Also known as Insta or IG, Instagram is a photo and video sharing social network founded in 2010. Initially created as a mobile application only for iOS and encouraging user content creations, it became famous among the photo lovers in a short time.
Besides the tools and filters to improve photos for sharing, some other features started to appear in the app while users gave feedbacks. As a result of its success, this social network was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and begin a new era releasing the app on different platforms and growing the number of users exponentially.
Business possibilities in Instagram
Like a personal account, companies can create a profile and include information about the business. After that, it’s possible to interact with people liking, commenting and sharing posts or following other users, hashtags, geotags and mentions. There are a variety of options to post on Instagram:
- Feed Photo: single image with a caption.
- Feed Carousel: up to 10 photos in a slide-show with a caption.
- Feed Video: up to 1 minute with a caption.
- Story Photo: image accessible by others for 24 hours.
- Story Video: up to 15 seconds of video accessible by others for 24 hours.
- IGTV: up to 10 minutes of video.
- Live Video: Up to 60 minutes.
For some accounts, some features and time limits can be different. It depends on the profile relevance for the social network and can’t be requested. Nevertheless, it’s recommended to verify the account to gain more credibility.
Additionally, Facebook released three different tools related to Instagram that let users create more exciting posts and handy for a quickly eye-catching publication:
- Hyperlapse: time-lapse video recorder.
- Boomerang: video loop recorder.
- Layout: photo composition tool.
Promoting a business on Instagram
In brief, Instagram has more than 1+ billion monthly active users, 500+ million accounts active every day, 25+ million business profiles worldwide, 80% of accounts follow a business on Instagram and probably the most addicted audience between the other social networks.
There are two different paths to advertise inside Instagram, one is through its ad tool, and the other is using the Facebook Ads tool. Instagram Ads tool allows marketers to create:
- Photo Ads: photos can be in a square or landscape format.
- Video Ads: videos up to 60 seconds-long in landscape or square format.
- Stories Ads: complement feed content with ads on Stories.
- Carousel Ads: swipe to view additional photos or videos in a single ad.
- Collection Ads: integrated story through video, images or both.
- Ads in Explore: reach people in a discovery mindset.
Also, it’s possible to use Facebook’s Ads tool that allows using all the features extended to Instagram. The main advantage of using Facebook Ads is to have more possibilities to control the audience targeting.
Instagram is the right choice for businesses that want to connect with the community and show their brand culture, style, highlight products and services.
What is your experience with Instagram?