Instagram’s Influence
No doubt, social media is powerful and influential around the world, but which platform is the most influential? Ask anybody and their answer might vary from the next person you ask, it’s an arbitrary answer. Unless you answer Myspace that is, then you might obviously be in your 20’s-30’s and very out of the loop.
Ask me though, and I would answer Instagram, hands-down, as the most influential and powerful marketing platform among individuals today. Why? Well, let’s discuss.
For starters, Instagram had over 800 million monthly active users in 2017. 800 million. 51% of these users visit the platform daily and check it multiple times throughout their day. Instagram has become a full-fledged, global platform that encourages and allows brands to humanize their content, recruit new talent, showcase products, and inspire their audience.
Instagram for Your Business
Just how exactly, can Instagram be of superb benefit for your business?
While Snapchat originated the idea of Stories, Instagram and other respective platforms have made it redundant and unnecessary. By incorporating an equivalent Stories feature into their platform, Instagram has made Snapchat obsolete. Even more, there are 200 million people using Instagram stories on a daily basis compared to 160 million on Snapchat.
Additionally, Instagram’s platform manifests permanence through a user’s ability to scroll through previous posts and highlight Stories for long periods of time (as opposed to only 24 hours). By allowing users to see previous posts, they understand a fuller and better idea of the community behind a company. With a better sense of community, the connections between company and potential consumers are better recognized and experienced. This connection is strong enough that one in five Instagram Stories receive a direct message from a viewer, and 70% of Instagrammers follow a business. In fact, Instagram users are actually seeking contact with brands – brands no longer have to seek out consumers, as consumers seek them out instead.
More than anything, businesses want their consumers to be interested and engaged. Instagram does better than any other social media platform, including Facebook, in terms of engagement. The average number of likes on Instagram compared to Facebook is significantly more for Instagram.
So, while there are multiple social media platforms to choose from for your business, Instagram is not one that your business wants to skip out on. With 45.6% of Instagram users more likely to remember marketing campaigns on Instagram itself over TV commercials and other traditional media, it’s a marketing strategy that you definitely want to focus on.
