Although marketing has changed vastly over the past few decades, from general paper ads to advertising directly to individuals via their smartphones, one thing remains true: Marketing is continually evolving and is absolutely necessary for those that want to sell directly to their consumers.
With 1 billion active users on the platform, up from 500 million in 2019, it is safe to say that your target audience is using Instagram as a social media platform - and you should be too.
What Value Does Instagram Bring to Businesses?
Instagram brings the ability for businesses to showcase their products/services on a more intimate level with consumers.
The best type of content to share on Instagram are photos of your products if you are a product-based business, and photos of the workplace, your staff, and other photos that represent the services you offer if you are service-based.
Instagram helps bring more transparency to what you do and how you do it. Behind the scenes content performs well on Instagram, and it helps consumers connect with the brand's beyond what they sell. It gets to the root of the brand and the people behind it.
This is especially true with Instagram Stories.
Instagram Stories was released in 2016, six years after Instagram was first launched. Stories are short 15-second video clips or photos that last for only 24 hours.
Instagram’s platform allows businesses to create a free Business Profile. If your Instagram account isn’t set up as a Business Profile, connect it to your business Facebook page and upgrade it in settings. Business Profiles give you the ability to add in more contact buttons on your profile, and the ability to track analytics around your content and audience.
Audience demographics on Instagram allow for you to track your marketing efforts and to see if you are reaching your target audience on the platform.
Instagram and their in-depth insights for Creator and Business accounts allows for businesses to track influencer insights. When working with influencers, there are two types of influencers to work with: niche and reach.
Niche Influencers
Niche influencers are influencers who have usually under 10k followers, sometimes they are known as micro-influencers, and they have a highly engaged audience interested in your certain product or industry.
Reach Influencers
Reach influencers are influencers that have a lot of followers, ranging anywhere from 10k to millions of followers, and they have high engagement rates.
Before developing any influencer strategy for Instagram, you want to find the right influencers for your campaign, and request their account insights to see how engaged their audience is, and who their audience is.
The influencer marketing bubble is bursting, and influencers with high counts of followers often can’t push products like niche, micro-influencers can.
What Content Performs Best on Instagram in 2020?
Instagram is shifting away from perfectly curated feeds, and into a platform that is full of content that provides value to your audience, entertains, and inspires. When you are creating your content strategy for Instagram, it is best to create a plan using these three pillars: value, entertainment, and inspirational.
Source: @aurelycerise
Top metrics for measuring Instagram post performance are saves, shares, and comments. With Instagram recently announcing that they are getting rid of likes, the platform is shifting into how users engage.
Valuable Content
Valuable content is content that educates your audience at some level for your product or service. This content can teach them about the ingredients in your products, the mission and philanthropy of your company, or their results that your clients receive from working with you if you are a service-based business. Valuable content is content that people will save. The save feature on Instagram is a bookmark tool under the post, and it will add the post into their Collections. Your audience will save valuable content because they can learn from it, and will potentially go back to it before they purchase from you.
Entertainment Content
Entertainment content is the second pillar you should create content for in your strategy. This is content that makes your audience laugh and that they resonate with. For example, this could include sharing funny memes that relate to your business, funny stories, or jokes relating to your product. Entertaining content is content that is shared the most on the platform. Either your audience shares it to their Stories or they share it through DMs with their friends and family who would also enjoy it.
Inspirational Content
Finally, the third pillar of content is inspirational. This is content that reaches your audience on a deeper level, and this is typically content that they will comment on. This can be inspiring quotes or stories, or testimonials of people who’ve used your product or service before.
What Does Instagram Plan on Adding in The Future?
Instagram has announced that they are adding the ability for creators to monetize IGTV.
This will act as an incentive for creators to create higher quality content because now there will be direct payment for them through ad revenue.
With more content being created and uploaded onto IGTV, there will be an upward trend of users flocking to this newer feature on Instagram.
What Can You Receive From Instagram as a Marketing Tool?
Instagram is a great, free marketing tool for any business in 2020. The platform allows for businesses to generate leads/customers, higher brand awareness, and the ability to understand your audience on a more intimate level.
In 2020, a huge marketing trend is authenticity and transparency.
Consumers want to know where their products are coming from, and they want to know more about the brand’s and the people behind them.
Instagram allows for any business, small or large, to connect with their audience through conversation on Instagram DMs.
Check your analytics on Instagram to understand your audience and top performing content before creating your Instagram strategy. A few insights are:
- Audience demographics: Where do they live? How old are they?
- Content insights: What were your top performing posts? Which posts had the most shares, saves, and comments?
- Activity insights: What days of the week is your audience on Instagram? What time of day are they using the app?
Knowing how to read Instagram’s analytics will allow you to understand your audience and create content for them, and in return you will see your engagement rate rise.
What is holding you back from marketing your business on Instagram? Join in the conversation in the comments section!