2023 Guide to Instagram

The Essentials:

Instagram which is owned by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), is a social media platform that allows users to post photos, videos and stories with their followers.

Instagram gained immense popularity due to its user-friendly interface and visually appealing content. It allows users to upload photos and videos, apply filters, and share them with their followers. Users can also like, comment, and privately message each other as well as businesses’ pages.

In addition to personal accounts, Instagram also provides a platform for businesses, influencers, and celebrities to promote themselves and connect with their audiences. The platform offers various tools such as Insights and Instagram Shopping to help businesses reach their target customers.

To compete with TikTok, Instagram released their own form of short form content feature called reels. These reels are very similar to TikTok videos and most creators on TikTok will just post the exact same video on reels to reach a larger audience. It is an effective and low effort technique to hit a larger audience as users, especially those who are not using TikTok. We have a great blog post on all things TikTok updated for summer 2023 which can be found following the below link.

Typical demographics that use Instagram on a regular basis is still the younger generations, 18–40-year-olds. This is not exclusive, there are still plenty of users out with this age range that use Instagram. It is something to keep in your mind when it comes to planning your businesses digital marketing campaigns and which platforms you will utilise.

Instagram is a great tool to be used by businesses as it has such a wide range of video and photo formats that create diverse engaging content. Businesses can use Instagram to develop a close community of followers that engage with posts providing essential feedback about products and services. The platform has proved to be a successful platform for customer service through public posts, stories and direct messaging.

Businesses should use stories if they want to get messages across quickly and they have a short time frame. An example of this would be a retail store that had excess stock of winter clothing and are about to stock all their summer clothing. They could have a 50% off sale for 24 hours on their Instagram story using specific link, once the link goes the deal is over. The scarcity of only having a day to pick up the deal, mixed with the huge discount will send people to the site and buy these items. It is a win, win for the business to gain a lot of site traffic and sales by using a free platform like Instagram stories.

Influencers

An influencer is an individual who can impact the purchasing decisions and behaviours of their followers on social media or other online platforms. Influencers are seen as experts or leaders in their respective fields or niches and have a large following of people who trust their opinions and recommendations. They may specialize in various topics such as beauty, fashion, food, travel, fitness, or technology. Brands often collaborate with influencers to promote their products or services to their followers in a more authentic and engaging way than traditional advertising methods. The level of influence an individual has as an influencer is often measured by their reach, engagement, and overall impact on their followers.

Typically, influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers can be paid 4 figure sums for a single post, while those with millions of followers with charge even more than that. These types of influencers are called Macro influencers.

The Macro influencer is not the only influencer that exists, there are influencers at multiple levels of follower count. For small businesses, the micro or nano influencer can be very effective at reaching highly engaged potential customers for a fraction of the cost compared to macro influencers.

To read more about influencers and how they can help your small business without breaking the bank, please click below:

Why should my business use Instagram? 

Instagram is still one of the world’s biggest social media platforms and we do not see that changing in the future, now is the best time to double down on Instagram or start making content if you haven’t already.

Instagram is one of the most attention-grabbing platforms, notably with the younger demographics. With the mixture of image, video and story sharing, users can create diverse content for one app. This diverse content can be repurposed for other social media sites. With large user base and higher engagement from users, Instagram will provide your business with a great opportunity to reach out and connect with a vast audience.

With the platform being visual focused, it is ideal for businesses to showcase products and services while also developing their brand story. Your business should be using creative and attracting visual media to communicate and evoke emotions in potential customers. Creating this content does not have to be difficult or time consuming. At Overlook Digital, we specialise in helping small businesses create content for online use as quickly and efficiently as possible. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help with your content creation.

Like most social media platforms today, Instagram allows you to advertise directly to specific target audiences on their platform. The effectiveness of Instagram’s audience targeting, allows businesses to reach hyper specific demographics, interests and behaviours without having to initially create a large following online. Being able to target these people directly can result in a higher chance for conversion and sales. It is recommended that business try using Instagram’s paid advertisements to see if they are effective for your business. Ad spend can be as little as £1 per day, so you have the freedom and flexibility to spend as much or little as you like. Keep an eye out for our blog post dedicated to Instagram Ads and how to best utilise them in your digital marketing campaigns.

With things like stories and reels, Instagram allows you the opportunity to humanise your brand and showcase your authority/expertise within your niche. This could be done with behind-the-scenes type content, engaging with customer comments, repurposing user generated content to build up trust and credibility with your online community. This increase in trust and credibility will ultimately foster stronger customer relationships.

Instagram offers analytic tools for your business page to measure things like, follower counts and engagement rates. These tools offer valuable data and insights into your audience and content performance on Instagram. Like everything we do in digital marketing, if you can’t easily measure it in real time then it is not worth putting your time into. It is much easier to devote efforts into things that are measurable so you can see if they are successful.

Instagram has added in multiple features over the years, one of the most important, especially for e-commerce businesses is the shopping tags and the shop features. Businesses can now advertise and link their products directly on posts allowing people to either purchase directly or be taken to the business’s website. There is massive potential for your small business to drive direct sales from posting engaging content on Instagram, thus creating a seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Finally, Instagram allows businesses to stay relevant to the rapidly changing digital landscape, it has emerged as a prominent platform where many trends are created and popularised. Having your business be an active participant on Instagram will allow you to stay up on current trends, leverage these trends and remain directly relevant to your target audience.

Summary

In summary, Instagram is still one of the most useful social media platforms both in the B2B and B2C markets. It can be used to quickly gain more trust and credibility with your target audience and help your business develop a great community of engaged followers. Building up this community through leveraging, video, images and stories will allow you to funnel traffic to your website or online store and in turn increase your sales.