you can set up, it is still a beneficial platform for businesses as it enables you to reach a wider audience through visual posts that your audience will find engaging.
Although you cannot currently update your account on a desktop you are able to update your account on a mobile device. Therefore meaning that you are more likely to post about something when you are outside of work that a lot more people will be looking for.
An example would be – If you were watching Coronation Street and saw that they were using a similar product that you sell on your website then you could do a quick post with the image of your product alongside an image of it on Coronation Street and use a relevant hashtag such as #CoronationStreet along with a description about your product. Everyone who then searches for that hashtag will then see your post. A recent figure shows that businesses that use Instagram have seen an increase in 12% of brand awareness.
What time of the day works best for you?
Keeping your profile up to date is really important for maintaining a successful online presence. However, also finding out when the best time is to post when your audience online is even better. Therefore, you will need to do a couple of tests. Upload a picture onto your account at varying times of the day over the course of two weeks and see which get the most engagement.
Upload some images in the morning, the afternoon and also the evening. Then after uploading some images at varying times for two weeks take a look at the performance of each post and see which worked best.m We then recommend that you try and upload a post around this time every other day with other images being posted in-between at different times. This enables your post to reach a wider audience as more people are online that are looking for what your company does.
The Do’s and Don’ts!
The Do’s
- Complete your profile with all of the necessary information
- Update your profile at least three times a week
- Find the best time for your business to post and make sure you do at least one post a week at that time
- Engage with your audience as often as possible by commenting back, liking/pinning relevant photos
- Always include a description on your posts
- Include a link on your post where you can
- Use relevant hashtags on your posts
The Don’ts
- Do not be inconsistent with the posting on your social accounts. This can make your business look bad and make you look like you are inconsistent with your work or service you offer.
- Do not upload images onto Instagram account one after the other as this can come across as spam and you can loose your following.
- Do not upload images that are not relevant to your company or industry
- Do not hashtag every word within your description. Make sure that you hashtag relevant words and phrases that people would search for on their own to find your post.
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If you would like any information on how we can help manage your social media accounts and help you create a successful plan contact us on calling on 0161 368 9100 or email us at here@asone.co.uk
