Importance of Instagram Marketing for New Starters

Originally published on LinkedIn on December 20, 2017.

Instagram has become an important, no, a crucial aspect of any marketer's arsenal. If you're not on it, then you're falling behind times. Instagram is currently one of only a few exchanges which invokes an organic change in consumer behaviour; whether you're marketing a product or a service - everybody likes to take a peek behind the scenes once in a while.

It has become a crucial tool to take advantage of when you're trying to grow a successful brand; producing quality content and engaging your audience in a more 'personal' way can be the thing which wins you new business and clients.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses, especially one's still living in the 'legacy' era are weary of adopting this shift in technology, and instead insist of using traditional or outdated ways of propagating their brand message.

Whether you're a business owner, or a media personality - having timely, 'on-brand' content can make or break it for you; focus on what makes you unique, is it the lifestyle or the image you or your brand portrays? What can you offers to your followers others can't - insightful information about your new product or awe-inspiring views from your last trip can go a long way in gaining new followers and expanding your brand outreach.

It's no longer just about 'paid for' content, it's about organic outreach, in a timely manner which can give the viewer a perception of value - look at developing 'on-brand' hashtags, so you can successfully track and measure your posts' success without needing additional attribution tools.

We recently conducted a study of 2,500 millennials who were choosing a company to work for - 91% of them chose Instagram as either their first or second point of contact when conducting research about the company they were applying to join. Brands with pages which had scarce content, minuscule followings and not enough engagement lost out to bigger, beefier industry titans.

But catching up to giants isn't that hard...

Just by uploading one post per week and using relevant hashtags can increase your outreach by 65% (based on our study) and if you want to increase that number all the way to 81% responding and liking your followers' content can be a great start.