Since its inception in 2010, Instagram has been transforming the world of digital communication. With 1 billion monthly users and 500 million daily users, it has come to be one of the most popular and widely used social media platforms.
An average Instagrammer spends around 53 minutes on the platform daily, making it a useful tool for marketers. Instagram provides brands with the advantage of enhancing their organic reach and growth to new levels. In the post-lockdown world, the importance of Instagram as a marketing tool has increased manifold as brands look for ways to revive business and ensure growth quickly.
Having an Instagram account, especially a verified Instagram account, is a signal that a brand is reputed, real and transparent, thus boosting the customer trust. Having a formidable online presence is imperative for brands post-lockdown, and Instagram helps brands in this endeavour. Instagram is a visual platform that allows brands to form a more personal connection with customers. A visual feed that seamlessly communicates brand identity and messaging reflects the brand's uniqueness and differentiates its business.
Moreover, Instagram allows brands to create visually appealing content that’s usually not possible with most of the other social media platforms. This lets brands to produce unique and quirky content that their core audience can easily relate to. Instagram also enables brands to connect with the target audience on a close and personal level, enhancing brand preference and loyalty.
As consumers staying indoors and spending a lot of time on social media, Instagram seems to be the ideal platform for brands to strengthen their digital footprint and drive brand awareness.
Instagram Stories: Why should brands use it
Instagram Stories is a quick and sure-fire way for brands to engage their audiences. It caters to a generation of people with shorter attention spans, as it is easily accessible to people on-the-go. Maintaining a recurring theme is another component that plays an important role. A unique and cohesive Instagram aesthetic is not just visually pleasing but can also significantly enhance brand recognition. It conveys a brand’s voice and personality and helps the followers instantly recognize its content when it appears on their feed.
Here are 4 reasons why brands should tap into the immense potential of Instagram Stories.
The Ability to Post a Variety of Content
Instagram Stories offers brands the freedom to post a diverse range of content while maintaining the aesthetic of their feed. It allows brands to arouse curiosity among its core audience during product launches, hold contests and announce winners, facilitate the Instagram takeover, share short, lighthearted content and keep the brand's content fresh and new. Brands can even leverage a diverse catalogue of creative features like Carousel Ads, Tap to Feature and more to make their content stand out.
Enabling growth
As businesses look for newer ways to grow post-lockdown, they can leverage Instagram Stories to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience. Using location tags in Stories will help brands boost content discoverability globally and reach different demographics. Including relevant hashtags will also increase the searchability of a brand's profile and its content within the Instagram community.
Enabling interaction between a brand and its audience
Establishing a meaningful connection with the audience is essential for growth post-lockdown as people see brands through a filtered lens. Setting up polls on Instagram Stories fuels audience interaction and increases engagement, while the "Ask Me Anything' feature lets brands hold conversations with their audience and familiarize them with their messaging. Tagging increases the chances of a brand to be seen. This is very effective because when a brand tags other brands and people in its Instagram Stories, they have the option of reposting it, which leads to enhanced reach.
Driving traffic to the website
Brands can effectively use Instagram Stories to drive traffic to their website, thus broadening their eCommerce reach. They can implement this by using the shopping bag-shaped notification, which allows users to click on the items on their Instagram Story and shop for them by visiting the brand’s website. Incorporating the "Swipe Up" feature will also allow brands to convert their Insta-audiences into website traffic.
As brands and marketers race to capitalize on the immense potential of Instagram post-lockdown, they must know some of its most significant business benefits.
● Using Instagram allows brands to connect with their customers across multiple channels and increase cross-channel engagement.
● Leveraging Instagram Stories enables brands to attract engaged traffic and build a community of loyal customers.
● Instagram Stories leads to the creation of valuable UGC (User-generated content)
● Instagram Stories allows brands to test how their content will perform based on organic engagement insights from Instagram before putting it on-site or in paid ads.
Reels - The latest by Instagram
Reels is Instagram’s latest feature. It allows brands to make 15-second thumb stoppers with quirky, fun content that resonates with the current times. It helps brands make their content viral. Using Reels, brands can get their channel featured in the Explore section under the "Top Reels" tab, thus making it more discoverable.
Brands can use Reels to their advantage by sharing content that attracts and engages consumers. As more social media platforms shift towards funnier, more entertaining, quirkier content these days, Reels will enable brands to exude authenticity through well-devised content that their consumer base can relate to.
With 700 million monthly active users, Instagram's reach is unprecedented. In today's post-lockdown landscape wherein providing seamless experiences is the key to business revival and growth, Instagram can be a useful marketing tool for brands. In keeping with this, brands need to spend time exploring the immense engagement opportunities with Instagram and make the most of them.
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