Photo by Dimitri Tyan on Unsplash

You would have to be hiding under a rock to not have heard about Instagram.  It’s been around for years, but the boom in mobile phones with cameras has rocketed it to one of the top 20 websites in the world.

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a social network for sharing photos and videos, ideally from a Smartphone.  Take the picture, upload it, and share it with your followers.  Think of it as Twitter for images, or a simplified version of Facebook, with images and video the main content formats.  (Facebook recently purchased Instagram.)

Every time you post an image and a link to a page on your site, your followers will see it and be able to like, comment, and share through an embedded code.  They can share to a specific person by typing in the person’s name and appending the @ symbol.  Hashtag sharing is also an option.

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash or number sign (#).  It’s often used to identify messages on a specific topic.  #cockerspaniel would be an example of a hashtag.  If you clicked on it, you would be taken to a page with images of cocker spaniels (currently more than 3 million).

Note that unethical marketers often try to deceive or trick readers by using popular hashtags on unrelated content.  Always create valuable content for the people in your target audience and avoid spamming.  Choose hashtags carefully to make sure they obviously pertain to the item.  Marginally related tags may be flagged as spam.

Why Use Instagram?

As with all social sites, Instagram will give you increased visibility.  If you love to take pictures, or have a lot of high-quality images of your products and services, it’s easy enough to post from your phone or even from your desktop with the help of a browser extension (such as Websta for Instagram, which you can add to your Google Chrome Browser).

Since Instagram is now owned by Facebook, you can also be confident that it will be growing by leaps and bounds.  In addition, you can now run Facebook ads on Instagram.  They offer a number of different ad formats and ways to create the ad, including right from your mobile phone.

Instagram ads are a relatively new phenomenon, so there is less competition and therefore the price will be cheaper.  Best of all, the ads will be highly targeted thanks to Facebook’s audience targeting.  Select by age, marital status, location, interests and more.

It also means tapping into an audience that tends to be younger, more tech-savvy, well-educated, and a higher income bracket.  More than 60% of 18 to 29-year olds use it, and more than 33$ of those 30 to 49.  The audience tends to be female and live in an urban area.  One-third of all users earn between $50,000 and $75,000 according to the software that create paystubs.  If this looks like the type of audience you would like to attract, it’s time to start marketing on Instagram.