Is Instagram a Social Platform for Business?

There seems to be a question on everyones mind when it comes to the social media platform Instagram and that is “How does it help a business?” Although there can be argument made that this question exists for all social media still, for those that have proven other social channels such as LinkedIn and Facebook as profitable sources of leads and sales there still seems to be a larger lingering tone of insecurities for businesses when using Instagram.

This undertone almost certainly exists firstly because the target audience started out as a primarily teen and young adult centered platform but has since grown to expand its target age range into the 30’s. Instagram also is light years behind Facebook in their advertising mediums BUT has recently started breaching into the paid advertising market working towards a goal of becoming similar to facebook’s boosting and ad performance.

So what makes Instagram different?

Instagram allows you the opportunity to create visual appealing art and photos to share on all your social media platforms. You can easily change the filter on an image and add text or create a fun collage with multiple photos. So many ads these days center around visually appealing images to the point that the competition to grab a users attention has steadily risen.

Since Facebook only allows 20% or less text on an image the ability to edit the photos on instagram can be a huge time saver to use on both platforms for advertising. 

Instagram also allows videos as of August 2013 and the use of videos in peoples news feed has become very prevalent and useful. Business owners can post how to videos for their products and even answer frequently asked questions via this platform to be sure to impress all potential and current customers.

As of very recently Hootsuite, the popular and free scheduling platform, has started integrating with Instagram profiles to allow for all the benefits of scheduling posts ahead of time.