Instagram has rapidly become a key marketing and advertising platform for b2c brands, and even some b2b businesses.

2017 was an impactful year in marketing and advertising. Brands started emerging on Instagram out of the woodwork. Some performed well, and others did not. The ones that did understood how to leverage themselves on Instagram and quickly established themselves on the platform, opening many doors for their business and brand.

2018 will continue to prove why just being on Instagram isn’t enough. The brands that get far on the platform have formulated a strategic plan which they executed the right way.

What separated these influential businesses from the pack?

They understood a very significant piece of puzzle. Instagram users want to look at, like and share content that is relevant to them and their community. If you are constantly posting about your services and obviously showing them that you just want to acquire customers, your business is not going to get far.

These influential accounts are engaging (and re-engaging) customers and building repeated awareness among their community (Source).

To state simply, visuals have a higher impact on the memory than just text, or when people are verbally told things.

Instagram is a platform that requires an Image or Video for a post – you cannot post text by itself. Other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ lets you do either.

Combining a particular visual with strategic copy could be the key to drawing in your target audience, engaging them and converting it into a sale.

It’s important that your business optimizes on this, because you don’t want to be constantly analyzing and wondering whether or not if people even remember what you said or posted within a short or long period of time.

It’s #Engaging Season

Instagram is the highest engaging platform for a reason. It is fun, enticing and energetic.

And their recent story feature is really a great add-on for the app, which can be used for exciting 1-day only sales, events or special promotions.

There are no limits to Instagram’s audience and potential reach

Other features like Explore (where you can see photos they recommend for you to look at based on your likes, friends and location) and switching your heart/notifications page to Following (where you can see what photos your friends like and who they decide to newly follow), really make the app personal and light. There are also certain stories and accounts that have shoppable features, and that’s a whole other fascinating subject..

It’s important to note that besides being a visual based platform (remember my note above about no text-only posts), Instagram is the one platform that was crafted to be used on mobile devices.

Yes, Instagram has a desktop view, but you can only upload posts from your desktop through certain applications and programs.

By gearing the platform for on-the-go users, it subconsciously registers and makes people want to check their Instagram feed when they are in between classes, on the train, in between workouts, have a few minutes before an appointment starts, waiting for their food etc.

In a recent survey of more than 2,500 micro-influencers (mid-sized social media users with a large following of daily engaged users), 60 percent thought Instagram was the best overall platform for engagement. This may shock you but, Facebook was the runner-up and only gathered support of 18 percent (Source).

Between photo and video alone, there’s a lot of content to be shared, but by creating photo collages, uploading multiple images in a carousel or making a bold statement with a photo-grid, the possibilities are infinite for your brand.

Instagram has more depth than people thought

When businesses started to really position themselves on Instagram and employees started to dedicate time on the platform, many businesses questioned if it was worth the time and effort. On the other hand, some saw the value, but didn’t know how to take advantage of it and needed some guidance with their messaging, visual elements, and cadence.

Before I even started at Splendor, I started to analyze their Instagram account, as well as their other social accounts and their company website.

The difference was that their website had amazing, attractive visuals and strong messaging on every single page. Their social accounts had some good visuals and copy, but it didn’t fully match what they were doing so well on their website.

Within a few weeks of being here I was able to grow each and every social account by developing a strategy which included: changing the company bios on each platform, mapping out the cadence and schedule, producing themed campaigns, implementing the company’s powerful messaging and tone, working with the team to obtain and create visuals, and a little bit of content curation.

Small changes made us stand out, grow awareness about our agency and it even resulted in some new leads.

Advertising Comparison: Instagram’s upper-hand on Facebook

Because Instagram has the highest engagement rate AND the most engaged audience, it’s vital to realize that this means your ads have the highest probability of being remembered on this application.

In addition, research indicates that ad recall from Instagram sponsored ads is 2.8x higher on average than ad recall from other social networks. Visitors from Instagram stay on a site for an average of 192 seconds, much longer than visitors from every other channel, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Translation, traffic from Instagram is the most engaged. (Source)

To conclude, it’s important that businesses take advantage of this platform and communicate with their audience effectively. It’s a great way to display what your brand is all about, visually.

Publish content that your target audience will want to engage with, share, talk about and remember, you never know what possibilities it will create.