Insta Famous

Every day, 3.5 million photos are liked on Instagram. I am one of 400 million users of Instagram. Every single day I log on to Instagram at least five or six times a day, checking my newsfeed or my notifications as to who liked my most recent photo. I find Instagram to be one of the most user friendly social media sites available to people. The site as a whole is aesthetically appealing with the simple but wide variety of options in editing pictures. Instagram has a very user friendly search bar and que, which I find helpful when trying to find another fellow user.

As an Instagram user, one of the highlights of Instagram is the fact that it has a “trending” or “look at these posts” tab where you can view other public profiles on the social media site to discover other people and their posts to inspire or connect with other fellow Instagrammers. This feature is also the main reason why I believe businesses are so successful on Instagram in regards to connecting and expanding their customer base.

Prior to researching various businesses, I was only familiar with the small number of posts that showed up in the search tab or the “trending” section of that tab. The advertisements were few and sparse though. Businesses also have contact with their customers by paying money to have their products or services show as a post within the user’s newsfeed. The benefit of randomly popping up in the newsfeed is greater visibility for a company. Beyond these two examples, I was unfamiliar with how businesses used Instagram to promote their company.

I found a blog post that listed 52 ways to market your company on Instagram that proved to be very insightful in regards to the Instagram business world (found at: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/59612395517/52-tips-how-to-market-on-instagram). This site told you how to effectively use Instagram for your business and how to creatively promote your company. One strategy I found very useful was to repost your followers and customers’ posts when they post about your products or services. Making shoutouts to followers will increase your popularity as well as start a trend where customers will post about products in order to make it on the company’s Instagram.

In addition to posting follower photos, Instagram makes customer interaction very easy, which is an aspect that is valued when using social media for a business. The more interaction you have with customers and followers, the more popular and reputable your company seems to be. Commenting, liking, and mentioning customers and their pages allows people to feel important or prioritized by a company. I believe in terms of rating customer interaction, Instagram is right up at the top with Twitter due to the ability to interact with customers in numerous ways.

Instagram has the unique ability to allow followers in to the mind and imagination of a company, similar to what blogs do. Instagram does not have a character count like what Twitter has, nor does it have restrictive and difficult platforms that allows for very little or more challenging strategies to interact with customers like Pinterest. The major downfall I see to using a platform such as Instagram is the lack of an older audience. The Instagram population seems to be dominated by the younger generation. However, the older generation seems to be slowly becoming interested in Instagram. Overall, I believe Instagram to be one of the best social media platforms for a business to market in (and I may be biased since Instagram is my go-to social media site).